The Magician's Land Read online

  “East coast. Northeast.”

  “What are you doing? Oh.” She forgot Josh knew like three times as much as anybody else about portals.

  He was already lost to concentration and his imaginary magic finger painting, which he accompanied now with satisfied grunts and hums. Janet had to give him credit: when he understood something, he really understood the hell out of it.

  “Pfft,” he said. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  He got up and began pacing around the room, looking around like he was tracking a mosquito nobody else could see.

  “I figured He must be working on some, like, special secret divine transport grid that us mere mortals are locked out of, by virtue of our fallen mortal nature. Right? But not even! So where exactly was He standing when He threw this thing open?”

  Janet gestured vaguely.

  “Show me,” Josh said. “I need to see it or it doesn’t work.”

  Janet sighed.

  “If you look at my ass I’m telling Poppy.”

  She got down on all fours, Umber-style, and reenacted the sequence exactly. Josh nodded gravely, staring at her ass.

  Then he walked over to the window where the portal had been and pressed his palms against it. He rubbed the glass in slow circles, and it was like he was doing a grave rubbing: wherever his hands went, a ghostly, silvery afterimage of the portal appeared, or rather the view through the portal: a range of low hills, but oddly regular. Each hill was perfectly smooth, and more or less the same height as the others, and they were arranged in perfect straight rows. On top of each hill was a single tree, an oak tree by the look of them.

  “Where the hell is that?” Josh said.

  “Chankly Bore,” Janet said. It had to be. Nowhere else like it. “Up north next to Broken Bay.”

  “Weird.” Josh leaned in to study it, put his nose against the glass. “Chankly Bore. Is ‘chankly’ an adjective? Modifying ‘bore’?”

  “Some mysteries it doesn’t pay to pry into. Josh, can you get us there?”

  “Can I?” He snapped his fingers, once, twice. “Almost had it.” Snap. On the third try the ghostly image burst into full color, hi-def, streaming live. “There you are, my queen.”

  —

  Janet wound up inching herself across the low windowsill feet first, on her bum, her face chalk white, allowing the gravity to get a grip on her feet and drag them downward to where Josh could reach up to receive them from the other side. The gravitational sheer was just not something she could get her mind around, let alone her body—she froze halfway, looking a bit like Winnie-the-Pooh stuck halfway in and halfway out of Rabbit’s burrow. In the end he had to yank her bodily through.

  Then she was standing on Fillorian soil again, less than four hours after she had boldly set forth in search of the rogue god Umber, of Whom there was no sign. She ruminated, again, on the eternal return, the widening gyre, that seemed to govern human history. There is a tide in the affairs of men. A slack tide, that heaves up wrack and slime and rotting seaweed and deposits them on the sand, like a cat leaving the corpse of a rat on your doorstep. Then it slinks back in search of more.

  They’d been so close. They could have solved everything. And now they wouldn’t. He’d gotten away.

  At any rate the Chankly Bore was a majestic sight in person. The hills ran on into the distance in their rows, not perfectly regular, she saw now, but almost, like the rubber dimples of a nonslip mat writ very, very large. Each one had its own tree at the summit, like a candle on top of a cupcake, and each tree was different. In places the flanks of the hills had been bleached a tawny golden yellow by the endless unyielding iron summer.

  There was Poppy, waiting for them, a quarter-mile off. She pointed—wait a minute, maybe all wasn’t lost after all. Umber wasn’t hiding, He was standing right there, looking at them, at the summit of one of the hills—one row in, three over. He wasn’t even moving! They could see Him totally plainly!

  She started toward Him.

  “Don’t run!” she shouted, pleaded even, as if the sound of her voice could keep Him there. “Don’t run away! Please! Just stay there!”

  Umber didn’t run. He waited for them.

  He didn’t even look especially concerned as the three humans, two queens and a king, plus a royal heir in utero, came straggling up the slope. As backdrops for earthshaking events went, the Chankly Bore was a corker. The view was sublime. Janet wondered if someone had planted the trees on the tops of the hills or if they’d just grown like that.

