Following her gaze, all the women looked at the wall, at the mosaic constructed from tiny coloured tiles, depicting the snake Ouroboros grasping its tail in its teeth.

‘That thing is destiny,’ she continued, fixing her dark eyes on Ciri. ‘Which I, Philippa Eilhart, have only recently begun to believe in. Which I, Philippa Eilhart, have only recently begun to understand. Destiny isn’t the judgements of providence, isn’t scrolls written by the hand of a demiurge, isn’t fatalism. Destiny is hope. Being full of hope, believing that what is meant to happen will happen, I cast my vote. I vote for Ciri. The Child of Destiny. The Child of Hope.’

The silence in the colonnaded hall of Montecalvo Castle, plunged in subtle chiaroscuro, lasted a long time. The cry of an osprey circling over the lake reached them from outside the window.

‘Madam Yennefer,’ Ciri whispered. ‘Does that mean…’

‘Let’s go, daughter,’ answered Yennefer in a soft voice. ‘Geralt’s waiting for us and there’s a long road ahead.’

Geralt awoke and leaped to his feet with the cry of a night bird in his ears.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Then the sorceress and the witcher were married and held a grand wedding party. I too was there, I drank mead and wine. And then they lived happily ever after, but for a very short time. He died ordinarily, of a heart attack. She died soon after him, but of what the tale does not say. They say of sorrow and longing, but who would lend credence to fairy tales?

Flourens Delannoy, Fairy Tales and Stories

It was the sixth day after the June new moon when they arrived in Rivia.

They rode out of the forests onto the hillsides and then, beneath them, down below, suddenly and without warning, twinkled and glittered the surface of Loch Eskalott, which filled the valley in the shape of the rune from which it took its name. The hillsides of Craag Ros, the protruding end of the Mahakam massif, covered in fir and larch, gazed at their own reflections in the lake surface. As did the red tiles of the towers of the stout Rivia Castle, the winter seat of the kings of Lyria, standing on a headland extending into the lake. And by a bay at the southern end of Loch Eskalott lay the town of Rivia, with the bright thatch of the cottages around the castle and dark houses growing by the lake shore like mushrooms.

‘Well, we seem to have arrived,’ Dandelion stated, shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘Now we’ve come full circle, we’re in Rivia. Strange, how strange are the twists of fate… I don’t see blue and white pennants on any of the castle towers, and thus Queen Meve is not residing at the castle. I don’t suppose, in any case, that she still remembers our desertion—’