“Block it, Mousesack!”

Emerald eyes sent two flashes of green lightning at them. They coiled into blinding, whirling funnels from the centers of which the Force—like a battering ram which exploded the skull, put out the eyes and paralyzed the breath—descended on them. Together with the Force, glass, majolica, platters, candlesticks, bones, nibbled loaves of bread, planks, slats and smoldering firewood from the hearth poured over them. Crying wildly like a great capercaillie, Castellan Haxo flew over their heads. The enormous head of a boiled carp splattered against Geralt’s chest, on the bear passant sable and damsel of Fourhorn.

Through Mousesack’s wall-shattering curses, through his own shouting and the wailing of the wounded, the din, clatter and racket, through Pavetta’s wailing, the witcher suddenly heard the most terrible sound.

Coodcoodak, on his knees, was strangling Draig Bon-Dhu’s bagpipes with his hands, while, with his head thrown back, he shouted over the monstrous sounds emerging from the bag, wailed and roared, cackled and croaked, bawled and squawked in a cacophony of sounds made by all known, unknown, domestic, wild and mythical animals.

Pavetta fell silent, horrified, and looked at the baron with her mouth agape. The Force eased off abruptly.

“Now!” yelled Mousesack, waving his wand. “Now, witcher!”

They hit her. The greenish sphere surrounding the princess burst under their blow like a soap bubble and the vacuum instantly sucked in the Force raging through the room. Pavetta flopped heavily to the ground and started to weep.

After the pandemonium, a moment’s silence rang in their ears; then, with difficulty, laboriously, voices started to break through the rubble and destruction, through the broken furniture and the inert bodies.

“Cuach op arse, ghoul y badraigh mal an cuach,” spat Crach an Craite, spraying blood from his bitten lip.

“Control yourself, Crach,” said Mousesack with effort, shaking buckwheat from his front. “There are women present.”

“Calanthe. My beloved. My Calanthe!” Eist Tuirseach said in the pauses between kisses.

The queen opened her eyes but didn’t try to free herself from his embrace.

“Eist. People are watching,” she said.

“Let them watch.”

“Would somebody care to explain what that was?” asked Marshal Vissegerd, crawling from beneath a fallen tapestry.

“No,” said the witcher.

“A doctor!” Windhalm of Attre, leaning over Rainfarn, shouted shrilly.

“Water!” Wieldhill, one of the brothers from Strept, called, stifling the smoldering tapestry with his jacket. “Water, quickly!”

“And beer!” Coodcoodak croaked.

A few knights, still able to stand, were trying to lift Pavetta, but she pushed their hands aside, got up on her own and, unsteadily, walked toward the hearth. There, with his back resting against the wall, sat Urcheon, awkwardly trying to remove his blood-smeared armor.

“The youth of today,” snorted Mousesack, looking in their direction. “They start early! They’ve only got one thing on their minds.”

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t you know, witcher, that a virgin, that is one who’s untouched, wouldn’t be able to use the Force?”

“To hell with her virginity,” muttered Geralt. “Where did she get such a gift anyway? Neither Calanthe nor Roegner—”