  Actually the entity most likely to know the answer to that question was ten yards away and closing. As she came up to Him she slowed, hardly believing that He wasn’t going to bolt the moment she came too close. His stupid woolly face was impassive.

  “So,” Janet said, breathing hard from the climb, hands on knees, “did somebody plant these trees or did they just grow like that?”

  “Do you like them?” Umber said. “They’re Mine of course. My brother did the hills, though I don’t think He meant to leave them like this. I’m sure He planned to scatter them about artfully later on, here and there. He liked to create the appearance of deep geological history. But I said, ‘No, no, they’re wonderful just as they are.’ And I put a single tree on top of each one, and they’ve stood like this ever since. From the First Day.

  “One of them is a clock-tree now.” That short quavering moan again—that was how He laughed, it turned out. How incredibly annoying and affected. “Don’t know how she did that. A marvelous facility, that witch has.”

  His manner was different from Ember’s. He was genteel, a little distracted, a little amused, a touch effeminate. Like if He’d been wearing any clothes He would have worn a bow tie and a purple waistcoat. She couldn’t tell if He was sort of lofty and above it all or just a bit dotty.

  But it didn’t matter because either way the moment was here. This was it, exposition time, He was going to tell them everything, all the missing pieces, and then they would know what to do to make Fillory live again—oh God, she realized, how she wanted it to live! She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to stay a queen!

  Another case solved. After all that urgent chasing Janet suddenly felt like she had all the time in the world. A deep red sunset was getting going on the horizon, like a livid bruise just starting to show.

  “You seem different from Your twin brother,” she said.

  “From who?”

  “Your brother? Ember? Your twin?”

  “Oh! Oh.” He had a bit of a selective deafness thing going on. “We’re just fraternal.”

  “We thought You were dead.”

  “Oh, I know!” Whinnying laugh. Umber actually trotted once in a circle, like a cat chasing its tail, such was His pleasure. “But I was just pretending. Martin wanted it that way. Such a strange boy. Never came out of the Oedipal phase, I don’t think. He was always talking about his mummy in his sleep, wondering if his father was alive, that sort of thing.

  “But of course You can get so much done when everyone thinks You’re dead. No interruptions. No one prays to a dead god, why would they? Though I did spend a while in the Underworld. Not that I had to, but I was getting into the spirit of the role. They wanted Me to be the lord of it, the dead did, but I wouldn’t. Imagine that—Me, god of the Underworld! I much preferred something less grand. More like, I don’t know, a visiting research fellow.

  “But I did enjoy My time there. It’s so quiet. And the games are so charming! I could have stayed forever, I truly could have.

  “And then I spent a few years as Ember’s shadow, following Him everywhere, trotting around under His feet. He never knew! I would have thought it would be obvious, with My name. But you know, Ember doesn’t think that way. He never did. He’s very literal about things.”

  “But why would You do it in the first place?” Poppy was frowning and shaking her head. “
I mean not the shadow thing, but why would You turn Martin into the Beast?”

  A deep sigh from Umber. He dropped His golden eyes to the turf.

  “That turned out very badly. Very badly. He wanted it so much, and I thought it would be good for him. But in the end I was so disappointed in Martin—his behavior. Disgraceful. Do you know what it was about Martin? He had no self-control. None!”

  “I would say that yes, that turned out extremely badly,” Josh said. “Not a lot of winners there.”

  “Not even Martin, in the end,” Umber said sadly. “Poor boy. He wanted so terribly to stay here. He never stopped talking about it. And he was very brilliant. I couldn’t say no, could I? I wanted to give him what he wanted, I only want to give everybody what they want! But then the things he did. He gave up his humanity, you know, in order to stay here in Fillory. He sacrificed it to Me, and there’s a great deal of power in that. Even I was surprised at how much he got out of it.

