And once again he became impatient. He stood up and threw a sable fur over his shoulders. He stood like that, turned away, staring at the window and the moon. Ciri sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. She was disappointed and cross, and at the same time she felt strangely wistful. It was doubtless the action of the powerful fisstech.

‘It’s all my fault,’ she mumbled. ‘That scar blights me, I know. I know what you see when you look at me. There’s not much elf left in me. A gold nugget in a pile of compost—’

He turned around suddenly.

‘You’re extremely modest,’ he drawled. ‘I would say rather: a pearl in pig shit. A diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse. As part of your language training you can create even more comparisons. I’ll test you on them tomorrow, little Dh’oine. O human creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman.’

He walked over to the table, picked up the tube and leaned over the looking glass. Ciri sat as though petrified. She felt as if she’d been spat on.

‘I don’t come here out of love!’ she barked furiously. ‘I’m being held and being blackmailed, as you well know! But I’m reconciled to it, I’m doing it for—’

‘For whom?’ he interrupted heatedly, quite unlike an elf. ‘For me? For the Aen Seidhe imprisoned in your world? You foolish maid! You’re doing it for yourself. You come here for yourself and vainly try to give yourself to me. For it’s your only hope, your only chance. And I’ll tell you one more thing. Pray, pray zealously to your human idols, godheads and totems. Because it’ll either be me, or Avallac’h and his laboratory. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to end up in the laboratory and become acquainted with the alternative.’

‘It’s all the same to me,’ she said softly, huddling up in bed. ‘I’ll agree to anything, as long as I regain my freedom. To finally free myself from you. To depart. To my world. To my friends.’

‘Your friends!’ he sneered. ‘Here are your friends!’

He turned around and abruptly tossed the fisstech-strewn looking glass to her.

‘Here are your friends,’ he repeated. ‘Have a look.’

He went out, the tails of the fur flapping behind him.

At first she only saw her own, blurred reflection in the dirtied glass. But almost immediately the looking glass brightened up milkily, filled up with smoke. And then with an image.

Yennefer suspended in a chasm, back arched, with hands raised. The sleeves of her dress are like the outstretched wings of a bird. Her hair undulates, little fishes dart among it. Whole shoals of shimmering, busy little fish. Some of them are nibbling the sorceress’s cheeks and eyes. A rope runs towards the bottom of the lake from Yennefer’s leg, and the end of the rope, trapped in the sludge and waterweed, is a large basket of stones. High above, the surface of the water shines and sparkles.