The throne, with Calanthe sitting on it, sprang up and flew across the hall like an arrow, smashing into the wall with a crash and falling apart. The queen slid to the floor like a ragged puppet. Eist Tuirseach, barely on his feet, threw himself toward her, took her in his arms and sheltered her from the hail pelting against the walls and floor with his body.

Geralt, grasping the medallion in his hand, slithered as quickly as he could toward Mousesack, miraculously still on his knees, who was lifting a short hawthorn wand with a rat’s skull affixed to the tip. On the wall behind the druid, a tapestry depicting the siege and fire of Fortress Ortagar was burning with very real flames.

Pavetta wailed. Turning round and round, she lashed everything and everybody with her cries as if with a whip. Anyone who tried to stand tumbled to the ground or was flattened against the wall. An enormous silver sauceboat in the shape of a many-oared vessel with an upturned bow came whistling through the air in front of Geralt’s eyes and knocked down the voivode with the hard-to-remember name just as he was trying to dodge it. Plaster rained down silently as the table rotated beneath the ceiling, with Crach an Craite flattened on it and throwing down vile curses.

Geralt crawled to Mousesack and they hid behind the heap formed by Fodcat of Strept, a barrel of beer, Drogodar, a chair and Drogodar’s lute.

“It’s pure, primordial Force!” the druid yelled over the racket and clatter. “She’s got no control over it!”

“I know!” Geralt yelled back. A roast pheasant with a few striped feathers still stuck in its rump, fell from nowhere and thumped him in the back.

“She has to be restrained! The walls are starting to crack!”

“I can see!”

“Ready?”

“Yes!”

“One! Two! Now!”

They both hit her simultaneously, Geralt with the Sign of Aard and Mousesack with a terrible, three-staged curse powerful enough to make the floor melt. The chair on which the princess was standing disintegrated into splinters. Pavetta barely noticed—she hung in the air within a transparent green sphere. Without ceasing to shout, she turned her head toward them and her petite face shrunk into a sinister grimace.

“By all the demons—!” roared Mousesack.

“Careful!” shouted the witcher, curling up. “Block her, Mousesack! Block her or it’s the end of us!”

The table thudded heavily to the ground, shattering its trestle and everything beneath it. Crach an Craite, who was lying on the table, was thrown into the air. A heavy rain of plates and remnants of food fell; crystal carafes exploded as they hit the ground. The cornice broke away from the wall, rumbling like thunder, making the floors of the castle quake.

“Everything’s letting go!” Mousesack shouted, aiming his wand at the princess. “The whole Force is going to fall on us!”

Geralt, with a blow of his sword, deflected a huge double-pronged fork which was flying straight at the druid.