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

  “An old friend of yours?”

  “Prince Ayonxa Rotri Shimaro, one of the grandees of the County Shimara. He’s a great fellow—you’re going to like him. His younger brother is also okay, but a bit too fierce for my taste. Prince Ayonxa, on the other hand, is a kind soul and very casual. He also owes me one.”

  “When our Melifaro had just started his career in the Minor Investigative Force, he managed to pull Prince Shimaro out of a nasty situation,” said Juffin. “One of the prince’s acquaintances here in Echo was very fond of murder using Forbidden Magic. He liked to think he was avenging some relative who had died in the Battle for the Code. He was smart enough to blame poor Ayonxa, who had just arrived in the Capital for reasons unknown. The prince was looking at doing life in Xolomi. Boy, that was some scandal! His younger brother, Prince Jiffa, turned to me for help. Let me tell you something: on first sight, Jiffa is the one who looks older, yet he is, indeed, the younger one—almost two years younger. Then again, he has been looking after his careless older brother since childhood. Back to the story, though. The esteemed grandee Prince Jiffa had rushed to the Capital incognito, like a simple merchant, and headed straight to me, saying, ‘Help me, Sir Venerable Head! Reopen the investigation. We’re fellow countrymen, after all.’ I was swamped with work at the time—I had to sleep and eat on my feet—so I offloaded it all onto Sir Melifaro, without much hope, I must say. Poor boy was absolutely discombobulated and had no idea which end to begin from. Imagine my surprise when he brought to me the real murderer the next morning!”

  “And then you finally realized how lucky you were to have me in your service,” said Melifaro.

  “May I suggest that we continue to reminisce about the inimitable exploits of the Ninth Volume of Sir Manga Melifaro’s Encyclopedia at the foot of my throne,” I said, putting an empty mug on the desk. “Let’s go, guys. My subjects have been crying and whining there for half an hour already. Soon the ambassadors will join in.”

  “You’re just jealous and bitter,” said Melifaro, laughing. “You hear words of praise, but they’re not for you. How sad.”

  “Have I been praising anyone?” said Juffin. “Okay, let’s go, or Sir Max’s subjects will indeed start crying. I never thought you’d make such a caring monarch.”

  For what it’s worth, ten minutes later the three of us did manage to get outside. Anday Pu was snoozing on the back seat of the company amobiler. The guy deserved a medal for patience.

  “It seems you have brought the press along,” said Juffin.

  “You know how vain I am. Can’t sneeze without my personal biographer knowing about it.” I switched to Silent Speech: Don’t worry. I’m not inviting him on the trip down Xumgat.

  That would have been something.

  The boss smiled a conspiratorial smile and sat down next to me.

  “Move over, Sir Royal Voice. A hole in the heavens above you, buddy. There’s sure a lot of you,” said Melifaro, trying to squeeze in.

  Anday wasn’t so fat as to take up the entire back seat, but he was shameless enough to place his sizable body right in the middle of it.

  “Please don’t push me, Sir Melifaro,” said the descendant of Ukumbian pirates in the tone of the Queen Mother visiting a seaport tavern for the first time in her life.

  “The way I see it, the Refuge for the Mad is a much more boring place than our organization,” I said, as though reporting my findings from the previous evening.

  I grabbed the lever, and we set off to my royal residence. How on earth did I end up being the protagonist of a geopolitical intrigue unleashed by His Sly Majesty? I thought. Not that there was much to think with.

  “Look, Juffin,” I said. “What is it exactly that I’m supposed to do there? I mean, are there some rules I should play by?”

  “Just remember your amusing ruler Caligula and stick to his agenda,” said Melifaro.

  “Thanks for the advice. The first thing I’m going to do is introduce capital punishment for bad jokes,” I said. “So, what about the rules, Juffin? Care to enlighten me?”

  “Well, if there are any rules, only the wisest elders of your poor people will know them. Unfortunately, I don’t have the pleasure of belonging to that particular level of high society. So you can improvise and do whatever you see fit. The foreign ambassadors have no clue, the grandees from the provinces will think that’s just how it’s done in the Barren Lands, and your subjects will think you’ve already picked up our ‘barbaric customs.’ And I don’t think they’re going to get friendly enough to try to help you out into the clear.”

