The Magician King m-2 Read online

  Quentin wondered what heaven would be like for Penny. Probably in heaven you were always right and you never had to stop talking. God, he could be a dick where Penny was concerned. Probably in heaven you had hands.

  They were silent for a bit, as they crossed a stone bridge over a canal. Little whirling snow-devils chased each other across the ice.

  “Where did the gods go?” Poppy asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’ve been in heaven. But they’re back. They’ve come back to close the loophole. They’re taking magic back, Quentin. They’re going to take it all away from us.”

  They’d come to a square that looked no different from any of the others except that the fountain in the center was closed. A tarnished bronze cover, ornately inscribed, fitted over the basin. It was held shut by a simple latch. Penny glided over to the fountain, over the snow, the tips of his bare toes brushing it. He let himself float gently to the ground.

  Quentin was trying to process what Penny had said. This must have been what the dragon had meant, back in Venice. This must be the mystery at the root of it all. But it couldn’t be real. It had to be a mistake. The end of magic: that would mean the end of Brakebills, of Fillory, of everything that had happened to him since Brooklyn. He wouldn’t be a magician anymore, nobody would be. All of their double lives would become single ones again. The spark would go out of the world. He tried to work out how they’d gotten here. A trip to the Outer Island, that’s all it was supposed to be. He’d pulled a thread, and now the whole world was coming unraveled. He wanted to unpull it, to put it back, weave it back together again.

  Penny was waiting for something.

  “Open this for me, please,” he said. “You have to undo the catch.”

  Right. No hands. Numb, but not from cold now, Quentin unhooked the bronze hook that held the cover on, then worked his fingertips between the cover and the stone. It was heavy—the metal was an inch thick—but with Poppy’s help he heaved it up and part of the way to one side. They peered in.

  It took a second for the perspective to resolve, and when it did they both backed away instinctively. It was a long way down.

  There was no water in the fountain. Instead it was just a vast, echoing darkness. It was like they were looking down through the oculus of an enormous dome. This must be what lay beneath the Neitherlands. Far down, Quentin would have guessed a mile, was a flat pattern of glowing white lines, like a schematic diagram of circuitry, or a maze with no solution. Among the lines, waist deep in them, stood a silvery figure. It was bald and muscled, and it must have been enormous. It was dark, but the giant made its own light. It glowed with a lovely steady silvery luminescence.

  The giant was busy. It was at work. It was changing the pattern. It grasped one line, disconnected it, bent it, connected it to another line. Because they were the size of derricks, its arms moved slowly, traversing enormous distances, but they never stopped moving. Its handsome face showed no expression.

  “Penny? What are we looking at?”

  “Is that God?” Poppy said.

  “That is a god,” Penny corrected her. “Though that is really just a term to describe a magician operating on a titanic power scale. We’ve seen at least a dozen of them; it’s hard to tell them apart. There’s one at each of these access points. But we know what they’re doing. They’re fixing it. They’re rewiring the world.”

  Quentin was staring down at the exposed circuitry of creation, and at the master of it. It looked a little like the Silver Surfer.

  “I suppose,” Quentin said slowly, “you’re going to say that that is a being of sublime beauty and power, and he only looks like that because my fallen mortal eyes are incapable of perceiving his true magnificence.”

  “No. We think that’s actually pretty much it.”

  “Come on,” Poppy said. She tilted her head. “He is pretty impressive. He’s big. And silvery.”

  “A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.”

  “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.”

  So that was him. The biggest bastard of them all, top of the food chain. That’s where magic came from. Did he even understand what he’d made, how beautiful it was, how much people loved it? He didn’t look like he loved anything. He just was. Though how could you make anything as beautiful as magic and not love it?

  “I wonder how he found out,” Poppy said. “About us using magic. I wonder who tipped him off.”

  “Maybe we should talk to him,” Quentin said. “Maybe we can change his mind. We could, I don’t know, prove ourselves worthy of magic or something. Maybe they have a test.”

  Penny shook his head.

  “I don’t think they can change their minds. When you get to that level of power and knowledge and perfection, the question of what you should do next gets increasingly obvious. Everything is very rule-governed. All you can ever do in any given situation is the most gloriously perfect thing, and there’s only one of them. Finally there aren’t any choices left to make at all.”

  “You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.”

  “The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals.”

  They watched the god work for a while without talking. It never paused or hesitated. Its hands moved and moved, bending lines, breaking one connection, making another. Quentin couldn’t see why one pattern was better than another, but he supposed that was his mortal fallibility. He felt a little sorry for it. He supposed it was happy, never doubting, never hesitating, eternally certain of its absolute righteousness. But it was like a giant divine robot.

  “Let’s cover it up,” he said. “I don’t want to look at it anymore.”

  The bronze cover grated against the stone, then dropped with a clang back into place. Quentin latched it. Though who the latch was going to keep in or out, he couldn’t imagine. They stood around it as if it were a grave they’d just finished filling.

  “Why is this happening now?” he said.

  Penny shook his head.

