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“Foolish…”

At the Smith’s suggestion, the blade turned in the man’s grip and sunk itself in its owner’s belly. The warrior fell to the ground with a gurgle of agony.

The Smith reached again for strands of story that he could manipulate, but again came up empty. “Nonfiction?” He shook his head. The girl had led him into a factual account. It didn’t matter. That only increased his advantage.

“Enough of these games. Bring me the child!” He turned this way and that, seeking any other challenge.

A sharp pain bit into the Smith’s leg just behind his knee. He collapsed to the ground, his shout more of surprise than from the injury. “How—” The Smith tried to rise, but his leg refused to support him. Even leaning on his hammer he couldn’t do it. It took another moment, despite all his mechanical knowledge, to understand that he had been hamstrung.

A tall figure, seeming half beast, half man, stepped out from behind the cracked stone. A man wearing an antler headdress. Others, men and women, emerged into the circle, some uncovering fire bowls that they fed with dry kindling so that firelight danced within the ring of stones.

The druid advanced on the Great Smith. The wind snatched at his ragged cloak as he raised his sickle-shaped blade of flint.

“Stone.” The Great Smith grimaced. “Clever girl.” Of all man’s tools, only stone had fallen beneath the Smiths’ consideration. And had she led him into a tale of dinosaurs with nine-inch teeth or of cavemen wielding stone axes, the fiction would not have posed a threat. But the druid who now loomed over him, with his blade of wickedly sharp flint…he stood in the center of his own truth, set down by his own hand.

The druid knelt, sickle held ready. The Great Smith drew back for his swing. Crippled or not, his sledgehammer would outreach a five-inch blade every time. Two men grabbed the weapon, three, pitting their untamed strength against the Smith’s arms. He wrenched the hammer free, but in that heartbeat of delay the flint knife flashed again, and a vital tendon in the Smith’s arm surrendered to that edge.

The men and women in the circle surged in, stamping, biting, clubbing with rocks.

Chapter 29

Rose stood on the windswept heath and waited for the sun to rise above the treetops. The screams had stopped now. She had hoped that the Antler Man would protect her, though when she ran from the circle into the arms of the night, she had been far from certain that anyone could withstand the Great Smith.

She hadn’t wished him well. Her anger had been stoked by the memory of Hannah falling with one of the Smith’s nails through her chest. But she hadn’t thought they would kill him, and certainly not that it would take so long and be so loud.

She wondered whether the Antler Man would take his time with her. The circle was the only place to enter or leave by, and so they hadn’t come chasing her down. She was glad of that. She wanted to see one more sunrise. She had seen too few.

She supposed she might wander off into the wider world, but she had spent time here before, and although it was beautiful, it was also exacting, and despite what she had learned here, she didn’t think she could survive in such a place. Moreover, if the people of the stones wanted her back, they could track her down easily enough. The forests and heaths spoke to them, telling tales about who or what had passed and how long ago.

The sun burned its way above the trees, red and gold and glorious, and with the long shadows at her back, Rose returned to the circle. She hoped that Red was all right. She would have liked to have gone back to her world of books now that the Great Smith was no longer there to chase her or send his minions against her. She would have liked to know the peace of the Riverbank again, and the excitement of having a thousand new worlds on her doorstep every morning.

A trembling took control of Rose’s body as she approached the circle and the Demetae people closed in behind her, their shadows stretching around her on the ground mist. Her body spoke a truth that her mind had kept at arm’s length. Still, she walked on, gooseflesh on her legs and arms, breath becoming shallow and quick with fear. The Muse would want her to face this with dignity.

The Antler Man was waiting as she had known he would be, head bowed, antlers angled toward the rising sun. Arms at his sides. No motion in him. She had returned, knowing what was promised for her. It had been a bargain she had accepted in her anger at the Great Smith’s pursuit of her helplessness—an answer to the venom and pride in the man. She might not escape death, but neither had he, and her end would not be at his hand. He would lay no finger upon her, never get to use what he considered to be his own.

“I’m here.”

The Antler Man raised his head at that and gestured to the grass at the center of the circle. Of the Great Smith, no sign remained save for dark stains on the focus stone, the largest of the megaliths.

Rose had seen it once before and she knew what was expected of her. She lay on the ground, on her back, gazing up at the Antler Man. The sun’s rays revealed his face at last: lean, sharp-nosed, scarred on both cheeks, unevenly though, as if by violence rather than ritual, hair still dark despite the age in his skin. The light didn’t reach his eyes.

Women among the Demetae, girls of around Rose’s age, came to scatter flowers across her, to place sprays of fresh green leaves, and to paint designs along her arms, neck, and cheeks. She shook the whole time. She’d seen the same vibration in a trapped hind, the anticipation of the knife. And still, she lay there, drowning in the inevitability of it. She had seen so much in the last few days, done so much, and yet the line that joined all of those things to each other, to her, had come to its end in this circle, drawn taut, quivering, waiting to be cut.

—

“That bastard’s going to kill her!” I tore my gaze away from the scene on the surface of the pool to check whether the assistant was seeing what I was seeing.

“The man gave her the gift of knowing what would happen if she returned. Men of his kind do not go back on their word.”

“You have to stop him!” This was crazy. Insane.

“It has already happened. That world was written more than a thousand years before your time.”

“But…it’s just a story!” I moved closer to the water’s edge, ready to jump unless something changed soon.

“We are all stories. This one is true. This man existed in your past. His account is without embellishment.”

Without theatrics, the Antler Man—druid, spirit, or demigod, I couldn’t tell—produced a flint knife with a horn handle, drawing it out from his ragged robe. The early light jumped from one facet to the next. Flint carries a ridiculously sharp edge. I’d sliced myself with a flake I broke off once and didn’t even know I was bleeding until I saw it. Damn cut took an age to heal and stung the whole time once I’d noticed it.