The Stranger's Woes

by Max Frei

  Juffin was waiting for me downstairs by the small door to his “lab.” He looked tired and preoccupied.

  “It’s best not to go in there,” he said, pointing at the door. “It was such a nice room. What will I do without it now?”

  “Put a spell on another one—you’ve got plenty of rooms here. What happened in there?”

  “Oh, it was quite a show. After I did some magic, Sir Xekta Bonbon came to and answered all my questions. Then that noble gentleman realized he had nothing to lose and decided to challenge me to a duel. Very romantic on his part.”

  “And very imprudent,” I said.

  “Imprudent, yes. But he caught me off guard. I think he stood a chance of winning, but I’m lucky. I called you down here to show you what happens to a room where Apparent Magic of the two hundred and thirty-fourth degree has been performed.”

  “The maximum degree!” I said.

  “I think so. There are grounds for believing that Sir Loiso Pondoxo used the two hundred and thirty-fifth degree once, but Loiso is such a legend you can never be sure whether what they say about him is true. Well, forget about your new relative for the time being, and look here.”

  Juffin pushed me toward the keyhole. I looked through it and was almost blinded by an unbearably bright emerald-green glare. There was nothing else to see there, only streams of light that looked alive, even angry.

  “Yikes!” I said, turning back to Juffin. “Talk about pyrotechnics. Is it going to go on like this forever?”

  “We’ll see. Maybe not forever, but I’m afraid it’s going to go on like that for a long, long time.”

  “What would happen if I tried to go inside?”

  “Well, only the Dark Magicians know what would happen if you tried to go in, but I recommend that you not attempt that experiment. As for an ordinary person, he would simply vanish. Just like that mad Xekta did. He just vanished—or, rather, burned up. Blazed up from inside with that green fire and disappeared. To tell you the truth, Max, it was the first time in my life that I performed this trick.”

  “I’ll be darned,” I said. “I never thought there were things that you did for the first time in your life.”

  “I’m full of surprises,” said Juffin. “Can I ask you to take me home? I’ll tell you the details on our way, unless you’ve already figured them out.”

  “Not even close,” I said. “Well, some of it is becoming clear. What’s-his- name, Magician Xekta Bonbon—he decided to sneak into Jafax to settle an old score with Magician Nuflin. Am I right?”

  “You are. Go on.”

  We were already upstairs and on our way out the door.

  “Will Kimpa mind?” I said, getting behind the levers of the amobiler. “After all, it’s his privilege to drive you home.”

  “Kimpa is at his grandson’s wedding in Landaland. He will be staying there for a long time. I spent almost an hour of my precious time persuading the old man that my one and only life will not go to the Dark Magicians in his absence, and I succeeded. But do go on, Max. I’m curious to see how closely your version corresponds to the actual events.”

  I started up the amobiler and went on: “Well, if I understand this right, Xekta disguised himself as a member of Nuflin’s retinue. Which he did with the help of poor Sir Varixa Ariama. Then he finished off that hapless Sir Jorinmuk, whose face he stole. Right?”

  “Right, except that he finished him off before, not after. Your logic fails you. Xekta couldn’t know beforehand which member of Nuflin’s retinue he’d be able to kill, and to do it so that no one noticed.”

  “Hey, that’s right,” I said. “So, he killed that unfortunate Sir Jorinmuk. What did he do with the body, by the way?”

  “Just made it disappear. It’s not a difficult trick, especially for someone like Xekta. He was a truly great magician, you can take my word for it.”

  “I’m sure he was,” I said. “By the way, why did this GrandMagician Xekta Bonbon ask Sir Ariama to change his face to begin with? What with him being a great magician and all.”

  “Because the art of changing one’s countenance requires not so much magic as it does years and years of practice. It’s like embroidering with gossamer: you need more than just talent.”

  “I see. Then he killed Varixa Ariama to get rid of the only witness to his metamorphosis, right?”

  “Right. Go ahead.”

  “No, now I’m going to ask you a few questions, whatever you might think of the limitless possibilities of my intelligence,” I said. “Why couldn’t Magician Xekta make his way into Jafax on his own? If I understand it correctly, he had a whole day. Another question: Lady Sotofa and I found him in the bushes in the garden of the Residence. What was he doing there all that time? Taking a leak?”

