Avallac’h quickly said a few words. It was the ellylon language that Ciri found so difficult, but she understood, particularly since the elf-women reached for their bows in unison. Avallac’h turned his face towards Ciri, and she felt a buzzing growing in her head. It was a buzzing quite similar to what a conch shell emits when pressed to the ear. But much stronger.

‘Do not resist,’ she heard a voice. ‘Do not fight. I must leap, I must transport you to another place. You are in mortal danger.’

A whistle and a long, drawn-out cry reached them from far away. And a moment later the earth shuddered under iron-shod hooves.

Riders emerged from behind the hill. An entire troop.

The horses were wearing caparisons, the riders crested helmets, and the cloaks around their shoulders fluttered in the gallop. Their vermilion-amaranth-crimson colour brought to mind the glow of a fire in the sky illuminated by the blaze of the setting sun.

A whistling and a cry. The horsemen raced towards them en masse.

Before they had ridden half a furlong the unicorns had vanished. They disappeared, leaving a cloud of dust behind them.

The riders’ leader, a black-haired elf, sat on a dark bay stallion as huge as a dragon. It was adorned, like all the horses in the troop, in a caparison embroidered with dragon’s scales, and wore on its head a truly demonic horned bucranium. Like all the elves, the black-haired one wore beneath his cloak of a myriad shades of red a mail shirt made of unbelievably tiny rings, thanks to which it fit his body snugly, like knitted woollen cloth.

‘Avallac’h,’ he said, saluting.

‘Eredin.’

‘You owe me a favour. You will pay it back when I demand it.’

‘I’ll pay it back when you demand it.’

The black-haired elf dismounted. Avallac’h also dismounted, gesturing to Ciri to do the same. They walked up the hill between white rocks with peculiar shapes covered in spindle and dwarf shrubs of flowering myrtle.

Ciri looked at them. They were of equal height, meaning they were both extremely tall. But Avallac’h’s face was gentle, while the black-haired elf’s face brought to mind a bird of prey. Fair and black, she thought. Good and evil. Light and dark…

‘Zireael, let me introduce you to Eredin Bréacc Glas.’

‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ The elf bowed and Ciri returned the bow. Not very gracefully.

‘How did you know,’ Avallac’h asked, ‘that we were in danger?’

‘I had no idea.’ The elf scrutinised Ciri. ‘We patrol the plain, for news has got out that the one-horns have become anxious and aggressive. No one knows why. I mean, now I know why. It’s because of her, naturally.’