The Magicians полностью

“Watch it, watch it!” Richard yelled. They registered the drumming thuds of hooves on soft earth almost too late. A carriage drawn by two horses tore past them at a full gallop, scattering them into the trees on either side of the road. The carriage was closed and dark; on its side it bore what looked like a coat of arms that had recently been painted over in black.

The coachman was bundled up in a black cloak. He—she? it was impossible to tell—signaled the horses to slow to a walk, then a stop, a hundred feet ahead of them down the road.

“The thick plottens,” Eliot said dryly.

It was about damn time something happened. Quentin, Janet, and Anaïs walked boldly toward it, all competing to be the reckless one, the hero, the one who pushed things forward. In his present state of mind Quentin felt fully prepared to go right up and knock on the shutters, but he found himself pulling up a few yards away. So did the others. The black coach did look ominously funereal.

A muffled voice spoke from inside the carriage.

“Do they bear the Horns?”

This was evidently directed not at them but at the coachman, who had the better vantage point. If the coachman replied, he/she did so inaudibly.

“Do you bear the horns?” This voice was louder and clearer.

The advance party exchanged looks.

“What do you mean, Horns?” Janet called. “We’re not from around here.”

This was ridiculous. It was like talking to the Once-ler in Dr. Seuss.

“Do you serve the Bull?” Now the voice sounded shriller to his ears, with high, twittering overtones.

“Who’s the bull?” Quentin said, loudly and slowly, as if he were talking to somebody who didn’t speak English or was mildly retarded. There was no bull in the Plover books, so—? “We are visitors to your land. We do not serve the bull, or anybody else for that matter.”

“They’re not deaf, Quentin,” Janet said.

Long silence. One of the horses—they were black, too, as was the tackle, and everything else—whickered. The first voice said something inaudible.

“What?” Quentin took a step closer.

A trapdoor banged open on top of the carriage. The sound was like a gunshot. A tiny expressionless head and a long green insect torso popped up out of it—it could only have been a praying mantis, but grown grotesquely to human size. It was so skinny and it had so many long emerald-colored legs and graceful whip antennae that at first Quentin didn’t notice that it was holding a green bow with a green arrow nocked.

“Shit!” Quentin yelped reflexively. His voice cracked. It was close range, and there was no time to run. He cringed violently and fell down.

The horses took off like a shot the moment the mantis released. The trapdoor banged shut again. Dust and twigs spun up into the air in the carriage’s wake, its four big wheels fitting neatly in the ruts in the road.

When Quentin dared to look up again, Penny was standing over him. He held the arrow in one hand. He must have used a spell to speed up his reflexes, Fillorian Circumstances be damned, then plucked it out of the air in midflight. It would have neatly speared Quentin’s kidney.

The others came straggling up to watch the carriage recede into the distance.

“Wait,” Josh said sarcastically. “Stop.”

“Jesus, Penny,” Janet breathed. “Nice catch.”

What, was she going to fuck him now? Quentin thought. He stared at the arrow in Penny’s hand, panting. It was a yard long and fletched in black and yellow like a hornet. The tip had two angry curly steel barbs welded to it. He hadn’t even had time to panic.

He took a shaky breath.

“That all you got?” he yelled after the dwindling carriage, too late for it to be funny.

Slowly he got to his feet. His knees were water and wouldn’t stop shaking.

Penny turned and, in an odd gesture, offered him the arrow. Quentin snorted angrily and walked away, slapping leaf junk off his hands. He didn’t want Penny to see him trembling. It probably would have missed anyway.

“Wow,” Janet said. “That was one angry bug.”

The day wore on. Light was leaking out of the sky, and the fun was leaking out of the afternoon. Nobody wanted to admit they were frightened, so they took the only other option, which was to be irritable instead. If they didn’t go back soon, they’d have to find somewhere to make camp for the night in the woods, which maybe wasn’t such a good idea if they were going to get shot at by giant bugs. None of them had enough medical magic to handle a barbed shaft to the small intestine. They stood and argued on the dirt road. Should they go back to Buffalo, maybe pick up some Kevlar after all? There were only so many arrows Penny could catch. Would Kevlar even stop an arrow?