The Stranger's Magic: The Labyrinths of Echo: Book Three Read online

  “I believe you are correct,” said Lonli-Lokli, nodding. “It is unfortunate that I will not be able to take part in the search. The timing could not have been worse.”

  “Very true,” said Juffin. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now. Do you want to stay here? I’d rather you stayed here, although, frankly speaking, you’d be much more comfortable in Xolomi.”

  “Naturally, I shall stay here. Comfort is not the topmost priority at the moment. The small room in your office where we used to keep prisoners is exactly what I need now. It is as isolated from the world as Xolomi is. At the very least, I shall be nearby and you will be able to observe me safely. In addition, I may perhaps bring some benefit without even leaving these premises.”

  I glanced in perplexity first at Juffin, then at Lonli-Lokli. Shurf noticed my confusion and raised the corners of his mouth in a sympathetic smile. “This Rider might straddle me yet again,” he said in a soft voice. “I gave Sir Juffin my gloves, but I am quite a capable Magician even without them. You know, as far as I understand, he feels something akin to personal hatred toward you. I had to be subject to his emotions, so I can assure you that his attempt on your life was born of a passionate desire to kill you, not a necessity. If that creature was afraid of your telling Sir Juffin about my problems, he would have made me silent from the outset: he is powerful enough to do that. When he comes, I have nothing to counter him with—a disgusting feeling. For this reason, I will have to be locked up for the time being—at least until you and Juffin are done with this creature that has straddled me. You know, you were not the only one walking on the edge today. I still cannot fathom the magnanimity you must have had not to spit your venom at me. You had more than one opportunity to do so.”

  “Nah, it’s not magnanimity,” I said, embarrassed. “To demonstrate magnanimity, I’d have needed a little time for consideration, and there wasn’t any time. No time to decide to spit or not to spit. I just didn’t. Why? Magicians only know. Maybe because I was sure that it wouldn’t work on you. I thought that the only right thing to do would be to do something completely unexpected, something I’d never done before, something you’d have no idea I’d be capable of doing. Actually, now, in retrospect, it’s hard for me to reconstruct how my logic worked back then. Chances are I didn’t use any logic at all.”

  “Allow me to assure you that I had no ready-made antidotes to your poison. I am a living human being, and I would have died from your spit just as any other person would, provided I had not been able to shield myself with my protective glove. The creature that possessed me had no particular reason to value my life. Had I died, my Rider would have found another ‘horse’ for the joint descent to Xumgat. I believe he has enough of them in his ‘stables.’ I just wanted you to know that you stood a very good chance of finishing me off.”

  “Good golly!” I said. “It would’ve been almost as bad as your finishing me off. Or worse?”

  “There is nothing worse than your own death, for when it arrives, everything else collapses. Other events may only destroy a part of your personal universe,” said Lonli-Lokli in a didactic tone. He thought for a moment and then added, “Although sometimes even this part may seem disproportionately large. Then, when that part collapses, it takes everything along with it.”

  “It happens,” said Juffin. He looked like someone who knew what he was talking about. “Very well now. I hope you won’t have time to get bored in your voluntary incarceration, Sir Shurf. I doubt your Rider will appear in my presence. If he does, he’ll regret it. I’m going to let you out from time to time for exemplary behavior. I’d suggest that you refrain from sleeping for the time being, though.”

  “I think I should, too,” said Lonli-Lokli. “I will easily manage to stay awake if you disarm my Rider in three to four days’ time. If not—well, you will have to resort to minor violations of the Code of Krember, just like the good old days.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Juffin. “We won’t have to take it to court. That, I promise.”

  “I have never doubted it, even for a second,” said Shurf. “Every cloud has a silver lining: I have quite a few books in my office I have been meaning to read.”

  “Very well then. Consider this adventure an extended vacation. You can start right now because Sir Max and I need to go to the Refuge for the Mad.”

  “You think we’re that bad?” I said, smiling.

