‘The end justifies the means,’ Emhyr said dully. ‘What I’m doing, I’m doing for posterity. To save the world.’

‘If the world is to be saved like that—’ the Witcher lifted his head ‘—it would be better for it to perish. Believe me, Duny, it’d be better if it perished.’

‘You’re pale,’ Emhyr var Emreis said, almost gently. ‘Don’t get so excited, for you are liable to faint.’

He moved away from the wardrobe, selected a chair and sat down. The Witcher’s head was indeed spinning.

‘The Iron Urcheon,’ the emperor began calmly and quietly, ‘was to be a way of forcing my father to collaborate with the usurper. It was after the coup. My father, the overthrown emperor, was in prison and being tortured. He couldn’t be broken, so another way was tried. A sorcerer hired by the usurper changed me into a monster in front of my father’s eyes. The sorcerer added a little something on his own initiative. Namely humour. Eimyr in our language means an “urcheon”, an old name for a hedgehog.

‘My father didn’t allow himself to be broken and so they murdered him. I, meanwhile, was released into a forest amidst mockery and scorn, and dogs were set on me. I survived. I wasn’t hunted too seriously, for it wasn’t known that the sorcerer had botched his work, and that my human form returned at night. Fortunately, I knew several people of whose loyalty I could be certain. And at that time I was, for your information, thirteen.

‘I had to flee the country. And the fact that I ought to search for a cure to the spell in the North, beyond the Marnadal Stairs, was read in the stars by a slightly crazy astrologer by the name of Xarthisius. Later, when I was emperor, I gave him a tower and apparatus for that. At that time, he had to work on borrowed equipment.

‘You know, it’s a waste of time getting bogged down in what happened in Cintra. I deny, however, that it supposedly had anything to do with Vilgefortz. Firstly, I didn’t know him then, and secondly I had a strong aversion to mages. Even today I don’t like them, actually. Ah, while I remember: when I regained the throne I caught up with the sorcerer who had served the usurper and tortured me in front of my father’s eyes. I also displayed a sense of humour. The mage’s name was Braathens, and in our language that sounds almost the same as “fried”.

‘Enough digressions, though, let’s get back to the matter at hand. Vilgefortz visited me secretly in Cintra, shortly after Ciri’s birth. He passed himself off as a trusted friend of people in Nilfgaard who were still loyal to me and had conspired against the usurper. He offered help and soon proved to be capable of helping. When, still mistrustful, I asked about his motives, he bluntly declared he was counting on gratitude. For the favours, privileges and power he would be given by the great Emperor of Nilfgaard. Meaning me. A powerful ruler who would govern half the world. Who would beget an heir who would govern half the world. He intended to rise high himself–or so he declared, without inhibition–at the side of those great rulers. Here he took out some scrolls bound with snake skin and commended the contents to my attention.