pictures. One minute you’re Prince Valiant, the next you’re Henry VIII.
Janet broke trail, guided by more muffled bugle notes. The horses’ hooves made satisfyingly solid beats on the packed loam of the forest floor. Everything that was cloying about court life, all the safety and the relentless comfort, went away for a moment. Trunks and spinneys and ditches and old stone walls whipped and blurred past. They dodged in and out of hot sun and cool shade. Their speed froze the falling sprays of yellow leaves in midair. Quentin picked his moment, and when they hit open meadow he swung out wide to the right, and for a long minute they were side by side, coursing wildly along in parallel.
Then all at once Janet pulled up. Quickly as he could Quentin slowed Dauntless to a walk and brought her around, breathing hard. He hoped her horse hadn’t pulled up lame. It took him another minute to find his way back to her.
She was sitting still and straight in the saddle, squinting off into the midday gloom of the forest. No more bugle calls.
“What is it?”
“Thought I saw something,” she said.
Quentin squinted too. There was something. Shapes.
“Is that Eliot?”
“The hell are they doing?” Janet said.
Quentin dropped down out of the saddle, unslung his bow again and nocked another arrow. Janet led the horses while he walked in front. He could hear her charging up some minor defensive magic, a light ward-and- shield, just in case. He could feel the familiar staticky buzz of it.
“Shit,” he said under his breath.
He dropped the bow and ran toward them. Julia was down on one knee, her hand pressed against her chest, either gasping or sobbing, he couldn’t tell which. Eliot was bent over talking to her quietly. His clothof-gold jacket had been yanked half off his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he said, seeing Quentin’s white face. “That fucking civet threw her and bolted. I tried to hold it but I couldn’t. She’s okay, she just got the wind knocked out of her.”
“You’re all right.” That phrase again. Quentin rubbed Julia’s back while she took croaking breaths. “You’re okay. I always said you should get a regular horse. I never liked that thing.”
“Never liked you, either,” she managed.
“Look.” Eliot pointed off into the twilight. “That’s what made it bolt. The hare went in there.”
A few yards away a round clearing began, a still pool of grass hidden in the heart of the forest. The trees grew right up to its edge and then stopped, like somebody had cleared it on purpose, nipping out the border precisely. It could have been ruled with a compass. Quentin picked his way toward it. Lush, intensely emerald-green grass grew over lumpy black soil. In the center of the clearing stood a single enormous oak tree with a large round clock set in its trunk.
The clock-trees were the legacy of the Watcherwoman, the legendary—but quite real—time-traveling witch of Fillory. They were a magical folly, benign as far as anyone could tell, and picturesque in a surreal way. There was no reason to get rid of them, assuming you even could. If nothing else they kept perfect time.
But Quentin had never seen one like this. He had to lean back to see its crown. It must have been a hundred feet tall, and it was massively thick, at least fifteen yards around at its base. Its clock was stupendous. The face was taller than Quentin was. The trunk erupted out of the green grass and burst into a mass of wiggly branches, like a kraken sculpted in wood.
And it was moving. Its black, nearly leafless limbs writhed and thrashed against the gray sky. The tree seemed to be caught in the grip of a storm, but Quentin couldn’t feel or hear any wind. The day, the day he could perceive with his five senses, was calm. It was an invisible, intangible storm, a secret storm. In its agony the clock-tree had strangled its clock—the wood had clenched it so tightly that the bezel had finally bent, and the crystal had shattered. Brass clockwork spilled out through the clock’s busted face and down onto the grass.
“Jesus Christ,” Quentin said. “What a monster.”
“It’s the Big Ben of clock-trees,” Janet said behind him.
“I’ve never seen one like that,” Eliot said. “Do you think it was the first one she made?”
Whatever it was, it was a Fillorian wonder, a real one, wild and grand and strange. It was a long time since he’d seen one, or maybe it was just a long time since he’d noticed. He felt a twinge of something he hadn’t felt since Ember’s Tomb: fear, and something more. Awe. They were looking the mystery in the face. This was the raw stuff, the main line, the old, old magic.
They stood together, strung out along the edge of the meadow. The clock’s minute hand poked out at a right angle from the trunk like a broken finger. A yard from its base a little sapling sprouted where the gears had fallen, as if from an acorn, swaying back and forth in the silent gale. A silver pocket watch ticked away in a knot in its slender trunk. A typically cute Fillorian touch.
This was going to be good.
“I’ll go first.”
Quentin started forward, but Eliot put a hand on his arm.
“I wouldn’t.”
“I would. Why not?”
“Because clock-trees don’t just move like that. And I’ve never seen a broken one before. I didn’t think they
“I know, right? It’s classic!”
Julia shook her head. She looked pale, and there was a dead leaf in her hair, but she was back on her feet.
“See how regular the clearing is,” she said. “It is a perfect circle. Or at least an ellipse. There is a powerful area-effect spell radiating out from the center. Or from the foci,” she added quietly, “in the case of an ellipse.”
“You go in there, there’s no telling where you’ll end up,” Eliot said.
“Of course there isn’t. That’s why I’m going.”
This, this was what he needed. This was the point—he’d been waiting for it without even knowing it. God, it had been so long. This was an adventure. He couldn’t believe the others would even hesitate. Behind him Dauntless whickered in the stillness.
It wasn’t a question of courage. It was like they’d forgotten who they were, and where they were, and why. Quentin retrieved his bow and took another arrow from his quiver. As an experiment, he set his stance, drew, and shot at the tree trunk. Before it reached its target the arrow slowed, like it was moving through water instead of air. They watched it float, tumbling a little end over end, backward, in slow motion. Finally it gave up the last of its momentum and just stopped, five feet off the ground.
Then it burst, soundlessly, into white sparks.
“Wow.” Quentin laughed. He couldn’t help it. “This place is enchanted as
He turned to the others.
“What do you think? This looks like an adventure to me. Remember adventures? Like in the books?”
“Yeah, remember them?” Janet said. She actually looked angry. “Remember Penny? We haven’t seen him around lately, have we? I don’t want to spend the rest of my queenhood cutting up your food for you.”
Remember Alice, she could just as well have said. He remembered Alice. She had died, but they’d lived, and wasn’t this what living was about? He bounced on his toes. They tingled and sweated in his boots, six inches from the sharp edge of the enchanted meadow.
He knew the others were right, this place practically reeked of weird magic. It was a trap, a coiled spring that was aching to spring shut on him and snap him up. And he wanted it to. He wanted to stick his finger in it and see what happened. Some story, some quest, started here, and he wanted to go on it. It felt fresh and clean and unsafe, nothing like the heavy warm lard of palace life. The protective plastic wrap had been peeled off.
“You’re really not coming?” he said.
Julia just watched him. Eliot shook his head.
“I’m going to play it safe. But I can try to cover you from here.”
He began industriously casting a minor reveal designed to suss out any obvious magical threats. Magic crackled and spat around his hands as he worked. Quentin drew his sword. The others made fun of him for carrying
