The Stranger's Shadow Page 26

  “We’ll have to spend the night in the House by the Bridge, Sir Max, so say goodbye to your favorite blanket for tonight. I’m truly sorry, but for the kinds of dreams that are in store for you and me, even my bedroom won’t work.”

  “Sounds like we’re in it up to our waists, if not higher.”

  “Not unlikely. I don’t know myself just yet,” Juffin said. “I think this darn mouse really was the leader of Mynin’s Secret Retinue at one time, though. I think we have been graced by the presence of that creature of legend—what was his name again?”

  “Doroth.”

  “That’s right. He came with the sole purpose of telling our buriwoks that the information about the secret rituals of the Manooks they keep in the Main Archive can be filed under ‘Verified.’ This would explain everything: the unearthly might of the mouse, whose roots go back to the ancient mysteries of the continent of Uandook, and even his flight to the Dark Side of Rulx Castle. No doubt Doroth had made that journey many times before when he accompanied Mynin as leader of his retinue. Our legendary king loved to surround himself with dangerous toys. All of you Origins have the craziest quirks.”

  “Not true. I don’t know about your King Mynin, but I certainly don’t have any crazy quirks. A bit of crazy foolhardiness here and there—I won’t deny that, of course.”

  “Is that really what you think? Well, thank you very much. You’re quite amusing!” Juffin laughed so loud that a few leaves fell off the trees.

  “Did I say something funny? Well, at least I can do something useful.”

  Once we crossed the threshold of the Ministry of Perfect Public Order, my mood improved, simply out of habit.

  “It will be pleasant in my office now. Too pleasant for our purposes,” Juffin said. “Kofa will be there, and the table will be groaning under the weight of good things to eat. We need to speak in a more subdued setting. I don’t want you stuffing your face with junk and agreeing placidly to everything I say. Right now I need your undivided attention.”

  “We should go to Sir Shurf’s office, then,” I said. “Its walls are so used to the gloomy face of its occupant that I’ll feel obliged to satisfy their expectations with my own glum countenance. Furthermore, there’s only one chair there, which you will sit in. It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to nod complacently when I’m sitting on a hard floor.”

  “Well, you can always sit on the windowsill. But I must say I like the idea.”

  It was dark in Lonli-Lokli’s office. Juffin and I agreed that it was just what we needed. Just as I had predicted, Juffin sat down in the only chair: hard and uncomfortable, as Shurf liked it. After a moment’s hesitation, I plumped down on the desk. Sacrilege!

  “Just don’t tell Shurf I sat here,” I said. “He tried to kill me once. I don’t want it to become a habit.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Juffin said absentmindedly. “Sir Shurf himself sits on it from time to time. He says that in certain cases it stimulates his thinking. I can’t imagine how, but I’m sure he knows best.”

  “So what kinds of mysteries are you planning to unleash on me?” I said.

  Juffin was silent, drumming his fingers on the tabletop—annoying at first, yet soon it started to have a calming effect on me. Then I realized that the boss was tapping out this jagged rhythm to help me concentrate.

  “That’s more like it,” he said after a few minutes. “Now I think I will lay a few mysteries on you—some terrible, some not so. Here’s the first one. Look.”

  Juffin went over to the open window and raised his right hand. His palm began to glow with a warm light. Then he made a smooth circular motion with his hand. I didn’t dare blink, and yet I missed the moment when the warm orange glow began to fade. A few seconds later I saw that Juffin’s hand was now wearing a fedora. It was a completely ordinary gray fedora—the kind that no one here wore except for His Majesty King Gurig VIII. It was, in fact, considered to be his crown.

  “Do you recognize it? King Mynin’s Hat. You gave it to me yourself, remember?”

  “I do. But this hat was given to me by someone named Ron. I don’t understand how it could be the hat of your King Mynin, who lived Magicians know how many thousands of years ago.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. It’s only three thousand years since Mynin disappeared. There’s no two ways about it, though—it’s his hat. But let me get down to business already.”

