His mind had become a loopy parody of itself, stretched thin as taffy, translucent as cellophane. Something unspeakable had happened, but he couldn’t keep hold of it. Somehow the world as he knew it was no longer there. He’d managed to find a reasonably soft, sandy patch of floor to recline on—it was thoughtful of Martin, really, to have brought them to a room where the sand was so deliciously fine and cool. Although it was a shame that this clean white sand was now almost entirely saturated with blood, his and Penny’s. He wondered if Penny was still alive. He wondered if it would be at all possible to pass out. He wanted to fall asleep and never wake up.

Quentin heard the scuff of a fine leather shoe, and Eliot loomed into the patch of ceiling directly above him, then passed by.

From somewhere ambiguous in space and time, Ember’s voice reached Quentin. Not dead yet, he thought. Tough bastard. Or maybe he was just imagining it.

“You have won,” the ram’s voice bleated from the shadows. “Take your prize, hero.”

Eliot picked up the golden crown of the High King of Fillory. With an inarticulate cry he threw it like a discus off into the darkness.

The last dream was broken. Quentin either fainted or died, he didn’t know which.

BOOK IV

BOOK IV

THE RETREAT

THE RETREAT

Quentin woke up in a beautiful white room. For a second—or was it an hour? a week?—he thought it was his room in Brakebills South, that he was back in Antarctica. But then he saw that the window was open and heavy green curtains were puffing in, and out, and in again with the coming and going of a warm summer wind. So definitely not Antarctica.

He lay looking up at the ceiling, letting himself drift and spin along on spacey, narcotic mental currents. He didn’t feel even remotely curious about where he was or how he’d gotten there. He blissed out on insignificant details: the sunlight, the smell of clean linens, a splinter of blue sky in the window, the gnarly whorls of the dark chocolate brown timbers that crossed the whitewashed ceiling. He was alive.