A black cat, exactly like the one on the inn sign, appeared from nowhere and rubbed against her calf, arching its back. She stroked it, and the cat gently butted her palm, sat down and began licking the fur on its breast. Ciri gazed into space, her sight drifting elsewhere…

She saw Jarre sitting by the fireplace in a circle of some unattractive looking scruffs. They were all knocking over small vessels containing a red liquid.

‘Jarre?’

‘That’s what you should do,’ said the boy, looking into the flames of the fire. ‘I read about it in The History of Wars, a work written by Marshal Pelligram. You should do that when the motherland is in need.’

‘What should you do? Spill blood?’

‘Yes. Precisely. The motherland is calling. And partly for personal reasons.’

‘Ciri, don’t sleep in the saddle,’ says Yennefer. ‘We’re almost there.’

There are large crosses painted in whitewash on the houses of the town they are arriving in, on all the doors and gates. Thick, reeking smoke, smoke is billowing from pyres with corpses burning on them. Yennefer seems not to notice it.

‘I have to make myself beautiful.’

A small mirror is floating in front of her face, over the horse’s ears. A comb is dancing in the air, tugging through her black curls. Yennefer is using witchcraft, she doesn’t use her hands at all, because…

Because her hands are a mass of clotted blood.

‘Mummy! What have they done to you?’

‘Stand up, girl,’ says Coën. ‘Master your pain, get up and onto the comb! Otherwise fear will seize you. Do you want to be dying of fear all your life?’

His yellow eyes shine unpleasantly. He yawns. His pointed teeth flash white. It’s not Coën at all. It’s the cat. The black cat…

A column of soldiers many miles long are marching. A forest of spears and standards sways and undulates over them. Jarre also marches, he has a round helmet on his head, and a pike on his shoulder so long he has to clutch it tightly in both hands, otherwise it would overbalance him. The drums growl, and the soldiers’ song booms and rumbles. Crows caw above the column. A mass of crows…

A lake shore. On the beach whitecaps of whipped up foam, rotten reeds washed up. An island on the lake. A tower. Toothed battlements, a keep thickened by the protrusions of machicolations. Over the tower, in the darkening blue of the sky, the moon shines, as bright as a gold sovereign chopped in half. Two women wrapped in furs sit on the terrace. A man in a boat…

A looking glass and a tapestry.

Ciri jerks her head up. Eredin Bréacc Glas is sitting opposite, on the other side of the table.

‘You can’t not know,’ he says, showing his even teeth in a smile, ‘that you’re only delaying the inevitable. You belong to us and we’ll catch you.’

‘Like hell!’