The Stranger (4 page)
Authors: Max Frei,Polly Gannon
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Horror, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Epic
When we were finally appropriately decked out, the fellows with the palanquins went down on their knees before us. Sir Juffin mounted the contraption and reclined gracefully upon it. I gulped and clambered onto my own glorified stretcher in turn. We were carried along in this way for quite some time, gazing down deserted corridors as broad as streets as we progressed. The sheer spaciousness of Sir Makluk’s dwelling made an indelible impression on me, and judging by the outside of the house, you’d never have known—it appeared to be just an ordinary house of modest dimensions.
Finally we arrived at a large hall, half-empty, like all the rooms in the only house in Echo with which I was acquainted. But the similarity to Sir Juffin’s interiors stopped there. Instead of a normal dining table and comfortable armchairs, my eyes beheld something quite extraordinary.
A narrow and seemingly endless oval table cut through the length of the room. Its centerpiece was a fountain, surrounded by a thick paling of low podiums. On one of the podiums was a palanquin that resembled those in which we had just had the distinct pleasure of arriving. A lively-looking gray-haired old man, who didn’t appear in the least like a grandee, peered out of the palanquin. This was Sir Makluk, our hospitable host. When he saw me he covered his eyes with his hand and greeted me:
“I see you as though in a waking dream!”
I reciprocated his gesture: Juffin and I had gone through this one. Then the little old man held out his hand to Juffin, doing this with such ardent warmth that he nearly tumbled off the podium, together with his dubious means of transportation.
“Hide the food, here comes Sir Hully the Hun!” he exclaimed gleefully. I readily concluded that this was an official form of greeting, and stored it away for future reference. It turned out I was mistaken, however: the host was in the mood for joking. I was more than a little insulted. I tried to grin and bear it, but, come what may, one’s emotional health is more important than emotional equilibrium. Did you wish to spend the weekend in the company of Mad Max, dear Juffin? Well, that’s just what’s in store for you! Here goes nothing . . .
But nothing came of it, for again I was thrown into a state of bewilderment when a very young creature of indeterminate sex came up to me. To distinguish a girl from a boy here, you need a keen eye and a great deal of experience, since they dress identically, and the hair of both sexes is allowed to grow as it will and then bound up, so that it doesn’t get in the way. The child was holding a basket with appetizing little bread rolls, which I had already grown fond of while devouring the breakfasts prepared by Kimpa. As fate would have it, I was the first stop for the little peddler of delicacies. No one was there to save me, as Juffin had been steered to the other end of the room to join the hospitable host. I helped myself silently to one bread roll. The little creature seemed surprised, but quickly slipped away. When it took the offerings to the gentlemen who had more experience in such matters than I, I realized what had caused the reaction—my very modesty and restraint! Juffin, and Sir Makluk, following suit, began raking up bread rolls by the handfuls and stuffing them into the roomy pockets of their “bibs.” It looked like I was going to starve.
In the meantime, my stretcher-bearers had begun shifting their feet, as though they couldn’t figure out where to deposit me. Judging by their blank faces, I was supposed to make this decision myself.
Raise your thumb
, resounded someone else’s thought through my poor brain,
and they’ll start walking. When you want to stop, show them your fist
.
, resounded someone else’s thought through my poor brain,
and they’ll start walking. When you want to stop, show them your fist
.
Thank you, Juffin
, I answered, trying with all my might to address my mute message with maximum accuracy to its destination.
You just about saved my life. I wish you always would!
, I answered, trying with all my might to address my mute message with maximum accuracy to its destination.
You just about saved my life. I wish you always would!
Excellent. You’re getting the hang of Silent Speech
, he declared happily.
, he declared happily.
I carried out the first part of his instructions and found myself floating in the direction of my dinner companions. When I was close enough to observe their actions, I threatened the bearers with my fist; they stopped, and raised me up onto a podium. I sighed with relief; finally, I had a moment to catch my breath.
Altogether, we journeyed around the table several times. The system was as follows: opposite every podium stood one dish. Having tasted it and wiped your mouth with one of the bright scraps that decorated the “bib,” the idea was to raise your thumb and travel around the table at a leisurely pace. When you came upon a dish that aroused the interest of the taste-buds, you were supposed to drop anchor for a spell.
For the first half-hour I was still rather timid, and stayed put even when the food in front of me did not deserve such a lengthy pause. Finally, with a “what the hey,” I got into the swing of things. I tasted everything there was to taste, some things more than once. After downing some “Jubatic Juice,” the local firewater, with its unassuming, yet somehow fitting name, I even ventured to join in the conversation of the old friends—and judging from Sir Makluk’s jovial demeanor, not without some success.
In short, the dinner went off without any untoward surprises.
As soon as we left Sir Makluk’s, I could no longer constrain my curiosity.
“Well, how did it go? You discussed me with your neighbor, didn’t you? Of course, Silent Speech allows you to do that in your victim’s presence—”
“My fabrication unraveled completely!” Sir Juffin said, grinning with fiendish pleasure. He paused dramatically, during which time I berated myself for being a miserable, dull-witted imbecile. Then he rescued me from my despair: “The old man kept trying to weasel out of me where I had dug up such well-mannered specimen of barbarian! Much more, and he would have offered you a position at court.”
