A block of stone stood in the center of room. On it was a large shaggy sheep—or no, it had horns, so that made it a ram. It lay with its eyes closed, its legs folded under it, its chin resting on a crown, a simple golden circlet snuggled between its two shaggy front knees. Quentin wasn’t sure if it was asleep or dead or just a very lifelike statue.
He took a tentative, exploratory step into the room, feeling like a man setting foot on shore after a long and grievous afternoon on a storm-tossed yacht. The sandy floor felt reassuringly solid.
“I didn’t know—” he called hoarsely to Alice. “I wasn’t sure if you were still alive or not!”
Josh thought Quentin was talking to him. His comical face was ashen. He looked like a ghost seeing a ghost.
“I know.” He coughed wetly into his fist.
“What the hell happened? Did you fight that thing?”
Josh nodded shakily. “Sort of. I felt a big spell coming on, so I just went with it. I think I finally felt what you guys feel. I called up one of those swirly black holes. He looked at it, then he looked at me with those freaky gold eyes, then it just sucked him in. Headfirst. Just ate him. I saw his big red legs sticking out kicking, and I just booked it out of there.
“Did you check out his dick though? That guy was hung!”
Quentin and Alice embraced without speaking. The others made their way over. Stories were exchanged. It was a reunion. Somehow everybody had managed to make it out of the banquet hall unscathed, or at least not too badly scathed. Anaïs showed everybody where her golden curls got crisped off in the back as she ran. Janet was the only one who hadn’t escaped out a side door; instead she ran all the way to the end of the hall, which it turned out did have an end after all, though it took her an hour to get there (“Three years of cross country,” she said proudly). She’d even had a glass of the wine with no ill effects, apart from mild intoxication.
They all shook their heads. What they’d all been through. Nobody would ever believe it. Quentin was so tired he could hardly think, except to think: we did it, we really did it. Eliot passed the flask, and everybody drank. It had been a game at first, and then it all got horribly real, but now it was starting to feel like a game again, something like what they’d been imagining on that terrible, wonderful morning back in Manhattan. Good fun. A real adventure. After a while they ran out of things to say, just stood in a circle looking at each other and shaking their heads with silly punch-drunk smiles on their faces.
A deep, dry cough interrupted them.
“Welcome.”
It was the ram. He had opened His eyes.
“Welcome, children of Earth. Welcome, too”—here he acknowledged Dint—”you valiant child of Fillory. I am Ember.”
He was sitting up. He had the strange, horizontal, peanut-shaped pupils that sheep have. His thick wool was the color of pale gold. His ears stuck out comically beneath the heavy horns that curled back magnificently from His forehead.
Of them all, only Penny knew what to do. He dropped his backpack and walked over to stand in front of the ram. He got down on his knees in the sand and bowed his head.
“We sought a crown,” he said grandly, “but we have found a king. My lord Ember, it is my honor and privilege to offer You my fealty.”
“Thank you, My child.”
The ram’s eyes half closed, gravely and joyfully. Thank God, was all Quentin could think. Literally, thank God. It was really Him. It was the only explanation. It wasn’t like they’d done anything especially heroic to deserve this re-reversal of fortune. Ember must have brought them here. He had saved them. This was it, the closing credits. They’d won. The coronation could begin.
He looked from Penny to the ram and back. He could hear feet shuffling on the sandy floor. Somebody else besides Penny was kneeling, Quen tin didn’t turn to see who. He stayed standing. For some reason he wasn’t ready to kneel down, not yet. He would in a minute, but somehow this didn’t feel like the moment. Though it would have been nice—he’d been walking for so long. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, so he clasped them together over his crotch.
Ember was talking, but Quentin’s mind glossed over the words. They had a certain boilerplate quality—he’d always skipped over Ember’s and Umber’s speeches in the books, too. Come to think of it, if this was Ember, where was Umber? Normally you never saw them apart.
