The eternally shaking earth opened fissures in the roof of Herne’s underground lair and dirt showered down. In places sand poured through the cracks and with it the salty-sweet stench of decay and an aura of putrid green and jaundice yellow. Even through the euphoric haze of Herne’s bluebell dust, Nush was beginning to get worried.

  ‘Don’t mean to interrupt you, but can I get a little bloody help here?’ She struggled against her restraints to no effect.

  Through gritted teeth, Herne wrestled with the wheel of Rundleskink’s machine, muscles bulging like a 1980’s action hero. The little, black-skinned elf clambered across the face of the great mechanism, oscillating between shouting instructions at Herne and squawking in frustration and muttering to himself.

  ‘Release the wheel for a turn!’ he shouted.

  The stag-headed deity let the wheel go and it spun in a blur.

  Rundleskink cried out, ‘Too much, too much!’

  Herne caught the wheel, grunting. It smoked in his fists as he gripped it hard to halt the spin. The chamber seemed to drop ten feet with a jolt, Nush’s head smacking against the back of the throne.

  ‘Mother f—’ She pulled at her restraints ineffectually, panic overtaking the inebriated part of her mind that wanted to laugh at her ludicrous, hallucinatory predicament.

  ‘Do something, Wrydsmith!’ Herne bellowed.

  Rundleskink hung from the side of the machine by a brass pipe. ‘Me, do something? Me!’

  ‘Of course, you, Weaver of the Fates.’

  Rundleskink’s blackbird eyes glinted with the white fury of a supernova. ‘I’ve told you, there is nothing more to be done. The deal is finished. We are finished. Our world is finished.’

  ‘No,’ Herne cried, straining at the wheel.

  ‘Merely because you will it won’t make it so. Not anymore. Not this way.’

  ‘It cannot be over. I cannot be over. I am the god of the Greenwood, the pollen on the air, the seed in the womb. I am life.’

  ‘Not anymore, you preening idiot!’

  Herne roared. Letting go of the wheel, he swung his boulder of a fist at Rundleskink. The elf skuttled out of the way across his machine just in time. The fist smashed into the glass orb contain the tiny, winged beings with humanoid arms and legs. They buzzed free and swarmed Herne. Little multi-coloured balls of light swooped and dived, stinging Herne. He flailed, striking out, punching a crater into the machine, twisting more of the mechanism. He clapped his hands together and thunder cracked through the chamber. Three of the little dots of light fell to the ground, flickering out. While Herne snatched more of them out of the air, the wheel spun too fast to see. The chamber jolted once more, and the cracks expanded. Soil and sand gushed forth, and along with them, water. Powerful jets of it, as if one by one, the bolts of a mighty ocean liner were popping under the strain.

  Rundleskink appeared at Nush’s arm. ‘We must go.’ His nimble fingers worked on her restraints with deft touches and the roots withdrew. She began to rub her wrist, but the little man took her hand, ready to jump down from the throne.

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  ‘Wyrdsmith, where is your fealty, you coward?’ Herne rounding on them.

  Rundleskink brayed. ‘Coward? Me? I’m not the one hiding in a wrinkle and fornicating with his prisoners.’

  ‘I will kill you.’ Herne bounded towards them, splashing in the pooling saltwater. The dead bodies of the fur rugs floated on the surface. A hunk of the roof fell and damaged another piece of the ruined machine.

  ‘If you dare,’ Rundleskink bridled. ‘What happens to those who harm a wrydsmith?’ He stood defiantly on the arm of the throne, although the grip on Nush’s hand and the mixing of their auras told her he was less confident than he appeared. But it worked. Fists bunching open and closed, Herne halted.

  ‘Even the Lord of the Hunt might want to ensure he has as much luck as he may need for what comes next.’

  Herne scowled. ‘Next? Coward! You are the one saying all is at an end.’

  ‘This,’ Rundleskink gestured around them, ‘is at an end. What comes next, who knows? And coward? Maybe, but I am not a deity of creation. How was the world born, Lord of the Greenwood?’

  Herne’s chest heaved and his words gravelled, ‘In battle and lust.’

  ‘Indeed, battle and lust. The forging by elements. Remember the hunt? Remember when the risk of blood was yours and its spilling birthed realities and mysteries untold?’