“Oh no! What will happen now?”
“Nothing much. In a week or two we’ll find you an apartment and furnish it according to your inclinations, after which I’ll get you off my back and you’ll get down to work. For the time being, you still have a few lessons left with me.”
“What kinds of lessons?”
“Very interesting ones. Don’t worry, the lessons in dining etiquette are over. It’s time to get down to business. At long last, I’ve acquired an assistant who has a distinct proclivity for Invisible Magic. You’ll be surprised to discover how easily it comes to you.”
“Wherever did you get the idea that I—?”
“Whenever did you stop trusting me?”
“The moment we stepped inside the home of your neighbor Sir Makluk! You never warned me about the palanquins and all the rest. I nearly died right there on the spot!”
“But you didn’t!” Sir Juffin Hully said. “Who would have thought!”
That night I not only retired to bed long before dawn, but slept like a log, to the great surprise of little Chuff. He already took it for granted that life only starts to get really interesting after midnight.
The next two days were busy and pleasant. During the day I read old newspaper files from the
Royal Voice
and
Echo Hustle and Bustle.
Sir Juffin had immodestly marked all the enthusiastic articles that had to do with the affairs of the Secret Investigative Force.
Royal Voice
and
Echo Hustle and Bustle.
Sir Juffin had immodestly marked all the enthusiastic articles that had to do with the affairs of the Secret Investigative Force.
This made for far more exciting reading than the most piquant literature. It was the first time I had read newspapers in which dull announcements about the misuse of forbidden magic far exceeded stories about everyday murder, revenge, and extortion—though such things happen here, too, of course. I quickly learned the names of my future colleagues: Sir Melifaro (for some reason his first name was never mentioned), Sir Kofa Yox, Sir Shurf Lonli-Lokli, Lady Melamori Blimm, and Sir Lookfi Pence. They pretty much made up the entire Minor Secret Investigative Force—and a fairly diminutive one it was.
Here in Echo, photography had still not been discovered, and portrait artists would not condescend to squander their talents on newspapers. Thus, I put my imagination to work, summoning up portraits of them in my head. (Whatever Sir Juffin might have said about my intuition, it turned out that I hadn’t guessed right a single time!)
At sunset, I took the amobiler and set off for the Right Bank. I got out and meandered along mosaic-laden sidewalks, gazing this way and that, made brief stops at cozy inns, and got a feel for the topography. Indeed, what kind of figure would I cut as a Nocturnal Representative of the Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force if I couldn’t even track down the street where my own department was located? It turned out to be fairly easy, however. I’ve never heard of a wolf getting lost in the woods, even if they’re not the woods in which he was born. I suspect the existence of some as-yet-undiscovered “urban instinct,” whereby if you can navigate one city, you won’t feel daunted by any other metropolis.
Then I was on my way home. As it had ever been in my life, nighttime still proved to be the most enchanting time of day. Sir Juffin, by his own admission, had had a temporary quarrel with his blanket. After dinner, he didn’t retire, but steered me into his study, where we undertook to “meditate on the memory of things.” This aspect of Invisible Magic, the most abstract and obscure science of this World, was the simplest and most indispensable one for my future profession.
There are few in the World who have any inkling of its existence. A knack for Invisible Magic, as far as I understand it, is in no way linked to the wondrous qualities of the Heart of the World. Indeed, this talent had been discovered in me, an alien. Sir Juffin himself, the undisputed expert in this area, hails from Kettari, a small town in the county of Shimara. The residents of that place lag significantly behind residents of the capital when it comes to knowing how to enhance their lives by means of magic.
But back to the lessons. I discovered very quickly that if you let your eyes rest on an inanimate object with a “special gaze” (I don’t know how else to describe it), the object would reveal its past to the observer—that is to say, events that happened in its presence. Sometimes these events were quite horrific, as I learned after an encounter with a pin for a looxi that had belonged long ago to a member of the Order of the Icy Hand, one of the most sinister and wicked of the ancient orders of magic. The pin showed us the rite of passage into the Order: a frenzied, exultant bear of a fellow voluntarily hacked off his left hand from his arm, after which a handsome, spry old fellow in a shiny turban (the Grand Master of the Order, as Juffin informed me) launched into some bizarre, incomprehensible fumblings with the amputated piece of anatomy. During the finale, the hand was presented to its former owner in the center of a glittering ice crystal. It turned my stomach.
Juffin explained that as a result of this procedure the fresh-baked invalid had gained an eternal inner fountain of marvelous youthful energy, and his missing digits would become a kind of “supersponge” that provided him with the powers indispensable to that occupation.
“Does he really need that?” I asked in naïve wonder.
“People will do strange things to sate their hunger for power and glory,” Juffin replied with a shrug. “You and I are lucky. We live in a much more moderate age. The opposition is complaining about the tyranny of the King and the Order of the Seven-Leaf Clover, yet they forget the true tyranny of several dozen omnipotent orders of magic, of which almost none has ever chosen the path of rejecting vice and ambition altogether.”
“Why didn’t they tear the World to shreds?”
“They almost did, Max. They almost did . . . But we’ll have time to talk about that later. This is the night when you to begin your studies in earnest. So, grab that cup there . . .”
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