Hadrian looked behind them.
“What?” Royce asked.
“We should put the box back.”
“Why?”
Hadrian shrugged. “Just seems right. After all we went through with the jester. I feel we owe it to him.”
Royce shook his head. “The little monster tormented us for days—tried to kill us—came damn close.”
“He just wanted justice, or to put it in your language, revenge.”
“That’s fine, only we never did anything to him. We weren’t even after the treasure. It was just a job.”
“Maybe that’s why we got out.”
Royce sighed. “Give me the damn thing.” He replaced the box, closed the coffin, and rejoined Hadrian, who waited leaning against the door. Outside, the night air was sweet with the scent of pine.
Hadrian gave Royce a surprised look when he returned.
“What?”
“I didn’t expect you’d really put it back,” Hadrian admitted, as he wrapped an arm around his friend and the two stepped out, letting the door close behind them.
Royce shrugged. “I owed you.”
“Owed me? For what?”
Royce pulled his hood up, covering his features as the two limped out into a lovely summer’s night. “I would have picked the chest.”
Like all stories, this one happened for several reasons, not just one. It was, as they taught me in high school social studies, overdetermined.
So for example, this story happened because I read George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings, and I liked the character Strong Belwas. I liked him so much I decided to steal him and give him a new name (“Vile Father”) and use him in a story of my own. It also happened because I had recently become a father again, and my own father was ill, and I was dealing with a lot of father-related issues, and I liked the idea of somebody having a big fight with a guy named Vile Father.
This story happened because I was coming to the end of the Magicians trilogy, and before it was over I wanted a chance to write a bit more in the vein of what might loosely be called epic fantasy, à la Fritz Lieber. I wanted to show Fillory in full flood, in the late-afternoon sunlight of a great age of adventure. Also, I wanted to display a little more of the biodiversity of Fillory, hence a mixed army that includes, among other things, manticores and hippogriffs and fairies and giants.
It happened because I wanted to write a scene from Eliot’s point of view, and more importantly, I wanted to show Eliot displaying the seriousness of purpose that I knew he was capable of. I wanted him to put his life on the line, and even more seriously, his dignity, because there was something even more important to him than that.
Most of all—and there’s nothing more important than this—I wanted to write this story because I thought it represented the playing out of tensions and forces that were already implicit in the world of Fillory, in a manner consistent with the logic that governs things in that world.
In other words, it happened because that’s what would have happened.
— Lev Grossman
THE DUEL
Lev Grossman
The Lorian champion was a squat fellow, practically as wide as he was tall, and apparently of some slightly different ethnic background than most of his compatriots. The Lorians were Vikings, basically, Thor types: tall, long blond hair, big chins, big chests, big beards. But this character came in at about five foot six, Eliot would have said, with a shaved head and a fat round Buddha face like a soup dumpling and a significant admixture of some Asiatic DNA.
He was stripped to the waist even though it was about forty degrees out, and his latte-colored skin was oiled all over. Or maybe he was just really sweaty.
The champion had a gut hanging over his waistband, but he was still a pretty scary-looking mofo. He had a huge saddle of muscle across his upper back, and his biceps were like thighs, practically, and there must have been some muscle in there, just by volume, even if they did look kind of chubby. And his gut wasn’t a flabby gut, exactly; even his fat looked hard. His weapon was weird-looking enough—it was a pole with a big curvy cross of sharp metal on the end—that you just knew he could do something really outstandingly dangerous with it.
The Lorian army went nuts for him when he stepped forward. They bashed their swords into their shields and looked at each other as if to say: yes, he may look a little funny, but our fellow is definitely going to kill the other fellows’ fellow, so three cheers for him, by Crom or whoever it is we worship! It almost made you like them, the Lorians. They had a multicultural side to them that Eliot wouldn’t have expected.