The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [145]
“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