The Stranger (33 page)
Authors: Max Frei,Polly Gannon
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Horror, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Epic
My guest began to grimace. He wore the expression of a person who has been wandering around for the last twenty-four hours with a mouthful of vinegar and unripe persimmon. The ancient fellow grew quite upset—and at that very moment the little green apple became a person again. And the person acquired the ability to act. He gave his left hand a good shake—a single deft motion was all it took. In the middle of the prison cell stood Sir Lonli-Lokli.
“You brought Thumbkins!” Maxlilgl cried with indignation.
It was as if we had agreed on the rules of battle beforehand, and I had breached the hypothetical contract.
“You’re not Perset!” the ghost added vehemently. Evidently, he was still hoping that I would feel ashamed of my behavior and stuff Sir Shurf back in the closet. I think Sir Annox had become considerably softer over the past years of associating only with defenseless, frightened inmates.
“Don’t ‘Perset’ me!” I growled.
The ghost’s confusion was palpable. Sir Shurf needed time to peel off his protective gloves, covered with runes. While the dead Magician and I were squaring off, Lonli-Lokli managed to carry out the necessary preparations. The brilliant light from his death-dealing hands illuminated the cell walls, and life seemed all of a sudden to be a devilishly simple and precious matter. A story with an untold number of happy endings—take your pick.
I didn’t even suspect that my chances for staying alive were still approaching zero.
It was my own fault, of course. I had never had to deal with retired Grand Magicians. I foolishly assumed that there was no hurry in killing him. My vanity demanded that I deliver this mistake of nature to the House by the Bridge and drop it screaming and kicking at Sir Juffin’s feet. How I was going to capture a ghost I had no idea. But then again, I had had a miserable, third-rate education. I didn’t have classes in the foundations of metaphysics, either in high school—which I got through on a wing and prayer—or in college, from which I was unceremoniously expelled. I shared my half-baked thoughts on the matter with my colleague—but Sir Shurf is the most disciplined creature in the universe. As he saw it, I was the leader of the operation. Consequently, my orders had to be summarily carried out. Even the most half-baked ones.
Lonli-Lokli’s paralyzing right hand did not achieve the desired effect. Instead of freezing submissively to the spot, the ghost began to increase in size, threatening to assume gigantic proportions. At the same time, he became increasingly transparent. It all happened so quickly that within the fraction of a second his indistinct head was hovering somewhere up near the ceiling.
“Stupid Thumbkins!” Maxlilgl Annox screeched. “He knows not how to kill! Begone, Thumbkins!”
And without paying any more heed to Lonli-Lokli, the thick mist, which by now had almost lost its human form, lunged at me. It managed to touch me—a cold, damp, sticky pudding—that’s what it felt like. The touch left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, for some reason, and the cold pain that shot through my body was such that I still can’t imagine how I survived it.
I didn’t even lose consciousness. Instead, I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“Liquidate him!”
Sinning Magicians! Where was my head?
As though from a great distance, I watched Lonli-Lokli join his remarkable hands together and cross his forefingers. This promising gesture had no visible consequences, though. Another tormenting second passed. I didn’t understand a thing. Why didn’t Shurf kill him? The human pudding was already thickening around me.
And then another improbable thing happened. It was like the icing on the cake of this bewitched night. The shining fingers of Lonli-Lokli drew the outline of a wondrous curve in the darkness, and a waterfall came crashing down on us. Tons of cold water swallowed up the transparent silhouette. I still didn’t understand what was happening, but I turned my face to the refreshing streams of water. A good wash was surprisingly welcome right then.
Our opponent, however, turned out to have a very tenacious vitality. Of course, the water wasn’t able to do serious harm to him, although it did engender another metamorphosis. After his bath, the ghost began shrinking at an alarming rate. As huge and transparent as he had just been, he now became tiny and dense.
My insights into astronomy are catastrophically limited. I don’t even know what super-dense heavenly bodies are called. That they are “dwarves” I know for certain. But whether they’re “white,” or “black” I have no clue. Our dwarf was, in any case, white, a miniscule homunculus, shining with the same blinding whiteness as Lonli-Lokli’s hands reaching out for him. In spite of his miniature stature, he looked very threatening.
“You were mistaken, Sir Max,” my imposing partner remarked evenly. “Water can’t harm him.”
“I, mistaken?! Wherever did you get the idea that water would do the trick?!”
“But you yourself told me to liquify him!”
“Sinning Magicians, Shurf!
Liquidate
, not liquify! It means to kill! And the sooner the bet—”
Liquidate
, not liquify! It means to kill! And the sooner the bet—”
I broke off in mid-sentence. Suddenly I couldn’t go on. I wasn’t up to talking anymore. The tiny creature glittered in the air, very close to my face. It was muttering something. The bastard’s putting a spell on me, I thought indifferently. I didn’t have the strength to resist him . . .