  “Even worse: no one can help us,” said Juffin, “so we won’t stay there long. We’ll just visit our fellow comrades in distress and try to find out what sorts of dreams they dream. And that will be it. Now be a good sport and bring Shurf’s books to him. I don’t want to look into the face of some scared courier.”

  “Aw, Juffin,” I said, shaking my head. “You could’ve come up with a more convoluted pretext for kicking me out of your office. If you and Shurf need to talk secret stuff behind my back, you could have used Silent Speech.”

  “How insightful,” said Juffin. “Look at the kid: he’s a regular genius! ‘Secrets.’ What secrets? I just wanted to make you run up and down the hallway so you don’t feel like you’re a great hero and a poor victim all at once.”

  “Right,” I said, walking out of the office.

  Whatever Juffin was saying, my wise other heart was positive that they were going to talk secrets. The boss reeked of mystery, and I could smell it a mile away. But I was magnanimous enough to leave the two of them alone. It would be tactless of me, in any case, to gallop up and down the hallway and return a minute later. I decided to give them enough time to talk all the secrets they wanted.

  Slowly, very slowly, two-steps-forward-one-step-back slowly, I crossed the Hall of Common Labor, walked backward down the hallway, and went into Lonli-Lokli’s spacious office. I picked a stack of books from the white bookshelf over his desk and smiled an involuntary, bewildered smile when I remembered Shurf’s recent grumbling about The Pendulum of Immortality, which I had put in the wrong place. The guy was probably my best friend: after all, we even dreamed the same dreams—well, some of the same dreams, anyway.

  Funny. I hadn’t thought anything of that sort before he tried to kill me.

  I returned and put the books on the desk in front of Shurf. He stared at them, thinking.

  “Perhaps this will be enough for a while. But not for long. May I ask you, gentlemen, to bring something else from my office?”

  “Sure,” said Juffin, nodding. “By the way, the old university library has accidentally come into the possession of this soon-to-becrowned monarch of Fanghaxra. He inherited it along with his residence.”

  “Hey! That’s true,” I said, remembering. “You can make a list, and I’ll dig through the books tomorrow. Then the next day I’ll—”

  “Dream on,” said Juffin. “Tomorrow you’re meeting your subjects, and then it’s your official coronation. Have you already forgotten?”

  “Gosh, I did forget. All right, I’ll rummage through the books right after the coronation. It’ll save me a trip to that blasted palace, anyway.”

  “Will you listen to him?” said Juffin. “‘That blasted palace.’ Any normal person would be thrilled to live in that luxurious place and wouldn’t come out for years.”

  “Well, you know me,” I said. “I love a cold yurt at the outskirts of the Barren Lands, a hard wooden barstool in the Armstrong & Ella, or, if worse comes to worst, the armchair in this office. Luxury items only overload my impoverished intellect.”

  “Then I hope you’re going to love the simple interiors of the Refuge for the Mad,” said Juffin. “Sir Shurf, you’re under arrest, so off you go to the cell. And if your Rider pops his head in, try to follow my advice. Will you be able to sense the right moment?”

  “I have reason to believe that I might be able to accomplish this task,” said Lonli-Lokli.

  He walked over to the farthest wall of our office, to the Secret Entrance to our “detention cell.” The cell was just as good as Xolomi: you couldn’t leave, y
ou couldn’t perform magic, and you couldn’t even send a call to anyone from it. On the upside, however, you could easily hide from someone else’s magic in it. Juffin had built this magic room at the dawn of the Code Epoch, right in the very beginning of his present job. A regular prison cell, you understand, couldn’t keep even a minor Magician of some worthless Order, and back then the Secret Investigative Force had to deal with much more serious clients on a daily basis.

  For as long as I could remember, the detention cell had mostly stood empty. Only once did we have to lock up the dead-but-quick Jiffa Savanxa from the Magaxon Forest there. Even so, as it had turned out, we should’ve known better.

  “Precisely,” said Juffin to Shurf as he locked the Secret Door. “I, too, believe that you are capable of accomplishing this task.”

