One of the elves leaned out through the window. He had very fair hair and green eyes and wore a silk kerchief around his neck. Ciri moved quickly along the ledge towards the next window. But the man dressed in black was looking out of it. His eyes were dark and intense, and he had a reddish mark on his cheek.
‘We’ve got you, wench!’
She looked down. She could see a courtyard far below her. There was a narrow bridge linking two cloisters above the courtyard, about ten feet below the ledge she was standing on. Except it was not a bridge. It was the remains of a bridge. A narrow, stone footbridge with the remains of a shattered balustrade.
‘What are you waiting for?’ shouted the one with the scar. ‘Get out there and grab her!’
The fair-haired elf stepped gingerly out onto the ledge, pressing his back against the wall. He reached out to grab her. He was getting closer.
Ciri swallowed. The stone footbridge – the remains of the footbridge – was no narrower than the seesaw at Kaer Morhen, and she had landed on that dozens of times. She knew how to cushion her fall and keep her balance. The witchers’ seesaw was only four feet off the ground, however, while the stone footbridge spanned such a long drop that the slabs of the courtyard looked smaller than the palm of her hand.
She jumped, landed, tottered and kept her balance by catching hold of the shattered balustrade. With sure steps, she reached the cloister. She couldn’t resist it; she turned around and showed her pursuers her middle finger, a gesture she had been taught by the dwarf Yarpen Zigrin. The man with the scar swore loudly.
‘Jump!’ he shouted at the fair-haired elf standing on the ledge. ‘After her!’
‘You’re insane, Rience,’ said the elf coldly. ‘Jump yourself.’
As usual, her luck didn’t last. She was caught as she ran down from the cloister and slipped behind a wall into a blackthorn bush. She was caught and held fast in an extremely strong grip by a short, podgy man with a swollen nose and a scarred lip.
‘Got you,’ he hissed. ‘Got you, poppet!’
Ciri struggled and howled because the hands gripping her shoulders transfixed her with a sudden paroxysm of overwhelming pain. The man chuckled.
‘Don’t flap your wings, little bird, or I’ll singe your feathers. Let’s have a good look at you. Let’s have a look at this chick that’s worth so much to Emhyr var Emreis, Imperator of Nilfgaard. And to Vilgefortz.’
Ciri stopped trying to escape. The short man licked his scarred lip.
‘Interesting,’ he hissed again, leaning over towards her. ‘They say you’re so precious, but I wouldn’t even give a brass farthing for you. How appearances deceive. Ha! My treasure! What if, not Vilgefortz, not Rience, not that gallant in the feathered helmet, but old Terranova gave you to Emhyr as a present? Would Emhyr look kindly on old Terranova? What do you say to that, little clairvoyant? You can see the future, after all!’
His breath stank unbearably. Ciri turned her head away, grimacing. He misread the movement.
‘Don’t snap your beak at me, little bird! I’m not afraid of little birds. But should I be, perhaps? Well, false soothsayer? Bogus oracle? Should I be afraid of little birds?’
‘You ought to be,’ whispered Ciri, feeling giddy, a sudden cold sensation overcoming her.
Terranova laughed, throwing his head back. His laugh became a howl of pain. A huge, grey owl had swooped down noiselessly and sunk its talons into his eyes. The sorcerer released Ciri, tore the owl off with a desperate movement and then fell to his knees, clutching his face. Blood poured between his fingers. Ciri screamed and stepped back. Terranova removed his bloodied, mucus-covered fingers from his face and began to chant a spell in a wild, cracked voice. He was not quick enough. A vague shape appeared behind his back, and a witcher’s blade whistled in the air and severed his neck at the base of his skull.
‘Geralt!’
‘Ciri.’
‘This isn’t the time for tenderness,’ said the owl from the top of the wall, transforming into a dark-haired woman. ‘Flee! The squirrels will be here soon!’
Ciri freed herself from Geralt’s arms and looked up in astonishment. The owl-woman sitting on top of the wall looked ghastly. She was blackened, ragged and smeared in ash and blood.
‘You little monster,’ said the owl-woman, looking down at her. ‘For your inopportune augury I ought to . . . But I made your Witcher a promise, and I always keep my promises. I couldn’t give you Rience, Geralt. In exchange I’m giving you her. Alive. Flee, both of you!’
Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach was furious. He had seen the girl he had been ordered to capture, but only for a moment. Then, before he had been able to act, the insane sorcerers unleashed such an inferno in Garstang that no action was possible. Cahir lost his bearings among the smoke and flames, blindly stumbling along corridors, running up and down stairs and through cloisters, and cursing Vilgefortz, Rience, himself and the entire world.
He happened upon an elf who told him the girl had been seen outside the palace, fleeing along the road to Aretuza. And then fortune smiled upon Cahir. The Scoia’tael found a saddled horse in the stable.
‘Run, Ciri, run. They’re close. I’ll stop them, you run. Fast as you can! Just like you used to on the assault course!’
‘Are you abandoning me too?’
‘I’ll be right behind you. But don’t look back!’
‘Give me my sword, Geralt.’
He looked at her. Ciri stepped back involuntarily. She had never seen him with an expression like that before.
‘If you had a sword, you might have to kill with it. Can you do it?’
‘I don’t know. Give me my sword.’
‘Run. And don’t look back.’
Horses’ hooves thudded on the road. Ciri looked back. And she froze, paralysed with fear.
She was being pursued by a black knight in a helmet decorated with raptor wings. The wings whooshed, and the black cloak streamed behind him. Horseshoes sent up sparks from the cobblestones.
She was unable to move.
The black horse burst through the roadside bushes, and the knight shouted loudly. Cintra was in that cry. The night, slaughter, blood and conflagration were in that cry. Ciri overcame her overwhelming fear and darted away. She leapt over a hedge and plunged into a small courtyard with a fountain. There was no way out; it was encircled by smooth, high walls. She could hear the horse snorting behind her. She turned, stumbled backwards and shuddered as she felt a hard, unyielding wall behind her. She was trapped.
The bird of prey flapped its wings, taking flight. The black knight urged his horse on and jumped the hedge separating him from the courtyard. Hooves thudded on the slabs, and the horse slipped, skidded and sat back on its haunches. The knight swayed in the saddle and toppled over. The horse regained its footing but the knight fell off, his armour clattering on the stones. He was on his feet immediately, though, and quickly trapped Ciri, who was pinned into a corner.
‘You will not touch me!’ she screamed, drawing her sword. ‘You will never touch me again!’
The knight moved slowly towards her, rising up like a huge, black tower. The wings on his helmet moved to and fro and whispered.
‘You will not escape me now, o Lion Cub of Cintra,’ he said, and his cruel eyes burned in the slit of his helmet. ‘Not this time. This time you have nowhere to run, o reckless maiden.’
‘You will not touch me,’ she repeated in a voice of stifled horror, her back pressed against the stone wall.
‘I have to. I am carrying out orders.’
As he held out his hand to seize her, Ciri’s fear subsided, to be replaced by savage fury. Her tense muscles, previously frozen in terror, began to work like springs. All the moves she had learned in Kaer Morhen performed themselves, smoothly and fluidly. Ciri jumped; the knight lunged towards her but was unprepared for the pirouette which spun her effortlessly out of reach of his hands. Her sword whined and stung, striking unerringly between the plates of his armour. The knight stagge
red and dropped to one knee as a stream of scarlet blood spurted from beneath his spaulder. Screaming fiercely, Ciri whirled around him with another pirouette and struck the knight again, this time directly on the bell of his helmet, knocking him down onto his other knee. Fury and madness had utterly blinded her, and she saw nothing except the loathsome wings. The black feathers were strewn in all directions. One wing fell off, and the other was resting on the bloodied spaulder. The knight, still vainly trying to get up from his knees, tried to seize her sword in his armoured glove and grunted painfully as the witcher blade slashed through the chainmail sleeve into his hand. The next blow knocked off his helmet, and Ciri jumped back to gather momentum for the last, mortal blow.
She did not strike.
There was no black helmet, no raptor’s wings, whose whistling had tormented her in her nightmares. There was no black knight of Cintra. There was a pale, dark-haired young man with stupefyingly blue eyes and a mouth distorted in a grimace of fear, kneeling in a pool of blood. The black knight of Cintra had fallen beneath the blows of her sword, had ceased to exist. Only hacked-up feathers remained of the forbidding wings. The terrified, cowering young man bleeding profusely was no one. She did not know him; she had never seen him before. He meant nothing to her. She wasn’t afraid of him, nor did she hate him. And neither did she want to kill him.