“. . . with your help. It is time We resumed our rightful stewardship over this land. Together We shall go forth from this place and restore glory to Fillory, the glory of the old days, the great days . . .”
The words washed over him. Alice could fill him in later. In the books Ember and Umber had always come off as slightly sinister, but in person Ember didn’t seem that bad at all. He was nice, even. Warm. Quentin could see why the Fillorians didn’t mind Him that much. He was like a kindly, crinkly-eyed department-store Santa. You didn’t take Him too seriously. He didn’t look any different from an ordinary ram, except that He was larger and better groomed, and He gave off more of an air of alert, alien intelligence than you would expect from your average sheep. The effect was unexpectedly funny.
Quentin found it hard to focus on what Ember was saying. He was drunk on exhaustion and relief and Eliot’s flask. He would be happy to stipulate to any big speeches. He just wished he knew where that tantalizing, tinkling, trickling sound was coming from, because he was perishing of thirst.
There was the crown right there, between Ember’s hooves. Should somebody ask for it? Or would he just give it to them when He was ready? It was ridiculous, like a question of dinner-party etiquette. But he supposed the ram would give it to Penny now, as a reward for his prompt display of sycophancy, and they’d all have to be his underlings. Maybe that was all it took. Quentin didn’t particularly want to see Penny crowned as High King of Fillory. After all this, was Penny going to turn out to be the hero of this little adventure?
“I have a question.”
A voice interrupted the old ram midstream. Quentin was surprised to find that it was his own.
Ember paused. He was quite a large animal, easily five feet at the withers. His lips were black, and His wool looked pleasantly soft and cloudlike. Quen tin would have liked to bury his face in that wool, to weep in it and then fall asleep in it. Penny craned his neck around and bulged his eyes warningly at Quentin.
“I don’t mean to sound overly inquisitive, but if You’re, you know, Ember, how come You’re down here in this dungeon, and not up there on the surface helping Your people?”
In for a penny. It wasn’t that he wanted to make a huge point about it. He just wanted to know why they’d all had to go through so much. He wanted to square it away before they went any further.
“I mean—and this is already coming out more dramatically than I meant it to—You are a god, and things are really falling apart up there. I mean, I think a lot of people are wondering where You’ve been all this time. That’s all. Why would You let Your people suffer like that?”
This would have worked better with a big ballsy shit-eating grin attached to it, but instead it was coming out shivery and a little teary. He was saying “I mean” too much. But he wasn’t backing down. Ember made an odd, nonverbal bleating sound. His mouth worked more sideways than a human mouth would. Quentin could see His thick, stiff, pink ram’s tongue.
“Show some respect,” Penny muttered, but Ember raised one black hoof.
“We should not have to remind you, human child, that We are not your servant.” Ember spoke less gently than He had before. “It is not your needs that We serve, but Our own. We do not come and go at your whim.
“It is true, We have been here under the Earth for some time. It is difficult to know how long, this far from the sun and his travels, but some months at least. Evil has come to Fillory, and evil must be fought, and there is no fighting without cost. We have suffered, as you see, an embarrassment to our hindquarters.”
He turned His long, golden head half a degree. Quentin now saw that one of the ram’s hind legs was in fact lame. Ember held it stiffly, so that the hoof only just brushed the stone. It wouldn’t take His weight.
“Well, but I don’t understand,” Janet spoke up. “Quentin’s right. You’re the god of this world. Or one of them. Doesn’t that make You basically all-powerful?”
“There are Higher Laws that are past your understanding, daughter. The power to create order is one thing. The power to destroy is another. Always they are in balance. But it is easier to destroy than to create, and there are those whose nature it is to love destruction.”
“Well, but why would You create something that had the power to hurt You? Or any of Your creatures? Why don’t You help us? Do You have any idea how much we hurt? How much we suffer?”
A stern glance. “I know all things, daughter.”
