“You haven’t got enough strength left, Yennefer.”

“You underestimate my strength. The wish, Geralt!”

“No, Yennefer. I can’t… The djinn might fulfill it, but it won’t spare you. It’ll kill you when it’s free. It’ll take its revenge on you… You won’t manage to catch it and you won’t manage to defend yourself against it. You’re weakened; you can barely stand. You’ll die, Yennefer.”

“That’s my risk!” she shouted, enraged. “What’s it to you what happens to me? Think rather what the djinn can give you! You’ve still got one wish! You can ask what you like! Make use of it! Use it, witcher! You can have anything! Anything!”

XIII

“Are they both going to die?” wailed Dandilion. “How come? Krepp, why? After all, the witcher—Why, by all perfidious and unexpected plagues, isn’t he escaping? Why? What’s keeping him? Why doesn’t he leave that bloody witch to her fate and run away? It’s senseless!”

“Absolutely senseless,” repeated Chireadan bitterly. “Absolutely.”

“It’s suicide. And plain idiocy!”

“It’s his job, after all,” interrupted Neville. “The witcher’s saving my town. May the gods be my witness—if he defeats the witch and chases the demon away, I’ll reward him handsomely…”

Dandilion snatched the hat decorated with a heron’s feather from his head, spat into it, threw it in the mud and trampled on it, spitting out words in various languages as he did.

“But he’s…” he groaned suddenly, “still got one wish in reserve! He could save both her and himself! Mr. Krepp!”

“It’s not that simple,” the priest pondered. “But if… If he expressed the right wish… If he somehow tied his fate to the fate… No, I don’t think it would occur to him. And it’s probably better that it doesn’t.”

XIV

“The wish, Geralt! Hurry up! What do you desire? Immortality? Riches? Fame? Power? Might? Privileges? Hurry, we haven’t any time!” He was silent. “Humanity,” she said suddenly, smiling nastily. “I’ve guessed, haven’t I? That’s what you want; that’s what you dream of! Of release, of the freedom to be who you want, not who you have to be. The djinn will fulfill that wish, Geralt. Just say it.”

He stayed silent.

She stood over him in the flickering radiance of the wizard’s sphere, in the glow of magic, amidst the flashes of rays restraining the djinn, streaming hair and eyes blazing violet, erect, slender, dark, terrible…

And beautiful.

All of a sudden she leaned over and looked him in the eyes. He caught the scent of lilac and gooseberries.

“You’re not saying anything,” she hissed. “So what is it you desire, witcher? What is your most hidden dream? Is it that you don’t know or you can’t decide? Look for it within yourself, look deeply and carefully because, I swear by the Force, you won’t get another chance like this!”

But he suddenly knew the truth. He knew it. He knew what she used to be. What she remembered, what she couldn’t forget, what she lived with. Who she really was before she had become a sorceress.