terrified her.
Creedmoor was pacing excitedly back and forth across the riverbed underneath the two giants. He had removed his hat and was swinging it from side to side, banging it dustily against his knees, and he was laughing.
Creedmoor’s beard, it struck Liv suddenly, was growing quite wild now; he had been clean-shaven and impeccably groomed in the House, but out here, now, he was well on his way to savagery.
“Wonderful things! Wonderful monstrous things! Who would have thought we’d ever see the like! Look at ’em, Liv! Look at ’em, Marmion. Are you there, Marmion? Do you see these things? We’ve seen a thing or two in our time, but this—”
Liv thought: Marmion. It has a name. She knew at once who—what—the name belonged to. She was suddenly more scared of tiny capering Creedmoor than of either of the looming rock giants.
“This is a sacred place. This is one fucker of a sacred place. No wonder they’ve been trying to scare us away. No wonder! Who can blame them! Marmion, suppose strangers came blundering into your sacred Lodge—how would you deal with them? How much more bloodily would you deal with them than the spirits of this place have seen fit to deal with us! How . . .”
—Creedmoor.
—How much more—? You’re back.
—Yes, Creedmoor. We have found our way to you. It was difficult. This place is not yet ready for us.
—How do they manage out here without you, I wonder. Look at this!
—Shut up, Creedmoor.
Pain filled Creedmoor’s head, and a stink of burning, sweat, gunpowder, fear. Red-hot fingers probed and dug into his memories.
—You do not know how we have suffered, Creedmoor. You do not know the agonies of terror and uncertainty, the screaming and weeping in our Lodge. Weeks in the wilderness. We did not know if you had failed us. Creedmoor, what’s this?
—What’s what?
—What have you been telling the woman? What lies about us? How dare you? You profane our mysteries with your chatter. You give up our secrets. You—
—It gets lonely out here. No harm—
—You think of betraying us.
—I do not!
—We know you better than you know yourself. You coward, Creedmoor. You must be brought to heel.
Creedmoor fell silent. His face flushed, and he clutched his forehead, and he grunted, suddenly stricken. He stood there, head in his hand, and his hat dropped limply to the dusty ground.
For a moment, Liv considered going to him—asking him if he was well, if she could help him, as if he were not a monster. . . . Instead she held the General by his arm and watched.
Creedmoor stumbled two steps forward, then half a step back. He shook his head and moaned.
Liv fumbled in her smock for the arrowhead. She clutched its shaft tightly and thought carefully.
A cold touch against her calf—something rough and wet scraping against her bare flesh—distracted her.
The mist drifted around her legs. Eddies of it thickened, congealed, acquired a strange slippery solidity. Only a few feet away from her—distracted, Liv let go of the General’s arm—a white wisp of mist flicked fish-tail around a rock.
Another wisp slipped from behind and touched against her, and this time it was quite clearly wet, and scaled; and what was more, there was no doubt that it was moving. She shrieked and spun around to see it course past her, squirming over the dry earth, and it leapt into the air like a salmon at spawning, and shone for a moment, then blew away.
She turned back—the General was talking again, but she wasn’t listening—and saw that the white mist poured now down the valley all along the miles of riverbed behind them and all the way back to the place where the river bent around a distant rockslide, two days back—and the mist rushed urgently past her legs, up to her knees now, leaping and full of purposeful pulsing shadow-life.
More solid now, flickering, sinuous, some tiny and darting, some of them heavy and long as her forearm. All white, save for their eyes, which—rushing past so quickly they were like shooting stars—were a pale blue. The tide was up to her waist now, and still leaping; one flicked just past her ear—she could see for a second the precise intricacy of its scales—and she gasped. The ghosts of all the life the river once held? They were weightless and insubstantial; nevertheless, she staggered and nearly fell.
Then they were gone; all gone past. Her legs, Liv noted with horror, were bleeding; whether from the rough touch of their scales