The Time of Contempt

The Northern Kingdoms are quietly readying for war with the Nilfgaardian Empire, and their monarchs do not yet know that Emperor Emhyr var Emreis has already read their plans. At the centre of it stands Cirilla of Cintra — the Lion Cub, a child of the Elder Blood whose gift half the Continent now wants to own.

Geralt of Rivia has entrusted Ciri to the sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg, who takes her from the temple at Ellander to Gors Velen and on to the island of Thanedd, to be schooled at Aretuza under its rectoress, Margarita Laux-Antille.

But the mages gathering on Thanedd have a quarrel of their own, and what is convened as a conclave becomes a coup. Sigismund Dijkstra and Philippa Eilhart move against the conspirators, Vilgefortz of Roggeveen shows his hand and breaks Geralt in a duel, and Tissaia de Vries is left to answer for a catastrophe she helped make possible.

Ciri escapes through a malfunctioning portal in the Tower of Gulls and is thrown into the Korath, a waterless waste where her own latent power stirs for the first time. She survives it, but not unchanged — and what waits on the other side is capture, escape, and a band of young outlaws willing to take her in.

The fourth book of the Witcher series and the second novel of the saga proper, first published in Poland in 1995 as Czas pogardy and translated into English by David French.