  “Translation: Shut up.”

  “Precisely. Take the hat. Just take it—don’t try to put it on your head yet. Now listen carefully.”

  I nodded. I began feeling extremely uncomfortable, as though at any minute the boss might turn to me, smiling graciously, and say, “You know, actually, we eat people like you here. That’s why I invited you to come live with us a while. How about I go ahead and eat you right now, before Lady Tekki beats me to it? I’m sure her mouth has been watering for ages.”

  I shook my head to rid it of these uncanny thoughts and looked at Juffin in confusion. I had known for a long time that he was privy to all the follies that went on in my poor head. This time it was very awkward.

  “You don’t have to look so guilty, Max,” Juffin said. He was very serious. “It’s a good thing that these fears visit you. At any given time, the most outlandish fancy could become the only reality at your disposal, and you must take such a possibility into account, along with many others that are far worse. You must always be aware of them and still love this wonderful World and us—the mysterious strangers who surround you. Love, no matter what.”

  I nodded again. I seemed to have temporarily lost the gift of speech, but I knew very well what Juffin meant. I also realized that I truly was able to “love, no matter what.” I was still a surprise to myself sometimes.

  “Good,” Juffin said, smiling. “The lyrical digression is over. I see you’re ready for more.”

  I could only nod. Magicians be praised, this time that exercise of the neck muscles did not give rise to anomalous cognitive phenomena in my head. Apparently, I was now really ready to listen.

  “As you have already understood, we’re in big trouble. Not so much you and I as your girls—and all the others who had the misfortune to be in the path of that dratted mouse, too, of course. Since we are dealing with a creature that in its time was drafted into the service of King Mynin, we stand some chance of getting help from Mynin himself. Unlike ordinary people, the Origins bear responsibility for their actions regardless of whether they are alive or not.”

  I raised my brows. Juffin shook his head, as if to say, “Slow down, you’ll understand it all soon enough.”

  “There’s a trick known—or, rather, unknown by almost everyone these days—as Mynin’s Dream. It’s the ability to consciously and intentionally summon up in your dreams a certain dimension in which it is possible to meet up with the Shadow of any human being—whether living, dead, or lost in another Universe. That’s where I found your Shadow, by the way, when you urgently needed to acquire a new heart. It is thought that one must enter Mynin’s Dream from underground. The deeper you go before you go to sleep, the better. But on that evening, I managed to set out to meet your Shadow directly from Tekki’s room on the second floor, proving again that anything is possible when you’re up against the wall. We’re not going to do any tests today, though. There’s no need to. We have at our disposal any number of excellent dungeons. It’s funny. Long ago King Mynin discovered in some old manuscripts some allusions to a forgotten path used by the ancient sorcerers of Xonxona. He was the first to try it out and to leave a record of the results. Now you and I are going to disturb his own Shadow. I’ll bet it will turn out that we are going to be the first to try this, in turn.”

  “How can that be?” I was so surprised I found my tongue again. “Do you mean to say that this idea never occurred to a single one of your crazy Magicians?”

  “Well, I can’t be absolutely sure, but I doubt it. King Mynin’s Shadow is a mystery that protects itself. Few people nowadays even suspect the exist
ence of Shadows. Among the initiated, it is customary to consider a possible encounter with Mynin’s Shadow to be a less than pleasant prospect in the life of a wonder hunter. I personally think it’s pure superstition, but I must warn you that this time I’m not even sure myself what will come out of our undertaking. I would gladly set out to meet him alone, but I’m certain that Mynin’s Shadow would sooner agree to meet with you than with me. You and he will find a common language much more easily.”

  “Because I’m an Origin, too?” I said, my voice dropping.

  “Precisely,” Juffin said. “Also, because one of your hearts belongs to your Shadow—another reason for mutual understanding. Usually I skip the explanations before dragging people into these kinds of undertakings and rely on fortune instead. But I need your consent. Even more than your consent. You must want to see Mynin’s Dream; otherwise it won’t work. If you end up there not on your own volition but simply to keep me company, you won’t be able to act independently. And chances are you’ll need to.”