  “I guess I’m in luck then,” I said. “Okay, I’ll improvise.”

  “Attaboy,” said Melifaro.

  I had the hardest time finding a place to park the amobiler and finally parked a whole block away from the Furry House. The sidewalks were crowded with my subjects’ antlered steeds, decorated with bric-a-brac. The rest of the street was packed with the amobilers of other visitors.

  “Looks like they thought we’d arrive on foot,” said Juffin, hopping down to the mosaic sidewalk.

  My friend Anday Pu followed us. His habitual brazen impudence had vanished. The poor thing was confused. He looked at me, beseeching, and was about to grab the folds of my Mantle of Death for moral support.

  “Stand by, fellow,” I said to him. “I’m a king now and have the right to a personal scribe or any other such whim.”

  “Here we go,” said Juffin, and I thrust open the front door of my residence.

  The expression on my face morphed into the smile of a hallucinating imbecile: my mind refused to acknowledge the reality of what was going on. Perhaps it was all for the better.

  After this momentary and slight lapse of reason, I found myself standing on the threshold of the Grand Reception Hall, formerly the reading hall. The enormous room was filled with people. I tried to find at least one familiar face in the crowd, but all the faces seemed to merge into a single undifferentiated blob. Could it have been panic?

  “Can you see where my colleagues are?” I whispered to my “scribe.” He nodded. “Good. Go and join them. If you stick close to Sir Melifaro, you won’t even get bored.”

  “I catch!” said Anday, and he disappeared into the crowd somewhere to my right.

  I turned my head in the direction he had gone but didn’t see either Melifaro or Juffin. What the heck? I looked around and couldn’t see anything resembling a throne. Then again, a king that couldn’t find the throne in his own palace—exactly the kind of moronic joke that I was known for. I stopped panicking, and my mood improved. I can sit wherever I want to, I thought to myself. Even in the doorway. I’m the boss here.

  Then I flung my arms into the air like some impostor prophet about to bestow on an ungrateful humanity his own complete and unabridged collected interpretations of “divine will.”

  “Words cannot convey the ecstasy I feel at meeting all of you here. I am overcome,” I said and sat down in the doorway cross-legged. A murmur of amazement rolled around the hall, so I felt I had to explain my eccentric behavior. “My place will always be here, for the place of a sovereign is always on the threshold between the people and the heavens, separating one from the other and guarding them from each other.”

  It seemed to me that my first solo number was a success, and it was only good manners that prevented the crowd from applauding me. But no one seemed to breathe.

  For a moment, nothing happened. I even began to get annoyed at the sluggishness of my subjects, but then I realized that the poor souls were simply waiting for my command.

  “You may approach now and do what must be done,” I said.

  Turmoil broke out in the middle of the hall. I waited. Most likely there was a throne after all, smack-dab in the middle of the opposite end of the enormous room. All the participants in the ceremony had already taken their places at the foot of the throne and were now forced to relocate.

  Now my subjects headed toward me at a solemn pace—perhaps not a particularly m
ajestic sight but passable. Ever since I’d taught them to wear their headbands à la pirates, they looked almost handsome. There were several dozen of these “beach boys,” in wide kneelength Bermudas and short soft boots, with huge bags slung over their shoulders.

  After approaching me, the fellows gave me a low bow but didn’t drop to their knees, praise be the Magicians. Apparently my lecture on the detrimental effect of genuflection had had a positive effect on them.

  The procession was led by a robust middle-aged man. His beautiful muscular body was very close to that of a bodybuilder. I’d be willing to bet, though, that this guy could kick the living daylights out of any bodybuilder in the first round: unlike them, he had been gaining his muscle mass in a natural environment—not to show off his muscles on the beach but out of sheer necessity.

  “Will you allow me to speak my name, Fanghaxra?” this giant said, his voice trembling with anxiety. I was happy. Huge fellows like him had never before spoken to me in a trembling voice.

  “I will,” I intoned in the manner of a man who was willing to forgo his principles in the name of the betterment of mankind.