  The chamber was collapsing around them. Nush, feeling more sober than ever, wanted to get moving. She tightened her grip on Rundleskink’s hand, hoping to communicate this, but the dark elf didn’t back down from Herne’s burning gaze. A sound like a mountain cracking accompanied the largest jolt yet. A chunk of ceiling the size of Nush’s long abandoned car fell from the roof and crashed into the deepening water, which gushed from the walls in thick, raucous streams. Nush swore, scrambling to her feet on the throne.

  ‘Fuck-ity-fuck-fuck it, can we shift our arses?’

  Herne’s glare fell on Nush. She stiffened. How was it possible to feel so very small and insignificant? She might have caught him off guard once in the woods when he relaxed his glamour on her and was trying to be charming. He was an altogether different being now, more like the one that bellowed and snared her in ivy to drag her into his lair, but worse still. Rage seemed to make the big bastard even bigger.

  ‘What if we sacrifice the girl?’ Herne said, darkly.

  ‘Piss off, and shove it right up your arse and twist you misogynistic twat?’ Nush spat but the bravado was a paper-thin shield.

  Rundleskink was curt and moved Nush further behind him on the throne. ‘No. You have been told. Too much blood has been spilled already. The contract is sodden and torn from its ink. The fibres are weak and breaking. This was our last chance. But that was all it ever was, a chance. There is nothing more my wyrding can do.’

  ‘And so you run?’ Herne said, pointing an accusing finger.

  ‘I run, yes, but to try to get Lorimer’s love away. She shouldn’t have been diverted from him. Love is a delicate force. One which I fear has tipped the balance this time and spun us into chaos. To kill the mothers was too much.’

  ‘Necessary, you said,’ Herne glowered.

  Rundleskink sighed. ‘Wyrding the fates has never been a matter of certainty. It is a steering. The greater one insists, the greater the counterbalance will be. It was the only possible way left, and that possibility proved wrong. And now we must go.’

  Herne dismissed them with a petulant wave of his hand. ‘Flee then,’ he said turning his back on them. ‘There is nowhere else for me to go.’

  Rundleskink and Nush hopped down from the throne and splashed through the cold water to one of the tunnels leading from the chamber. At its threshold, Rundleskink turned back. Herne sat himself heavily upon his throne, darkness knitting his thick brow together.

  ‘There is one place yet you may go, Lord of the Hunt.’

  ‘Go!’ Herne bellowed without looking at them.

  With a small nod, Rundleskink led Nush to the tunnel. As they passed through, the elf reached up and hooked a line of moon-thread that Nush had not seen laying taut around the compacted dry wall. His long, pointed nail gave the thread a sharp tug. It tinkled faintly like the bells on the elf’s shoes.

  ‘What was that?’ Nush said, as they picked up their speed, the water getting deeper as the tunnel descended.

  ‘A final twist of fate,’ he said, pulling her along.

  ###

  Herne seethed on his throne. His kingdom was falling around him. All had failed. He had made the deal and given them all so much. Prosperity. Safety. Such things are rare in a world made of blood and rutting. The only thing required was sacrifice once in a generation. Thankless. There was a time, long before the pact, when they would have cut the throats of their firstborns for him and brought him maidens to sire at the world tree, or sometimes a young man merely for his pleasure. No more. He was old. Even this Nush woman resisted his charms, as did that snake wench the Tunstall buck wedded. She had flirted. Had almost been his, but she saw through the glamour and laughed at him. Laughed at Herne, God of the Greenwood, Lord of the Hunt, The Great Stag that seeded the world. She laughed no more once he turned her into a doe.

  A root like a sea serpent’s tale lashed down from the roof into the water before Herne’s throne. The Wrydsmith’s machine was a deadfall of useless, forgotten things, like them both. The chamber rocked violently to one side and settled back with a slam. From behind Herne’s throne his great spear, with its mighty head of napped flint, toppled forward and sunk into the water beside his foot. He looked upon it, its image a refracted dream of what once was. Curious to feel it in his grip again, he reached down and hefted it upright. Salt water dripped from it like the clear ichor of new gods slain before they could enjoy the fruits of creation. The spear belonged in his hand, and his hand belonged to it. Why had it been so long since he had wielded it? Because the world was born in battle and blood. And now it had no need for him, what use was a spear to a forgotten god at the end of his days?

  What use, indeed?