The Stranger's Shadow Read online

  I turned around and saw him. Loiso had just come up the opposite side of the hill, but his breathing was as shallow and steady as that of a sleeping person. The peculiarities of the local climate didn’t seem to bother him one bit. His face, still looking shockingly like mine, remained pale, his forehead dry. Even the hot wind that bent down the dry grass so that it almost touched the ground hadn’t disheveled his hair. Loiso’s snow-white garments looked neat, as if he had at his service all the laundromats in the Universe.

  “No, I didn’t think you were glued to it,” I said. “After all, you did get up from it the other day to give me a kick in the butt.”

  “Nonsense. Even as a kid I never did such indecent things. I did indeed give you light push on the side so you would return home quickly. By that time, you had already been baked. I could have sprinkled you with lemon juice and served you on a platter. You’re one rancorous fellow, aren’t you? Is that why you haven’t come to see me all this time?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” I said. “I only just remembered about you kicking me . . . pushing me. I thought you never made mistakes.”

  “If I never made mistakes, I wouldn’t be here to begin with,” said Loiso, smiling and sitting down on his favorite rock. “Why didn’t you come sooner, then? Because of the heat?”

  “That too,” I said, sighing. “You know, I told myself that I needed a break from miracles, whereas in fact, I was just scared. Stupid, huh?”

  “Not at all. Fear is an ordinary human emotion. Perhaps the most ordinary and most human of all. I can relate.”

  “I came back when I realized I couldn’t afford the luxury of being afraid. Just tonight a friend of mine overindulged himself a little on a kossu herb liqueur, and I witnessed Magician’s Horror with my very eyes,” I said.

  “I know what you’re talking about,” said Loiso, nodding. “Once that liqueur almost killed me. I still can’t believe how many times I managed to escape all the traps that were set for me by my own silly fears.”

  “So you’re familiar with silly fears that come out of the blue?”

  “Am I ever! I even know for certain where they come from. I have all but forgotten that nasty feeling now, but in the beginning I was really scared. Very scared. All the time, with no lunch breaks. I was walking on the edge. All the wonders of the Universe were on the one side, on the other . . . The other side was filled with me and everything I strove to love. Back then I thought it would help fill in the frightening void in my heart. On the border of the two was a strip of fear. That was where I was hanging about. For too long, as I’ve realized by now. I was painstakingly looking for a way out, a path, a road, a passageway that would lead me away from that border. I had to learn to hate, because hatred turned out to be stronger than fear. That’s the answer to the riddle of the origins of the Great Evil Loiso Pondoxo. Scared boys make for excellent evil magicians. Do you know what I’m talking about, Max?”

  I shrugged.

  “Oh, that’s right. Your life is easier, whatever you might think about it yourself. As for Magician’s Horror, I don’t think it poses any danger to you. You lack the ability to focus on anything, including your fears. Normally, that’s your biggest flaw, but in this situation, it’ll do you good. Then again, almost anything will do you good. You’re always lucky. Come to think of it, I’m the one who should be surprised that you know the feeling of fear, not the other way around.”

  “How come?” I said.

  “Well, for starters, because there are a whole bunch of people looking after you. An army of indefatigable wise old men and women, charmed by your good fortune, will shield you with their own chests when the winds begin to blow harder from the Dark Side. In my book, they are overprotective. Me? I have always had to stand alone against the unknown, like a child lost in a graveyard about which he has heard innumerable scary old stories. I’ve been alone for as long as I care to remember. Now I realize that solitude suits me better than the best company, but I haven’t always been this wise, trust me.”

  “I do,” I said. “You’ve made me ashamed of myself. Here I am, blubbering about my fears, which, as it turns out, are very ordinary, third-rate fears. Why am I whining?”

  “That’s all right,” said Loiso. “Whine away. It’s even cute. And you shouldn’t have feared coming here. You’re not afraid of the Kettarian, are you?”