  “Well, you’re my main supplier of first-class adventure, and you know it doesn’t take long to convince me,” I said. “I mean, right this second I want to turn around and go home before it’s too late, but I’m too intrigued. I won’t be able to rest until I see this Mynin’s Dream with my own eyes. Besides, until today I didn’t dare hope that I’d ever have the chance to meet this legendary king. How can I pass it up?”

  “Not Mynin himself, only his Shadow,” Juffin said.

  “Doesn’t it come down to the same thing?”

  The boss shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘coming down to the same thing,’ but the Shadow is strikingly different from its source. The odd thing is that they also consider us to be their Shadows. To be honest, it’s not clear which of us is right.”

  “Okay, so his Shadow, then,” I said. “Anyway, who am I to turn down a mystery?”

  “Never a truer word spoken,” Juffin said. “All the better. Wait a moment, I’ll be right back.”

  He left the office, and I stared at the orange mist surrounding the streetlights outside the window. I didn’t want to contemplate the boss’s words, nor did I want to think about the symptoms of my own madness, which for some time had been whispering to me that for the sake of some promised mysteries it was worth even putting your own head in a noose. Why wrack your brains over some nonsense when you could look out the window at the myriad paving stones on the Street of Copper Pots? You could also raise your eyes and see the greenish saucer of a waning moon in an inky sky, the glow above the city, and two pale stars through a rent in the clouds. One needed to remember what this marvelous and still unknown World looked like. There was no guarantee it would be possible to return to it, and no guarantee that what returned would be me.

  “We’re off, Max. Don’t forget the hat.”

  Juffin came in so quietly that I first took his words to be my own thoughts—sudden and so very clear they seemed almost palpable. I turned around and saw a bright silhouette in the doorway. The boss looked so much like a phantom that I thought, What if it turns out that Sir Juffin Hully, the Venerable Head of the Secret Investigative Force, is my personal delusion? That would be a showstopper.

  We made our way downward for a long time. The underground levels of the Headquarters of the Ministry of Perfect Public Order seemed to go on forever. It’s completely beyond me how for three years I could have thought there was nothing down there but dreary bathrooms.

  Finally our long descent segued into a brief sprint through a dark passageway, at the end of which Juffin fumbled around with a tiny door.

  “Crawl in, Max,” he said after the door had opened with a long protesting creak. “Technically, this room belongs to the Order of the Seven-Leaf Clover, as do all the dungeons under the Xuron. A half-hour walk through the corridor would take us directly into the reception hall of Magician Nuflin himself. Long ago, however, I bargained for the right to use a large part of these underground spaces, which are extremely useful for practicing magic in your spare time, as we are going to do now. I’m almost certain that Nuflin made this door small on purpose before handing the room over to us, just so I’d have to kowtow to him. A little jest.”

  “Do you really think he’d be such a scoundrel?” I said, laughing.

  “Oh, I don’t just think so. I know it.”

  Juffin locked the door behind us, and I looked around. The room was extremely tiny. No more than sixty square feet. Here in Echo, where the smallest rooms are about the size of a school gym, this room would be too small even for a closet.

  “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” said Juffin. “Some strong people start feeling unwell in here, and it isn’t surprising. Yet this little room is the perfect place for entering Mynin’s Dream.”

  “Not to worry,” I said. “If I start feeling sick, it won’t be from the dimensions of the room.”

  “Good, then. You see the pile of blankets in the corner? Take as many as you need, and try to get comfortable.”

  “Gladly,” I said, starting to dig through a mound of thick fur pelts. “I have no idea what kind of sleep you’re preparing me for, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to stay awake.”

  “Now take off your turban,” Juffin commanded, “and put on the hat. A person who wants to enter Mynin’s Dream must have on him an object belonging to the one whose Shadow he intends to seek.”