“Well, okay, then know this.” Janet put her hands on her hips. She had struck an unexpected vein of bitterness in herself, and it was running away with her. “We human beings are unhappy all the time. We hate ourselves and we hate each other and sometimes we wish You or Whoever had never created us or this shit-ass world or any other shit-ass world. Do You realize that? So next time You might think about not doing such a half-assed job.”
A ringing silence followed her outburst. The torches guttered against the walls. They’d left streaks of black soot all the way up to the domed ceiling. It was true, what she was saying. It made him angry. But there was something about it that made him nervous too.
“You are incensed, daughter.” Ember’s eyes were full of kindness.
“I’m not Your daughter.” She crossed her arms. “And yeah, no shit I’m incensed.”
The great old ram sighed deeply. A tear formed in His great liquid eye, spilled over, and was absorbed into the golden wool on his cheek. In spite of himself, Quentin thought of the proud Indian in the old anti-littering commercials. From behind him Josh leaned into Quentin’s shoulder and whispered: “Dude! She made Ember cry!”
“The tide of evil is at the full,” the ram was saying, a politician staying relentlessly on message. “But now that you have come, the tide will turn.”
But it wouldn’t. Suddenly Quentin knew it. It all came to him in one sick flash.
“You’re here against Your will,” he said. “You’re a prisoner down here. Aren’t You?”
This wasn’t over after all.
“Human, there is so much you do not understand. You are still but a child.”
Quentin ignored him. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why You’re down here? Somebody put You down here, and You can’t get out. This wasn’t a quest, this was a rescue mission.”
Next to him Alice had both her hands over her mouth.
“Where’s Umber?” she asked. “Where is Your brother?”
Nobody moved. The ram’s long muzzle and black lips were still and unreadable.
“Mmmm.” Eliot rubbed his chin, calmly assessing. “It is possible.”
“Umber’s dead, isn’t He?” Alice said dully. “This place isn’t a tomb, it’s a prison.”
“Or a trap,” Eliot said.
“Human children, listen to Me,” Ember said. “There are Laws that go far beyond anything in your understanding. We—”
“I’ve heard pretty much enough about my understanding,” Janet snapped.
“But who did it?” Eliot stared down at the sand, thinking fast. “Who even has the muscle to do this to Ember? And why? I suppose it was the Watcherwoman, but this is all very odd.”
Quentin felt a prickling in his shoulders. He looked around at the dark corners of the cave they were in. It wouldn’t be long before whatever had broken Ember’s leg turned up, and they would have to fight again. He didn’t know if he could take another fight. Penny was still on his knees, but the back of his neck as he looked up at Ember was flushed crimson.
“Maybe it’s time to hit the ol’ panic button,” Josh said. “Back to the Neitherlands.”
“I have a better idea,” Quentin said.
They had to get control of the situation. They could quit now, but the crown was right there, right in front of them. They were so close. They were almost home, they could still win it all if they could just figure out a way to push through to the end of the story. If they could gut it out through one more scene.
And he realized he knew how.
Penny had dropped his pack on the sandy floor. Quentin bent down and rummaged through it. Of course Penny had webbed and bungeed the fucking thing to within an inch of its life, but in among the Power Bars and the Leatherman and the spare tighty whiteys, wrapped in a red bandanna, he found what he was looking for.
The horn was smaller than he remembered it.
“Right? Remember what the nymph said?” He held it up. ” ‘When all hope is lost’? Or something like that?”
“I wouldn’t say all hope is lost . . .” Josh said.
“Let me see that,” Dint said imperiously. He had been conspicuously silent since Ember woke up. Anaïs clung to his arm.
Quentin ignored him. Everybody was talking at once. Penny and the ram were locked in some kind of intense lover’s quarrel.
“Interesting,” Eliot said. He shrugged. “It might work. I’d rather try that than go back to the City. Who do you think will come?”
“Human child,” the ram said loudly. “Human child!”
“Go for it, Q,” Janet said. She looked paler than she should have. “It’s time. Go for it.”