Free The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman Page B

apart from the obvious. He nodded to Vile Father. No response.
    Time passed. It was actually a teensy bit socially awkward. A soft cold wind blew. Vile Father’s brown nipples, on the ends of his pendulous man-cans, were like dried figs. He had no scars at all on his smooth skin, which somehow was scarier than if he were all messed up.
    Then Vile Father wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t magic, he had some kind of crazy movement style that was like speed-skating over solid ground. Just like that he was halfway across the distance between them and thrusting his blade, whatever it was, straight at Eliot’s Adam’s apple at full extension. Eliot barely got out of the way in time.
    He shouldn’t have been able to get out of the way at all. Like an idiot he’d figured V.F. was going to swing the blade at him like a sword, on the end of that long pole, thereby giving him plenty of time to see it coming. Which would have been stupid, but all right, I get it already, it’s a thrusting weapon. By rights it should have been sticking out of the nape of Eliot’s neck by now, slick and shiny with clear fluid from his spine.
    But it wasn’t, because Eliot was sporting a huge amount of invisible magical protection in the form of Fergus’s Spectral Armory, which by itself would have saved his life even if the blade had hit home, but in addition to that he was sporting Fergus’s A Whole Lot of Other Really Useful Combat Spells, which had amped his strength up a few times over, and most important had cranked his reflexes up by a factor of ten, and his perception of time down by that same factor.
    What? Look, Vile Father spent his whole life learning to kill people with a knife on a stick. Was that cheating? Well, while he was doing his squats and whatever else, Eliot had spent his whole life learning magic.
    When he and Janet had first finished up the casting, a couple of hours earlier, in the chilly predawn, he’d been so covered in spellcraft that he glowed like a life-size neon sign of himself. But they’d managed to tamp that down so that the armor was only occasionally visible, maybe once every couple of minutes and only for a moment at a time, a flash of something translucent and mother-of-pearly.
    The trigger for the time/reflexes part of the enchantment system was Eliot twitching his nose.
He did it now, and
everything in the world abruptly slowed down. He leaned back and away from the slowly, gracefully thrusting blade, lost his balance and put a hand down on the sand, rolled away, then got back on his feet while V.F. was still completing the motion.
    Though you didn’t get to be as big and fat as Vile Father was without learning a thing or two along the way. He didn’t look impressed or even surprised, just converted his momentum into a spin move meant to catch Eliot in the stomach with the butt of the pole. I guess it doesn’t pay to stand around looking all impressed on the battlefield.
    Though Eliot was impressed. Watching it slowed down like this, you had to admire the man’s athleticism. It was balletic, was what it was. Eliot watched the wooden staff slowly approaching his midriff, set himself and, all in good time, hammered down on it as hard as he could with his metal baton. The wood snapped cleanly about three feet from the end. Fergus, whoever you were, I heart you.
    V.F. course-corrected once again, reaching out with a free hand to snag the snapped-off bit while it spun in midair. Eliot batted it away before he could get to it, and he watched it drift off out of V.F.’s reach, moving at a stately lunar velocity. Then, seeing as how he had some time to kill, he dropped the baton and slapped Vile Father’s face with his open hand.
    Personal violence did not come naturally to Eliot; in fact he found it distasteful. What could he say, he was a sensitive individual, fate had blessed and cursed him with a tender heart; plus V.F.’s cheek was reallyoily/sweaty. He wished he’d worn gloves, or gauntlets even.