The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [122]
He was actually untying the thin rope from the tree branch—he had to do it with his left hand, since he couldn’t lift his right arm above his head—when a pale face appeared at the far end of the beach. Another soldier.
It was eerie how long it took them both to react. Quentin didn’t want to believe that the man could see him, or if he did that he would recognize Quentin as an intruder, but even though the daylight was going by the minute there was no actual way that either of those things was possible. A cold wavelet broke over Quentin’s foot.
If the man had run and raised the alarm, that would have been the end of it. But he didn’t. Instead he advanced—he strode down the beach toward Quentin, drawing a short stubby sword as he came, the twin of the one Quentin was holding. Guess everybody wants to be a hero. Quentin supposed he didn’t look especially imposing.
But appearances were deceiving. Quentin stuck the first soldier’s sword point-down in the sand and squared off.
Kinetics: he was good with them. He was a Physical Kid. Whispering fast, reaching back to a Brakebills seminar he hadn’t thought about in, what, five years, he held out both hands, palms up, and waved them toward the soldier as if he were shooing away a flock of pigeons. As one, the black pebbles on the shore rose up at the man in a dark stream, like a swarm of angry bees, pelting him in the chest and the face with a rattling sound like a gravel truck dumping its load. Confused, the man turned to run, but he fell after only a few steps, and the rocks buried him into unconsciousness.
There now. All at once the fear was gone again, and the pain was gone, and the inertia was gone. Quentin was free to move. He could pass the boat. He’d been free his whole life, if only he’d known it.
He walked over to where the man lay half-covered. A warm, damp wind was coming in from offshore. Quentin kicked some rocks away from his face: a narrow sunburned face, ravaged by acne scars. His story was over for now. Quentin picked up his sword and chucked it as hard as he could out to sea. It skipped once, twice, and sank.
He picked up a small flat stone and slipped it into his pocket.
A skinny, windy path led up from the end of the beach through the trees toward the near watchtower. The grade was steep, and he walked up it bent over; it made his burning side feel better. He was afraid of nothing except losing momentum. He rehearsed spells to himself under his breath without actually casting them, feeling the energy build and then letting it die away again.
The watchtower was round and built on a steep slope, so coming up on it even the ground floor was above him. He put a hand on the old exposed foundation. He wondered who’d built it. The bricks felt cool and permanent. Who had placed them in this careful, elegant way, rectangular bricks approximating a smooth circle? Who was inside it? Was it enough that fate, or Ember, or whoever, had stuck these people in his way, that he was now going to hurt or kill them? After all he couldn’t keep this nonlethal shit up all night. Was it enough that one or really two of them had tried to kill him—one of them had even gone so far as to stick a sword in him?
Enough thinking. Sometimes it felt like all he did was think, and all other people did was act. He was going to do the other thing for a while. See how that felt.
He blew five minutes on a silent ritual that was supposed to enhance his senses, at least in theory, though he hadn’t done it since he was an undergraduate, and even then he’d never done it sober. His best bet would be to fly up the outside of the tower and surprise whoever was inside from above. Flight was a surprisingly major arcanum, bigger than you’d think, and he worried that using it would leave him with too little juice for a fight. But on the other hand, huge points for style. Nothing made you feel more like a fucking sorcerer than aviating under your own power. Yippee ki-yay,