Lev Grossman - The Magicians

“I wouldn’t say all hope is lost…” Josh said.

“Let me see that,” Dint said imperiously. He had been conspicuously silent since Ember woke up. Anaïs clung to his arm.

Quentin ignored him. Everybody was talking at once. Penny and the ram were locked in some kind of intense lover’s quarrel.

“Interesting,” Eliot said. He shrugged. “It might work. I’d rather try that than go back to the City. Who do you think will come?”

“Human child,” the ram said loudly. “Human child!”

“Go for it, Q,” Janet said. She looked paler than she should have. “It’s time. Go for it.”

Alice just nodded gravely.

The silver mouthpiece tasted metallic against his lips, like a nickel or a battery. The breath he took was so deep that pain lanced hotly into his arrow-stuck shoulder as his ribs expanded. He wasn’t sure exactly what to do — purse his lips like a trumpeter, or just blow into it like a kazoo? — but the ivory horn produced a clear, even, high note as gentle and round as a French horn winded by a seasoned symphony player in a concert hall. Everybody stopped talking and turned to look at him. It wasn’t loud, exactly, but it made everything else quiet around it, so that it was instantly the only sound in the room, and everything resonated with its pure, simple strength. It was natural and perfect, a single note that sounded like a grand chord. It went on and on. He blew until his lungs were empty.

The sound echoed and faded away, gone as if it had never been. The cavern was still. For a moment Quentin felt ridiculous, like he’d just blown a noisemaker. What was he expecting, anyway? He really didn’t know.

There was a snuffling sound from Ember’s pedestal.

“O child,” came the ram’s deep voice. “Don’t you know what you have done?”

“I just got us out of this mess. That’s what I’ve done.”

The ram drew Himself up.

“I am sorry you came here,” Ember said. “Children of Earth. No one asked you to come. I am sorry that our world is not the paradise you were looking for. But it was not created for your entertainment. Fillory”—the old ram’s jowls shook—“is not a theme park, for you and your friends to play dress-up in, with swords and crowns.”

He was visibly mastering some powerful emotion. It took Quentin a moment to recognize it. It was fear. The old ram was choking on it.

“That’s not why we came here, Ember,” Quentin said quietly.

“Is it not?” Ember said, basso profundo. “No, of course it is not.” His alien eyes were hard to meet, with their molten yellow whites and black pupils like figure eights on their sides, symbols of infinity. “You came here to save us. You came here to be our King.

“But tell me something, Quentin. How could you hope to save us when you cannot even save yourself?”

Quentin was spared the necessity of answering, because that was when the catastrophe began.

A small man in a neat gray suit appeared in the cave. His face was obscured by a leafy branch that hung in front of it in midair. He looked exactly the way Quentin remembered. The same suit, the same club tie. His face was no less illegible. He held his pink, manicured hands clasped urbanely in front of him. It was as if Quentin had never left the classroom where he first appeared. In a way he supposed he never had. The terror was so absolute, so all-encompassing, that it was almost like calm: not a suspicion but the absolute certainty that they were all about to die.

The Beast spoke.

“I believe that was my cue.” His tone was mild, his accent patrician English.

Ember roared. The sound was colossal. It shook the room, and a stalactite fell and shattered. The inside of Ember’s mouth was mottled pink and black. At that moment the ram no longer looked quite so ridiculous. There were great humps of muscle under all that fluffy wool, like boulders under moss, and His ribbed horns were thick and stony — they curled all the way around so that the two sharp tips pointed forward. Head down, He surged down off the stone plinth at the man in the gray suit.

The Beast slapped Him aside with a smooth, unhurried backhand motion. The gesture was almost casual. Ember shot sideways like a rocket and hit the rock wall with a sickening, boneless smack. The physics of it looked wrong, as if the ram were as light as a leaf and the Beast as dense as dwarf star matter. Ember dropped motionless to the sandy floor.

He lay where He fell. The Beast flicked woolly fluff off one immaculate gray sleeve with the backs of his fingers.

“It’s a funny thing about the old gods,” he said. “You think that just because they’re old they must be difficult to kill. But when the fighting starts, they go down just like anybody else. They aren’t stronger, they’re just older.”

There was a sandy shuffling from behind Quentin. He risked a glance: Dint had turned on his heel and walked out of the room. The Beast did nothing to stop him. Quentin suspected the rest of them wouldn’t get off that easily.

“Yes, he was one of mine,” the Beast said. “Farvel was, too, if you want to know the whole truth. The birch tree, you remember him? They mostly are. The rams’ time is over. Fillory is my world now.”

It wasn’t a boast, just a statement of fact. Fucking Dint, Quentin thought. And I pretended to like his stupid vest.

“I knew you’d come for me. It’s hardly a surprise. I’ve been waiting for you for ages. But is this really all of you? It’s a bad joke, you know.” He gave an incredulous snort. “You’ve no chance at all.”

He sighed.

“I suppose I won’t be needing this anymore. I’d almost gotten used to it.”

Almost absentmindedly the Beast plucked the branch that hung in front of his face with a thumb and forefinger, as if he were taking off a pair of sunglasses, and tossed it lightly aside.

Quentin cringed — he didn’t want to see its real face — but it was too late. And it turned out he had nothing to worry about, because it was an utterly ordinary face. It could have been the face of an insurance adjuster: round, mild, soft-chinned, boyish.

“Nothing? You don’t recognize me?”

The Beast strode over to the stone plinth, picked up the crown that still lay there, and placed it on his graying temples.

“My God,” Quentin said. “You’re Martin Chatwin.”

“In the flesh,” the Beast announced cheerfully. “And my, how I’ve grown!”

“I don’t understand,” Alice said shakily. “How can you be Martin Chatwin?”

“But surely you knew? Isn’t that why you’re here?” He searched their faces but got no answer. They were frozen in place — not magically this time, just paralyzed the regular way, with fear. He frowned. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters. But I would have thought that was the whole point. It’s a little insulting, really.”

He pouted for show, a sad clown. It was disturbing to see a middle-aged man with the mannerisms of a little English schoolboy. It really was him. He hadn’t grown up at all. He even had a curiously miniature, asexual quality, as if he’d stopped growing the moment he’d run away into that forest.

“What happened to you?” Quentin asked.

“What happened?” The Beast spread his arms triumphantly. “Why, I got what I wanted. I went to Fillory, and I never came back!”

It was all becoming clear. Martin Chatwin hadn’t been stolen by monsters, he had become one. He had found what Quentin thought he wanted, a way to stay in Fillory, to leave the real world behind forever. But the price had been high.

“I wasn’t going to go back to Earth after I’d seen Fillory. I mean, you can’t show a man paradise and then snatch it back again. That’s what gods do. But I say: down with gods.”