A white unicorn stood by the lake shore–literally suspended above the surface. Beside it was a black horse. And in the saddle of the black horse was sitting…

But I know that legend, the thought flashed through Nimue’s head. I know that fairy tale! I was a child, a little child, when I heard that tale. The wandering storyteller, the beggar Pogwizd, had told it to her. The witcher Ciri… with a scar on her cheek… The black mare Kelpie… Unicorns… The land of the elves…

The movements of the man, who hadn’t noticed the phenomenon at all, became more and more urgent, and the sounds he was uttering more and more amusing.

‘Whooops,’ said the girl on the black mare. ‘Another mistake! It’s not this place, not this time. And what’s more, I see, it’s a bad time. I’m sorry.’

The image blurred and shattered, as painted glass shatters, suddenly fell to pieces, disintegrated into a rainbow-coloured twinkling of sparkles, gleaming and gold. And then all of it vanished.

‘No!’ screamed Nimue. ‘No! Don’t disappear! I don’t want you to go!’

She straightened her knees and tried to free herself from under the man, but she could not–he was stronger and heavier than her. The man groaned and moaned.

‘Oooooh, Nimue… Ooooh!’

Nimue screamed and dug her teeth into his shoulder.

They lay on his sheepskin coat, quivering and hot. Nimue looked at the lake shore, at the caps of foam whipped up by the waves. At the reeds bent over by the wind. At the colourless, hopeless void, the void left by the disappearing legend.

A tear trickled down the novice’s nose.

‘Nimue… Is something the matter?’

‘Yes.’ She cuddled up to him, but carried on looking at the lake. ‘Don’t say anything. Hold me and don’t say anything.’

The man smiled proudly.

‘I know what happened,’ he said boastfully. ‘Did the earth move?’

Nimue smiled sadly.

‘Not just the earth,’ she replied after a moment’s silence. ‘Not just the earth.’

A flash. Darkness. The next place.

The next place was tenebrous, baleful and foul.

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.