Authors: Max Frei,Polly Gannon

Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Horror, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Epic

The Stranger (51 page)

BOOK: The Stranger

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The End of the Year is the End of the Year, Max. In any case, be on your guard. Over and out.

All the Secret Investigators had latched on to that expression, making Silent Speech feel like communicating via walkie-talkie.

Sir Kofa no longer needed my help, not because the Echo-dwellers had suddenly become more sensible, but because they simply didn’t put up such a fuss when they were being arrested. It allowed them to hope that they could get away with only a fine and a warning.

Juffin arrived at the House by the Bridge just before daybreak, and only for a moment. He didn’t even drink any kamra—an event hardly less significant than the end of the world. He took numerous parcels out of the drawer of the desk, told me confidentially that he was determined to lose his mind, and dashed off with a speed that Melifaro couldn’t fathom even in his wildest dreams.

Then Lady Melamori appeared in the doorway and began complaining about life.

“Sir Max. Just Max, I mean. You can’t imagine!” (The poor thing still stumbled over my name.) “You can’t imagine how awful it is to have a big family!”

“I can imagine it very well,” I sighed. “As we speak, another unhappy victim of family ties is snoozing over at my house, while his three million relatives think he’s saving the Unified Kingdom.”

“You mean Melifaro? Lucky man! I have it worse. My relatives are influential enough to free me from duty if duty interferes with family gatherings. So there’s no one who can save me. I’m glad the End of the Year doesn’t come every dozen days!”

“Have a mug of kamra,” I suggested. “Sit down with me for half an hour. It won’t be the most exciting adventure in your life, but you’ll be able to relax. Maybe you’ll even be inspired to comb your hair.”

Melamori stared at her reflection in the convex side of the glass mug.

“Oh, how embarrassing! You’re right, Max. A half hour of ordinary life wouldn’t hurt right now.” She took off the small lilac turban she was wearing and began arranging her wild tresses. “Well, never mind. In three days it will all be over.”

“I suggest celebrating your return to ordinary existence with the most exhausting of strolls.” I had decided that a little pressure wouldn’t hurt. “Crowded places, brightly lighted streets, and no monkey business.”

“Not necessarily,” Melamori said with an unexpected smile. “I mean, crowded places aren’t absolutely necessary. Who, I wonder, could protect me from Sir Max, the Terror of all of Echo? Boboota’s boys? Anyway, it’s bad form to promise something at the End of the Year. So I make no promises. When the year ends, though—”

“I get it. Next year I’ll try to make as many promises to as many different people as possible so I won’t feel I’ve just escaped from a Refuge for the Mad. I’ll be just like everyone else.”

“Thanks for the kamra, Max. I’ve got to run. My parents have finagled Days of Freedom for me—alas, not Freedom from Care, but from ordinary human existence. If they discover that I’ve come here only to wish you good morning rather than fulfilling the duties of a son—”

“You mean daughter.”

“No, I made no mistake. I meant what I said: a son. My father, Korva Blimm, desperately wanted a boy. He is sure to this day that I was born a girl purely out of stubbornness. Someday I’m going to run away to your Wild Lands, I swear by the World.”

Melamori, gloomy again, gave a dispirited wave and left the office and the House by the Bridge.

I yawned, more out of a feeling of helplessness than from want of sleep. The World was clearly at sixes and sevens.

Even the indestructible Sir Lonli-Lokli was destined to drink of the bitter cup at the end of the year. Even if the report Juffin had dumped on him appealed to his lower bureaucratic instincts, the guy still had worries piled up over the year waiting on his doorstep back home. And everyone needs to sleep, even Lonli-Lokli.

So he wasn’t looking his best. It was the first time his impassive face had looked completely human to me. It seemed to suggest that the fellow was sick of everything.

After he had downed my kamra as well as his own, Sir Shurf boldly embarked on the last part of the report.

I wasn’t the only normal person in this pre-holiday bedlam, though. The life of our Master Curator of Knowledge, Sir Lookfi Pence, didn’t seem to have suffered any change. Before it was even noon he dropped by for a chat. Well, if the chap has time for this, it must mean everything is as it should be, I surmised.

“It seems that you, too, are burdened neither by promises, nor by reports, nor by relatives,” I said, looking at the cheerful boyish countenance of Sir Lookfi with pleasure and relief.

“What makes you say that?” he asked in surprise.

“Because you’re the only other person whose face doesn’t bear witness to the exhausting send-off of the passing year.”

“What, is the year ending already?”

“In three days.”

“Goodness gracious! I completely forgot! I’ll have to ask Varisha if there’s anything I must do. Thank you for the reminder, Sir Max.”

Lookfi bounded headlong out of the office, upsetting a cup and overturning a chair. The remains of the kamra settled into the green pile of the carpet in the shape of a mournful question mark. I had no choice but to call the messenger. Someone had to clean up this mess!

After midday I began to nod off and secretly to curse the sleepyhead Melifaro. I adore the opportunity to save a human life, of course; but charity begins at home. And that was just where I wanted to be.

