there aren’t any choices left to make at all.”
“You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.”
“The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals.”
They watched the god work for a while without talking. It never paused or hesitated. Its hands moved and moved, bending lines, breaking one connection, making another. Quentin couldn’t see why one pattern was better than another, but he supposed that was his mortal fallibility. He felt a little sorry for it. He supposed it was happy, never doubting, never hesitating, eternally certain of its absolute righteousness. But it was like a giant divine robot.
“Let’s cover it up,” he said. “I don’t want to look at it anymore.”
The bronze cover grated against the stone, then dropped with a clang back into place. Quentin latched it. Though who the latch was going to keep in or out, he couldn’t imagine. They stood around it as if it were a grave they’d just finished filling.
“Why is this happening now?” he said.
Penny shook his head.
“Something caught their attention. Somebody somewhere must have tripped an alarm and summoned them back from wherever they were. They may not even have realized they were doing it. We didn’t know they were here until the cold started. Then the sun went out, and the snow came, and the wind. The buildings started to collapse. It’s all ending.”
“Josh was here,” Quentin said. “He told us about it.”
“I know,” Penny said. He shifted uncomfortably under his robe. He forgot himself and spoke in his old voice again. “The cold makes my stumps ache.”
“What’s going to happen?” Poppy asked.
“The Neitherlands will be destroyed. It was never part of the divine plan. My predecessors built it in the space between universes. The gods will clear it away, like a wasp’s nest in an old wall. If we’re still here we’ll die with it. But it won’t stop there. It’s not even the Neitherlands they’re after, it’s what it runs on.”
You could say one thing for Penny, he could look a hard truth in the face. He had a weird integrity about things like that. He was calm and collected. He didn’t flinch. It wouldn’t occur to him to.
“Magic is the problem. We’re not supposed to have it. They’re going to close whatever loophole they left open that lets us use it. When they’re done it will go dead, not just here but everywhere, in every world. That power will belong to the gods only.
“Most worlds will simply lose magic. I think Fillory may fall apart and cease to exist entirely. It’s a bit special that way—it’s magical all the way through. I have a theory that Fillory itself might be the loophole, the leak through which magic first got out. The hole in the dike.
“The change would have started already. You may have seen signs.”
The thrashing clock-trees. They must be something like Fillory’s early warning system, sensitive to any signs of trouble. Jollyby’s death: maybe Fillorians can’t live without magic. Ember and the Unique Beasts up in arms.
They were fixing the world. But Quentin preferred it broken. He wondered how long it would take. Years, maybe—maybe he could go home and not think about it and it would all happen after he was dead. But he wasn’t getting that impression. Quentin wondered what he would do if magic went away. He didn’t know how he would live in that world. Most people wouldn’t even notice the change, of course, but if you knew about it, knew what you’d lost, it would eat away at you. He didn’t know if he could explain it to a non-magician. Everything would simply be what it was and nothing else. All there would be was what you could see. What you felt and thought, all the longing and desire in your heart and mind, would count for nothing. With magic you could make those feelings real. They could change the world. Without it they would be stuck inside you forever, figments of your own imagination.
And Venice. Venice would drown. Its weight would crush those wooden pilings, and it would disappear into the sea.
You could see the gods’ point of view. They made magic. Why would they want an ignorant insect like Quentin playing around with it? But he couldn’t accept it. He wasn’t going to. Why should the gods be the only ones who got magic? They didn’t appreciate it. They didn’t even enjoy it. It didn’t make them happy. It was theirs, but they didn’t love it, not the way he, Quentin, loved it. The gods were great, but what good was greatness if you didn’t love?
“So is it going to happen?” he asked. For now he would be stoic like Penny. “Is there any way to stop it?”
He was warm again, but the chill kept creeping back in through the soles of his boots.
“Probably not.” Penny began to walk, like a regular mortal, with his actual feet. The snow didn’t seem to bother him. Quentin and Poppy walked with him. “But there is a way. We always knew this might happen. We prepared for it. Tell me, what’s the first thing a hacker does once he breaks into a system?”
“I don’t know,” Quentin said. “He steals a bunch of credit card numbers and subscribes to a lot of really premium porn sites?”
“He sets up a back door.” It was good to know that even having attained enlightenment Penny was still impervious to humor. “So that if he’s ever locked out, he can get back in.”
“The Order did that?”
“So they say. A back door was built into the system, metaphorically speaking, that would let magic back out into the universe, if the gods ever returned to claim it. It just has to be opened.”
“Oh my God.” Quentin didn’t know whether he should dare to hope or not. It would almost be too painful if it turned out not to be true. “So you can fix this? You’re going to fix this?”
“The ‘back door’ exists.” Penny mimed doing quotey-fingers, which he couldn’t actually do. “But the keys to it were hidden a long time ago. So long ago now that not even we know where they are.”
Quentin and Poppy looked at each other. It couldn’t be that simple, it just couldn’t. No way were they that lucky.
“Penny, there wouldn’t by any chance be seven of these keys?” Quentin said.
“Seven, yes. Seven golden keys.”
“Penny. Jesus Christ, Penny, I think we have them. Or six of them. We have them back in Fillory. It has to be them!”
Quentin had to sit down on a block of stone, even though it was a little outside Penny’s circle of warmth. He put his head in his hands. That was the quest. It wasn’t fake, and it wasn’t a game, it was real. It mattered after all. They’d been fighting for magic all along. They just hadn’t known it.
Of course Penny took this in stride. He would never be so uncool as to give Quentin credit for saving the universe or anything.
“That’s very good. That’s excellent. But you must recover the seventh key.”
“Right. I got that far. We’ll find the seventh key. And then what?”
“Then take them all to the End of the World. The door is there.”
This was it. He knew what to do now. He’d received his cue. It was like how he felt back on the island, in the castle, but calmer this time. This must be what the gods felt like, he thought. Absolute certainty. They had arrived at Penny’s building, back where they’d started.
“Penny, we have to get back to Fillory, back to our ship, to finish the quest. Can you send us back? I mean, even with the fountains frozen over?”
“Of course. The Order has made me privy to all the secrets of interdimensional travel. If you think of the Neitherlands as a computer, then the fountains are merely—”
“Awesome. Thanks, man.” He turned to Poppy. “Are you in on this? Or do you still want to go back to the real world?”
“Are you kidding?” She grinned and pressed herself against him. “Fuck reality, baby. Let’s go save the universe.”
“I will prepare the spell to send you back,” Penny said.
It was snowing harder, the flakes blowing slantwise through their little dome of warmth, but Quentin felt invulnerable now. They were going to fight this, and they were going to win. Penny began chanting in that same incomprehensible language he’d used before. It had some vowel sounds that Quentin barely recognized as human.
“It needs a minute to take effect,” he said when he was done. “Of course, from this point forward the
