They didn’t slow to a walk until they were passing under the portcullis and through the thick outer wall of Castle Whitespire; it was the first time he and Alice had been there together. They stepped out into the courtyard. It had been the longest of long shots—a dot in the shark, Eliot would have said—that Ember would be there waiting for them.

And He wasn’t. But Umber was.

Quentin had never seen Him before, and until a week ago he’d thought Umber was dead, but it couldn’t have been anybody else. He stood quite still, like a tame ram in a meadow, His head down as He cropped a stray weed pushing up between two paving stones, in the twilight of the dying world. He straightened up.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” He said, between chews. “For ages. I made a bet with myself that you’d come, and now look. I’ve won.”

Quentin hadn’t planned for this, but he supposed one was as good as the other, for his purposes. But Umber seemed to know what Quentin was thinking.

“Well, come on. It’s no good with just Me. You’re going to need Us both.”

Umber tossed His horned head at them, come-hither. Under any other circumstances Quentin would have hesitated, but on this day of all days His meaning was unmistakable. Quentin jogged over to Him and, as he’d imagined doing ten thousand times before, at least, he threw an arm and a leg over Umber’s broad soft back and heaved himself up onto it. Alice climbed on behind him and put her arms around his waist. The instant Quentin had his fingers wound into Umber’s cloudy gray wool the god surged forward under them and they were off.

Quentin had always wanted to do this—they all had—and now he knew why. After a few trotting steps to get up to speed Umber bunched all four legs together under Himself and leapt the castle wall, like the cow jumping over the moon. The rush and acceleration were beyond anything. He picked up speed as He bounded through the crumbled city and out of it, touching the ground ever more lightly and at wider intervals, trees and fields and hills and walls and rivers whipping past.

There was a strange fateful joy to it. The scene was catastrophic, his mission could not have been more dire, but Quentin Coldwater had come back to Fillory with Alice, and together they were riding a god.

“Hi ho!” Umber said. And Quentin answered Him:

“Hi ho!”