Melifaro showed up before I had fully exhausted my supply of curses. He looked so healthy and robust that I felt like a saint. This was even more pleasant than scaring the population of Echo with my Mantle of Death.

“All hail, Sir Max, the one and only bestower of sweet dreams!” Melifaro exclaimed from the doorway.

He could have continued this panegyric until kingdom come, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen.

“I’m going home to bestow sweet dreams on myself. If someone tries to wake me up, I’ll start to spit, so beware,” I threatened, and called for a Ministry amobiler. Just then the ten-minute walk home didn’t seem like the best way of getting there. I so desperately wanted to sleep that I began undressing in the amobiler. But who would be surprised by that at the End of the Year?

The following two days passed in a similar fashion. The general tension continued to mount. But on the morning of the Last Day of the Year, I suddenly realized that everything was over.

Sir Juffin Hully arrived at the expected time, sat down in a chair, and was lost in contemplation for a time.

“You still haven’t learned how to make kamra, Max?” he asked out of the blue.

“I don’t think I have the knack for it. Do you remember my first attempts? The results were so disastrous I decided not to repeat the experiment.”

“Fine. Now I’ll teach you how to do it. Otherwise my conscience will bother me. Luring a person to a strange, unknown World, and then turning him loose without teaching him the most basic of skills . . .”

I was so surprised that I took the risk of agreeing to try. And we began casting spells over a miniscule brazier that he fished out of the bottomless drawer of his desk. Our joint creation was not bad at all, although it could never have competed with the “piece de resistance” of the
Glutton
. After this success I had to repeat it on my own.

“A hole in the heavens above you, Max,” Juffin grumbled, as he tasted my creation. “You’re never going to learn. It’s hopeless.”

“I’m a newfangled newcomer,” I announced proudly. “A barbarian, a savage, and an ignoramus. You should pity me, instruct me, and not criticize me. Besides, if you had warned me that you needed a fellow who could make kamra, I would immediately have admitted that you had come to the wrong address.”

“Ignorance is no sin,” said Juffin. “But I don’t understand. Why can’t you learn this one thing? You do much more difficult things with the greatest of ease.”

“Talent,” I insisted. “You need talent for everything. In this area of expertise, I happen to be all thumbs. It’s lucky for you, Juffin, that you never tried one of my omelets. Not to mention the rest of my culinary quirks. Sandwiches are the acme of my abilities.”

“Really? That’s terrible. Fine, let’s go to the
Glutton
. And if someone comes when we’re not here, Kurush will take care of him. Right, my dear?” Juffin said fondly, stroking the buriwok’s soft feathers.

Kurush looked very pleased.

Naturally, when we got to the
Glutton,
we couldn’t settle for just two mugs of kamra. We had a lengthy, hearty breakfast, and I was finally convinced that the pre-holiday nightmare had been left behind.

“Don’t even think of hightailing it home yet, Max! The Royal Showering of Gifts is scheduled for noon. If I’m not mistaken, you’re also on the list for receiving some unadulterated nonsense or other.”

“And Sir Kumbra Kurmak couldn’t be persuaded to part with my souvenir an hour earlier?”

“What a sly one you are! No, you’ll just have to be patient. Kumbra won’t show up before noon, anyway.”

“Maybe it could be a reward for saving Melifaro’s life two days in a row. The only thing I’m dreaming about is going to bed.”

“You’ll have to wait a while. Don’t pout, Max. I picked out an excellent present for you. It far outshines a present from the King.”

Juffin handed me a ceramic vessel with delicate cracks on it that witnessed to a venerable old age.

“This is—!”

“Sh-h-h. Yes, it’s the real thing!” The smile on the face of my boss revealed that this could be nothing other than Elixir of Kaxar, the sweet offspring of Forbidden Magic, the only potion capable of restoring my composure in any situation. Just in time!

“You’re hushing me up like someone is about to rat on us as we speak. I’d like to know who—is Sir Kofa somewhere around here?”

“It’s always the same,” grumbled a bald, sharp-nosed old man who had just seated himself at the next table.

Yes, it was none other than Sir Kofa Yox, in the flesh—though skillfully disguised, as usual, in the interests of the profession.

“And I was just about to arrest you, gentlemen. Well, never mind. I’ll insist on a bribe, though, Max. In contrast to you, I haven’t slept a wink for four nights straight. Well, hardly at all, anyway. A hole in the heavens above this Last Day of the Year!”

I began to open the bottle eagerly.

“You’re really letting yourselves go, boys,” Juffin smirked. “Magic of the eighth degree in a public place and abusing professional privileges, that’s what it is.”

“Oh, give us a break, Juffin! Well, do you want Max and me to turn ourselves in? We’ll turn you in, too, while we’re at it. I’d like to see what you would do if we tried.”

It had been a long time since I’d seen Sir Kofa so happy. He had grown younger by . . . oh, I’ve never been much good with numbers of that magnitude.