They chased him just beside the rift, because the water there was deep enough for them to swim, while he was clambering the slippery rocks with difficulty, wallowing in the foam. In the rift, however, it was too tight for them to assail him from all sides. He stopped in the basin where Dandelion had found the skull.

He stopped and turned around. And calmed down.

He struck the first with the very tip of his sword, where the temple would have been on a man. He split open the belly of the next one, which was armed with something resembling a short battle-axe. A third fled.

The Witcher rushed up the gorge, but at the same time a surging wave boomed, erupting in foam, seethed in an eddy in the vent, tore him off the rocks and dragged him downwards, into the boiling water. He collided with a fishy creature flapping about in the eddy, and thrust it away with a kick. Something caught him by his legs and pulled him down, towards the seafloor. He hit the rock on his back, opened his eyes just in time to see the dark shapes of the creatures, two swift blurs. He parried the first blur with his sword, and instinctively protected himself from the second by raising his left arm. He felt a blow, pain, and immediately afterwards the sharp sting of salt. He pushed off from the bottom with his feet, splashed upwards towards the surface, formed his fingers together and released a Sign. The explosion was dull and stabbed his ears with a brief paroxysm of pain. If I get out of this, he thought, beating the water with his arms and legs, if I get out of this, I’ll ride to Yen in Vengerberg and I’ll try again… If I get out of this…

He thought he could hear the booming of a trumpet. Or a horn.

The tidal wave, exploding again in the chimney, lifted him up and tossed him out on his belly onto a large rock. Now he could clearly hear a booming horn and Dandelion’s cries, seemingly coming from all sides at once. He snorted the saltwater from his nose and looked around, tossing his wet hair from his face.

He was on the shore, right where they had set out from. He was lying belly-down on the rocks, and a breaker was seething white foam around him.

Behind him, in the gorge–now a narrow bay–a large grey dolphin danced on the waves. On its back, tossing her wet, willow-green hair, sat the mermaid. She still had beautiful breasts.

‘White Hair!’ she sang, waving a hand which was holding a large, conical, spirally twisting conch. ‘Are you in one piece?’

‘Yes,’ the Witcher said in amazement. The foam around him had become pink. His left arm had stiffened and was stinging from the salt. His jacket sleeve was cut, straight and evenly, and blood was gushing from the cut. I got out of it, he thought, I pulled it off again. But no, I’m not going anywhere.