The space between the columns in the hall suddenly lit up. In the materialising oval they saw Sabrina Glevissig in male attire, her hair tied on her forehead with a chiffon scarf and her face blackened with stripes of camouflage pigment. Behind the sorceress’s back could be seen dirty stone walls, and on them shreds of rags, once tapestries. Sabrina extended a gloved hand hung with long strands of cobwebs towards them.

‘The only thing there’s plenty of here,’ she said, gesticulating wildly, ‘is this! Just this! Bloody hell, what stupidity… What a fiasco…’

‘Make yourself clearer, Sabrina!’

‘Make what clearer?’ yelled the Kaedwenian witch. ‘What could be clearer here? Can’t you see? This is Rhys-Rhun Castle! It’s empty! Empty and dirty! It’s a sodding empty ruin! There’s nothing here! Nothing!’

Keira Metz emerged from behind Sabrina’s shoulder, looking like a hellish fiend in her facial camouflage.

‘There isn’t and there hasn’t been anyone in this castle,’ she said calmly, ‘for at least fifty years. For fifty years there hasn’t been a living soul here, not counting the spiders, rats and bats. We made the landing in completely the wrong place.’

‘Have you made sure it isn’t an illusion?’

‘Do you take us for children, Philippa?’

‘Listen, both of you.’ Philippa Eilhart nervously ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Tell the mercenaries and novices they were on manoeuvres. Pay them and return. Return at once. And put a brave face on it, do you hear? Put a brave face on it!’

The oval of the communicator went out. Only the image on the wall screen remained. Rhys-Rhun Castle against the black sky, twinkling with stars. And the lake, with the stars reflected in it.

Fringilla Vigo looked down at the table. She felt as though the pounding blood would soon burst her cheeks.

‘I… really,’ she said at last, unable to bear the silence in the columned hall of Montecalvo Castle. ‘I… really don’t understand…’

‘But I do,’ said Triss Merigold.

‘That castle…’ said Philippa deep in thought, not paying any attention to her comrades. ‘That castle… Rhys-Rhun… will have to be destroyed. Utterly annihilated. And when legends and tales begin to be made up about this whole debacle, it will be necessary to subject them to scrupulous censorship. Do you understand what I mean, ladies?’

‘Only too well,’ nodded Francesca Findabair, who had been silent up until that moment. Ida Emean, also silent, took the liberty of making quite an ambiguous snort.

‘I…’ Fringilla Vigo still seemed stunned. ‘I truly can’t comprehend… how it could have happened…’

‘Oh,’ said Sheala de Tancarville after a very long silence. ‘It’s nothing serious, Miss Vigo. No one’s perfect.’

Philippa snorted softly. Assire var Anahid sighed and raised her eyes towards the plafond.