The Stranger: The Labyrinths of Echo, Part One

by Max Frei

  “Yes, it was around two years,” Sir Shurf insisted. “Just so. Of course, it couldn’t go on indefinitely. It is no exaggeration to say that I was already mad with that extra strain, and two years of insomnia turned me into something utterly unspeakable. Sir Juffin Hully followed every move I made, as I later came to understand. He was waiting for the right moment.”

  “So that he could—”

  “No, Marilyn. Not to kill me. You see, that night when he destroyed my house and saved my life, the life he was going to extinguish, it was a serendipitous event. The Kettarian rarely made a fool of himself, and he concluded that fate was showing him the way to me. So instead of capturing the Mad Fishmonger, Sir Juffin decided to save Shurf Lonli-Lokli, who had become entangled in his own marvels.”

  “It’s all so romantic,” I said.

  “Yes, quite. Of course, Sir Juffin has an unimpeachable sense of timing. He arrived at my side just at the moment when I realized that the period of insomnia was coming to an end—and with it, the end of my life was nigh. I was glad to die. Death seemed to me an appropriate way of avoiding a much worse fate. Then when the famous Kettarian Hunter caught up with me, I experienced an incomparable joy, for I was going to die in battle, and that was much more fun than suicide.”

  “What did you say? ‘More fun’?” I was sure my ears had deceived me.

  “Yes, of course. Contrary to the Lonli-Lokli of the present, the Mad Fishmonger loved to joke around and have fun. But Juffin and I never came to blows: instead of trying to kill me, Sir Juffin put me to sleep. I don’t suppose it was too hard for him at that point, as I was obsessed with the thought of sleeping. Juffin shoved me into the embrace of the dead men, who were obsessed with revenge. That began a whole eternity of weakness and pain. Oh, you shouldn’t grieve for me Marilyn. It happened long ago; and not to me, you may believe. And then the Kettarian pulled me out of the nightmare. He just woke me up, brought me to my senses, and explained that there was only one way out.”

  “What was the way out, Glamma?”

  I didn’t know very much about the local miracles, but I had experienced for myself the monstrous power of the nightmares of this World.

  “It was all quite simple. Those two were seeking the Mad Fishmonger, so, I had to become someone else. Of course, an ordinary masquerade, like the one you and I performed before beginning this journey, wouldn’t have helped. It’s not that easy to deceive dead Magicians. Some people, yes; but not them. Sir Juffin transported me to some strange place, gave me a few words of advice, and left me there.”

  “What kind of ‘strange place’ was it?” I asked, my heart at a standstill.

  “I don’t know. Or, rather, I don’t remember. It’s impossible to preserve in your memory things that happen beyond the boundaries of your comprehension.”

  “What kind of advice did he give you? Excuse me for pressing the matter, but I want to understand. What kind of advice can you give a person who has been struck by such misfortune?”

  “It was nothing, really. He explained what I had to do, and why. He showed me some breathing exercises like the ones I showed you. Don’t forget that at the time I possessed enormous strength, enough to perform any wondrous feat. Juffin simply created the ideal conditions for it to manifest itself. I remember that in that strange place I couldn’t do anything but these breathing exercises. It was impossible to eat, sleep, and think. Time, as we ordinarily perceive it, didn’t exist. My personal eternity fit into a single moment, that’s the only way to describe it. I didn’t even notice when the Mad Fishmonger died. The young man I had once been died, too. After that, the me you know by the name of Shurf Lonli-Lokli emerged. I have no complaints about my new personality—it doesn’t prevent me from concentrating on the things that are really important. And, all in all, it doesn’t get in the way.”

  “It’s simply unbelievable. Who would have thought?” I whispered.

  “Yes, it is fairly improbable,” Sir Shurf agreed phlegmatically. “Then I was able to leave the strange empty place and return to Echo. Sir Juffin Hully found decent work for me. By the end of the Troubled Times a person with hands like mine didn’t have to worry about finding something to do. So in the end I did learn to taste the blood of the Grand Magicians; but by then it was a question of duty, not desire. In fact, for my new self it is a matter of complete indifference. I don’t think a single murder I’ve had to commit has had any meaning for me, or for anyone else.” He paused. “Excuse me, Marilyn. I’m not a very good philosopher.”

