It took them four days to harry the Lorians back to Grudge Gap—you could only kick their asses along so fast and no faster. That was where Eliot stopped and called out their champion. Now it was dawn, and the pass made a suitably desolate backdrop, with dizzyingly steep mountainsides ascending on either side, striped with spills of loose rock and runnels of meltwater. Above them loomed icebound peaks that had as far as he knew never been climbed, except by the dawn rays that were right now kissing them pink.
Single combat, man to man. If Eliot won, the Lorians would go home and never come back. That was the deal. If the Lorian champion won—his name for some reason was Vile Father—well, whatever. It wasn’t like he was going to win.
The lines were about fifty yards apart, and it was marvelously quiet out there between them. The pass could have been designed for this; the walls made a natural amphitheater. The ground was perfectly level—firm packed coarse gray sand, from which any rocks larger than a pebble had been removed overnight. Eliot kicked it around a little, like a batter settling into the batter’s box.
Vile Father didn’t look like somebody waiting to begin the biggest fight of his life. He looked like somebody waiting for a bus. He hadn’t adopted anything like a fighting stance. He just stood there, with his soft shoulders sloping and his gut sticking out. Weird. His hands were huge, like two king crabs.
Though Eliot supposed he didn’t look much less weird. He wasn’t wearing armor either, just a floppy white silk shirt and leather pants. For weapons he carried a long knife in his right hand and a short metal fighting stick in his left. He supposed it was pretty clear that he had no idea how to use either of them, apart from the obvious. He nodded to Vile Father. No response.
Time passed. It was actually a teensy bit socially awkward. A soft cold wind blew. Vile Father’s brown nipples, on the ends of his pendulous man-cans, were like dried figs. He had no scars at all on his smooth skin, which somehow was scarier than if he were all messed up.
Then Vile Father wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t magic, he had some kind of crazy movement style that was like speed-skating over solid ground. Just like that he was halfway across the distance between them and thrusting his blade, whatever it was, straight at Eliot’s Adam’s apple at full extension. Eliot barely got out of the way in time.
He shouldn’t have been able to get out of the way at all. Like an idiot he’d figured V.F. was going to swing the blade at him like a sword, on the end of that long pole, thereby giving him plenty of time to see it coming. Which would have been stupid, but all right, I get it already, it’s a thrusting weapon. By rights it should have been sticking out of the nape of Eliot’s neck by now, slick and shiny with clear fluid from his spine.
But it wasn’t, because Eliot was sporting a huge amount of invisible magical protection in the form of Fergus’s Spectral Armory, which by itself would have saved his life even if the blade had hit home, but in addition to that he was sporting Fergus’s A Whole Lot of Other Really Useful Combat Spells, which had amped his strength up a few times over, and most important had cranked his reflexes up by a factor of ten, and his perception of time down by that same factor.
What? Look, Vile Father spent his whole life learning to kill people with a knife on a stick. Was that cheating? Well, while he was doing his squats and whatever else, Eliot had spent his whole life learning magic.
When he and Janet had first finished up the casting, a couple of hours earlier, in the chilly predawn, he’d been so covered in spellcraft that he glowed like a life-size neon sign of himself. But they’d managed to tamp that down so that the armor was only occasionally visible, maybe once every couple of minutes and only for a moment at a time, a flash of something translucent and mother-of-pearly.
The trigger for the time/reflexes part of the enchantment system was Eliot twitching his nose. He did it now, and everything in the world abruptly slowed down. He leaned back and away from the slowly, gracefully thrusting blade, lost his balance and put a hand down on the sand, rolled away, then got back on his feet while V.F. was still completing the motion.
Though you didn’t get to be as big and fat as Vile Father was without learning a thing or two along the way. He didn’t look impressed or even surprised, just converted his momentum into a spin move meant to catch Eliot in the stomach with the butt of the pole. I guess it doesn’t pay to stand around looking all impressed on the battlefield.
Though Eliot was impressed. Watching it slowed down like this, you had to admire the man’s athleticism. It was balletic, was what it was. Eliot watched the wooden staff slowly approaching his midriff, set himself and, all in good time, hammered down on it as hard as he could with his metal baton. The wood snapped cleanly about three feet from the end. Fergus, whoever you were, I heart you.
V.F. course-corrected once again, reaching out with a free hand to snag the snapped-off bit while it spun in midair. Eliot batted it away before he could get to it, and he watched it drift off out of V.F.’s reach, moving at a stately lunar velocity. Then, seeing as how he had some time to kill, he dropped the baton and slapped Vile Father’s face with his open hand.
Personal violence did not come naturally to Eliot; in fact he found it distasteful. What could he say, he was a sensitive individual, fate had blessed and cursed him with a tender heart; plus V.F.’s cheek was really oily/sweaty. He wished he’d worn gloves, or gauntlets even. He thought of that dead hermit, and those burned trees, but even so he pulled the punch. With his strength and his speed all jacked up like this he had no idea how to calibrate the blow. For all he knew he was going to take the guy’s face off.