  “But then would you believe it, it was the best part of him! The rest of him turned out to be an absolute turd. I just went into hiding—he really might have killed Me if he could have found Me. Then later he said he did, and I let it stand. It’s disappointing.” Umber sighed and settled down onto the grass, making Himself comfortable. “So disappointing. We had to change the rules because of it. That’s why We let you lot stay, you know. We don’t send the kings and queens home anymore.”

  “But why did you take it?” Josh said. “I mean his humanity?”

  “Well—” And the ram looked down again, this time coyly embarrassed. He trailed one of His fore-hooves in the grass. “I suppose I had a notion that if I possessed Martin’s humanity, I could be king of Fillory. As well as god. A god-king, you might say. It was just an idea. But then I’ve been enjoying being dead so much, I haven’t even tried!”

  This conversation wasn’t going quite the way Janet had thought it would. She didn’t expect to like Umber, but she hadn’t expected to hate Him so much. She was hoping for more of a charming-supervillain type. That she could relate to. But Umber wasn’t charming. He had a way of not taking responsibility for things. She may have been a bitch, but at least she copped to it.

  “This is all really fascinating,” she said. “Truly. But it’s not actually why we wanted to talk to You.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Which by the way,” Josh said, “since we’re talking, why did You sort of run away just then, and then stop running away?”

  “Oh!” Umber looked surprised. “I thought you’d like that. Bit of a chase. Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Not really, no,” Janet said.

  “Though I did like the part when I saved everything,” Josh said. “That was good. You know, with the portal.”

  “There!” Umber said. “You see? And you needed the exercise too.”

  This had the effect of canceling out Josh’s triumph. Poppy patted his arm.

  “Well, whatever,” he said. “Look, what about this apocalypse thing? End of the world. How are we going to stop that? That’s Your thing, right?”

  Umber actually looked wounded.

  “The apocalypse? Oh, no. That’s not one of Mine.”

  “It’s not?” Janet said. “Wait.”

  “Goodness no. Why would I do that?”

  The two queens and the king looked at each other. Something began dying a little inside Janet. Oh yes—hope. That’s what people called it.

  “But if You’re not—?” Poppy said. “Then how are we going to—?”

  The astonishment was plain even on Umber’s inhuman face.

  “Stop it? You can’t think I would know! I don’t think you can stop it. How would you stop an apocalypse? It’s just nature. It happens by itself.”

  “So you can’t . . .” Josh said, but he trailed off.

  “But then—” Janet said. She couldn’t finish her sentence either. She’d been sure this was it. The answer, the end of the quest, at last. She’d been so sure.

  The impulse came over Janet out of nowhere; nowhere was where she got a lot of her best impulses these days. It suddenly all linked up in her head: Umber had taken Martin’s humanity, and He made it all sound like a lark, like what else could He do? But Martin had become the Beast, the Beast had bitten off Penny’s hands and crushed Quentin’s collarbone and made Alice turn herself into a niffin. And he’d eaten that girl back in school, what was her name. That all went back to Umber.

  She ripped one of her axes from its strap on her back and in the same motion clouted Umber in the head with it. She didn’t even have time to put an ice blade on it, it was just a cold steel spanner straight to the ram-jowls.

  “Yah!”

  Umber’s eyes went wide. She did it again, a lot harder this time, and His front knees buckled.

  These crazy axes. She’d give the Foremost that, he hadn’t oversold them. They were everything he’d said they were and more. You could hit a god with them, and He would feel it.

  Umber started to rise, shaking His long muzzle, befuddled more than anything else, and Janet hammered Him again, and again, and again, and His legs folded under Him and He sank down and lost consciousness. Then she hit Him once more, cracked Him right on His ear, knocked a tiny chip out of one of those big horns. Blue sparks flew.

  “That’s for everything You did! And everything You didn’t do! You fucking jerk!”

  “Janet!” Poppy said, losing her cool a bit for once. “Jesus!”

