The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [7]
Quentin stepped back a pace and replaced his sword in its sheath in one smooth gesture. It was the first thing his fencing master had taught him: two weeks of sheathing and unsheathing before he’d even been allowed to cut the air. Now he was glad he’d done it. Nothing made you look like more of a dick than standing there trying to find the end of your scabbard with the tip of your sword.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Julia.
“It is all right, Quentin,” she said. “This is not your adventure. Follow it no further.”
He wanted to lean his head down and rub his cheek back and forth against her hand like a cat.
“I know,” he said. He wasn’t going to go. “I get it.”
“You’re really not going?” Janet sounded almost disappointed. Probably she’d wanted to watch him blow up into glitter too.
“Really not.”
They were right. Let somebody else be the hero. He’d had his happy ending. Right then he couldn’t even have said what he was looking for in there. Nothing worth dying for, anyway.
“Come on, it’s almost lunchtime,” Eliot said. “Let’s find some less exciting meadow to eat in.”
“Sure,” Quentin said. “Cheers to that.”
There was champagne in one of the hampers, staying magically chilled, or something like champagne—they were still working on a Fillorian equivalent. And those hampers, with special leather loops for the bottles and the glasses—they were the kind of thing he remembered seeing in catalogs of expensive, useless things he couldn’t afford back in the real world. And now look! He had all the hampers he could ever want. It wasn’t champagne, but it was bubbly, and it made you drunk. And Quentin was going to get good and drunk over lunch.
Eliot climbed back into the saddle and swung Julia up behind him. It looked like the civet was gone for good. There was still a large patch of damp black earth on Julia’s rump from the fall. Quentin had a foot in Dauntless’s stirrup when they heard a shout.
“Hi!”
They all looked around.
“Hi!” It was what Fillorians said instead of “hey.”
The Fillorian saying it was a hale, vigorous man in his early thirties. He was striding toward them, right across the circular clearing, practically radiating exuberance. He broke into a jog at the sight of them. He totally ignored the branches of the broken clock-tree that were waving wildly over his head; he couldn’t have cared less. Just another day in the magic forest. He had a big blond mane and a big chest, and he’d grown a big blond beard to cover up his somewhat moony round chin.
It was Jollyby, Master of the Hunt. He wore purple-and-yellow striped tights. His legs really were pretty impressive, especially considering that he’d never even been in the same universe as a leg press or a StairMaster or whatever. Eliot was right, he must have been following them the whole time.
“Hi!” Janet shouted back happily. “Now it’s a party,” she added to the others, sotto voce.
In one huge leather-gloved fist Jollyby held up a large, madly kicking hare by its ears.
“Son of a bitch,” Dauntless said. “He caught it.”
Dauntless was a talking horse. She just didn’t talk much.
“He sure did,” Quentin said.
“Lucky thing,” Jollyby called out when he was close enough. “I found him sitting up on a rock, happy as you please, not a hundred yards from here. He was busy keeping an eye on you lot, and I got him to bolt the wrong way. Caught him with my bare hands. Would you believe it?”
Quentin would believe it. Though he still didn’t think it made sense. How do you sneak up on an animal that can see the future? Maybe it saw other people’s but not its own. The hare’s eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.
“Poor thing,” Eliot said. “Look how pissed off it is.”
“Oh, Jolly,” Janet said. She crossed her arms in mock outrage. “You should have let us catch it! Now it’ll only tell your future.”
She sounded not at all disappointed by this, but Jollyby—a superb all-around huntsman but no National Merit Scholar—looked vexed. His furry brows furrowed.
“Maybe we could pass it around,” Quentin said. “It could