Oh, Child of the Elder Blood! You belong to us! You are ours! Join our procession, join our hunt! We will race, race unto the very end, unto eternity, unto the very end of existence! You are ours, starry-eyed daughter of chaos! Join us; learn the joy of the hunt! You are ours. You are one of us! Your place is among us!

‘No!’ she cries. ‘Be gone! You are corpses!’

The King of the Wild Hunt laughs, the rotten teeth snapping above his rusted gorget. The skull’s eye sockets glitter lividly.

Yes, we are corpses. But you are death.

Ciri clung to the horse’s neck. She didn’t have to urge her horse on. Sensing the pursuing apparitions behind her, the steed thundered across the causeway at a breakneck gallop.

The halfling Bernie Hofmeier, a Hirundum farmer, lifted his shock of curly locks, listening to the sound of the distant thunder.

‘It’s a dangerous thing,’ he said, ‘a storm like this without any rain. Lightning will strike somewhere and then you’ve got a fire on your hands…’

‘A little rain would come in handy,’ sighed Dandelion, tightening up the pegs of his lute, ‘because you could cut the air with a knife… My shirt’s stuck to my back and the mosquitoes are biting… But I reckon it’ll blow over. The storm has been circling, circling, but for a while there’s been lightning somewhere in the north. Over the sea, I think.’

‘It’s hitting Thanedd,’ confirmed the halfling, ‘the highest point in the area. That tower on the island, Tor Lara, attracts lightning like nobody’s business. It looks like it’s on fire during a decent storm. It’s a wonder it doesn’t fall apart…’

‘It’s magic,’ said the troubadour with conviction. ‘Everything on Thanedd is magic, even the rock itself. And sorcerers aren’t afraid of thunderbolts. What am I saying? Did you know, Bernie, that they can even catch thunderbolts?’

‘Get away! You’re lying, Dandelion.’

‘May the lightning strike me—’ the poet broke off, anxiously looking up at the sky. ‘May a goose nip me if I’m lying. I’m telling you, Hofmeier, sorcerers catch thunderbolts. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Old Gorazd, the one who was killed on Sodden Hill, once caught a thunderbolt in front of my very eyes. He took a long, thin piece of metal, he hooked one end of it onto the top of his tower, and the other—’

‘You should put the other end in a bottle,’ suddenly squeaked Hofmeier’s son, who was hanging around on the veranda. He was a tiny little halfling with a thick mop of hair as curly as a ram’s fleece. ‘In a glass demijohn, like the ones Daddy makes wine in. The lightning whizzes down the wire into the demijohn—’