  “On the contrary,” I said, smiling, “Sir Juffin Hully is the most potent medicine for fear. At least for my fear.”

  “See? But of the two of us, he is the more dangerous one. For example, I don’t send you to the Dark Side. I don’t send you anywhere. I just tell you fairy tales that you love to hear, that’s all.”

  “True,” I said, sighing. “The thing is, I never used to wake up with scratches on my face. Dreams with you in them are a tad too realistic for my taste—that’s what’s scaring me now.”

  “The dreams in which you met Juffin belong to the same category,” said Loiso. “It just so happened that you never got scratches on your face in them. And don’t even get me started on your journeys through Xumgat. You’re not going to tell me those were just peculiar dreams now, are you? I’m sorry, Max, but right now you look like an old lady trying to persuade her fifth husband that it was he who took her virginity.”

  I laughed and immediately realized that laughing was not among the luxuries I could afford under the circumstances. Nauseating colorful rings began swirling around in my eyes. The blasted heat was getting to me.

  “Uh-oh,” said Loiso. “Time to go home, Max. What will happen to my reputation if I have to resort to quackery?”

  “I still haven’t asked you why your Order had such a stupid name,” I murmured, grabbing my head, which suddenly felt like it was made of lead, with my hands.

  “At least someone realizes that it was stupid,” said Loiso, laughing. “It’s a long story, Max. I’ll tell you some other time. You’ll have another pretext to come see me. It is unbearably hot here, but that’s just about the only thing you should be afraid of in this place. This may very well be the safest place in the Universe for you.”

  “How’s that?” I said, making the first unsteady step down the sunburned side of the hill.

  “Because it is in my interests to keep you away from trouble. I still don’t doubt that you’ll set me free, sooner or later.”

  “You might want to get yourself an AC unit, if you like my living body more than a piece of well-done steak,” I mumbled, making another step.

  I felt queasy but tried to maintain a vertical position by walking slowly and carefully. My previous visits here had all ended up the same: I fell and rolled down the slope, grabbing the sharp blades of grass, and then I woke up in my bed, dirty and covered with scratches on my skin. This time I desperately wanted to break with tradition.

  I was going downhill for what seemed like an eternity. Each step I took cost me an incredible amount of effort. When my vision went totally black, I realized that it was indeed dark around me and I was still descending not the slope of a hill but a flight of squeaky wooden stairs. I had already reached the second floor where the Slayer of the Black Hand, Sir Melifaro, was catching forty winks. I had to go back upstairs.

  That’s a sick joke on your part, Sir Loiso, I thought. What is it going to be next time? Will I find myself walking on the window ledge outside?

  I got back to my room; took off my clothes, which were drenched in my sweat; and blacked out.

  My sleep was sound and very long. When I finally woke up, it was way past noon. I felt peaceful and quiet, as though I had spent my whole life in this house in the woods and my waking up today had been no different from thousands of similar awakenings before. I dressed, moaned a little, remembering the distance I had to cover between my room and the outhouse, and set off.

  I ended up washing with cold water. I was almost sure there was a way, some trick—some fortieth or even hundred fortieth degree of Black Magic—that could turn cold water in the tub into hot water, but I was n
ot capable of performing such miracles. At least not for now.

  I found Melifaro in the dining hall. He was sitting at the bar, listening to the red-haired innkeeper. I don’t know what that amiable fat man was telling him, but Melifaro looked as though he were listening to a fascinating story from his favorite book.

  “You are the biggest sleeper in all of the Worlds,” he said, turning to me.

  “You can say that again,” I said. “But recently I’ve been thinking of branching out and becoming the biggest glutton in all of the Worlds.”

  “Would you like me to make you all five of my dishes?” said the innkeeper. “Or would you like any one of them?”

  “Just make me some kamra, please,” I said. “Do you have cookies or some pies?”

  “Bemboni always bakes something, but guests usually don’t express any interest in that. I’ll get some for you,” said the fat man.

