Rience screamed. And choked on the viscous, leaden water. And vanished.

There was blood on the ice, on the perfectly even tracks left by the skates. And fingers. Eight fingers.

Boreas Mun vomited on the ice.

Bonhart galloped along the edge of the lake, hurtling along, heedless that any moment the horse might break its legs on the snow-covered clefts. Frosted over spruce branches lashed his face, and whipped his arms, and icy powder poured down his collar.

He couldn’t see the lake. The entire valley was filled with fog, like a bubbling witch’s cauldron.

But Bonhart knew the girl was there.

He sensed it.

Deep under the ice, a school of striped perch curiously followed the silver, fascinatingly glimmering casket which had slipped out of the pocket of a corpse floating in the water. Before the casket had sunk to the bottom, raising a cloud of silt, the boldest of the perch even tried to nudge it with their snouts. But they suddenly took flight in terror.

The casket was emitting strange, alarming vibrations.

‘Rience? Can you hear me? What’s been going on? Why haven’t you responded for two days? Give me your report! What about the maid? You can’t let her enter the tower! Do you hear? You can’t let her enter the Tower of the Swallow… Rience! Answer, dammit! Rience!’

Rience, naturally, could not answer.

The embankment came to an end, the shore flattened out. It’s the end of the lake, thought Bonhart, I’ve done it. I’ve trapped the maid. Where is she? And where’s that sodding tower?

The curtain of fog suddenly ruptured and lifted. And then he saw her. She was right in front of him, sitting on her black mare. She’s a witch, he thought, she communicates with that beast. She sent it to the end of the lake and ordered it to wait for her.

But that won’t help her.

I have to kill her. The devil take Vilgefortz. I have to kill her. First I’ll make her beg for her life… And then I’ll kill her.

He yelled, pricked his horse with his spurs and launched into a breakneck gallop.

And suddenly realised he had lost. That she’d deceived him.

Not more than a furlong separated him from her–but over thin ice. She was on the other side of the lake. What’s more, the crescent of open water now curved around the opposite way–the girl, riding along the ‘bowstring’, was much closer to the end of the lake than he was.

Bonhart swore, tugged on the reins and steered his horse onto the ice.

‘Ride, Kelpie!’

Frozen earth shot from under the black mare’s hooves.

Ciri clung to the horse’s neck. The sight of Bonhart pursuing her filled her with dread… She was afraid of him. An invisible fist tightened on her stomach at the thought of facing him in combat.