before her, and bow their heads, and receive her blessing.
A World Awakes with Her
For the third time, Charn gritted his teeth to keep from passing out. When the woozy feeling passed, he went on, crawling arm over arm, staying down. He went slowly, crossing no more than ten yards in a single hour. His left ankle was broken—badly. It shattered when he fell from the blind, and it had been a narrow thing giving Fallows the slip.
There were six fauns in the circle of worship, set there to cut off any escape through the little door. But Charn still had a gun. He had methodically worked his way higher, avoiding the murder-weed that would whisper if it saw him—“poison! poison!”—moving so slowly that the crackle of dead leaves beneath him was all but imperceptible, even to the sharp ears of the fauns. There was a shelf of rock, jutting out over the clearing. It was accessible only from one side, as the slope on the other side was too steep and the earth too loose. Nor could it easily be approached from the crag above. For an armed man on this outcropping, though, firing into the clearing would be like shooting faun in a barrel.
Whether he ought to open fire . . . well, that was another question. The faun war party might yet be led away. The boy Christian could still make a convenient appearance and draw them off. On the other hand, if the numbers below swelled, perhaps it was best to simply slink away. He had survived in this world for nine months once before, and he knew a golem who would make a deal. General Gorm the Obese always had work for a bad man with a gun.
Charn pulled himself behind a rotting log and swiped the sweat from his brow. A single lightning-struck tree, like a beech, loomed over him, partially cored out. Below him some brush rustled at the edge of the clearing, and the one named Forgiveknot slipped into the glade, bolas hanging from his belt. Charn knew him well. He’d misjudged a shot at the old faun years before and given him that scar across the face. He smiled grimly. He so hated to miss.
The sight of him made up Charn’s mind: kill them now, before any more showed up. He slipped the Remington off his shoulder and rested the barrel on the log. He put the front sight on Forgiveknot.
Something clattered in the dead tree over him. There was a chittering and a rustle.
“Assassin!” cried a whurl gazing down at Charn from one branch of the blasted tree. “Save yourselves! A Son of Cain is here to kill you all!”
Charn rolled and swung the barrel up. His sights found the whurl, and he pulled the trigger, and the gun made a flat, tinny click. For a moment he just stared at the old Remington in a kind of blank bewilderment. It was loaded—he had put in a fresh cartridge himself only a few minutes before. A misfire? He didn’t believe it. He cleaned and oiled the gun once a month, whether he used it or not.
He was still trying to come to grips with that awful, dead click when the loop of rope fell. It caught him around the face, and Charn sat up, and as he did, it dropped around his neck and tightened. The lasso yanked. The rope choked off his air, and it jerked him back, over the rotten log and over the edge. He spun as he fell. He hit the earth with enough force to drive all the air out of him. Ribs broke. Pain screamed in his shattered ankle. A thousand black specks wheeled around him, like midges, only they were in his head.
He sprawled on the ground, ten feet from his little door. As his vision cleared, it seemed the sky was lighter, almost lemon-colored. He could see fair clouds in the distance.
His right hand fumbled for the rifle, but just as his shaking fingers scraped the butt, whoever held the other end dragged him away. Charn choked, tried to force his fingers under the rope and couldn’t. He rolled and kicked as he was dragged and wound up on his belly, beneath the single corrupted, dead tree that leaned out over the whole natural amphitheater.
“Rifle wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” Fallows said from above him. Charn stared at his black hooves. “I took the firing pin out last night, while you were