  “Who cares? It’s not Him. He can’t help us. He doesn’t know anything.” Plus who knows when was the next time she’d get to beat down a god? Especially one who so obviously deserved it? Umber sprawled on His side, unconscious, the tip of His thick tongue poking out of His slack mouth.

  “Loser.” She spat on Him. “You could never have been a king anyway. You’re too much of a pussy.”

  The others just stared at her, and at the slumbering god, laid out on the putting-green grass under a tree on top of a hill in the Chankly Bore.

  “That was for Alice,” she said. “And, you know, Penny’s hands. All that stuff.”

  “No, we got it,” Josh said. “Message received.”

  “We should go,” Poppy said.

  But they didn’t, or not yet. In the distance, through a gap in the Nameless Mountains, they could see that the sun had almost reached the rim of the world. They watched it setting.

  But then it didn’t quite set. It didn’t quite make it. Instead of dipping below the horizon, the sun seemed to come to rest on it. Bit by bit, increment by increment, its lower edge flattened, and distant flares and gouts of flame began to rise up around it, complicating the sunset. There was a flash of light, then another, a distant bombardment. The sound reached them a few seconds later, a crackling boom, and the tremor a few seconds after that, a heavy industrial vibration passing through the earth, like someone was applying a belt sander to the rim of the world. A few leaves shook down from the tree behind them.

  “What,” Josh said, “the fuck is that.”

  Janet wished she didn’t get it, but she did.

  “It’s the end.” She sat down on the crown of a hill in the Chankly Bore and hugged her knees. “It’s starting. We’re too late. The apocalypse has begun.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Alice slept. She slept for twenty hours give or take, in Quentin’s bed, flat on her back, mouth propped open, perfectly still under a thin sheet, not once stirring or rolling over. Quentin stayed awake as long as he could watching her, listening to her faint wheezing. Her hair was long and lank and matted. Her skin was pale. Her fingernails needed cutting, and she was bruised on one arm from when she’d fallen to the floor. But she was healthy and whole. She was her.

  Quentin looked at her and looked at her: she was finally back. He felt like the rest of his life could begin now. He didn’t know if he was still in love with Al
ice, but he knew that being in the same room with her made him feel real and whole and alive in a way that he’d forgotten he could. When he couldn’t stay awake any longer the others took over.

  He was downstairs eating breakfast at noon, getting ready for another shift, when she woke up.

  “She said she was hungry,” Plum said.

  Quentin looked up from his Cheerios to see her in the doorway, wrapped in Plum’s pale blue bathrobe, looking like the palest, most wan, most precious, most vulnerable creature he’d ever seen. There were purple shadows under her eyes.

  He stood up, but he didn’t go to her. He didn’t want to crowd her. He wanted to take things at her pace. He’d had a lot of time to think about this moment, and his one resolution was that he wasn’t going to get too excited. Calm was what she needed. He was going to pretend he was greeting her at the arrivals gate after she’d been away on a long, disastrous journey.

  It was easier than he thought. He was just happy to see her. There were no road maps for this, but they would figure it out. They had all the time in the world now.

  “Alice,” he said. “You’re probably hungry. I’ll get you something to eat.”

  Alice didn’t answer, just shuffled over to the table, then stared down at it as if she were uncertain as to how precisely this apparatus worked. He put out a hand, to guide her maybe, but she shied away. She didn’t want to be touched.

  She lowered herself cautiously into a chair. He got her some Cheerios. Did she like those? He couldn’t remember. It was all they had. He placed the bowl in front of her, and Alice regarded it like it was a bowl of fresh vomit.

  Probably niffins didn’t eat. Probably this was her first meal in seven years, because this was her first time having a body in seven years. After another minute she clumsily dipped a spoon in it. There was a sense of everybody trying not to stare at her. She chewed for a few seconds, robotically, like somebody who’d seen some crude diagrams of what chewing food looked like but had never actually tried it before. Then she spat it out.