After that ordeal the test was almost an afterthought. They were released separately out onto the snowpack, at intervals, to discourage collaboration. Mayakovsky made Quentin disrobe first—so much for the flour and the garlic and that bent silver fork—and walk naked out beyond the range of the protective spells that kept the temperature bearable at Brakebills South. As he passed through the invisible perimeter the cold hit him face-first, and it was beyond all belief. Quentin’s whole body spasmed and contracted. It felt like he’d been dropped into burning kerosene. The air seared his lungs. He bent over, hands jammed in his armpits.

“Happy trails,” Mayakovsky called. He tossed Quentin a Ziploc bag full of something gray and greasy. Mutton fat. “Bog s’vami.”

Whatever. Quentin knew he had only a few seconds before his fingers would be too numb for spellcasting. He tore open the bag and jammed his hands inside and stuttered out Chkhartishvili’s Enveloping Warmth. It got easier after that. He layered on the rest of the spells by turns: protection from the wind and the sun, speed, strong legs, toughened feet. He threw up a navigation spell, and a great luminous golden compass wheel that only he could see appeared overhead in the white sky.

Quentin knew the theory behind the spells, but he’d never tested them all together at full strength. He felt like a superhero. He felt bionic. He was in business.

He turned to face the S on the compass wheel and trotted off toward the horizon at speed, circling around the building he’d just left, bare feet fluffing silently through bone-dry powder. With the strength spells in place his thighs felt like pneumatic pistons. His calves were steel truck springs. His feet were as tough and numb as Kevlar brake shoes.

Afterward he remembered almost nothing of the week that followed. The whole thing was very clinical. Reduced to its technical essence, it was a problem of resource management, of nurturing and guarding and fanning the little flickering flame of life and consciousness within his body as the entire continent of Antarctica tried to leach away the heat and sugar and water that kept it burning.