  “Ha! There was only one way for him to get inside Jafax: through the Secret Door. Do you think it’s easy to walk in and out of the Secret Door of Jafax? Unlike people, the Door really doesn’t care much about what the person trying to go through looks like. What it craves is a good spell. After some time, Magician Xekta Bonbon did manage to walk through, but by that time you’d already stepped on his trace, so the poor old man was having trouble with his health. It’s pure luck that Melamori was running late for her date and decided to give you her job. Any more questions?”

  “Oh, I haven’t even started! For example, I don’t understand what that ‘filthy Mudlax’ has to do with all this. What’s his angle? And how come he survived? How on earth did he get into Xolomi for someone else’s crime? I know the arrest procedure. The magic wands of the guys from the Office of Expedited Reprisals work just as well as our magic gauges. If a person has never exercised a certain degree of Forbidden Magic, the wand will not light up when held over his head, and everyone will see that he’s not guilty. Isn’t that how it works?”

  “It is,” said Juffin. “You’re absolutely right, Max. But unlike me, you’ve never had to deal with high-grade specialists like Xekta. A powerful magician is quite capable of projecting his guilt onto another person so that Baguda Maldaxan’s subordinates never know the difference. Baguda himself could probably pick up on the hoax, but he hasn’t come to the scenes of the crime for many years now. So it all worked like a charm.

  “As for your other questions, you see, it was pure luck. Mudlax chose a very bad time to visit Ariama. I think he panicked when his subjects couldn’t defeat Aloxto, so he decided to change his face again, just in case. When he came to Varixa Ariama, the Magician had just finished with Xekta. Xekta told him to work on his client and hid in the next room. He peeked and eavesdropped, though, and came to a few conclusions. Mudlax wasn’t too specific, but Xekta figured out that he needed a good place to hide. He thought that he could use Mudlax’s problem to his advantage. You see, leaving Sir Ariama alive wasn’t a good option: he’d talk under pressure. Just killing him was dangerous—a Master of Pursuit would easily detect his trace. But this was his chance. Xekta waited for Ariama to finish with Mudlax’s face and then emerged from hiding.

  “You know, Max, it never ceases to amaze me what people can do in a desperate situation. You remember I had talked to Varixa Ariama the day before? And I could swear that his magic powers didn’t extend much beyond his excellent skills in disguise. But according to Xekta, Ariama put up a fight worthy of the last hero of the Epoch of Orders. So the former Grand Magician had to sweat a great deal to defeat Ariama. I think he used Apparent Magic of no less than the hundred and seventieth degree.

  “Then Xekta explained to Mudlax, who had been watching the battle of the titans, that Xolomi was the best hiding place. He offered him a choice: a horrible death or a perfect hideout for the next few hundred years. I think Mudlax figured that his death would give too much pleasure to the Conqueror of Arvarox. In any case, he accepted Xekta’s offer with gratitude.

  “Oh, look, here we are at my place already! Thanks, Max. I’m so wiped out, you can’t imagine. Sorry for not inviting you to come in. I mean, you can come in if you wish, but I don’t thin
k I’ll be up for a cup of kamra and a friendly talk.”

  “To be honest, I don’t think I’m up to it either,” I said, suppressing a yawn. “Then again, my shift only ends in the morning, right?”

  “Well, you don’t have to go back to work tonight,” said Juffin, “but here’s a piece of advice from me: go back to Headquarters. You’ll definitely be able to catch some sleep there, and that’s what you need now. You won’t last much longer on Elixir of Kaxar alone.”

  “I can get some sleep at home, too,” I said.

  “Right, at home. Look, lover boy, do as I tell you, and everything is going to be all right. Good night, Sir Max.”

  “Wait,” I said. “One last question. Why didn’t Mudlax kill Ariama Junior?”

  “That we’ll have to ask Mudlax himself,” said Juffin. “I think he just ran into a stranger in the doorway and thought it was an ambush. His reaction was almost instinctual. Then he either recognized Ariama Junior or saw some resemblance—I’m not sure if he’d seen the boy before or not—and decided to hide him so as not to raise the suspicions of the master of the house. Dragged him into the backyard and hid him in the bushes. I think that’s plausible.”

