A bone comb, a cheap ring, a book with a tattered binding, and a faded light blue sash lay spread out on a cloth before the altar. Iola the First, a priestess with prophetic powers, was kneeling over the objects.

‘Don’t hurry, Iola,’ Nenneke, standing beside her, warned. ‘Start concentrating slowly. We don’t want a dazzling prophecy, we don’t want an enigma with a thousand solutions. We want an image. A distinct image. Take the aura from these objects; they belonged to Ciri, Ciri touched them. Take the aura. Slowly. There’s no hurry.’

Outside, a strong wind howled and a snowstorm whirled. Snow quickly covered the temple’s roofs and courtyard. It was the nineteenth day of November. A full moon.

‘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.