The Tower of Swallows (The Witcher, #4)

by Andrzej Sapkowski

“I’m Ciri of Kaer Morhen. I’m a witcher! I’ve come here to kill you.”

“You ride a black mare…” he mumbled. “On a night as black as a pall… You sweep away the tracks behind you…”

“Whoever meets you,” the beggar mumbled, “will not avoid death… For you yourself are death.”

a beann’shie’s plaintive wailing sounded a second time. Vysogota lay on the floor, where he had collapsed as he was getting out of bed. He found to his horror that he couldn’t stand up. His heart pounded in his throat, choking him. Now he knew whose death the elven apparition’s nocturnal cry was auguring. Life was beautiful, he thought. In spite of everything. “O Gods…” he whispered. “I don’t believe in you… But if you do exist…” A dreadful pain suddenly exploded in his chest, behind his breastbone. Somewhere in the swamps, far away, but much nearer than before, the beann’shie howled savagely for the third time. “If you do exist, protect the witcher girl on the road!”

Boreas Mun looked for tracks. He couldn’t stop thinking about a dream from the night before. In it he had been drowning. The black water had closed over his head and he sank to the bottom, the icy water gushing into his throat and lungs.

“She has skates… Now she’s darting across the ice like the wind…

“I knew you’d prevail, Zireael. And that you’d enter the tower. Why, I’ve read about it. Because it has already been described… It has all been written about. Do you know what learning gives you? The ability to make use of sources.”

The Elder Blood that flows in your veins gives you power over time. And over space. Over the dimensions and the spheres. You are now Master of the Worlds, Ciri. You have a mighty Power. Do not let criminals or rogues take it from you and use it to their own ends… “I won’t.” Farewell, Ciri. Farewell, Swallow. “Farewell, Old Raven.”