  “I am Barxa Bachoy. I have been riding at the head of the warriors of the Xenxa people for forty-three years now.”

  Oh, so that’s the name of this people, I thought. Shame on you, mister, for not bothering to learn it in all this time. That’s an F, sir. See me after class.

  Barxa Bachoy continued his speech. “Until today, I have been responsible for your people before the heavens, O Fanghaxra, but the heavens have been reluctant to take heed of my voice. Today I ask you to relieve me of this burden.”

  “Cool,” I said. “It’s a deal. From now on, everything’s going to change. I’m going to take the responsibility for my people before the heavens, and you’ll only be responsible for them before me. I promise you that, unlike the heavens, I’m going to take heed of your voice from time to time.”

  Barxa Bachoy looked as though some inner light had flared up inside him. He was amazed, filled with gratitude. He mumbled something awkward and touching. I think he still didn’t understand that nothing had really had changed for him. All his responsibilities still stayed with him. Well, perhaps I relieved him of the need to pursue his fruitless attempts to contact the deaf and dumb heavens.

  My new acquaintance, whom I now mentally referred to as the General, stepped aside and gave way to a short, lean old man. He had in his sinewy arms, it seemed, as much power as the muscled biceps that rolled back and forth underneath the tanned skin of the war chief. The grandpa deserves special mention. Something in his stature reminded me of the powerful Magicians of the forbidden Orders of the past epoch. My wise second heart knew very well that the old man could have become just as dangerous and powerful if his life had taken a slightly different turn.

  “I greet you, Fanghaxra,” said the old man. “I am Fairiba, and wisdom condescends to me sometimes. I have come to call you by your True Name. When its sounds reach your heart, the curse that has followed your people since the day we lost you will be lifted. Ask your venerable guests not to hold a grudge against me for not opening my mouth while pronouncing your name: a king’s True Name cannot be pronounced out loud, for it would be against the wishes of the heavens.”

  “I knew not that my people could use Silent Speech,” I said.

  “Indeed. Your people do not practice such dangerous magic,” said the stern old man. “But I have enough power to reveal to you your True Name.”

  Frankly, I didn’t doubt for a second that this Fairiba could do that and then some. The old man untied the leather straps of his travel bag and shook out its content in front of me. To my surprise, it was just a pile of soil, as though he had decided to do some gardening in my reception hall. Great, I thought. As soon as you get your own palace, this has to happen.

  “Our customs demand that the kings of the Xenxa people learn their True Names while standing on their native soil,” said Fairiba. “The powerful King of the Unified Kingdom instructed us not to ask you to come with us, for you have responsibilities to him. I ask not the reason. Your people hold secrets sacred. That is why I have brought the soil of your steppes with me. I beg you to step onto it, Fanghaxra.”

  I got up. Fairiba’s request seemed most timely: my legs had begun to grow numb from sitting. For a split second, I was worried that they’d ask me to take off my boots, which would be a tiresome ordeal, but my fears were groundless.

  The old man produced from his bosom a small pouch. Out of the pouch he took a small box, and out of the box an even smaller bottle. For some reason, it occurred to me that Fairiba was about to release a genie, wild from millennia of solitude, but that was not what happened.

  “Give me your hand, Fanghaxra,” said the old man.

  I stretched out my left hand. I don’t know why I stretched out my left hand and not my right. Maybe because I used my left hand for most of the magic “tricks” I had learned so far.

  “It is a sign from the heavens, Fanghaxra!” Fairiba whispered, his voice trembling. “For generations, all Xenxa kings have accepted their names with their right hand. But there lived a sovereign in the days of yore who, as you just did, proffered his left hand to his shaman. He was Droxmor Modillax, who subdued half the lands surrounded by oceans and then disappeared. You will be the greatest of our kings, O Fanghaxra!”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  Fairiba would be in for a deep disappointment. I was planning to abdicate in a couple of years and annex my Barren Lands to the lands of His Majesty Gurig VIII. No “subduing” in my plans, I’m afraid, but “disappearing” is another matter altogether, I thought. I can do that in my sleep, pardon the pun. Maybe this will comfort them somewhat?