She threw her sword onto the ground.
She turned around, hearing the cries of the Scoia’tael approaching fast from Garstang. She knew that in a moment they would trap her in the courtyard. She knew they would catch up with her on the road. She had to be quicker than them. She ran over to the black horse, which was clattering its horseshoes on the paved ground, and urged it into a gallop with a cry, leaping into the saddle in full flight.
‘Leave me . . .’ groaned Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach, pushing away the elves who were trying to lift him up with his good hand. ‘I’m fine. It’s just a scratch . . . After her. Get the girl . . .’
One of the elves screamed, and blood spurted into Cahir’s face. Another Scoia’tael reeled and fell to his knees, his fingers clutching his mutilated belly. The remaining elves leapt back and scattered all around the courtyard, swords flashing.
They had been attacked by a white-haired fiend, who had fallen on them from a wall, from a height that would have broken a normal man’s legs. It ought to have been impossible to land gently, whirl in an impossibly fast pirouette, and a split second later begin killing. But the white-haired fiend had done it. And the killing had begun.
The Scoia’tael fought fiercely. They had the advantage, but they had no chance. A massacre was played out before Cahir’s eyes, wide with terror. The fair-haired girl, who had wounded him a moment earlier, had been fast, had been unbelievably lithe, had been like a mother cat defending her kittens. But the white-haired fiend who had fallen amongst the Scoia’tael was like a Zerrikan tiger. The fair-haired maid of Cintra, who for some unknown reason had not killed him, seemed insane. The white-haired fiend was not insane. He was calm and cold. And killed calmly and coldly.
The Scoia’tael had no chance. Their corpses piled up on the slabs of the courtyard. But they did not yield. Even when only two of them remained, they did not run away, but attacked the white-haired fiend once more. The fiend hacked off the arm of one of them above the elbow as Cahir watched. He hit the other elf with an apparently light, casual blow, which nonetheless threw him backwards. It tipped him over the lip of the fountain and hurled him into the water. The water brimmed over the edge of the basin in ripples of crimson.
The elf with the severed arm knelt by the fountain, staring vacantly at the blood gushing from the stump. The white-haired fiend seized him by the hair and cut his throat with a rapid slash of his sword.
When Cahir opened his eyes the fiend was standing over him.
‘Don’t kill me . . .’ he whispered, giving up his efforts to rise from the ground, now slippery with blood. His hand, slashed by the fair-haired girl, had gone numb and did not hurt.
‘I know who you are, Nilfgaardian,’ said the white-haired fiend, kicking the helmet with the hacked-up wings. ‘You have been pursuing her doggedly and long. But now you will harm her no more.’
‘Don’t kill me . . .’
‘Give me one reason. Just one. Make haste.’
‘It was I . . .’ whispered Cahir. ‘It was I who got her out of Cintra. From the fire . . . I rescued her. I saved her life . . .’
When he opened his eyes, the fiend was no longer there. Cahir was alone in the courtyard with the bodies of the elves. The water in the fountain soughed, spilling over the edge of the basin, washing away the blood on the ground. Cahir fainted.
At the foot of the tower stood a building which seemed to be a single, large hall, or perhaps some kind of peristyle. The roof over the peristyle, probably illusory, was full of holes. It was supported by columns and pilasters carved in the shape of scantily clad caryatids with generous breasts. The same kinds of caryatids supported the arch of the entrance through which Ciri had vanished. Beyond the doorway, Geralt noticed some steps leading upwards. Towards the tower.
The Witcher cursed under his breath. He did not understand why she had fled there. He had seen her horse fall as he rushed after her along the tops of the walls. He saw her leap nimbly to her feet, but instead of running along the winding road encircling the peak, she had suddenly rushed uphill, towards the solitary tower. Only later did he notice the elves on the road. Those elves – busy shooting arrows at some men running uphill – saw neither Ciri nor himself. Reinforcements were arriving from Aretuza.
