Ciri involuntarily hunched over in the saddle, shaken–both in the literal and the metaphorical sense of the term. For Kelpie’s horseshoes had thudded against something as painfully hard, flat and unyielding as rock. After a long time of gliding in very soft limbo, the impression of hardness was so astonishing and unpleasant that the mare neighed and suddenly lunged aside, beating out a staccato rhythm on the ground that made Ciri’s teeth chatter.

The second shock, the metaphorical one, was supplied by the smell. Ciri groaned and covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve. She felt her eyes immediately filling with tears.

All around rose a sour, acrid, thick and glutinous stench, a smell of burning both choking and dreadful, impossible to define, resembling nothing Ciri had ever smelled. It was–she was certain of it–the stench of decay, a corpselike reek of final degradation and degeneration, the odour of disintegration and destruction; in addition, there was the impression that whatever was decaying hadn’t smelled any more pleasantly when it was alive. Not even when it had been in its salad days.

She bent over in a nauseous reflex she was unable to control. Kelpie snorted and shook her head, contracting her nostrils. The unicorn, which had materialised beside them, leaned back on his haunches, jumped up and kicked. The hard ground answered with a shock and a loud echo.

All around was the night, the dark and filthy night, muffled by the sticky and reeking tatters of darkness.

Ciri glanced upwards, searching for the stars, but there was nothing above her, only an abyss, lit up in places by an indistinct, red glow, like a distant fire.

‘Whooops,’ she said and grimaced, feeling the sour and rotten mist settling on her lips. ‘Yuuuckk! Not this place, not this time! Under no circumstances!’

The unicorn snorted and nodded his head, his horn describing a short and dynamic arc.

The ground grinding beneath Kelpie’s hooves was rock, but strange, unnaturally smooth, emitting an intensive stench of burning and dirty ash. It took some time for Ciri to realise that what she was looking at was a road. She had had enough of that unpleasant and annoying hardness. She guided the mare to the side of the road, marked by something that had once been trees, but were now hideous and naked skeletons. Corpses hung with shreds of rags, quite like the remains of rotten shrouds.

The unicorn gave a warning by neighing and sending a mental signal. Too late.

Just beyond the strange road and the dead trees a heap of scree began, and further away, at its edge, a steep slope running downwards, almost a precipice. Ciri yelled, stuck her heels into the sides of the mare as she slipped down. Kelpie jerked, crushing whatever the heap was made of under her hooves. And it was waste. Mostly some kind of strange pots. The vessels didn’t crumble under the horseshoes, didn’t crunch, but burst repulsively softly and stickily, like great fishes’ bladders. Something squelched and gurgled, and the odour belching forth almost knocked Ciri from the saddle.