  “Okay, so we’ve arrested Lonli-Lokli. Now we can head to the Refuge for the Mad,” I said. “Boy, are we having fun!”

  “I’m liking it, too,” said Juffin. “Let’s go, Sir Max.”

  “Where to?” I said as I was getting behind the lever of the amobiler.

  “First to the New City through the Gates of Three Bridges, then straight down parallel to the Xuron. I’ll show you the way when we reach the outskirts.”

  “It’s a bit far,” I said.

  “With you behind the lever, the distance doesn’t matter.” Juffin was unusually generous with his compliments, but he soon composed himself and added the proverbial fly to the ointment: “Just try not to get us into some silly fatal accident, or instead of doing time, poor Shurf will do life.”

  “Yeah, I guess the sentence for attempted murder would be too long for Shurf. Well, instead of scaring me, why don’t you tell me what we’re going to do in the Refuge for the Mad? Or is that another one of your secrets?”

  “No, rather a review session for poor students such as yourself. Do you remember what I taught you about finding out about the past of things?”

  “Do I? I’m a good learner and almost an A student. How can I forget the very basics of your lectures? You probably won’t believe me, but I even practice on occasion.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t think you’ve had much time for practicing lately,” said Juffin. “But maybe it’s all for the better and you’ll be able to help me tonight. That would be mighty fine.”

  “Are we going to interrogate furniture again?”

  “No, not furniture. My latest lecture on this fascinating topic explains that people can be treated much the same as any inanimate object. The only difference is that an object will tell us about the events that occurred in its surroundings and a person will divulge information about himself. Sometimes he will even reveal things he didn’t know he knew. Granted, it’s much more difficult to work with people, and sometimes this kind of sorcery will only work on a sleeping person. We’re in luck, though. It’s close to midnight, and soon most of our potential witnesses will be sleeping like logs. The others will also be sleeping, in fact, just not quite like logs. Not much we can do about that.”

  I broke into an involuntary smile. “So that’s why you had me sleep at your place after each dangerous adventure. And then the next morning, you looked all important and told me you were tired as all get-out and that it was ‘all clear to you now.’”

  “Did you think I was just crazy about your snoring? Don’t try to play the fool, mister. You knew it all along; you just didn’t bother to admit it to yourself. Am I right, or am I right?”

  “I suppose so,” I said, sighing. “You know best. You’re the world’s greatest expert in the science of knowing me.”

  “True, that. Now take a right. We’re almost there.”

  About two minutes later I stopped the amobiler by a low decorative fence. Until now, I had thought that the Refuge for the Mad would be guarded as securely as the famous Nunda Royal Prison of Hard Labor in Gugland. It turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong; even the gate wasn’t locked. Of course, it didn’t really matter: a fence like that could only stop someone who preferred crawling around on his stomach.

  We left the amobiler by the gate, crossed a grand but very neglected garden, and finally arrived at our destination. Two large windows glowed with a cozy orange light in the middle of the garden, among the thick branches of trees.

  “Pick up the pace, Max. They’re waiting for us,” said Juffin, rushing toward the light like a giant moth.

  “How come there’s no security?” I said. “Don’t tell me it’s just one of the things that ‘aren’t done.’”

  The boss’s eyebrows flew up. “Of course it isn’t done. Why? Who would ever think of attacking these poor fellows?”

  “I mean the other way around,” I said. “You need the security to keep the loonies in.”

  “Why would they not want to stay in? They are treated well here—better than in other places, anyway. Our wisemen can ease any torments of the soul. They have even returned many of the inhabitants of this place back to their normal lives. Hold on a minute, Max. Are you saying locking them in is one of the pleasant little customs of your homeland?”

  “It is. Did you get a chance to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? I highly recommend it. Very educational. It makes the habits of your legendary villain Loiso Pondoxo look like child’s play.”

  I noticed that I was trembling in helpless fury, as though I was the one being tortured and not the defiant brawler Mc Murphy. Talk about the magic of cinema.

