‘I’m ready, O mother,’ Iola the First said in her melodious voice.

‘Begin.’

‘One moment.’ Triss sprang up from the bench and threw the chinchilla fur from her shoulders. ‘One moment, Nenneke. I want to enter the trance with her.’

‘That isn’t safe.’

‘I know. But I want to see. With my own eyes. I owe her that. I owe it to Ciri… I love that girl like a sister. She saved my life in Kaedwen, risking her own life to do it…’

The sorceress’s voice suddenly broke.

‘Just like Jarre.’ The high priestess shook her head. ‘Run to the rescue, blindly, recklessly, not knowing where or why. But Jarre is a naive young boy, and you’re supposedly a mature, wise sorceress. You ought to know that you won’t be helping Ciri by entering a trance. But you may harm yourself.’

‘I want to enter the trance with Iola,’ Triss repeated, biting her lip. ‘Let me, Nenneke. As a matter of fact, what am I risking? An epileptic fit? Even if I am, you’d pull me out of it, wouldn’t you?’

‘You risk,’ Nenneke said slowly, ‘seeing things you ought not to see.’

The hill, Triss thought in horror, Sodden Hill. Where I died. Where I was buried and my name was carved into the obelisk over the grave. The hill and the grave that will one day call for me.

I know it. It was prophesied.

‘I’ve already made my decision,’ she said coldly, haughtily standing up and throwing her luxuriant hair back with both hands onto her shoulders.

‘Let us begin.’

Nenneke kneeled down and rested her forehead on her folded hands.

‘Let us begin,’ she said softly. ‘Make ready, Iola. Kneel beside me, Triss. Take Iola’s hand.’

It was dark outside. The snowstorm moaned. Snow was falling.

In the South, far beyond the Amell mountains, in Metinna, in a land called Hundred Lakes, in a place far from the town of Ellander and the Temple of Melitele, five hundred miles away as the crow flies, a nightmare jolted the fisherman Gosta awake. After waking, Gosta could remember nothing of the dream, but an eerie anxiety kept him awake for a long time.

Every experienced angler knows you must wait for the first ice to land a perch.

That year, the winter–although unexpectedly early–played tricks and was as fickle as a pretty, popular girl. The first frost and snowstorm came as an unpleasant surprise, like a brigand from an ambush, at the beginning of November, right after Samhain, when no one had been expecting snow or frost and there was still plenty of work to do. By the middle of November the lake was already glazed over with a very thin layer of ice, which seemed just about able to bear the weight of a man, when the fickle winter suddenly subsided. Autumn returned, torrents of rain shattered the ice and a warm, southerly wind pushed it against the bank and melted it. What the devil? the peasants wondered. Is this winter or is it not?