. . . I was blinded by the bright light of the sun. I was standing beneath the spreading branches of a tree, and an unkempt girl, milky-white, as short in stature as Sir Maxlilgl Annox, was offering me an apricot. “Accept the gift of a fairy, Perset!” Why, I don’t know myself, but I took it and bit into it. The fruit was worm-ridden. A pale little caterpillar slipped into my wide-open mouth and dove into the tender depths of my gullet. I felt its sharp jaws pierce the sensitive membranes. Poison began coursing through my body, filling me with weak nausea. I should probably have died of pain and disgust, but a blinding hatred filled me, and I began to shout. I shouted so violently and fiercely that it set a rushing wind in motion. Leaves, scorched dry, began falling from the tree, and the milk-white girl, her face distorted from horror, slithered through the withered grass, hissing like a viper. Finally, I spit out the poisonous caterpillar at the feet of Lonli-Lokli, who wasn’t in that garden at all; and then the glaring light began to subside.
What I really admire in our Master Who Snuffs Out Unnecessary Lives is his unflappability. He won’t be caught out! While I was wandering through the sunny fields of my nightmare, the guy did what had to be done. He finally put his death-dealing left hand into action—something he should have done straight off. In such cases, everything goes off without a hitch. Whether you’re a human being, or a ghost, or a Magician-knows-what, death will be easy and instantaneous.
Then this remarkable fellow pulled on his protective gloves, and with the dexterity of a professional nurse poured the remains of the Elixir of Kaxar into my mouth.
“It’s very helpful in cases like this, Max, so drink up. I regret that I didn’t understand your order properly. I concluded that you were talking about a new method of destruction by water. It cost me considerable effort to get him wet. Here in Xolomi, even I have a hard time working wonders—although Sir Juffin, naturally, gave me special training.”
From the Elixir of Kaxar I not only came to, I also cheered up—a clear sign of an overdose.
“A method of destruction by water—Sinning Magicians! How could that be expected to work? Why water? You should have just pissed on him! That would have killed him, I’m sure! Loki, have you never tried pissing on a ghost?”
“Sir Max,” my savior protested in an injured tone, “my name is not Loki, but Lonli-Lokli. Until now you have always managed to pronounce it correctly. I would hope that the ability will return to you in the near future.”
The poor chap had decided, apparently, that I was as big a dunderhead as Melifaro.
“That was no slip of the tongue, Sir Shurf. I was simply reminded of a menacing god whose name resembles yours. Please don’t take offense, my friend.”
“I’ve never heard of a god by the name of Loki,” he admitted in surprise. “Do your fellow tribespeople worship him?”
“Some of them, anyway,” I didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “We of the Barren Lands have a multitude of divinities, you know. Everyone believes whatever he wants to. Every second nomad is a high priest. And some chaps, myself included, don’t believe in anything in particular, but take a lively interest in everything.”
“It isn’t secret knowledge, is it?” Lonli-Lokli inquired. “You could enlighten me about these matters?”
“Yes, I can,” I nodded resolutely. “For you—I’d do anything.”
For the next hour and a half, over the cold remains of the excellent prison kamra, I waxed eloquent on the subject of Scandinavian mythology, passing it off as legend of the Barren Lands.
I must give Sir Shurf his due—the Scandinavian epic was very much to his liking. He especially liked Odin, the chief of the gods and dead heroes, who brought the honey of poetry to earth. The Master Who Snuffs Out Unnecessary Lives viewed poetry with profound reverence, if not outright trepidation.
Inspired either by the unexpectedness of our shared literary passions or by overindulgence in Elixir of Kaxar, I patted my imposing colleague on the back. I had forgotten that in the Unified Kingdom this gesture is only allowed to close friends. Luckily for me, Sir Shurf didn’t object to this official acknowledgment of our newly established friendly footing. Indeed, he seemed very flattered.
Then it occurred to me that I had no idea what obligations my status as close friend of Sir Lonli-Lokli would entail. Here in Echo there must be myriad peculiar rites and customs surrounding true friendship. I decided I’d have to consult Juffin about it. Let him teach me how to be a friend here. And I’d write it down in my notebook and try to check every move I made against it. I just hoped that in the next hour and a half I wouldn’t offend him; that would be just like me.
Finally we finished our divinity tutorial and began sending signals to the world outside the cell. We were immediately released and led to the commander’s office. They fed us an excellent breakfast and plied us with fresh, hot kamra. It was wonderful. When I began to feel quite chipper again, I hastened to relieve my curiosity.
“Tell me, Shurf. How did you pass the time when you were small? I’m not asking about your childhood, of course. I mean when you were hidden from prying eyes in my tightly clenched fist.”
“Time?” Lonli-Lokli asked with a shrug. “Time, Sir Max, passed as it always does. During these few hours I even managed to work up an appetite.”
“What? Few hours!”
“Do you mean to say that I miscalculated?”
“We’ve spent three days and nights here!” I exclaimed.
“A curious effect,” Lonli-Lokli concluded impassively. “But it’s for the better. Three days and nights is too long an interval to go without sandwiches. One might call it a lucky thing that my temporal perception was distorted.”
I would have liked to delve into many more details about his existence in the palm of my hand, but Sir Shurf said that in matters like this you have to take it as it comes—you can’t learn about it secondhand. Then he generously offered to give me the experience firsthand—but I decided I’d had enough excitement for one day, and tactfully changed the subject.
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