They were ready. Only one thing remained to be taken care of.

‘Come here, everybody.’

They approached.

‘Cahir, son of Ceallach,’ Geralt began, trying not to sound pompous. ‘I wronged you with unfounded suspicion and behaved shabbily towards you. I hereby apologise, before everyone, with bowed head. I apologise and ask you to forgive me. I also ask you all for forgiveness, as I shouldn’t have made you watch or listen to it.

‘I vented my fury and resentment on Cahir and all of you. It was caused by knowing who betrayed us. I know who betrayed and abducted Ciri, whom we aim to rescue. I’m angry because I’m talking about a person who was once very close to me.

‘Where we are, what we’re planning, what route we’re taking and whither we’re heading… all was uncovered with the help of scanning, detecting magic. It’s none too difficult for a mistress of magic to remotely detect and observe a person who was once well-known and close, with whom they had a long-term psychic contact which permits the creation of a matrix. But the sorcerer and sorceress of whom I speak made a mistake. They’ve revealed themselves. They made an error when counting the members of the company, and that error betrayed them. Tell them, Regis.’

‘Geralt may be right,’ Regis said slowly. ‘Like every vampire, I’m invisible to magical visual probing and scanning; that is, to a detecting spell. A vampire may be tracked using an analytical spell, from close up, but it is not possible to detect a vampire with a remote, scanning spell. The detection will report that there’s no one there. Thus only a sorcerer could be mistaken regarding us: to register four people, where there were actually five; that is, four people and one vampire.’

‘We shall exploit the sorcerers’ error,’ the Witcher continued. ‘Cahir, Angoulême and I shall ride to Belhaven to talk to the half-elf who hired assassins to kill us. We won’t ask the half-elf on whose orders he’s acting, for we know that already. We’ll ask him where the sorcerers on whose orders he is acting are. When we learn their location we’ll go there. And exact our revenge.’

Everybody was silent.

‘We stopped counting the date, so we haven’t even noticed it’s the twenty-fifth of September. Two days ago it was the night of the Equinox. The Equinox. Yes, that’s exactly the night you’re thinking about. I see your dejection, I see what your eyes are saying. We received a signal, that dreadful night, when the merchants camping beside us were keeping their courage up with aqua vitae, singing and fireworks. You probably had a less distinct sense of foreboding than Cahir and I, but you’re speculating too. You suspect. And I’m afraid your suspicions are well founded.’

The crows flying over the moorland cawed.

‘Everything indicates that Ciri is dead. She perished, two nights ago, at the Equinox. Somewhere far from here, alone amongst hostile people; strangers.