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warrant you know what it is.’
    1 )andilion clenched his teeth with anger and despair.
    ‘Well?’ Rience made a sign to the reeking man. ‘Where is the witcher hiding? What is the place called?’
    The poet remained silent. The rope tightened, twisting his hands painfully, and his feet left the ground. Dandilion let out a howl, brief and broken because Rience’s wizardly ring immediately gagged him.
    ‘Higher, higher.’ Rience rested his hands on his hips. ‘You know, Dandilion, I could use magic to sound out your mind, but it’s exhausting. Besides, I like seeing people’s eyes pop out of their sockets from pain. And you’re going to tell me anyway.’
    Dandilion knew he would. The rope secured to his ankles grew taut, the bucket of lime scraped along the ground.
    ‘Sir,’ said the first ruffian suddenly, covering the lantern with his cloak and peering through the gap in the pigsty door, ‘someone’s coming. A lass, I think.’
    ‘You know what to do,’ Rience hissed. ‘Put the lantern out.’
    The reeking man released the rope and Dandilion tumbled inertly to the ground, falling in such a way that he could see the man with the lantern standing at the door and the reeking man, a long knife in his hand, lying in wait on the other side. Light broke in from the bawdy-house through gaps in the planks, and the poet heard the singing and hubbub.
    The door to the pigsty creaked open revealing a short figure wrapped in a cloak and wearing a round, tightly fitting cap. After a moment’s hesitation,  the woman crossed the threshold.  The
    reeking man threw himself at her, slashing forcefully with his knife, and tumbled to his knees as the knife met with no resistance, passing through the figure’s throat as though through a cloud of smoke. Because the figure really was a cloud of smoke – one which was already starting to disperse. But before it completely vanished another figure burst into the pigsty, indistinct, dark and nimble as a weasel. Dandilion saw it throw a cloak at the lantern man, jump over the reeking one, saw something glisten in its hand, and heard the reeking man wheeze and choke savagely. The lantern man disentangled himself from the cloak, jumped, took a swing with his knife. A fiery lightning bolt shot from the dark figure with a hiss, slapped over the tough’s face and chest with a crack and spread over him like flaming oil. The ruffian screamed piercingly and the grim reek of burning meat filled the pigsty.
    Then Rience attacked. The spell he cast illuminated the darkness with a bluish flash in which Dandilion saw a slender woman wearing man’s clothes gesticulating strangely with both hands. He only glimpsed her for a second before the blue glow disappeared with a bang and a blinding flash. Rience fell back with a roar of fury and collapsed onto the wooden pigsty walls, breaking them with a crash. The woman dressed in man’s clothing leapt after him, a stiletto flashing in her hand. The pigsty filled with brightness again – this time golden – beaming from a bright oval which suddenly appeared in the air. Dandilion saw Rience spring up from the dusty floor, leap into the oval and immediately disappear. The oval dimmed but, before it went out entirely, the woman ran up to it shouting incomprehensively, stretching out her hand. Something crackled and rustled and the dying oval boiled with roaring flames for a moment. A muffled sound, as if coming from a great distance, reached Dandilion’s ears – a sound very much like a scream of pain. The oval went out completely and darkness engulfed the pigsty again. The poet felt the power which gagged him disappear.
    ‘Help!’ he howled. ‘Help!’
    ‘Stop yelling, Dandilion,’ said the woman, kneeling next to him and slicing through the knots with Rience’s stiletto.
    ‘Yennefer? Is that you?’
     
    ‘Surely you’re not going to say you don’t remember how I look. And I’m sure my voice is not unfamiliar to your musical ear. Can you