Quentin was spared the necessity of answering, because that was when the catastrophe began.
A small man in a neat gray suit appeared in the cave. His face was obscured by a leafy branch that hung in front of it in midair. He looked exactly the way Quentin remembered. The same suit, the same club tie. His face was no less illegible. He held his pink, manicured hands clasped urbanely in front of him. It was as if Quentin had never left the classroom where he first appeared. In a way he supposed he never had. The terror was so absolute, so all-encompassing, that it was almost like calm: not a suspicion but the absolute certainty that they were all about to die.
The Beast spoke.
“I believe that was my cue.” His tone was mild, his accent patrician English.
Ember roared. The sound was colossal. It shook the room, and a stalactite fell and shattered. The inside of Ember’s mouth was mottled pink and black. At that moment the ram no longer looked quite so ridiculous. There were great humps of muscle under all that fluffy wool, like boulders under moss, and His ribbed horns were thick and stony—they curled all the way around so that the two sharp tips pointed forward. Head down, He surged down off the stone plinth at the man in the gray suit.
The Beast slapped Him aside with a smooth, unhurried backhand motion. The gesture was almost casual. Ember shot sideways like a rocket and hit the rock wall with a sickening, boneless smack. The physics of it looked wrong, as if the ram were as light as a leaf and the Beast as dense as dwarf star matter. Ember dropped motionless to the sandy floor.
He lay where He fell. The Beast flicked woolly fluff off one immaculate gray sleeve with the backs of his fingers.
“It’s a funny thing about the old gods,” he said. “You think that just because they’re old they must be difficult to kill. But when the fighting starts, they go down just like anybody else. They aren’t stronger, they’re just older.”
There was a sandy shuffling from behind Quentin. He risked a glance: Dint had turned on his heel and walked out of the room. The Beast did nothing to stop him. Quentin suspected the rest of them wouldn’t get off that easily.
“Yes, he was one of mine,” the Beast said. “Farvel was, too, if you want to know the whole truth. The birch tree, you remember him? They mostly are. The rams’ time is over. Fillory is my world now.”
It wasn’t a boast, just a statement of fact. Fucking Dint, Quentin thought. And I pretended to like his stupid vest.
“I knew you’d come for me. It’s hardly a surprise. I’ve been waiting for you for ages. But is this really all of you? It’s a bad joke, you know.” He gave an incredulous snort. “You’ve no chance at all.”
He sighed.
“I suppose I won’t be needing this anymore. I’d almost gotten used to it.”
Almost absentmindedly the Beast plucked the branch that hung in front of his face with a thumb and forefinger, as if he were taking off a pair of sunglasses, and tossed it lightly aside.
Quentin cringed—he didn’t want to see its real face—but it was too late. And it turned out he had nothing to worry about, because it was an utterly ordinary face. It could have been the face of an insurance adjuster: round, mild, soft-chinned, boyish.
“Nothing? You don’t recognize me?”
The Beast strode over to the stone plinth, picked up the crown that still lay there, and placed it on his graying temples.
“My God,” Quentin said. “You’re Martin Chatwin.”
“In the flesh,” the Beast announced cheerfully. “And my, how I’ve grown!”
“I don’t understand,” Alice said shakily. “How can you be Martin Chatwin?”
“But surely you knew? Isn’t that why you’re here?” He searched their faces but got no answer. They were frozen in place—not magically this time, just paralyzed the regular way, with fear. He frowned. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters. But I would have thought that was the whole point. It’s a little insulting, really.”
He pouted for show, a sad clown. It was disturbing to see a middle-aged man with the mannerisms of a little English schoolboy. It really was him. He hadn’t grown up at all. He even had a curiously miniature, asexual quality, as if he’d stopped growing the moment he’d run away into that forest.
“What happened to you?” Quentin asked.
“What happened?” The Beast spread his arms triumphantly. “Why, I got what I wanted. I went to Fillory, and I never came back!”
It was all becoming clear. Martin Chatwin hadn’t been stolen by monsters, he had become one. He had found what Quentin thought he wanted, a way to stay in Fillory, to leave the real world behind forever. But the price had been high.
“I wasn’t going to go back to Earth after I’d seen Fillory. I mean, you can’t show a man paradise and then snatch it back again. That’s what gods do. But I say: down with gods.”