  “And you’ve brought the Sword, right? Oh, I’ll bet you have. That tipsy elf’s timing couldn’t have been better.”

  “Elves always have an impeccable timing. That’s just the way they are. Even thousands of years on a drinking binge are powerless to change that.”

  I managed to fashion a perfect little nest from the blankets. Then I lay down, curled up in a little ball, and realized that I liked burrowing like this very much. A little room with a low ceiling, fresh air—I had no idea how the scent reached this underground space, but it smelled like a park after rain here. All of this filled me with a sense of peace and well-being.

  Juffin sat down on the ground, his back resting against the wall. I could see the pallid gleam of the Sword resting on his knees. I didn’t know when the boss had found time to clean it off and polish it, but the formerly rusty lump of iron had turned into a splendid specimen of ancient weaponry, forged from a light-greenish metal.

  “Am I supposed to do something now?” I said, donning the hat that had once belonged to Ron, the guy I had run into in a New York café.

  “No. Just close your eyes and let the slumber wash over you. Don’t worry, it will all happen of its own accord.”

  I closed my eyes. The dream pounced on me like a strangler who had been lurking in the shadows of a dark bedroom, waiting for his victim.

  At a certain moment it seemed to me that I woke up. I was no longer lying on the heap of soft fur blankets. I was sitting with my legs crossed on the threshold of an enormous dark room, as though expecting the next meeting with the official delegation of my subjects. I stared around the room for a few seconds, trying to make out where exactly I was and what was going on. Little by little I remembered the circumstances that had preceded my awakening.

  “Juffin, are you here?” I called out in fright.

  Not completely, the boss said in Silent Speech. I’m already in, but you’re still on the threshold. So we’re in different places.

  But why— I began, but Juffin didn’t let me finish.

  It will be easier for us to talk if you come into the room. Stand up and take a step forward. According to the laws of this place, you must come in yourself, voluntarily. And you’re still not able to make up your mind what you want—to see Mynin’s Dream or just to have a good long sleep. That’s why you’re on the threshold. Come on, then, step inside.

  I stood up and took a step forward. I have to admit I was completely unprepared for such strong resistance. Actually, I wasn’t prepared for any problems at all. I thought that in this dream everything would be as easy and simple a
s it had been in the past—boom, and you’re there. But this was not the case. Far from it.

  An invisible wall grew between the dark room and me. I was stuck in a thick substance, like warm jelly. I couldn’t move forward or back. I desperately wanted to call out to Juffin, but I had no access to speech at all—either ordinary or Silent. I thought of the dead insects that show up sometimes in amber. I seemed to be in the same kind of mess.

  I wasn’t afraid. What I felt was more like anger—my own helplessness always infuriates me. A part of me lurched forward with such an effort that it seemed my body was a plane on fire and I was trying to escape. Whether with a parachute, or without, was the last thing that mattered.

  “Got stuck, huh?” Juffin said. He caught me just before my nose hit the floor. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That happens here. Especially to those who waver. Indecisiveness isn’t a luxury you can afford here. But you entered, that’s the important thing.”

  I took a deep breath and looked around. The huge room wasn’t dark, as it had seemed to me on the threshold. It was fairly bright. I couldn’t focus my eyes enough, though, to make out the details of the interior. They looked like melting pools of color, as though I were nearsighted and had forgotten my eyeglasses.

  “I can’t see very well,” I said. “Is that normal?”

  “Yes, it’s normal,” Juffin said, nodding. “You see me, don’t you?”

  “You I can see,” I said, surprised.

  “That’s because I don’t belong to this place, just like you. It’s a good sign that you can make out something, at least. When I was here for the first time, I could only see a colored mist in front of my eyes. In time you learn to see here. Now I can see almost as well as I usually do.”

  “What kind of room is this?” I said. “Is it just the apartment of one of the Shadows? Or a meeting room for tiresome visitors so they don’t wander through your whole house?”