‘If I believed in such things,’ he continued, pushing a bent copper tube into her nose, ‘I’d have thought it was Lydia van Bredevoort’s revenge. From beyond the grave. I’m regenerating, but it’s slow, time-consuming and heavy going. It’s particularly difficult with the regeneration of the eyeball… The crystal in my eye socket plays its role splendidly; I can see in three dimensions, but yet it’s a foreign body, and the lack of a natural eyeball occasionally makes me absolutely furious. Then, seized by–let’s face it–irrational anger, I vow to myself that when I catch Ciri–immediately after catching her–I’ll order Rience to pluck out one of those huge, green eyes. With his fingers. With these fingers, as he likes to say. You’re saying nothing, Yennefer? Perhaps because you know I’d also like to rip out one of your eyes? Or both?’

He stuck thick needles into the veins on the back of her hands. Sometimes he missed and jabbed to the very bone. Yennefer gritted her teeth.

‘You’ve caused me problems. You’ve made me interrupt my work. You’ve exposed me to risk. Forcing your way over the Sedna Abyss in that boat, towards my Maelstrom… The echo of our brief duel was powerful and travelled far, it may have reached the wrong ears, prying ears. But I couldn’t stop myself. The thought that I would have you here, that I’d be able to connect you up to my scanner, was too appealing.

‘For you can’t possibly imagine–’ he stuck in another needle ‘–that I was taken in by your provocation? That I swallowed the bait? No, Yennefer. If you think so, you’re mistaking stars reflected in the surface of a pond at night for the sky. You thought you were tracking me, whereas in fact I was tracking you. You made my job easier by sailing over the Abyss. For I cannot find Ciri, you see, even with the help of my peerless scanning device. The girl has powerful, innate defence mechanisms, her own powerful anti-magical and suppressive aura: it’s the Elder Blood, after all. But my super-scanners ought to detect her anyhow. Yet they don’t.’

Yennefer was now completely entwined in a network of silver and copper wires and encased in a scaffolding of silver and porcelain tubes. Glass vessels containing colourless liquids wobbled on racks placed by the chair.

‘And so I thought–’ Vilgefortz thrust another tube into her nose, this time a glass one ‘–that the only way of tracking Ciri was an empathic probe. For that I needed someone who had a sufficiently strong emotional bond with the girl and had developed an empathic matrix, a kind of algorithm–to coin a phrase–of feelings and mutual affection. I thought about the Witcher, but he had disappeared, and besides, witchers are poor mediums. I planned to order the kidnapping of Triss Merigold, our Fourteenth from the Hill. I pondered over abducting Nenneke of Ellander… But when it turned out that you, Yennefer of Vengerberg, were literally forcing yourself into my hands… Truly I couldn’t have hoped for anything better… Once connected to the scanner you will track down Ciri for me. Admittedly, the operation requires your cooperation… But there are, as you know, ways of making people cooperate.