He didn’t, thank God, but Vile Father definitely felt it. In slow motion you could see his jowls wrap halfway around his face. That would leave a mark. Emboldened, Eliot dropped the knife too, moved in closer and delivered a couple of quick body blows to Vile Father’s ribcage—the hook, his instructor had told him, was his punch. Vile Father absorbed them and danced away to a safe distance to do some heavy breathing and reconsider his life choices.
Eliot followed, jabbing and slapping, both ways, left-right. My sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter. His blood was up now. This was in every way his fight. He hadn’t come looking for it, but by God he was going to finish it.
It was awfully calming, being sped up like this. It gave you time to think about things, to consider your own life choices. Mostly Eliot was satisfied with the ones he’d made. He was in the right place. He was living his best life. How many other people in the multiverse could say that? He woke up every morning knowing what he wanted to do, and then he went and did it, and when he was done he felt proud. He believed himself to be a good High King, and he had a lot of evidence to back it up. The people were happy. When it wasn’t falling apart Fillory was a good place, a great place. It took a substantial amount of malicious mismanagement to make Fillory a lousy place to live in, and nobody was going to get away with that on Eliot’s watch, ever again. Least of all the Lorians.
If he had a major unfulfilled ambition, currently, it related to Quentin. It had been a year since Quentin was dethroned and expelled from Fillory and Julia had gone over to the Far Side. That had come as a shock to everybody, but to Eliot most of all, or second after Quentin anyway.
The year since then had been peaceful and prosperous, and in some ways the mood was lighter in the castle with Josh and Poppy installed as King and Queen in place of Quentin and Julia, Fillory’s brooders-in-chief. But Eliot missed Quentin. He wanted Quentin by his side. For all his faults Quentin had been his best friend here, and really he’d just been coming into his own. That last adventure had been good for him. It had worn away the last of his adolescent self-consciousness, letting his better nature—his curiosity, his intelligence, his fanatical loyalty, his wounded heart—show through.
Fillory wasn’t the same without him. Nobody loved Fillory the way Quentin did, not even its High King. Nobody understood it like he did. Nobody enjoyed it like he did, and nobody could troubleshoot it like him when things went south.
And Quentin was missing out on so much. The passing of Martin Chatwin and the subsequent crisis of magic had given way to a glorious period in Fillory’s history, a new Golden Age unlike anything since the time of the Chatwins. It was an age of legends, of noble deeds and great wonders and high adventure, unfolding in a golden summer that went on and on and on. Already this year Eliot and the others had ousted a great barbed dragon from a box canyon out in the Cock’s Teeth and recovered two Named Blades from its hoard. They’d hunted a pair of fifty-headed trolls through the Darkling Woods, and forced them into the open and held them down and heard the sputtering crackle, like ice cracking in a nice vodka tonic, as they turned to stone in the morning sun. Eliot had brought back a bristling, spitting black troll-cat for a pet. Quentin would have loved that!
Frankly Eliot worried about him. Quentin was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, except when he wasn’t. He was fine when he was on an even keel, but last time Eliot saw him his keel was looking distinctly wobbly. Eliot had been scheming a way to get Quentin back to Fillory ever since the day he was banished, but he hadn’t gotten very far. It was in the back of his mind that maybe if he defeated Vile Father, thereby saving the realm, Ember might give him a reward. He would ask Ember to pardon Quentin. It was half the reason he’d set up this duel in the first place.
Speaking of whom, Vile Father was moving in again, still without much expression on his stolid, hoggy face. Eliot felt as though he ought to be inspiring a little more terror in his adversary, but whatever. He flipped time to normal speed for just a second, coming up for air; Vile Father was whirling his abbreviated pole arm in a tricky cloverleaf pattern, much good may it do him. Eliot slo-moed again, ducking under it, working around it, pounding the man’s body like a heavy bag, trying to knock the wind out of him.
He ought to have been more careful. Eliot had underestimated how much punishment Vile Father could take, or maybe he’d overestimated how much he was giving out. He’d definitely underestimated how quickly V.F. could move even relative to Eliot’s massively accelerated time frame, and how completely V.F. had sized up his overconfident, inexperienced opponent. Even as he sucked up a hail of body shots, Vile Father barged into Eliot and managed to get his arms around him.
Never mind, Eliot would just slip out—hm. You’d think you could just—but no. It was harder than he thought. A moment’s hesitation had cost him. Vile Father’s smooth baby face and yellow teeth and beefy breath were right up next to him now, and those ham-hock arms were starting to squeeze and crush.
V.F. had evidently assessed the situation and decided that it didn’t matter how fast your opponent could move when he couldn’t move a muscle, so you took whatever damage you had to to get the other guy in a bear hug. He had, and now he was trying, slowly but strangely unstoppably, to crush the life out of Eliot, and also to get his teeth into Eliot’s ear.
