opened her eyes again, she moaned, because the madness was not over:
The river rose. It reared, as if wounded. The waters rose in an instant from Liv’s hips to her chest; they pushed more strongly; slow, still, but implacable. Dark heavy shapes pushed through it, around her legs. Something sleek and sinuous shoved past her, and she stumbled. She was barely able to stand upright.
She would not make it back to the safety of the bank again.
“Creedmoor—help us!”
Thunder sounded overheard; drumming sounded from the hills.
Creedmoor, his face gray with stone dust, turned his weapon to the northern giant and laughed.
Then he returned the Gun to its waterlogged holster. He rolled up his sleeves and stalked forward. He passed Liv without looking at her, his eyes fixed intently on the water. He turned left—stalked left, searching—right again—and lunged.
He reached into the water with both hands. He seemed to have grabbed something—something that slipped and wriggled beneath the tide. Liv could see only a dark shadow, thrashing. Creedmoor set his shoulders firmly and held tight, and then, like a farmer delivering a breached calf, wrenched the thing up out of the water and into the air.
Creedmoor was holding by its throat something that at first Liv took—so sleek and long and black-haired was it—for an otter, or a large dog. It shook itself, and the long black hair and beard shook aside and exposed chalky flesh, red-painted; bony flailing arms with long, long nails that scratched at Creedmoor’s face, long fingers that wrapped around Creedmoor’s throat.
It was one of the Folk. Tiny, thin, pale, struggling. Wizened and ancient. Something in its lines, in its red sigils, under the hair, suggested to Liv that it was a female of the species.
Creedmoor held the wet Folk woman with his left arm, his elbow locked around her throat, just as her long white rootlike fingers locked around his. With his right hand, he held the Gun against her head.
There was a moment of expectant stillness. The waters stilled, too, Liv thought. The General was nowhere to be seen. Sobbing, she began again her struggle for the safety of the north bank.
Behind her, Creedmoor and the Folk woman held each other in tense silence.
—Monster.
—John Creedmoor to you, ma’am. What are you doing in my head?
—Your kind are not wanted here. Do not look on this place, do not name these things, do not make them into things they are not.
She spoke in his head with no voice, no accent, no sound or illusion of sound—there was only the sense, an instant afterwards, of a memory of her meaning.
—Kill it, Creedmoor.
His master spoke with a noise like the drop of a gallows, the snapping of necks.
—This is very crowded and painful and confusing. I don’t suppose either of you care.
—How dare you bring this thing here?
—Kill it, Creedmoor. Kill it at once.
—Fallen thing. Broken thing. Mad thing. Poisoned thing. We pity you. But you have no place here. Not yet. Go.
—Kill it and be done with it, Creedmoor, it mocks us—
—Go.
—Marmion?
—Your master has gone away.
—Forever?
—No. It will find its way back.
—How long?
—Long enough.
—I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you or run screaming.
Creedmoor slowly took the gun from the woman’s head and pointed it back down the valley away from her.
The woman uncurled her long fingers from around Creedmoor’s throat.
He didn’t holster his gun, but kept it ready. The waters were now surging around his chest.
—What now, ma’am?
—Go back, monster. Do not look on these things, do not—
—What’s your name, ma’am?
—It pains us to talk to you. It pains us to be named by you.
—I told you mine.
—Ku Koyrik. Do not misname me.
—Is that a name or a curse?
—Hound of the border.
—What border?
—Made; unmade. Fallen; free.
—Let us pass.
—No.
—Please?
—What?
—Please.
—You are strange.
—I mean it sincerely. I see no need for us to fight.
Creedmoor let go of the woman. She darted through the water and launched herself up with a flealike kick of her bony legs onto a rock, where she crouched, glaring. Creedmoor holstered his weapon and stood in the rising waters with his hands raised and empty.
—I have maimed myself so that I could stand before you.
—Have you? How? I’m sorry regardless. This place is sacred to you, and . . .
—Your word. Not ours.
—I’m sorry.
—Words.
—I talk too much, I know. A vain man, and not the least of my sins. If I were you, I wouldn’t welcome me either. What about the old man? Who, you’ll notice, is drowning.