  Juffin walked inside his house, and I went back to Headquarters.

  Everyone had already left. The party had ended without me.

  “All for the better,” I said to the sleepy Kurush. “Did they give you a pastry?”

  “Four pastries. But don’t wake me up, okay?”

  “I won’t. I’m going to catch some sleep myself,” I said. I sat in Juffin’s armchair and put my legs on my own chair. It made a pretty comfortable makeshift bed.

  “Why don’t you do this at home?” Kofa’s cheerful voice yanked me out of the realm of my sweetest dreams.

  “Is it morning already?” I said.

  “Almost. Boy, did we mess up the place last night. The junior employees will have one heck of a morning cleaning it up.”

  Sir Kofa put the jug with the remains of cold kamra on the burner.

  “Tell me, Kofa, do you ever sleep?” I said, taking the bottle of Elixir of Kaxar from the top drawer. That was the only way I knew to revive myself quickly after just a few hours of sleep, which clearly hadn’t been enough.

  “I do, of course. But I got lucky with my body. Two or three hours of sleep are usually enough for me. Convenient, isn’t it?”

  “You bet,” I said enviously. “I wish I only needed two hours of sleep every day.”

  “Be careful what you wish for. Both for you and for Juffin dreaming is an essential part of life. That’s your strength and your weakness at the same time. In my life, on the other hand, I only focus on this wonderful World. Dreams mean nothing to me. So, it’s unclear who’s the luckiest of us here.”

  “I don’t know, right now I’d like to change my body’s habits, if only for a short time,” I said. “It seems to need to sleep at least a dozen hours a day, and that’s absolutely out of line with my plans.”

  “Go home and sleep some more.”

  “I’m going to. After a cup of kamra in your company.”

  “I’ve always liked good company,” said Sir Kofa. “I owe you one, boy.”

  “In what sense?” I said, sipping the warm kamra.

  “Thank you for telling me about Kekki. You know, I had no idea . . . Such a nice young lady, a hole in the heavens above her crazy head! But I’m old enough to be her grandfather.”

  “Grandfather, great-grandfather . . . what difference does it make?” I said with the tone of an experienced ladykiller. “By the way, if you were her age, she wouldn’t have read about you in old newspapers. I think this is all very romantic.”

  “I think so too,” said Kofa. “We’ll see.”

  “The wisest words I’ve ever heard,” I said. “Okay, since you don’t mind, I’m going take my leave. If I can peel myself off the chair, that is.”

  “Go ahead. By the way, you and I haven’t had dinner together for far too long. Don’t you find it outrageous?”

  “Utterly outrageous,” I said. “As soon as that Surf Thorn ‘foams the ocean’ again, you and I will go celebrate that long-anticipated occasion.”

  “I know who’s really going to be celebrating then: poor Melifaro. He’s going to be living it up till the end of the year, I’m sure.”

  “Not such a bad idea—living it up for the rest of the year,” I observed. “But, as Sir Anday Pu likes to say, ‘It would kill me,’ for sure. Speaking of Anday, I haven’t seen him in ages. Do you know what’s happening to him?”

  “The usual,” said Kofa. “Throws around the money he gets from the Royal Voice, parties every night in expensive taverns, and complains about his miserable fate. Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “To think of how interesting other people’s lives can be,” I said, grinning. “I’m really going to be on my way now, though.”

  “You’ve been saying that for—”

  “I’m gone!”

  My head was spinning. Of course, I was going to see Tekki. Forget about sleeping.

  When I walked outside it was still dark. I approached my new amobiler. Compared to the official amobiler clones of the Ministry, mine looked like a true monster. I had acquired it recently from an ingenious local craftsman. It cost me almost nothing: the guy was happy to get rid of it after failing to sell it for a dozen years. The locals were too conservative to handle such an unusual design, but I was happy. This “avant-garde” specimen very much resembled old automobiles from my World.