  I was astounded. My own world, the world I had inhabited so cozily and comfortably, had fallen apart before my very eyes. Infallible Sir Shurf, solid and dependable as a rock, imperturbable and pedantic, completely devoid of a sense of humor and ordinary human weaknesses—where had he gone? And my other colleagues, headed by Sir Juffin Hully, who turned out to have been the staid “Kettarian Hunter”—what did I really know about them? What other surprises were in store for me?

  “Now is a good time to do some of those exercises I taught Max, Marilyn,” my companion advised me. “You shouldn’t get so upset about things that happened long ago, when we weren’t even there.”

  “Words of wisdom!” I exclaimed, and threw myself into Lonli-Lokli’s breathing exercises.

  In about ten minutes I was absolutely calm. The mysteries of an exciting new World were gradually being revealed, and this was a great boon. Nonetheless, I still thank fate that the wonderful revelations of my colleagues didn’t come down on me all at once.

  “Mr. Abora Vala just sent me a call,” Lonli-Lokli said. “The caravan is going to stop for lunch now. You have behaved perfectly this morning, Marilyn. Try to keep it up. By the way, I have long wanted to remark that in doing his breathing exercises, Sir Max breathes just as sharply and unevenly as he speaks. You should do something about it.”

  “All right, I’ll try,” I murmured. “Do I really speak so poorly?”

  “Yes, of course, but it will pass in time. Let’s stop, Marilyn. Get ready to change the subject, all right?”

  “Agreed. By the way, our Master Caravan Leader doesn’t have bad timing, either. I could eat a horse.”

  “No, Marilyn: ‘I’m hungry as a horse,’ or, simply, ‘I’m famished.’ Mr. Vala has no sense of timing whatsoever. Our caravan leader just stops at the taverns whose proprietors pay him for delivering clients.”

  I laughed.

  “How do you know, Glamma?”

  “I looked him in the eye when we met.”

  “Oh, I see! Still, he stopped just on time. I’m very hungry.”

  “Here we go, then,” said Shurf, and chivalrously helped me out of the amobiler.

  The meal was nothing to write home about; for me, anyway. As a budding gourmet and the favorite pupil of Sir Kofa Yox, I wasn’t about to jump for joy at your average country cooking. But our traveling companions turned out to be ordinary, dull tavern philistines. I was surprised to realize that the wonderful new World I so adored was not perfect. I suppose the average inhabitants of all Worlds are rather lackluster. I wasn’t exactly dizzy with delight at the prospect of socializing with a large number of these good-natured, simple souls. But a journey is a journey, and even such annoyances as bad food and the uninspiring company of fellow travelers had its charms.

  After lunch I persuaded Lonli-Lokli to let me drive the amobiler. He didn’t want to risk it at first; my common sense didn’t exactly fill Sir Shurf with confidence. But Lady Marilyn begged him so!

  After an hour of crawling at a snail’s pace, I was rewarded.

  “I would never have imagined that you could exercise such restraint,” Shurf said.

  It occurred to me that this was the biggest compliment I had ever been paid before.

  “Why are you so surprised, Glamma? If someone tells me ‘you mustn’t,’ I fully intend to heed the advice.”

  “This isn’t merely about things one must or must not do. The amobiler moves at the speed its driver wishes it to, and our wishes ar
e often at odds with necessity.”

  “Really? Are you serious? Good golly! I had no idea.”

  “You didn’t know?” asked Lonli-Lokli. “I was sure you were simply fulfilling your childhood dream of high-speed racing when you got behind the levers.”

  “No! Up till now it just seemed to me that I wasn’t as cautious as other drivers, and pushed it to maximum speed.”

  “Of course, that’s what I had in mind when I didn’t want to let you behind the levers. Only there’s no ‘maximum speed.’ It’s all a matter of the driver’s inner speedometer. I underestimated your self-control, however. I believe I owe you an apology.”

  “You shouldn’t apologize, Glamma. That’s nonsense. So all this time I’ve been driving this jalopy, I didn’t know how it worked. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”

  I sighed, and wiped the drops of perspiration from my forehead. Too much strange, new information for one day.

