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knife to her throat. He said, ‘Give her back to me or I kill her, Then your son dies also. But let me take her, and I will raise your son as mine.’ You and he swore oaths and made it so. Now I, Mari, of the lineage of Gelfun, say this. Take me, rock-born, by guile or by force, put your seed into me, and I will kill myself, as Gelfun would have killed his own daughter. Then you will lose both your new child and your old child, by whom your blood is in me. But give me back my husband, him alone, him living, and I will give you a gift as great to you. ”
    He stood for a while, simply looking at her in the late twilight.
    â€œ Do you drive me from my place, as Gelfun drove me? ” he asked. “ He would have brought an army of men, to dig out the rocks, to drain my lake away, to beset my cave and take me and bind me with chains and drag me into the sun. I am the last of my kind. Therefore I took the ship he gave me and came to this land. Long I lived sadly before I found my cave. I would not live so again. ”
    â€œ This is my gift to you, ” said Mari, and explained to him as best she could about the hydroelectric scheme. He didn’t seem to find it strange.
    â€œ It is in my husband’s hands, ” she finished. “ At his word it will be done or not done. Therefore he must live, so that I may persuade him. ”
    â€œ Unfasten the boat, ” he said. “ Take it to the rock in the middle of the river. Wait there. ”
    He turned and walked down the bank. At the river’s edge he leaped, frog-fashion, into the water.
    Mari stripped off and followed. Reaching the dinghy she used the anchor rope to haul herself down to the river bed, untied the anchor rock by feel, and surfaced gasping. Then she turned on her back and kicked across the current to the stiller water close by the rock shelf. Once there she could take it more easily, simply maintaining her position. The first she knew of the creature’s return was the boom of its voice close behind her.
    â€œ That is good. Stay there. ”
    Nothing happened for a while, though she could tell from the slackened current that the creature was still there, sheltering her from its flow. She assumed it must be doing something concerned with separating itself from Dick’s body, though it was already speaking in its own voice, not his. Then it grunted and she heard the splash of its heaving itself up onto the shelf. It waddled past her with Dick inert in its arms and lowered him into the dinghy.
    â€œ Child of my blood, farewell, ” it boomed. “ I leave you with a choice. ”
    It leaped neatly into the water and disappeared.
    Mari towed the dinghy ashore, somehow heaved Dick out onto the bank, and dragged him on up and into the house. By the time she had got him into the living room she was almost spent. She knelt beside him and felt for his pulse. It was there, faint and slow. She switched on all the heaters, stripped off his sodden clothes, dried him and rolled him into a duvet, flung another one over him, and then dried herself and wriggled in beside him, holding him close, trying to warm him through with her own warmth. Now she could actually feel the movement of his breathing. She slid her hand under him, felt for the cicatrice and stroked it gently. His shoulder stirred and she heard his sigh.
    He slept almost till noon next day, but Mari woke at the usual time, slipped out of bed and stole away to her desk. There was a long email from Doctor Tharlsen, with further fragments from the oath-taking passage of the Gelfunsaga . Several of them now slid into place. Likely links emerged. She wrote back briefly:
    Take this for the moment as a dream. It was not, but I would rather not tell you in writing, even in runes. I have met Raggir. He took Dick, and I followed and took him back, using the same threat Gelfun used about killing his daughter. I couldn’t have done it without you. This is what Raggir told