  I stroked the green polished side of my beauty and took the driver’s seat. I put my hand on the levers and felt something squeezing my throat. Everything went dark in front of my eyes, and I thought, That old buzzard Death is at it again. Why doesn’t he go play with somebody else for a change?

  I’m really getting sick of this, I thought. And then I stopped thinking. Fortunately, not forever.

  I didn’t die. I came to and found myself very much alive, if not kicking. Because kicking was a tad problematic. My hands and legs were tied. On top of that, I was wrapped up in something thick and heavy, which proved a hindrance to my plans for living life to the fullest. I think it was a thick carpet. Judging by the jolting and bumping, I was in a beat-up vehicle of some sort.

  “What the heck is going on?” I said.

  “Do not be angry with us, Fanghaxra, but you must return to your people.”

  Horrified, I recognized the voice of the gray-haired leader of my insane “fellow countrymen.” First, I wanted to cry, but then I became enraged. Fortunately, I didn’t do anything I would regret later. No Forbidden Magic of the umpteenth degree or whatever. I just cursed. And cursed. And cursed. I had no idea I knew so many swear words. Sir Juffin Hully, with his puny set of two thousand expletives, was a choirboy compared to me.

  My subjects were deaf to my appeals, however, so I soon lost interest in my monologue and tried to come up with a better plan. Technically, my humble magical powers were more than enough to blow this caravan of Borderland dwellers to pieces, but to put my powers to any use I needed to free my hands. Without them I couldn’t do more than spit venom. Unfortunately, the nomads had been farsighted enough to wrap me so tightly that it was extremely difficult for me to use any of my tricks.

  I carefully moved the fingers of my left hand and tried to snap them. It worked. I was lucky that my kidnappers didn’t have a complete file on me with the details of my “paranormal” abilities. If they had, they would have tied the ropes not only around my hands but also around all of my fingers.

  I heaved a sigh of relief. Now I could act. The blasted carpet posed no obstacle to my Lethal Spheres, so . . .

  But by that time, I had calmed down a great deal and didn’t find the idea of massacring a group of peaceful nomads all that appealing. What I really wanted to do was to get rid of them and go back to the small cozy apartment above the Armstrong & Ella.

  I decided to start with a little interview.

  “Guys,” I said i
n a stern voice, “what do you think you’re doing? Let’s imagine you took me home. Then what? Were you going to chain me to the throne? How was I supposed to reign, huh? With my hands and legs tied up? Because if you don’t tie me up, I’m going to run back here on the first old nag I can find, I swear.”

  “Your feet must touch your homeland, Fanghaxra. Then your delusion will be gone,” said the stubborn old man. “There are many cunning magicians among these Uguland barbarians. They put a spell on you. That’s why you turned your back on your people. As soon as you step on your native soil, your heart will awaken.”

  The old man’s voice lacked confidence, but I had no doubt he’d try to finish his bold experiment to remove the evil spell from me. No matter what the cost.

  “If you don’t untie me now, you’re going to be very, very sorry,” I said. “Do you want to try me?”

  “Even you are not capable of breaking our snares,” said the old man.

  It sounded like he was trying to persuade himself rather than me.

  “Well, that was a mistake,” I said. “You’ve been warned.”

  I tried to focus. I still didn’t want to kill the earnest fellows. The nomads were few in number, proud, and rather sweet, and their stubborn attempts to make me their king were not so much annoying as they were flattering.

  I tried my best to get rid of the rest of my anger and irritation. I knew already that Lethal Spheres followed my inmost secret desires, and that was great. All I had to do was tame my inmost secret desires, and all would be fine. I hoped that I had enough willpower to accomplish this feat. I just needed those stubborn dolts to do as I told them. And I wanted them to do it now, before they put their ridiculous crown on my poor head. A long voyage to the borders of the Unified Kingdom was not my idea of a good vacation.

  A few moments later I decided it was time to act. I wiggled my numb left hand to let the blood flow and snapped my fingers a few times. Green fireballs passed through the thick pile of the carpet with a soft sucking sound. I could only hope that those dangerous clots of bright light were smart enough to find their targets without my help. Then again, sitting in that dark ravine, I hadn’t exactly been aiming at the dead bandits from the Magaxon Forest, but still . . .