He intended to follow Ciri up the steps when he heard a sound. From above. He quickly turned around. It was not a bird.
Vilgefortz flew down through a hole in the roof, his wide sleeves swishing, and slowly alighted on the floor.
Geralt stood in front of the entrance to the tower, drew his sword and heaved a sigh. He had sincerely hoped that the dramatic, concluding fight would be played out between Vilgefortz and Philippa Eilhart. He didn’t have the least bit of interest in this kind of drama.
Vilgefortz brushed down his jerkin, straightened his cuffs, looked at the Witcher and read his mind.
‘Infernal drama,’ he sighed. Geralt made no comment.
‘Did she go into the tower?’
He made no answer. The sorcerer nodded his head.
‘So we have an epilogue then,’ he said coldly. ‘The denouement that draws the play to a close. Or is it perhaps fate? Do you know where those steps lead? To Tor Lara. To the Tower of Gulls. There is no way out of there. It’s all over.’
Geralt stepped back between two of the caryatids holding up the doorway, in order to protect his flanks.
‘Yes indeed,’ he drawled, keeping his eyes on the sorcerer’s hands. ‘It’s all over. Half of your accomplices are dead. The bodies of the elves who were brought to Thanedd are piled up all the way to Garstang. The others ran away. Sorcerers and Dijkstra’s men are arriving from Aretuza. The Nilfgaardian who was supposed to take Ciri has probably bled to death already. And Ciri is up there in the tower. No way out of there? I’m glad to hear it. That means there’s only one way in. The one I’m blocking.’
Vilgefortz bridled.
‘You’re incorrigible. You are still incapable of assessing the situation correctly. The Chapter and Council have ceased to exist. The forces of Emperor Emhyr are marching north. Deprived of the mages’ assistance and advice, the kings are as helpless as children. In the face of Nilfgaard, their kingdoms are tumbling like sandcastles. I proposed this to you yesterday and repeat it today: join the victors. Spit on the losers.’
‘It is you who’s lost. You were only a tool to Emhyr. He wanted Ciri, which is why he sent that character with the wings on his helmet. I wonder what Emhyr will do to you when you report this fiasco.’
‘You’re shooting wildly, Witcher. And you’re wide of the mark, naturally. What if I told you that Emhyr is my tool?’
‘I wouldn’t be
lieve you.’
‘Geralt, be sensible. Do you really want to play at theatrics, play out the banal final battle between good and evil? I repeat my proposition of yesterday. It is by no means too late. You can still make a choice. You can join the right side—’
‘Join the side I thinned out a little today?’
‘Don’t grin. Your demonic smiles make no impression on me. Those few elves you hacked down? Artaud Terranova? Trifles, meaningless details. They can be waved aside.’
‘But of course. I know your philosophy. Death has no meaning, right? Particularly other people’s?’
‘Don’t be trite. It’s a pity about Artaud but, well, too bad. Let’s call it . . . settling old scores. After all, I tried to kill you twice. Emhyr grew impatient, so I sent some assassins after you. Each time I did it with genuine reluctance. You see, I still hope they’ll paint a picture of us one day.’
‘Abandon that hope, Vilgefortz.’
‘Put away your sword. Let’s go up into Tor Lara together. We’ll reassure the Child of the Elder Blood, who is sure to be dying of fright up there somewhere. And then let’s leave. Together. You’ll be by her side. You will see her destiny fulfilled. And Emperor Emhyr? Emperor Emhyr will get what he wanted. Because I forgot to tell you that although Codringher and Fenn are dead, their work and ideas are still alive and doing very well, thank you.’
‘You are lying. Leave this place before I spit on you.’
‘I really have no desire to kill you. I kill with reluctance.’
‘Indeed? What about Lydia van Bredevoort?’
The sorcerer sneered.
‘Speak not that name, Witcher.’
Geralt gripped the hilt of his sword tightly and smiled scornfully.
‘Why did Lydia have to die, Vilgefortz? Why did you order her death? She was meant to distract attention from you, wasn’t she? She was meant to give you time to become resistant to dimeritium, to send a telepathic signal to Rience, wasn’t she? Poor Lydia, the artist with the damaged face. Everyone knew she was expendable. Everyone knew that except her.’