“Yes,” whispered Nick. He smiled and said, “Lirael.”

Lirael didn’t smile back. She brushed her black hair back from her face with a golden-gloved hand, and said, “The spells are working strangely on you, but they are working. I’d best deal with the Hrule.”

“The creature?”

Lirael nodded.

“Didn’t I kill it? I thought my blood might poison it. . . .”

“It has sated it,” said Lirael. “And made it much more powerful, when it can digest it.”

“You’d better kill it first, then.”

“It can’t be killed,” said Lirael. But she picked up a very odd-looking spear, a simple shaft of wood that was topped with a fresh-picked thistle head, and stepped over to the creature. “Nothing of stone or metal can pierce its flesh. But a thistle will return it to the earth, for a time.”

She lifted the spear high above her head and drove it down with all her strength into the creature’s chest. Surprisingly, the thistle didn’t break on the hide that had turned back bullets; it cut through as easily as a hand through water. The spear quivered there for a moment; then it burst, shaft and point together, like a mushroom spore. The dust fell on the creature, and where it fell, the flesh melted away, soaking into the ground. Within seconds there was nothing left, not even the glow of the violet eyes.

“How did you know to bring a thistle?” Nick asked, and then cursed himself for sounding so stupid. And for looking so pathetic. He raised his head again and tried to roll over, but Lirael quickly knelt and gently pushed him back down.

“I didn’t. I arrived an hour ago, in answer to a rather confused message from the Magistrix at Wyverley. I expected merely to cross here, not to find one of the rarest of Free Magic creatures. And . . . and you. I bound your wounds and put some healing charms upon you, and then I went to find a thistle.”

“I’m glad it was you.”

“It’s lucky I read a lot of bestiaries when I was younger,” said Lirael, who wouldn’t look him in the eye. “I’m not sure even Sabriel would know about the peculiar nature of the Hrule. Well, I’d best be on my way. There are stretcher bearers waiting to come over to take you in. I think you’ll be all right now. There’s no lasting damage. Nothing from the Hrule, I mean. No new lasting effects, that is. . . . I really do have to get going. Apparently there’s some Dead thing or other farther south—the message wasn’t clear. . . .”

“That was the creature,” said Nick. “I sent a message to the Magistrix. I followed the creature all the way here from Dorrance Hall.”

“Then I can go back to the Guards who escorted me here,” Lirael said, but she made no move to go, just nervously parted her hair again with her golden-gloved hand. “They won’t have started back for Barhedrin yet. That’s where I left my Paperwing. I can fly by myself now. I mean, I’m still—”