  “Something caught their attention. Somebody somewhere must have tripped an alarm and summoned them back from wherever they were. They may not even have realized they were doing it. We didn’t know they were here until the cold started. Then the sun went out, and the snow came, and the wind. The buildings started to collapse. It’s all ending.”

  “Josh was here,” Quentin said. “He told us about it.”

  “I know,” Penny said. He shifted uncomfortably under his robe. He forgot himself and spoke in his old voice again. “The cold makes my stumps ache.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Poppy asked.

  “The Neitherlands will be destroyed. It was never part of the divine plan. My predecessors built it in the space between universes. The gods will clear it away, like a wasp’s nest in an old wall. If we’re still here we’ll die with it. But it won’t stop there. It’s not even the Neitherlands they’re after, it’s what it runs on.”

  You could say one thing for Penny, he could look a hard truth in the face. He had a weird integrity about things like that. He was calm and collected. He didn’t flinch. It wouldn’t occur to him to.

  “Magic is the problem. We’re not supposed to have it. They’re going to close whatever loophole they left open that lets us use it. When they’re done it will go dead, not just here but everywhere, in every world. That power will belong to the gods only.

  “Most worlds will simply lose magic. I think Fillory may fall apart and cease to exist entirely. It’s a bit special that way—it’s magical all the way through. I have a theory that Fillory itself might be the loophole, the leak through which magic first got out. The hole in the dike.

  “The change would have started already. You may have seen signs.”

  The thrashing clock-trees. They must be something like Fillory’s early warning system, sensitive
to any signs of trouble. Jollyby’s death: maybe Fillorians can’t live without magic. Ember and the Unique Beasts up in arms.

  They were fixing the world. But Quentin preferred it broken. He wondered how long it would take. Years, maybe—maybe he could go home and not think about it and it would all happen after he was dead. But he wasn’t getting that impression. Quentin wondered what he would do if magic went away. He didn’t know how he would live in that world. Most people wouldn’t even notice the change, of course, but if you knew about it, knew what you’d lost, it would eat away at you. He didn’t know if he could explain it to a non-magician. Everything would simply be what it was and nothing else. All there would be was what you could see. What you felt and thought, all the longing and desire in your heart and mind, would count for nothing. With magic you could make those feelings real. They could change the world. Without it they would be stuck inside you forever, figments of your own imagination.

  And Venice. Venice would drown. Its weight would crush those wooden pilings, and it would disappear into the sea.

  You could see the gods’ point of view. They made magic. Why would they want an ignorant insect like Quentin playing around with it? But he couldn’t accept it. He wasn’t going to. Why should the gods be the only ones who got magic? They didn’t appreciate it. They didn’t even enjoy it. It didn’t make them happy. It was theirs, but they didn’t love it, not the way he, Quentin, loved it. The gods were great, but what good was greatness if you didn’t love?

  “So is it going to happen?” he asked. For now he would be stoic like Penny. “Is there any way to stop it?”

  He was warm again, but the chill kept creeping back in through the soles of his boots.

  “Probably not.” Penny began to walk, like a regular mortal, with his actual feet. The snow didn’t seem to bother him. Quentin and Poppy walked with him. “But there is a way. We always knew this might happen. We prepared for it. Tell me, what’s the first thing a hacker does once he breaks into a system?”

  “I don’t know,” Quentin said. “He steals a bunch of credit card numbers and subscribes to a lot of really premium porn sites?”

  “He sets up a back door.” It was good to know that even having attained enlightenment Penny was still impervious to humor. “So that if he’s ever locked out, he can get back in.”

  “The Order did that?”

  “So they say. A back door was built into the system, metaphorically speaking, that would let magic back out into the universe, if the gods ever returned to claim it. It just has to be opened.”

  “Oh my God.” Quentin didn’t know whether he should dare to hope or not. It would almost be too painful if it turned out not to be true. “So you can fix this? You’re going to fix this?”

  “The ‘back door’ exists.” Penny mimed doing quotey-fingers, which he couldn’t actually do. “But the keys to it were hidden a long time ago. So long ago now that not even we know where they are.”

  Quentin and Poppy looked at each other. It couldn’t be that simple, it just couldn’t. No way were they that lucky.

  “Penny, there wouldn’t by any chance be seven of these keys?” Quentin said.

  “Seven, yes. Seven golden keys.”

  “Penny. Jesus Christ, Penny, I think we have them. Or six of them. We have them back in Fillory. It has to be them!”

  Quentin had to sit down on a block of stone, even though it was a little outside Penny’s circle of warmth. He put his head in his hands. That was the quest. It wasn’t fake, and it wasn’t a game, it was real. It mattered after all. They’d been fighting for magic all along. They just hadn’t known it.

  Of course Penny took this in stride. He would never be so uncool as to give Quentin credit for saving the universe or anything.

  “That’s very good. That’s excellent. But you must recover the seventh key.”

  “Right. I got that far. We’ll find the seventh key. And then what?”

  “Then take them all to the End of the World. The door is there.”

