The Stranger's Magic: The Labyrinths of Echo: Book Three (4 page)

“Oh, dear, dear me!” his mother said. “It was no more than a hundred years ago that my little boy swore he would refuse to sleep when he grew up.”

“Ah, so he’s also a perjurer,” I said. “What a nice young man.”

“It runs in the family,” said Sir Manga with pride. “Granted, Anchifa is the crowning glory of my upbringing methods. The first real pirate in the family. That’s quite
something, I’ll tell you.”

“If I understand correctly, he’s already left?” I said.

“Of course. Anchifa has never stayed home for more than a couple dozen days.”

“Good for him,” I said in a dreamy voice. “You know, I sometimes think I should quit my job and ask him to hire me as a regular sailor on his ship.”

“I’d advise you not to. A shikka isn’t exactly a resort for a sailor: a barbarian Ukumbian contraption, no magic, and—as a result—too much work for everyone,
including the captain. And I wouldn’t say the passengers fare much better: the vessel is subject to violent rocking. Yet my son wouldn’t hear of buying a new ship, even though he could
easily afford one, and then some. The boy tries to imitate his mentors in every possible way. This is a case of typical Ukumbian bravado. The local pirates believe that a man can only be considered
a true captain if he has sailed the same shikka for no less than five dozen years.”

“What’s a shikka? A kind of a ship?”

“Indeed. The swiftest and most maneuverable there is, and not quite what one would consider a pleasure boat, believe me. I once had the misfortune of hiring a Ukumbian shikka, and I lived
to rue the day I decided to go on an around-the-world journey. If I hadn’t managed to transfer to a regular three-mast karuna equipped with several magic crystals when we reached the next
port, this World would have lost four of the eight volumes of my sinning encyclopedia, and myself to boot.”

“All right then. I guess I won’t try to hire myself out as a sailor to your Anchifa after all,” I said. “Thanks for warning me. I think I’ll go to sleep instead.
After all, it’s the cheapest way to travel in comfort.”

“If you are referring to the bedroom of my prodigal father, Filo, you couldn’t be more correct. As for the other bedrooms, I’m not so sure. Do you remember where it is, or do
you want me to show you the way?”

“Do you think my feeble intellect would suffice to find anything in the endless labyrinth you call your house? You’re flattering me, Sir Manga.”

“Oh, but of course I am,” the greatest encyclopedist of the World said with a yawn. “All right then. Let’s try to find that sinning door together, shall we?”

For some time, we wandered through the spacious hallways of the mansion. Sir Manga did his best to play the part of a lost child. It wasn’t very believable, but I was noble enough to play
along, insofar as my humble acting abilities allowed.

At last I was alone in the small dark bedroom I was already so fond of. When I’m there, I always think that Filo Melifaro, the famous grandfather of my colleague and one of the powerful
Elder Magicians of the Order of the Secret Grass, had me in mind when he built his wonder-working bedroom. He somehow knew that his efforts would benefit more than just his own kin. Hey, if you
think about it, it’s quite possible that such a great man could sniff out in advance my eventual presence on his territory. For instance, I could have appeared to him in a dream. Why not?
People are known to have all kinds of nightmares from time to time.

But none of this really mattered. It was just another fairy tale, the kind it’s nice to tell yourself before you fall asleep while staring, enchanted, at the ancient crisscrossing beams of
the ceiling somewhere above your head in the darkness of the room.

This time I crossed the border between reality and dreamland so slowly that I probably could have marked the path I traversed with white pebbles, like Hansel and Gretel. In this dream, however,
I didn’t have any white pebbles with me.

First I wandered around in a few blissful dreams, not fully understanding who I was or what I was doing there. Only when I ended up on the barren sandy beach—which, after all, was the goal
of this journey—did I begin to remember myself as I was in real life. This was not as easy as one might think, but in certain fundamental dreams, recurring dreams I’ve had since
childhood, it always happens in the end—of its own accord, without any apparent effort from me.

The difference this time around was that I was returning to myself very slowly and painfully, as though I were trying to recall what I had done while drunk. I was able to recollect the evening I
had spent in the company of Melifaro’s parents, the trip through the twilit countryside, Tekki’s “promise” to bring home naked men, and then, finally and very unclearly, the
conversation with Shurf Lonli-Lokli that had worried me. Then I looked down and saw footprints in the sand.

The footprints, somewhat akin to those of sneakers, had been left by someone wearing soft Uguland shoes. I concentrated, and it suddenly dawned on me that the footprints belonged to Sir Shurf
himself. I didn’t guess or deduce it by any clues—I simply felt it. I knew it in my heart (and it was clear which one of the two). This had happened to me more than once in real life,
too. Recently I had noticed a kind of one-way connection between my colleagues and myself, the nature of which I did not fully comprehend. Moments before one of them appeared, I would begin to
detect a faint scent only emitted by that particular person. And if I happened to enter a room where one of my crew had just been, I would know without the shadow of a doubt who had been there.
Maybe that’s how loyal dogs anticipate their master’s return, I explained to myself. No, that’s ridiculous. Dogs use their sense of smell, and I was using . . . I was using . . .
Gosh, I had no idea what it was.

