‘I’d had a gutful of druids,’ said Vilgefortz. ‘So I gave up my sacred oak groves and set off into the world. I did a variety of things. I’m still ashamed of some of them. I finally became a mercenary. My life after that unfolded, as you might imagine, predictably. Victorious soldier, defeated soldier, marauder, robber, rapist, murderer, and finally a fugitive fleeing the noose. I fled to the ends of the world. And there, at the end of the world, I met a woman. A sorceress.’

‘Be careful,’ whispered the Witcher, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Be careful, Vilgefortz, that the similarities you’re desperately searching for don’t lead you too far.’

‘The similarities are over,’ said the sorcerer without lowering his gaze, ‘since I couldn’t cope with the feelings I felt for that woman. I couldn’t understand her feelings, and she didn’t try to help me with them. I left her. Because she was promiscuous, arrogant, spiteful, unfeeling and cold. Because it was impossible to dominate her, and her domination of me was humiliating. I left her because I knew she was only interested in me because my intelligence, personality and fascinating mystery obscured the fact that I wasn’t a sorcerer, and it was usually only sorcerers she would honour with more than one night. I left her because… because she was like my mother. I suddenly understood that what I felt for her was not love at all, but a feeling which was considerably more complicated, more powerful but more difficult to classify: a mixture of fear, regret, fury, pangs of conscience and the need for expiation, a sense of guilt, loss, and hurt. A perverse need for suffering and atonement. What I felt for that woman was hate.’

Geralt remained silent. Vilgefortz was looking to one side.

‘I left her,’ he said after a while. ‘And then I couldn’t live with the emptiness which engulfed me. And I suddenly understood it wasn’t the absence of a woman that causes that emptiness, but the lack of everything I had been feeling. It’s a paradox, isn’t it? I imagine I don’t need to finish; you can guess what happened next. I became a sorcerer. Out of hatred. And only then did I understand how stupid I was. I mistook stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the sky.’

‘As you rightly observed, the parallels between us aren’t completely parallel,’ murmured Geralt. ‘In spite of appearances, we have little in common, Vilgefortz. What did you want to prove by telling me your story? That the road to wizardly excellence, although winding and difficult, is available to anyone? Even – excuse my parallel – to bastards or foundlings, wanderers or witchers—’

‘No,’ the sorcerer interrupted. ‘I didn’t mean to prove this road is open to all, because that’s obvious and was proved long ago. Neither was there a need to prove that certain people simply have no other path.’