Enough. This guy was strong, and he had all the leverage, but he wasn’t superhuman. Eliot felt like he was practically encased in Vile Father at this point, and he hadn’t taken a proper breath in about thirty seconds. He began to pry himself free.
It was still a lot harder than you’d think—he had no leverage whatsoever—and Vile Father was not at all kidding about his personal vileness, but Eliot slither-wrenched his way out of Vile Father’s arms and staggered a few feet away. He was still getting his balance when he felt something poke him painfully behind one shoulder. He arched his back away from that fiery hot point and shouted:
“Ah!”
Nothing the Lorian was carrying should have been able to get through Spectral Armor. He spun away, still ahead of Vile Father, but not nearly as far ahead as he expected; in real life both their movements must have been a blur. This guy was running magic weaponry; Eliot should have looked at the blade on that thing more closely.
It must be Fillorian metal. Magic metal. I bet he took it from that hermit, Eliot thought. I bet that thing’s made from a Fillorian plow blade.
Oh, that is it. Eliot snapped.
On his feet again, he spun around the blade and grabbed what was left of the weapon’s shaft and wrenched it out of Vile Father’s hands. That took some skin with it, he thought. Good. He threw it as hard as he could, as hard as Fergus could. It was still rising when it disappeared into the low-hanging cloud around a mountain peak.
He skipped back and set himself the way his boxing instructor told him to, then he shuffled forward. The boxing thing was mostly just for the aerobics, plus it was an excuse to enjoy the company of the boxing instructor, whose amazing upper body was enough to make Eliot not miss Internet porn in the slightest, but it had some practical value too. Jab, jab, cross. Hook-hook. He was snapping it out crisp and firm. No more holding back.
He was rocking Vile Father back on his heels now. Eliot found he was baring his teeth and spitting words with each punch.
“You. Killed. A. Hermit. You. Weird. Sweaty. Bastard!”
Don’t go down, cocksucker. Don’t go down, I want to hit you some more. They were practically back against the Lorian front line when Eliot kicked Vile Father in the balls and then, indulging a personal fantasy, he swept the leg and watched Vile Father rotate clockwise in a stately fashion and simultaneously descend until he crashed, thunderously and with a lot of slow-motion blubbery rippling, onto the packed sand.
Even then he started to get up. Eliot kicked him in the face. He was through with these fucking people. My kingdom. My country. Mine.
He dropped all the magic at once. The strength, the speed, the armor, all of it.
“Go.”
Well, not all of it all of it. His amplified voice echoed off the stone walls of the pass like thunder. He picked up the broken end of Vile Father’s weapon and threw it into the sand. Fortunately for his sense of theater, it stuck there upright.
“Go. Let this shattered spear mark the border between our lands. If any man cross it, or woman, I make no guarantee of their safety. Fillory’s mercy is great, but her memory is long, and her vengeance terrible.”
Hm. Not exactly Shakespeare.
“You mess with the ram,” he said, “you get the horns.”
Better leave it at that.
Eliot scowled a terrible royal scowl at the Lorian host and turned and walked away, speaking a charm under his breath. He was rewarded with the soft rustle and creak of the little stub of wood growing into an ash tree behind his back. A bit of a cliché. But hey, they’re clichés for a reason.
Eliot kept walking. His breathing was going back to normal. He’d done it, he’d shown the world that when it came right down to it the High King would put everything on the line. The pass ran north–south, and the sun was finally cracking its eastern rim, having already been busy lighting the rest of Fillory for at least an hour now. The ranks parted to let him go through.
God he loved being a king sometimes. There wasn’t much better in life than having your own ranks part before you, especially after you’d just delivered a bona fide public ass-kicking to somebody who deserved it. He avoided eye contact with the rank and file, though he did point two fingers at the most senior of the giants, acknowledging that he’d done the High King a personal favor by showing up. I owe you, man.
The giant inclined his huge head toward Eliot, gravely. Their kind played a deep game.
It was a funny feeling, coming back to real time after having watched the world in slow motion for half an hour. Everything looked wildly accelerated: plants waving, clouds moving, people talking. It was a beautiful clear morning, the air an icy coolant washing across his overheated brain. He decided he would just keep on walking—he would walk the whole mile back to the Fillorian encampment by himself. Why the hell not? A lot of people tried to fuss at him about his punctured shoulder, which was probably still leaking some blood, and now that the excitement was wearing off it had started to sting pretty furiously.
But he didn’t want to be fussed over. Not quite yet. All in good time.
The war with Loria was over. Life was good. It was funny how just when you thought you knew yourself through and through, you stumbled on a new kind of strength, a fresh reserve of power inside you that you never knew you had, and all at once you found yourself burning a little brighter and hotter than you ever had before.
Eliot thought Quentin would have understood.
—