  “The important thing is that you know how to drive it. And you can’t be an uncle, even a monkey’s. You keep forgetting who you are, my dear.”

  We rode in silence until deep in the night. Lonli-Lokli, no doubt, had already exhausted his quota of words for the next three years. And I was mortally afraid of asking another questions—I’d had enough amazing revelations for one day, thank you very much.

  We spent the night in a large roadside motel. Our guide sat down at the small bar for a game of Krak. Some of the travelers were happy to join him.

  “This is how to do business,” Lonli-Lokli said. “Two nights on the road to Kettari, and two nights on the return trip. This Master Caravan Leader is a very rich man, I’m willing to bet.”

  “Do you think he’s a cardsharper, too?”

  “No, but Kettarians are very good at card games. They have a true talent for it. So fleecing even the luckiest dwellers of the Capital comes naturally to them. I think we need a good sleep. We have a hard day ahead of us.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said uncertainly, knowing I’d hardly be able to go to sleep this early, even after a hard day.

  “You know, Lady Marilyn,” Lonli-Lokli said, arranging himself under a fluffy blanket. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave our room. It won’t look very plausible—pretty married women don’t usually sit in the bar until dawn after a hard day on the road. People might think things aren’t quite right between us.”

  “It would never have entered my head. No nocturnal ramblings! If tipsy barflies begin making passes at Lady Marilyn, I’ll have to spit at them. And that doesn’t conform to my notions of propriety and discretion.”

  “In that case, I beg your pardon. Good night, Marilyn.”

  My companion dozed off. I crawled under my blanket and let my mind wander. I had quite enough to think about after our instructive conversation. At the same time, I could take advantage of the free time and snatch a few cigarettes from under my wonder-working pillow.

  I only managed to fall asleep at dawn, and an hour later Sir Shurf, already impeccably groomed and alert, thrust a tray with kamra and sandwiches under my nose.

  “I’m very sorry, but we’re leaving in half an hour. I think you ought to use some of your supply of Elixir of Kaxar.”

  “No, it’s better if I sleep in the amobiler,” I said, lifting my heavy head from the pillow. “Thanks for your concern, Glamma. Your wife—I mean the real wife of Lonli-Lokli—must be the happiest of women.”

  “I hope so,” said Shurf. “I have a strange fate, Marilyn. Real wife or no, I’m the one who serves her kamra in bed, and not the other way around.”

  “Sinning Magicians, was that a joke I just heard?”

  “It’s simply a statement of fact. If you wish to bathe, you’d better hurry.”

  “Of course I want to!” I swallowed the kamra down in one gulp, I couldn’t even look at the food.

  I settled down in the back seat of the amobiler, leaving my fellow travelers to contemplate the dreary, monotonous plains stretching to the west of Uguland. I fell asleep so soundly that Sir Lonli-Lokli’s attempts to make me come out for lunch proved futile. “Just tell them that the lady is suffering from motion sickness,” I grumbled sourly, and dove headfirst into the sweetest of sweet dreams.

  I awoke not long before sundown. I was as happy, rested, and hungry, all at once, as I had been in a long time.

  “I took a few sandwiches from the tavern where we had lunch,” Lonli-Lokli said. “I think it was the right thing to do.”

  “You got that right,” I said gratefully. “I hope it’s not some inedible stuff again.”

  “The local cuisine differs from that of the Capital, naturally,” said Sir Shurf. “But one shouldn’t underestimate the benefit of some variety in life.”

  “Oh, I’m conservative in these matters,” I said with my mouth full. “Maybe it’s time for me to take over from you, Glamma? I hope you trust me behind the levers by now.”

  “Of course I do. You can do as you wish, though I’m not really tired yet.”

  “One shouldn’t underestimate the benefit of some variety in life. End of quote.”

  “Touché.”

  My Lady Marilyn made herself comfortable at the levers and daringly lit up a cigarette. I couldn’t wait to partake of the fruits of my night’s labor.

  Lonli-Lokli grew visibly uneasy.

  “I don’t know where these strange smoking accoutrements come from, but you should hide them from the gaze of strangers. What is all right for Max is not necessarily acceptable for an ordinary citizen, Lady Marilyn.”