Neither had I the time to think about man’s best friends. My head began to spin. No wonder: my mind had just gotten a good kick. In my dream, I had just found actual footprints of another
person who had recently seen this very dream. It looked as though we had both walked along the sand somewhere on the shore of a very real, wet, and salty sea, each of us following the footsteps of
the other.

I decided that the best thing to do would be to scream and wake up—the sooner the better. It was all too much for me.

“Shut up,” I said to myself. “After all, you’re here on business.
You can have a tantrum in the morning in Sir Manga’s bathroom if you so choose.”

My stupid habit of talking to myself often proves to be very helpful. Having yelled at myself, I realized that I was quite capable of putting off my hysterics until later. Not until
morning—in the morning I would still behave myself. I would hold off on my hysterics until I was in Juffin’s presence. The boss would probably bestow upon me two or three of his highly
theoretical yet thoroughly pacifying explanations. I would then pretend that I understood them, and I would feel great.

I found the courage not to wake up. Instead I walked for a long time up and down the barren beach, trying to find any trace of the presence of the evil stranger Shurf had been talking about. I
had found nothing and I was already dead tired. Each step required an enormous amount of effort. I don’t recall ever experiencing anything more dispiriting in any of my dreams than what I
felt on this walk.

Having expended all my energy, I woke up. Peace and quiet reigned in the cozy bedroom built by the magical hands of Filo Melifaro. Outside everything was dark and quiet—even the birds
hadn’t woken up yet. The runes on the beams in the ceiling were doing their magic: it took them only a few seconds to calm down my restless hearts, and then a few minutes more to lull me to
sleep. This time, the switchman angels that watch over dreamers as they arrive at their destinations took mercy: I dreamed some meaningless but very sweet nonsense. I couldn’t ask for
more.

I woke up at dawn, happy and content. Unsolved mysteries did not spoil my mood. It was even pleasant to think that the barren sandy beaches that I had grown to love did indeed exist, and that I
might have the chance to see them in real life one day. Something similar had once happened to me: while walking around the mountains near Kettari, I discovered the town from my childhood dreams.
It turned out that the sandy beach was good news rather than bad—that is, if the news was ever amenable to such primitive terms, and the usual morning grogginess notwithstanding.

“Sir Filo,” I said in a tender voice, addressing the ceiling, “I adore you. I don’t know what I would do without you, and so on and so forth. Just keep me in mind when
you begin recruiting new grandchildren.”

Naturally, the ceiling was silent, yet after this insane tirade, my mood improved even more. I had to go down the narrow stairs leading to the bathroom sideways—otherwise my smile
wouldn’t fit.

Moments later, I was flying down to the dining room. I had the rare opportunity to have breakfast alone, then wake up my colleague and observe his suffering, deriving a sadistic pleasure out of
it. Generally, Sir Melifaro Junior was no keener to get up in the morning than I had been as a schoolboy. That was strange, though, considering he was going to be spending another great day in the
House by the Bridge rather than meeting the principal.

Today, however, my colleague had gotten up all by himself and was feeling not too bad, to put it mildly. I had the presence of mind not to be upset about it.

“Well, does everything please Your Majesty?” he said when he entered the dining room.

“Yeah, I think I’m not going to execute you this year,” I said. “After that, we’ll see about it.”

“Dream on. I’m not one of your subjects yet, praise be the Magicians.”

“We’ll see what tune you’re singing when my boys are galloping down the streets of Echo on their antlered nags. I’ll let you in on a big secret: my personal plan for the
unification of the Barren Lands and the Unified Kingdom differs somewhat from the official one. I figured it’d be better if I annexed the lands of His Majesty Gurig VIII to mine rather than
the other way around.”

“Is that so?” said Melifaro, shoving an enormous sandwich in his mouth. “I think I’m going to denounce you then, if that’s okay with you. I’ve never done this
before, but better late than never, I guess.”

“Please don’t. I’ll make you my prime minister.”

“Tempting, very tempting. Fine, give me a ride on your amobiler for starters, mister. Then I’ll think about it.”

“Can do. At your service, sir.”

“This has been the dream of my miserable life—to make you my personal chauffeur,” said Melifaro with a sigh. “You should give this lengthy consideration. It’s the
only talent you have that’s worthy of the name, anyway.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, snorting. “I know how much a chauffeur makes. I’ve already been poor once, and didn’t like it one bit.”

“You? Poor? When?” said Melifaro. “All right, let’s go. I’m really running late for work now.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been standing in the doorway shuffling my feet for thirty minutes already.”