‘And all that’s left to us is vengeance. A cruel and bloody revenge, about which stories will still be told a hundred years hence. Stories which folk will be afraid to listen to after nightfall. And the hand of any who would repeat such a crime will tremble at the thought of our vengeance. We shall give a horrible example of terror! Using the ways of Mr Fulko Artevelde, wise Mr Fulko, who knows how blackguards and scoundrels should be treated. The illustration of terror we shall give will astonish even him!

‘So let us begin and may Hell assist us! Cahir, Angoulême, to horse. We ride up the Nevi, towards Belhaven. Dandelion, Milva, Regis, make for Sansretour, towards Toussaint’s borders. You won’t get lost, Gorgon will point the way. Goodbye.’

Ciri stroked the black cat, which had returned to the cottage in the swamp, as is customary with all cats in the world, when its love of freedom and dissolution had been undermined by cold, hunger and discomfort. Now it was lying in the girl’s lap and arching its back against her hand with a purr signifying profound bliss. The cat couldn’t have cared less about what the girl was saying.

‘It was the only time I dreamed of Geralt,’ Ciri began. ‘From the time we parted on the Isle of Thanedd, from the Tower of the Seagull, I’d never seen him in a dream. So I thought he was dead. And then suddenly came that dream, like the ones I used to have, dreams which Yennefer said were prophetic, precognitive; that they either show the past or the future. That was the day before the Equinox. In a small town whose name I don’t recall. In a cellar where Bonhart had locked me. After he’d flogged me and made me admit who I am.’

‘Did you divulge to him who you are?’ Vysogota raised his head. ‘Did you tell him everything?’

‘I paid for my cowardice,’ she swallowed, ‘with humiliation and self-contempt.’

‘Tell me about your dream.’

‘In it I saw a mountain; lofty, sheer, and sharp, like a stone knife. I saw Geralt. I heard what he was saying. Exactly. Every word, as though he were with me. I remember I wanted to call out and say it wasn’t like that at all, that none of it was true, that he’d made an awful mistake… That he’d got everything wrong! That it wasn’t the Equinox yet, so even if I happened to have died on the Equinox, he shouldn’t have declared me dead earlier, when I was still alive. And he shouldn’t have accused Yennefer or said such things about her…’

She was silent for a time, stroking the cat and sniffing hard.

‘But I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t even breathe… As though I was drowning. And I awoke. The last thing I saw, that I recall from that dream, was three riders. Geralt and two others, galloping along a ravine, with water gushing from its walls…’