  He disappeared behind the door and soon returned with a pitcher of kamra and a large dish with a pile of ugly gray crackers. I winced and took a tiny bite out of one of them.

  It turned out my wincing was uncalled for. The gray cracker could take a shot at, and even win, a baking contest—even now, when cooks and bakers in Echo were allowed to use a little magic, which they often abused.

  Melifaro watched me with eyes full of compassion. I think I looked like a poor homeless orphan from a fairy tale.

  “Want to try it?” I said, my mouth full. “Hurry up, though, or there won’t be any left.”

  My mumbling was the best advertisement. Melifaro grabbed a cracker and shoved it in his mouth. His face bloomed with pleasure.

  “May I go, gentlemen?” said the innkeeper. “We have lunch at this hour, and it’s our custom to sit together at the table.”

  “Go ahead, Kekula,” said Melifaro, nodding. “A family lunch is sacred.”

  As soon as the innkeeper left, Melifaro jumped up on his stool and stared at me in triumph. “Guess what! You won’t believe this!” he said.

  “I will,” I said. “I’ve been very gullible recently. It’s much easier and simpler that way. So what’s the news?”

  “These people think that their woods are the entire World!” said Melifaro.

  “Could you run that past me one more time? They think what?”

  “I’m telling you. There’s the woods and there’s their house in the middle of it. That’s it.”

  “Are you saying they’ve never heard of Echo?”

  “Echo? Boy, they’ve never even heard of the Unified Kingdom, or anything else for that matter. Moreover, they think that their house is the only building in the Universe, and that that the rest of the people—including you and me—just live in the woods. Want to know how I found out? That fat guy asked me how we managed to sleep in the woods and remain so clean. He said he had tried to spend a night in the woods a few times, but every time he returned home as dirty as a swamp tussock. Can you believe that?”

  “What did you tell him?” I said.

  “I was a little taken aback, so I told him we made nests in the trees. Kekula was happy—one less mystery to rack his brains over.”

  I laughed as I imagined an enormous nest with Melifaro’s bright-yellow boots hanging over the edge of it.

  Then I said, “Okay, so they think there’s nothing beyond the woods. Where do they get the food and all the rest, then?”

  “They make almost everything themselves. They have a huge setup here. Also, a man comes here a few times a year and brings them a cart full of food, probably from around Chinfaro. He takes all the money they have collected over time and then leaves. The innkeeper thinks that the cart with food just comes from the woods and then the cart just goes back,” said Melifaro.

  “Okay, but what about other travelers like us? They must tell them something about the rest of the world, don’t they?”

  “They probably do. But many people hear only what they want to hear and filter out the rest. Remember our friend from Isamon, Rulen Bagdasys? He remained deaf except for those rare occasions when he desperately needed some information. Most people are like him, though Bagdasys was an extreme case, of course. Plus, shapeshifters who suddenly become rich probably visit this inn more often than city loafers like us.”

  “This is all just too bizarre,” I said. “How did it happen? Where did those two come from anyway?”

  “There are more than just those two. Our friend Kekula and that cute Bemboni—she’s his sister, not his wife, by the way—are the oldest. They have three brothers and two sisters. They live in the next house and keep the inn together: carve out the dishes, work in the garden, forage in the woods for berries, and so on. They were all born in this house. Their late parents told them that there was nothing in the World save for this house and the woods around it. I don’t know why they told them that. Maybe they believed it themselves, or maybe they had reasons for holding a grudge against the World and the reasons were strong enough to make them just reject its existence. Nobody knows, and the folks have been dead for a long time, so you can’t ask them. Unless you want to dig them up and throw a family reunion for Kekula, Bemboni, and the rest.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “Boy, what a story, indeed.”