  “I’m a stranger myself, if you care to remember! And it’s very unlikely that anyone is observing us now.”

  “Not now, no, but during the stops.”

  “I’m not a complete dunce!” I retorted. “Do you really think I’d light up a cigarette in the company of other people, Shurf?”

  “It’s always better to be forewarned. Besides, you probably haven’t considered that it would be better to burn the butts than to throw them away. You really must mind your manners, Marilyn,” my companion reprimanded me.

  I burst out laughing. Our dialogue was becoming heated. When I had recovered, I carefully burned my cigarette butt. Lonli-Lokli was, after all, the wisest of mortals. And I was a frivolous ninny who knew nothing about the paramount demands of secrecy.

  That night we had already reached the County Shimara. Our Master Caravan Leader sat down at the card table again, and we dined on something exotic—too spicy and oily for my tastes—then went to the night’s lodgings.

  Only then did I realize that the huge residential hall was outside the territory of the Unified Kingdom. Our room was not much larger than an ordinary hotel room in my own world, and the bed was a regular double bed. I looked at Lonli-Lokli in dismay.

  “Well, I’ll be! It looks like we’ll have to sleep in each other’s embrace, my darling!”

  “That may be rather inconvenient,” Sir Shurf said. “Besides, since it has come to this, I can offer you the possibility of using my sleep. When people sleep side by side, it’s fairly easy to do so.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, puzzled. “I’ll have your dreams instead of my own? And anyway, it won’t work—Lady Marilyn slept until sundown.”

  “When one person shares his sleep with another, they fall asleep simultaneously,” Shurf explained. “I’ll put you to sleep, and then I’ll wake you up. But I don’t know in advance whose dreams we’ll have: yours, mine, or both at the same time. It’s up to us to decide. Anyway, I think this solution to the dilemma is a reasonable one. Tomorrow after lunch we’ll be in Kettari, and you’ll have to be awake and alert the whole day. If I’ve understood correctly, Sir Juffin wanted us to pay close attention to the road leading into the city.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “Do you have good dreams, Glamma? After the story about some of Sir Lonli-Lokli’s dreams—”

  “I would never propose that you share my nightmares. Luckily, I have been free of them for a long time.”

>   “Well, I can’t vouch for my dreams,” I said, and sighed. “Sometimes I see such terrible things in my dreams that it’s enough to make you despair. Do you like taking risks, Glamma?”

  “There’s no risk involved, since I’m always able to wake up at will. Lie down, Marilyn. We mustn’t waste any more valuable time.”

  I quickly undressed, surprised again that my body had remained the same beneath the illusion of Lady Marilyn, so very plausible and genuine.

  It’s time to sleep in your pajamas, kid, I thought. You’re not going to walk around naked in your friend Shurf’s dreamworld, are you? It’s wouldn’t be polite.

  “It’s best if our heads are touching,” Lonli-Lokli said. “I’m not an expert in these matters by a long shot.”

  “Okay,” I said, and obediently shifted my head. “All the more since putting to sleep such a live-wire as myself . . .” I yawned without finishing my thought, ready to peek into my companion’s dreams.

  It turned out that the “projectionist” in this small dream-cinema for two was me. My favorite dreams of all visited us that night—the city in the mountains, where the only kind of municipal transport was a cable car; the marvelous English park that was always empty; the line of sandy beaches on the shore of a dark, gloomy sea.

  I wandered through these extraordinary dreamscapes, now and then exclaiming, “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” “Wonderful!” my partner agreed, an astonishing fellow who didn’t look at all like my good friend Sir Shurf Lonli-Lokli, nor like the Mad Fishmonger who once terrorized all of Echo, nor like Sir Glamma Eralga.

  I awoke at dawn, happy and full of peaceful well-being.

  “Thank you for that wonderful excursion,” I said, smiling at Lonli-Lokli, who was already pulling on Glamma’s blue skaba.

  “I’m the one who should be thanking you, since our dreams belonged to Sir Max. I’ve never had the opportunity to be in places like that before. Without the slightest doubt, they’re marvelous. I never expected anything like that from you, Sir Max.”