The Magician King

a shell. A line of shadow was advancing across the map, showing where it was night and where it was day in Fillory. Overhead on the vaulted ceiling, tiny stars twinkled in the velvety blue-black of a celestial map that showed the Fillorian constellations.

This was Quentin’s kingdom, the land he ruled. It looked so fresh and green and magical like this. This was Fillory the way he’d thought of it as a little kid, before he’d ever been here—it looked like the maps printed on the endpapers of the Fillory and Further books. He could have watched it all day.

The map room wasn’t exactly a hive of activity. The only visible staff was a surly teenager with thick black bangs that fell over his eyes. He was bent over a table furiously working some kind of calculation using a collection of steel cartographical instruments. It took him a minute to look up and realize that he had a patron.

The boy gave his name, grudgingly, as Benedict. He might have been sixteen. Quentin had a feeling that not a lot of people came through the map room, and still less often were those people kings; at any rate Benedict was out of practice at showing the appropriate amount of deference. Quentin sympathized. Personally he could take or leave the bowing and scraping. But he still needed a map.

“What can you show me that has the Outer Island on it?”

Benedict’s eyes went blank for a second as he queried some mental database. Then he turned away and dragged himself over to a wall that was honeycombed with little square drawers. He yanked one out—they turned out to be thin but very deep—and extracted the single scroll it contained.

The centerpiece of the map room was a heavy wooden table with an elaborate brass mechanism bolted to it. Benedict nimbly fitted the scroll into it and cranked a handle. It was the only thing he did with anything remotely resembling alacrity. The crank unrolled the scroll and spread it out flat so you could get a good look at the section you wanted.

It was a lot longer than Quentin expected. Yards of almost-blank parchment scrolled by as Benedict cranked, showing curves and arcs of latitude and longitude or whatever the Fillorian equivalents were, traversing miles of open ocean. Finally he stopped at a tiny, irregular nugget of land with its name underneath it in italic script: The Outer Island.

“That must be the place,” Quentin said dryly.

Benedict would neither confirm nor deny this. He was painfully uncomfortable making eye contact. Quentin couldn’t think who Benedict reminded him of until he realized that this was what he had probably looked like to other people when he was sixteen. Fear of everybody and everything, hidden behind a mask of contempt, with the greatest contempt of all reserved for himself.

“It looks pretty far out,” Quentin said. “How many days’ sail?”

“Dunno,” Benedict said, which wasn’t quite true, because he added, obviously in spite of himself: “Three maybe. It’s four hundred and seventy-seven miles. Nautical miles.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Nautical’s longer.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred and sixty-five yards longer,” Benedict said automatically. “And a bit.”

Quentin was impressed. Somebody must have managed to beat some information into Benedict somehow. The brass map reader had many articulated arms that extended seductively outward, each one with a posable lens on it. Quentin swiveled one around, and a magnified version of the Outer Island swam into view. It was roughly peanut-shaped, with a star marked on it at one end. Its border was a thick dark line, with a fainter outline around it, doubling it, as if to suggest waves, or maybe the submerged edge of the landmass under the water.

It was about what he expected. A fine black thread, a single lonely stream, wandered from the interior down to the coast. Next to the star was the word Outer, in smaller letters. Presumably that was the name of the island’s one town. The lens failed to reveal anything else. All it did was make the fine grain of the parchment look coarse.

“Who lives there?”

“Fishermen. I guess. There’s an agent of the crown there. That’s why it has a star.”

They looked at the star together.

“It’s a shit map,” Benedict volunteered. He leaned down so that his nose almost touched it. “Look at the shading. Why do you want to know about it?”

“I’m going there.”

“Really? Why?”

“That’s actually a pretty good question.”

“Are you looking for the key?”

“No, I’m not looking for the key. What key?”

“There’s a fairy tale,” Benedict said, as if he were explaining to a kindergartner. “That’s where the key that winds up the world is. Supposed to be.”

Quentin wasn’t wildly interested in Fillorian folklore.

“Why don’t you come along?” he said. “You could make a new map of it, if this one’s so bad.”

Now he was a counselor of troubled youth. Something about the boy made Quentin want to shake him up. Get him out of his comfort zone so he could stop sneering at everybody else who was out of theirs. Get him thinking about something besides his own neuroses for a change. It was harder than it looked.

“I’m not rated for fieldwork,” Benedict mumbled, dropping his gaze again. “I’m a cartographer, not a surveyor.” Quentin watched Benedict’s eyes keep getting drawn back to the map, to that irregular peanut. Maps of places, rather than actual places, were obviously where young master Benedict preferred to live. “The linework is . . .” He made a noise through his teeth: ch. “Jesus Christ.”

“Jesus Christ” was an expression the younger Fillorians had picked up from their new rulers. It was impossible to explain to them what it actually meant. They were convinced it was something dirty.

“In the name of the Kingdom of Fillory,” Quentin intoned, “I hereby pronounce you rated for fieldwork. Good enough?”

Should’ve brought my sword. Benedict shrugged, embarrassed. It was exactly what Quentin would have done ten years ago. Quentin almost found himself liking the kid. He probably thought nobody could possibly understand how he felt. It made Quentin realize how far he’d come. Maybe he could help Benedict.

“Think about it. We should bring somebody to update the maps.”

Though the draftsmanship looked fine to Quentin. Idly he turned the crank of the brass map-viewing contraption. It really was very neat: little half-concealed gears spun, and the Outer Island drifted away and was rolled up on the far side of the scroll. He kept cranking. Yards and yards of creamy blank paper passed by, decorated here and there with dotted lines and tiny numbers. Empty ocean.

Finally the scroll ran out, and the loose end popped out and flapped around.

“Not much out there,” he said, since he felt like he should say something.

“It’s the last scroll in the catalog,” Benedict said. “No one’s even looked at it since I’ve been here.”

“Can I take it with me?”

Benedict hesitated.

“It’s okay. I am the king, you know. It’s my map anyway, if you want to be technical about it.”

“I still have to sign it out.”

Benedict carefully rolled up the scroll and placed it in a leather case, then gave him a slip of paper that allowed him to take it out of the map room. He had cosigned it: his full name was Benedict Fenwick.

Benedict Fenwick. Jesus Christ. No wonder he was sulky.

Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had a psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn’t the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn’t trying to save the world from Sauron, he was attempting to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders. It would definitely do. They left Castle Whitespire three weeks to the day after Jollyby died.

A stiff salt breeze was scouring the waterfront. The Muntjac’s sails looked ready to lap it up and race off over the horizon in search of more. They were a glorious white with the very pale blue ram of Fillory splashed across them like a watermark, their edges snapping and vibrating with barely contained excitement. It really was a marvelous beast.

A brass band played on the waterfront. The conductor was visibly urging his charges to greater and greater