The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(137)

“It’s time, Ember. The bird isn’t coming. The spell is gone. This is the only way left.”

The old ram blinked. He could hear Quentin.

“I’m not pretending it’s easy, but You’ll die anyway when Fillory dies. You know this. There must be only a few minutes left. Give Your own life now, before it’s too late. While it still matters.”

The truly sad thing was that Ember actually wanted to do it. Quentin saw that too: He had come here intending to drown Himself, the way the god before Him had, but He couldn’t quite manage it. He was brave enough to want to, but not brave enough to do it. He was trying to find the courage, longing for the courage to come to Him, but it wouldn’t, and while He waited for it, ashamed and alone and terrified, the whole cosmos was coming crashing down around Him.

Quentin wondered if he would have been brave enough. He would never know. But if Ember couldn’t sacrifice himself, Quentin would have to do it for Him.

He took a step forward. He was a man proposing to kill a god. It was an impossibility, a contradiction in terms, but if it meant saving Fillory then there had to be a way. He held on to that knowledge tightly. If magic was for anything it was for this. He’d faced up to his dead father and Mayakovsky. He’d faced losing Fillory and losing Brakebills. He’d even faced Alice. He was circling back to all the things he’d fought and lost over the years, and one by one he was putting them to rest. Now it was time for him to face Ember.

He took another step and now Ember turned on him. The god’s eyes were wild, blank with panic. His nostrils flared. Ember was out of His mind with fear. Quentin felt a surge of pity and even of love for the ridiculous old beast, but it didn’t change what he had to do.

He’d hoped inspiration would come to him, but it didn’t. It came to Alice instead.

“Your turn this time,” she said, and then she did something strange: she bit the back of her left hand, scraping skin off the knuckles, and then touched Quentin’s cheek with it.

It wasn’t a spell Quentin knew, or would ever know—the technicalities were too much for him, and the raw power too, probably, but he’d seen Alice do it once before. As she chanted the words his arms burst with masses of muscle, and his skin thickened and toughened at the same time. He felt the special force that belonged to Alice’s magic alone transforming him. His legs exploded with strength, he was rising upward on two pillars, and his neck lengthened and the base of his spine flowed out into a long sinuous tail. His head was stretching forward into a snout, and his flat grinding omnivore’s teeth grew and sharpened until they interlocked with each other, the way teeth were always meant to do.

His nails sprouted into claws. His vertebrae threw up a ridge of spines—it was like his back being scratched only even better. He was made of power, and there was a furnace in his belly. He opened his mouth and roared a word, and the word was made of fire. He was a dragon, and he was ready. He was going to blast the immortal living shit out of Ember.

The fire bent and flowed around Ember’s horns, but it scorched Him too—Quentin smelled the burning wool. Maybe as His world crumbled the god was losing some of His imperviousness. Well, bad luck. Quentin bounded forward, and Ember bolted, but it was all slow motion to Quentin’s draconian reflexes. He pinned Ember to the ground with one massive taloned forefoot—none of your puny T. rex arms for this dragon—and tried to get his jaws around Ember’s thick muscled neck while the god writhed frantically in his grip. Quentin’s scales, he couldn’t help but notice in passing, were the shiny metallic blue of a bitchin’ muscle car.

He was a dragon, not a god, but he was huge and tough and strong, and this body was made for epic scrapping. Whereas Ember, for whatever divine reason, was a god with the body of an animal that occasionally took part in ritualized male dominance contests but spent most of its time grazing. Ember rolled and flipped Quentin over Him, Quentin lashing his tail crazily, hoping Alice was well clear. Then he was on top again.

“Enough!” Ember roared, and Quentin was blown back into the air.

Spreading his wings—his wings!—like an angry angel Quentin checked his flight and power-dived back at the god, who dodged before Quentin could crush Him. They circled for a minute, pacing, the pond spouting steam whenever Quentin’s overheated tail touched it, then he darted forward again and had Ember in his teeth. Lightning struck his back, once and then three, four, five times, jangling his nerves and blowing off half a dozen scales, and probably crippling his delicate bat-wings, but pain was something a dragon noted only in passing and then dismissed with contempt.

Any love or pity he might have felt for Ember was a human thing. There was no room in his dragon-heart for any such feelings. This was a job for a monster, and that’s what he was now. Die, he thought. Die, you selfish bastard, you miserable coward, you old goat. Die and give us life.

Now he had a proper grip, and he held on and ground Ember between his molars like a cheap cigar, and the air bleated out of Him. He held on for Alice, for Eliot, for Julia, for Benedict, for his useless hopeless father, for everyone he’d ever loved or disappointed or betrayed. He held on out of pride and anger and hope and stubbornness, and he felt what was left of Fillory holding on too and waiting to see if it would be enough. Quentin blew white-hot fire between his teeth, and his saliva was toxic acid. The ram’s ribs bent and groaned, and Quentin felt Him try to inflate His lungs, felt Him fail. He tasted burned skin, and he felt the skin tear.