Flocks of black birds flew up, cawing, from the masts, yards, ropes and skeletons alarmed by the appearance of the rider, frightened by the clack of hooves. For a moment they flecked the sky, circled in a flock over the edge of the cliff, at the bottom of which lay a lake, as grey and smooth as quicksilver. On the edge could be seen a dark and gloomy stronghold, whose towers partly overlooked the graveyard of ships, and were partly suspended over the lake, with its bastions embedded in the vertical rock. Kelpie danced, snorted, and pricked up her ears, alarmed by the wrecks, the skeletons, at the whole landscape of death. At the cawing black birds, which had already returned, alighting again on the broken masts and crosstrees, on the shrouds and skulls. But if anyone ought to have been afraid there, it was the rider.

‘Easy, Kelpie,’ said Ciri in a changed voice. ‘It’s the end of the road. This is the right place and the right time.’

She found herself outside a gate, God knows how, and emerged like an apparition from between the wrecks. The guards at the foot of the gate noticed her first, alarmed by the cawing of rooks, and now shouted, gesticulating and pointing at her, calling others.

When she rode to the gatehouse, there was already a crush there. An excited hubbub. They were all staring at her. The few who knew her and had seen her before, like Boreas Mun and Dacre Silifant, and the considerably more numerous of them who had only heard about her: newly recruited soldiers from Skellen, mercenaries, and ordinary marauders from Ebbing and the surroundings, who were now looking in amazement at the ashen-haired girl with the scar on her face and the sword on her back. At the splendid black mare, holding her head high, and snorting, her horseshoes ringing on the flagstones of the courtyard.

The hubbub died down. It became very quiet. The mare trotted, lifting her legs like a ballerina, her horseshoes ringing like a hammer on an anvil. This went on for a long time before her way was finally barred by crossed gisarmes and ranseurs. Someone reached out a hesitant and frightened hand towards the bridle. The mare snorted.

‘Take me to the lord of this castle,’ the girl said confidently.

Boreas Mun, not knowing himself why he was doing it, held her stirrup steady and offered his hand. Others held the stamping and snorting mare.

‘Do you recognise me, my lady?’ Boreas asked softly. ‘For we’ve already met.’

‘Where?’

‘On the ice.’

She looked him straight in the eye.

‘I didn’t look at your face then, sir,’ she said unemotionally.

‘You were the Lady of the Lake,’ he nodded seriously. ‘Why have you come here, girl? What for?’

‘For Yennefer. And to claim my destiny.’

‘Claim your death, more like,’ he whispered. ‘This is Stygga Castle. In your place I’d flee as far from here as you can.’