  “A story like any other,” said Melifaro. His voice was full of sadness. “Most people live entrapped in such delusions all their lives, only their delusions are not as funny. Our friendly innkeepers believe that the World is the woods; some uneducated farmer thinks that the Unified Kingdom and a dozen smaller countries nearby are the World. More sophisticated people believe that the World is a lot of water with small islands floating in it, upon which little serious-looking people run hither and thither. By the way, not twenty years ago I was convinced that this was true. Now you and I think that the World is the World, plus the Dark Side, plus other Worlds, plus the mysterious Corridor between them. But there’s no guarantee that we’re any smarter than these funny forest people. We just happen to have a little more information, but it’s not all there is to know, not by a long shot. We’re not much different from them.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” I said, surprised.

  “Of course you can’t.”

  Melifaro grabbed the last cracker from the plate, waved it like a victor over a defeated enemy, and popped it into his mouth. The sad philosopher had disappeared, and now the all too familiar natural disaster, better known as Melifaro Junior, was fidgeting on the stool. I liked him much better this way. All the more so, since I still had to spend at least a day in his company, and I was completely incapable of keeping a straight face for more than a few minutes running.

  Sir Kofa returned only at the end of the next day. He looked important, mysterious, and very pleased with himself, almost like in the good old days.

  “You look like you have seduced all the women on all the farms in this part of Landaland,” said Melifaro. “Figures, though. You’ve become such a pretty boy ever since we left Echo. Maybe you should keep this look back home, too? It’s too bad Kekki can’t see you now.”

  “Kekki is a smart girl,” said Kofa. “She couldn’t care less about my looks. If she needs to see someone beautiful in her bedroom from time to time, she can just put up a mirror. Let’s go, boys. We’ve already lost a lot of time.”

  “Oh, we’ve lost time, have we?” said Melifaro. “Also, where do you think we’re going to go now? It’s almost nighttime.”

  “What’s wrong with nighttime?” said Kofa, surprised. “What difference does it make?”

  “I usually sleep at night,” Melifaro grumbled.

  “That’s a stupid habit. But it’s all the same, you can sleep in the amobiler,” said Kofa.

  “Yes, let’s go,” I said, agreeing with Kofa. “The sooner we leave, the better. Are we close yet?”

  “Fairly close,” said Kofa. “If there were an ordinary human behind the levers, we’d be entering Glenke Taval’s estate tomorrow night. You drive much faster, even on this awful road. I’ll give credit where
credit is due: you found a good substitute for the wheels.”

  “And you did the field test,” I said, smiling.

  “Indeed. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing all this time,” said Kofa.

  We said goodbye to the odd inhabitants of the Middle of the Woods. The red-haired innkeeper was very sympathetic. He was convinced that we were going back to our uncomfortable nests in the treetops. He probably thought that we had run out of money to pay for his hospitality. I almost felt that he was torn between the altruistic desire to let us stay for another couple of nights free of charge and the cold pragmatism that required him to take compensation for room and board.

  The pragmatism won out. Kekula promised, somewhat sentimentally, that next time he would let us sleep in beds “for only one small money,” he liked us so much. I was so moved that I left a few more crowns in the Middle of the Woods on the sly: one on the porch, one on the doorway of the outhouse, and one more by the gate. I liked to think that finding the coins from time to time would make these people happy.

  Sir Kofa was watching with great interest.

  “Conjuring magic?” he said.

  “Nah, just fiddling around,” I said.

  “Okay, then.” He lost interest in my strange actions and demanded, “Max, are we ever going to leave?”

  “We are,” I said, getting behind the levers of the amobiler.

  This time Melifaro got in the back seat, announcing that he needed to get more sleep.

  “Be my guest,” said Kofa. He sat next to me in the front and put his “field canteen” on his knees. Thank goodness he didn’t take out his barrel organ. Apparently, today Kofa didn’t need any calming down or stimulation of his thinking processes.

  After my amobiler had been transformed into a travesty of an off-road vehicle, driving through the woods became quite pleasant. Granted, I couldn’t afford the luxury of speeding up for real, but we weren’t exactly crawling. Melifaro was snoozing on the back seat. The son of the great traveler paid no attention to such trifles as the lack of a bed, pillow, or blanket.