  The old man opened the bottle and poured onto my palm a few drops of clear liquid. “This water is from the sacred spring of the Lands of Fanghaxra,” he said.

  He then took out a thin greenish plate from the box. I couldn’t determine what sort of material it was made from. Fairiba carefully lowered the plate onto my hand, which was still wet from the sacred water. I thought the smooth plate would slip and fall on the floor, so I clenched my hand.

  To my astonishment, the plate felt so cold it burned, like a piece of dry ice from an ice cream vendor. I opened my hand and saw that the plate was gone, and that my left palm was completely smooth: no life line, no fate line, no heart line, no Mercury line (as they were called in a palmistry brochure I had once flipped through). Palmistry aside, this metamorphosis freaked me out big time.

  A pictogram began to emerge on the smooth skin of my left palm. I had never seen anything resembling this alphabet in my life. A “simultaneous translation” began sounding in my head, albeit with a slight lag: Ayot Mu-o Limli Niixor, the Sovereign of Fanghaxra.

  Fairiba’s Silent Speech almost trailed away halfway through, but he stoically went on with it all the way. I could sense that each word required an enormous amount of stamina on his part. I had once gone through the same pain while teaching myself Silent Speech, but my marvelous mentor Sir Juffin Hully—and the power that merely residing in Echo, the magic Heart of the World, bestowed on me—had both been working in my favor.

  I found my “True Name” to be a tad on the long side. I had doubts that I’d remember this sumptuous abracadabra even after it had been imprinted on my palm for all eternity, but I decided not to insult my subjects with an untimely suggestion to shorten my precious True Name to at least half the size.

  “It is done!” said the old man.

  “It is done!” his company echoed.

  “It is, isn’t it?” I said and sat down in the doorway again. “So how’s that old curse doing now? Lifted yet?”

  The nomads didn’t say a word, but their eyes radiated pure joy and their stern faces assumed a serene expression. From that, I concluded that the curse had indeed been lifted for good—strange, considering I had never been the real Fanghaxra, all the mystical gibberish on my palms notwithstanding.

 
Meanwhile, the ceremony had reached a lull: everyone was waiting for my commands and I had no idea what to occupy them with. For starters, I decided to wrap up the part where I deal with my longsuffering people: “As you know, business forces me to stay here in Echo. I am happy that Fairiba and Barxa will be with you.”

  I looked at my newly appointed deputies. They stood with arms akimbo, seeming almost taller now. Their companions also looked happy: despite fears to the contrary, the new boss had confirmed the supreme status of his predecessors—everyone do a jig! Good, good. Hooray for the wise me.

  “I want you to make these people happy,” I said to my chosen ones. “If you encounter an obstacle while doing so, do not hesitate to inform me by sending a messenger, since you are averse to Silent Speech. I promise to answer you promptly. How long does a good rider need to reach Echo from the Barren Lands?”

  “Forty days, if misfortunes do not follow him on his way,” said Barxa Bachoy.

  “Not too bad,” I said. I was happy. It seemed that I wouldn’t be burdened by my royal obligations too often.

  “We have brought gifts for you, Lord Fanghaxra,” said Fairiba. “Our customs demand that we give them to you alone, but if you wish to share your joy with your guests, I dare not impede.”

  “No need to break the customs. Alone it will be. That makes it even more interesting. But now I need to be with my guests. Take my gifts to the archive: it’s a large room to the right down the hallway. Tell my servants to show you the way and bring you some food and refreshments. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  The nomads picked up their bags and were off. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a good dozen servants following them. The generosity of His Majesty King Gurig, who had lent me this band of loafers, knew no bounds, and his notion about my needs was in acute conflict with reality.

  Today, however, it was all for the better. I was happy with my own idea of sending my exalted subjects away to another room, giving them their own “children’s table” with cookies and candy so they didn’t get under the feet of the “grown-ups”—the grandees of the provinces of the Unified Kingdom and foreign ambassadors. I suspected that it wouldn’t be easy for them to find common ground and interact with one another. Besides, I doubted that I myself would find much common ground with these important gentlemen—but then again, there wasn’t much I could do about that.