  This was it. He knew what to do now. He’d received his cue. It was like how he felt back on the island, in the castle, but calmer this time. This must be what the gods felt like, he thought. Absolute certainty. They had arrived at Penny’s building, back where they’d started.

  “Penny, we have to get back to Fillory, back to our ship, to finish the quest. Can you send us back? I mean, even with the fountains frozen over?”

  “Of course. The Order has made me privy to all the secrets of interdimensional travel. If you think of the Neitherlands as a computer, then the fountains are merely—”

  “Awesome. Thanks, man.” He turned to Poppy. “Are you in on this? Or do you still want to go back to the real world?”

  “Are you kidding?” She grinned and pressed herself against him. “Fuck reality, baby. Let’s go save the universe.”

  “I will prepare the spell to send you back,” Penny said.

  It was snowing harder, the flakes blowing slantwise through their little dome of warmth, but Quentin felt invulnerable now. They were going to fight this, and they were going to win. Penny began chanting in that same incomprehensible language he’d used before. It had some vowel sounds that Quentin barely recognized as human.

  “It needs a minute to take effect,” he said when he was done. “Of course, from this point forward the journey will be undertaken by members of the Order.”

  Wait.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My colleagues and I will return with you to your ship and carry out the remainder of the quest. You may observe, of course.” Penny gave them a moment to take that in. “You didn’t think we would leave a mission of this importance to a group of amateurs, did you? We appreciate the good work you’ve done to get us this far, we truly do, but it’s out of your hands now. It’s time for the professionals take over.”

  “Sorry, but no,” Quentin said. “It isn’t.”

  He wasn’t giving this up. And he definitely wasn’t inviting Penny along.

  “I suppose you’ll find your own way back to Fillory then,” Penny said. He crossed his handless arms. “I take back the spell.”

  “You can’t take it back!” Poppy said. “What are you, nine? Penny!”

  He’d finally gotten under even Poppy’s skin.

  “You don’t understand,” Quentin said, though he wasn’t totally sure he understood himself. “This is our job. Nobody else can do it for us. That’s not how it works. You have to send us back.”

  “I have to? Are you going to make me?”

  “Jesus! Penny, you are unbelievable! Literally unbelievable! You know, I actually thought you’d changed, I really did. Do you even get that this isn’t about you?”

  “Not about me?” Penny lost his grip on his interdimensional monk voice again and spoke in his old, higher-pitched voice, the one he used to use when he felt especially aggrieved and self-righteous. “Spare me that, Quentin. You haven’t spared me much during our long acquaintance, but spare me that. I found the Neitherlands. I found the button. I took us to Fillory. You didn’t do all that, Quentin, I did.

  “And I got my hands bitten off by the Beast. And I came here. And now I’m going to finish this, because I started it.”

  Quentin imagined it: Penny and his fellow Blue Oyster Cult members showing up on the Muntjac and ordering everybody—ordering Eliot!—around. Probably they were better magicians than he was, technically. But still, no, he couldn’t do it. It was impossible.

  They glared at each other. It was a stalemate.

  “Penny, can I ask you something?” Quentin said. “How do you do magic now? I mean, without your hands?”

  The funny thing about Penny was that you knew questions like that weren’t going to make him uncomfortable, and it didn’t. In fact his mood brightened immediately.

  “At first I thought I would never do magic again,” Penny explained. “But when the Order took me in they taught me another technique that does not depend on hand motions. Think about
it: what’s special about hands? What if you were to use other muscles in your body to cast spells? The Order showed me how. Now I can see how limiting it was. To be honest I’m a little surprised you’re still doing it the old way.”

  Penny wiped his chin with his sleeve. He always used to spit a little when he got excited. Quentin took a deep breath.

  “Penny, I don’t think you or the Order can finish this quest. I’m sorry. Ember assigned this one to us, and He must have had His reasons. I think that may just be the way it works. It’s His will. I don’t think it would work for anybody else.”

  Penny mulled this for a minute.

  “All right,” he said finally. “All right. I can see there is a certain logic to it. And there is a great deal for the Order to do in the Neitherlands. In fact in many respects the crucial effort will take place here, while you retrieve the keys.”

  Quentin had a feeling that was the best he was going to get.

  “Great. I appreciate that. If you wanted to, you could take this opportunity to say that you’re sorry about sleeping with my girlfriend.”

  “You were on a break.”

  “Okay, look, just get us the hell out of here, we have to go save magic.” If they stayed here any longer Quentin was going to doom the universe all over again by killing Penny with his bare hands. Though it would almost be worth it. “What are you going to do while we do that?”

  “We—the Order and I—are going to engage the gods directly. This will delay them while you recover the last key.”

  “But what could you possibly do?” Poppy asked. “Aren’t they all-powerful? Or practically?”

  “Oh, the Order can do things you wouldn’t believe. We’ve spent millennia studying in the library of the Neitherlands. We know secrets that you never dreamed of. We know secrets that would drive you mad if I whispered them to you.