  “Don’t overdo it,” said the boss. “We’ve come to see a wiseman. He’s a scholar. He’ll suspect something as soon as he sees you like this. You’ll end up with an extraordinary vacation and I with a boatload of troubles. Do me a favor, Sir Max—get a grip on yourself.”

  I reined in my righteous fury, took a deep breath, and said in a very different tone, “Actually, locking up the loonies isn’t a form of mindless torture. It’s a necessity. You saw one of my crazy fellow countrymen yourself. Remember how happy he was slitting the throats of those poor women? What would you do with a guy like that? Give him pills and walk him through the garden?”

  “Well, I doubt that even our wisemen would’ve been able to cure that guy,” said Juffin. “But at the very least, they would have given him the Crystal of Submission. That would have done the trick.”

  “That easy?”

  “Sure. Piece of cake. If you don’t believe it, here’s your last chance. Starting tomorrow, you’re going to be treated like royalty. And you know what they call crazy kings—eccentrics. No one will say a word, even if they start dancing naked on the market square. All hail Your Majesty!”

  The boss gave me a mocking bow—Sir Melifaro himself would have died of envy—and opened a heavy, ancient door.

  The cozy windows we had seen from afar were on the second floor. We ascended a wide staircase covered with a very soft carpet, in case, I guess, one of the crazy inhabitants of this hospitable house decided to count the stairs with his own lower jaw.

  “Good night, Sir Hully. I see you as though in a waking dream, Sir Max. The Refuge is honored by your visit. I am happy to say my name: Slobat Katshak, Master Keeper of the Peace of Mind, or Chief Nocturnal Wiseman, to put it simply,” said a delicate young man in a light-turquoise looxi.

  “Also, the former Junior Magician of the Order of Spiky Berries,” said Juffin. “And as much of a night owl as you are, Max.”

  The little wiseman was about to burst from his enormous hospitality. “Be my guests, gentlemen. My heart will be broken into a million pieces if you decline this humble meal.”

  “Secret Investigators turning down free food?” said Juffin. “Rest assured, Slobat, Sir Max and I will not leave as much as a crumb of bread on our plates.”

  Calling it a “humble meal” was, of course, an understatement. The table was densely populated with all manner of trays with food. Still, all Juffin’s Rabelaisian bravado notwithstanding, the meal didn’t take more than a quarter of an hour: the boss was eager to get down to business.

  “Slobat, Sir Max a
nd I must inspect the rooms of the charges in your care,” he said. “Perhaps we will need your help, but perhaps not. I think you should come with us and wait in the hallway. This is a classified affair. I am sorry. I know this is not the most entertaining way to spend the night. I guess tonight isn’t your lucky night.”

  “Not the most difficult or unpleasant undertaking, either,” said the wiseman. “Where would you like to start?”

  “From the most hopeless cases, those whose spirits roam the Universe like waifs and strays during the Troubled Times.”

  “Sinning Magicians,” I said, getting up from the table. “You’re a poet, Juffin.”

  “Nothing to brag about. The premises dispose one to it.”

  We had to leave the house and walk toward the middle of the garden. Finally, we reached a relatively small one-story building.

  “This is the final abode of those who have no hope of ever finding their light half,” said the wiseman. “You may inspect the bedrooms. I’ll wait outside, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not only do we not mind, we insist,” said Juffin, smiling.

  We entered a dark hallway. In an effort to economize, the administration of the Refuge hadn’t bothered to put up a lamp or even a candle here. This wasn’t a problem: I had long ago learned to find my way in darkness, and Juffin, like any other inhabitant of the Unified Kingdom, had had this ability since birth.

  “What do I do?” I said in a whisper. “How do I take part in your ‘medical exam’? I’ve never tried it on people before, you know.”

  “For starters, just watch me. Maybe you’ll figure it out on your own. Or maybe we won’t have to do anything at all. There’s no guarantee that we’ll find what we’re looking for here. Praise be the Magicians, I only need to enter a bedroom to see if its occupant holds any interest for us.”

  “By the way, why here? Is this Refuge for the Mad special?”