After being hauled out, Skellen turned blue and began to shiver violently. The edge of the ice was breaking under Silifant, who was struggling to drag himself out. Dacre vanished beneath the water again. But he surfaced at once, choking and spitting, and dragged himself onto the ice with superhuman effort. He crawled out and collapsed, exhausted to the limits. A puddle spread out beside him. Boreas moaned and closed his eyes. Skellen was trembling.

‘Save me… Mun… Help…’

Rience hung onto the edge of the ice, submerged up to his armpits. His wet hair was plastered smoothly to his skull. His teeth were chattering like castanets, sounding like a ghoulish overture to some infernal danse macabre. The skates grated. Boreas didn’t move. He waited. Skellen was trembling.

She approached. Slowly. Blood trickled from her sword, marking the ice with a trail of drops. Boreas swallowed. Although he was soaked to the skin with icy water, he suddenly felt unbearably hot.

But the girl wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Rience, who was vainly struggling to get out onto the ice.

‘Help me…’ Rience overcame the chattering of his teeth. ‘Save me…’

The girl braked, whirling on the skates with the grace of a dancer. She stood with legs slightly apart, holding her sword in both hands, low, across her thighs.

‘Help me…’ Rience howled, digging his numbing fingers into the ice. ‘Save me… And I’ll tell you… where Yennefer is… I swear…’

The girl slowly pulled the scarf from her face and smiled. Boreas Mun saw the hideous scar and fought to stifle a shout.

‘Rience,’ said Ciri, still smiling. ‘You were going to teach me pain, weren’t you? Do you remember? With those hands. With those fingers. Those ones? Those, the ones you’re holding the ice with?’

Rience answered, but Boreas didn’t understand what he said, for the sorcerer’s teeth were chattering and rattling so much they made articulated speech impossible. Ciri spun around on her skates and lifted the sword. Boreas clenched his teeth, convinced she would slash Rience, but the girl was picking up momentum to set off. To the tracker’s astonishment she skated away, quickly, gathering speed with powerful thrusts. She vanished into the fog, and a moment later the rhythmic scraping of the skates also died away.

‘Mun… Puuull… me… out…’ Rience barked out, chin on the edge of the ice floe. He flung both hands on the ice, trying to hang on with his fingernails, which had largely been torn away. He spread his fingers, trying to cling to the blood-stained ice with his hands and wrists. Boreas Mun looked at him and was certain, terrifyingly certain…

They heard the grinding of the skates at the last moment. The girl approached at extraordinary speed, literally a blur. She skated up at the very edge of the floe, speeding along right beside the brink.