“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, Quentin 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.
