And dreamed on.

The tower of Inis Vitre had a terrace supported on columns, suspended over the lake. At the beginning, Condwiramurs did not pay any attention to the matter, but finally began to wonder. The terrace was strange, because it was totally inaccessible. It was impossible to get onto the terrace from any of the rooms she knew.

Aware that the abodes of sorceresses were sure to have such secret anomalies, Condwiramurs did not ask any questions. Even when–as she took a walk along the lake shore–she saw Nimue watching her from the terrace. It was inaccessible, it turned out, only to the unauthorised and the profane.

Piqued that she was thought of as profane, she dug her heels in and pretended that nothing was the matter. But it wasn’t long before the secret of the terrace was revealed.

It was after she had been visited by a series of dreams, triggered by the watercolours of Wilma Wessely. Clearly fascinated by that fragment of the legend, the artist devoted all her works to Ciri in the Tower of the Swallow.

‘I’m having strange dreams after those paintings,’ the novice complained the next morning. ‘I’m dreaming of… paintings. Always the same paintings. Not situations, not scenes, but paintings. Ciri on the tower’s battlements… An unmoving picture.’

‘And nothing else? No sensations apart from visual ones?’

Nimue knew, of course, that a dream-reader as able as Condwiramurs dreamed with all her senses–she didn’t only experience the dream with sight, like most people, but also with her hearing, touch, smell–even taste.

‘No.’ Condwiramurs shook her head. ‘Only…’

‘Yes, yes?’

‘A thought. A stubborn thought. That by this lake, in this tower, I’m not the mistress at all, but a captive.’

‘Follow me.’

Just as Condwiramurs had guessed, the way to the terrace was only possible through the sorceress’s private chambers, which were utterly clean, pedantically tidy, smelling of sandalwood, myrrh, lavender and naphthalene. They had to use a tiny door and a winding staircase leading downwards.

This chamber, unlike the others, didn’t have wood panelling or tapestries. It was simply painted white and was thus very bright. It was all the brighter since there was a huge triptych window, or rather a glass door, leading straight onto the terrace perched above the lake.

The only pieces of furniture in the chamber were two armchairs, an immense looking glass in an oval, mahogany frame and a kind of rack with a horizontal bar and a tapestry draped over it. The tapestry measured about five foot by seven and its tassels rested on the floor. It showed a rocky cliff over a tarn, and a castle carved into the cliff, which seemed to be part of the rock wall. A castle Condwiramurs knew well from numerous illustrations.

‘Vilgefortz’s citadel, Yennefer’s place of imprisonment. The place where the legend ended.’