‘Aedd Gynvael,’ she repeated slowly. ‘The sleigh of the Elf Queen. Why? Why, Geralt?’

‘I’m travelling with you, Yen, because the harness of my sleigh got entangled, caught up in your runners. And a blizzard is all around me. And a frost. It’s cold.’

‘Warmth would melt the shard of ice in you, the shard I stabbed you with,’ she whispered. ‘Then the spell would be broken and you would see me as I really am.’

‘Then lash your white horses, Yen. May they race north, where a thaw never sets in. I hope it never sets in. I want to get to your ice castle as quickly as I can.’

‘That castle doesn’t exist,’ Yennefer said, her mouth twitching. She grimaced. ‘It’s a symbol. And our sleigh ride is the pursuit of a dream which is unattainable. For I, the Elf Queen, desire warmth. That is my secret. Which is why, every year, my sleigh carries me amidst a blizzard through some little town and every year someone dazzled by my spell gets their harness caught in my runners. Every year. Every year someone new. Endlessly. Because the warmth I so desire at the same time blights the spell, blights the magic and the charm. My sweetheart, stabbed with that little icy star, suddenly becomes an ordinary nobody. And I become, in his thawed out eyes, no better than all the other… mortal women…’

‘And from under the unblemished whiteness emerges spring,’ he said. ‘Emerges Aedd Gynvael, an ugly little town with a beautiful name. Aedd Gynvael and its muck heap, that enormous, stinking pile of garbage which I have to enter, because they pay me to, because I was created to enter filth which fills other people with disgust and revulsion. I was deprived of the ability to feel so I wouldn’t be able to feel how dreadfully vile is that vileness, so I wouldn’t retreat from it, wouldn’t run horror-stricken from it. Yes, I was stripped of feelings. But not utterly. Whoever did it made a botch of it, Yen.’

They were silent. The black kestrel rustled its feathers, unfurling and folding its wings.

‘Geralt…’

‘Yes, Yen.’

‘Now you answer my question. The question I’ve never asked you. The one I’ve always feared. I won’t ask you it this time, either, but answer it. Because… because I greatly desire to hear your answer. It’s the one word, the only word you’ve never told me. Utter it, Geralt. Please.’

‘I cannot, Yen.’

‘Why not?’

‘You don’t know?’ he smiled sadly. ‘My answer would just be a word. A word which doesn’t express a feeling, doesn’t express an emotion, because I’m bereft of them. A word which would be nothing but the sound made when you strike a cold, empty skull.’

She looked at him in silence. Her eyes, wide open, assumed an ardent violet colour. ‘No, Geralt,’ she said, ‘that’s not the truth. Or perhaps it is, but not the whole truth. You aren’t bereft of feeling. Now I see it. Now I know you…’