Book 2: The Magician King

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1  

Quentin rode a gray horse with white socks named Dauntless. He wore black leather boots up to his knees, different-colored stock­ings, and a long navy-blue topcoat that was richly embroidered with seed pearls and silver thread. On his head was a platinum coronet. A glittering side-sword bumped against his leg - not the ceremonial kind, the real kind, the kind that would actually be useful in a fight. It was ten o'clock in the morning on a warm, overcast day in late August. He was everything a king of Fillory should be. He was hunting a magic rabbit.  

By King Quentin's side rode a queen: Queen Julia. Up ahead were another queen and another king, Janet and Eliot - the land of Fillory had four rulers in all. They rode along a high-arched forest path littered with yellow leaves, perfect little sprays of them that looked like they could have been cut and placed by a florist. They moved in silence, slowly, together but lost in their separate thoughts, gazing out into the green depths of the late summer woods.  

It was an easy silence. Everything was easy. Nothing was hard. The dream had become real.  

"Stop!" Eliot said, at the front.  

They stopped. Quentin's horse didn't halt when the others' did - Dauntless wandered a little out of line and halfway off the trail before he persuaded her for good and all to quit walking for a damn minute. Two years as a king of Fillory and he was still shit at horseback riding.  

"What is it?" he called.  

They all sat for another minute. There was no hurry. Dauntless snorted once in the silence: lofty horsey contempt for whatever human enterprise they thought they were pursuing.  

"Thought I saw something."  

"I'm starting to wonder," Quentin said, "if it's even possible to track a rabbit."  

"It's a hare," Eliot said.  

"Same difference."  

"It isn't, actually. Hares are bigger. And they don't live in burrows, they make nests in open ground."  

"Don't start," both Julia and Janet said, in unison.  

"Here's my real question," Quentin said. "If this rabbit thing really can see the future won't it know we're trying to catch it?"  

"It can see the future," Julia said softly, beside him. "It cannot change it. Did you three argue this much when you were at Brakebills?"  

She wore a sepulchral black riding dress and an actual riding hood, also black. She always wore black, like she was in mourning, even though Quentin couldn't think of anyone she should have been in mourning for. Casually, like she was calling over a waiter, Julia summoned a tiny songbird to her wrist and raised it up to her ear. It chipped, chirruped something, and she nodded back and it flew away again.  

Nobody noticed, except for Quentin. She was always giving and get­ting little secret messages from the talking animals. It was like she was on a different wireless network from the rest of them.  

"You should have let us bring Jollyby," Janet said. She yawned, hold­ing the back of her hand against her mouth. Jollyby was Master of the Hunt at Castle Whitespire, where they all lived. He usually supervised this kind of excursion.  

"Jollyby's great," Quentin said, "but even he couldn't track a hare in the woods. Without dogs. When there's no snow."  

"Yes, but Jollyby has very well-developed calf muscles. I like looking at them. He wears those man-tights."  

"I wear man-tights," Quentin said, pretending to be affronted. Eliot snorted.  

"I imagine he's around here somewhere." Eliot was still scanning the trees. "Discreet distance and all that. Can't keep that man away from a royal hunt."