The Stranger: The Labyrinths of Echo, Part One

by Max Frei

  “Ugh! That’s revolting. Hand over the matches.”

  A few minutes later, Melifaro’s jubilant voice echoed through the room.

  “Juffin’s going to fire us, Mr. Bad Dream! Boboota’s here, but he seems to be all right. He doesn’t even look like a sausage—he’s just sleeping.”

  “He’s been here since yesterday. Evidently, turning into pâté is a fairly lengthy process. Oh, if it hadn’t been for my darned good luck, poor Juffin would have been so happy! It looks like it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  “What’s going on here? Are you here, Sir Melifaro?” It was the voice of Lieutenant Shixola, a policeman, and our good friend.

  “Over here. Keep it down, boys. Your boss, it seems, is taking a nap.”

  “What?! Our boss?”

  Shixola quickened his pace, and tripped over the corpse of the mad chef at a rapid clip. I managed to catch him at the very moment his thoroughbred nose was an inch from the floor. His colleague, following close behind, miraculously avoided the same fate, and several more policemen reached for their weapons in alarm. Melifaro guffawed.

  “Good day, Sir Max,” Shixola mumbled, freeing himself from my embrace. “Lucky for me you have excellent reflexes. What did I trip over?”

  “Over the body of a state criminal—a poisoner, a cannibal, and the abductor of General Boboota. Mr. Itullo tried so hard to make your life easier and more pleasant! Truly, gentlemen, Sir Melifaro and I are terribly sorry. We are to blame. Here is your boss, healthy and all in one piece.”

  “Not ‘we’—just you, Max!” Melifaro hurried to rid himself of the undeserved laurels. “I just came here for dinner. So, gentlemen, if you have come to punch the living daylights out of the one who rescued your boss, Sir Max is your man. I ask you to observe the proper protocol!”

  The policemen looked at Melifaro as though he were a slow-witted sick child. It seemed to them that saying such things about a person wearing the Mantle of Death, in his presence, no less, was not courage, but suicide. I made a horrible grimace and showed Melifaro my fist. One shouldn’t let down one’s defenses in front of strangers, all the same. Otherwise, how could you keep them quaking in fear?

  “I won’t disturb your work, gentlemen,” I said, bowing to Melifaro. “Carry on.”

  “And you?” Melifaro asked indignantly.

  “What more is there for me to do here? I’ll go cheer up Juffin. By the time you get there, he will already have had time to kill me for the good news. Then, you’ll see, you’ll be relieved. I’m saving your skin, friend. It’s nothing to me—I’m immortal.”

  The poor policemen listened to me, mouths agape.

  As I was going out the door, Melifaro’s voice reached me. “Were you serious about that immortality business, Max?” I sighed and resorted to Silent Speech, which I had been avoiding all day, Who knows who I am? I told you.

  I set out for the House by the Bridge. I really couldn’t wait to repent before my boss. And I hadn’t seen Melamori since the morning.

  Since I was driving the amobiler, I was in Sir Juffin Hully’s office, in less than ten minutes.

  “I never expected you to be so prompt, Max. Finding Boboota a dozen seconds after sunset! That’s a record even for our office—cracking a case less than a minute after it was officially opened. We have something to celebrate. Let’s go to the Glutton. And you can stop peering around in hopes of seeing Lady Melamori. She has been home for two hours already, by my estimation. I let her off, poor thing: first her relatives, then that foolish call from you at sunrise. What brought that on? A surge of tender emotion? Come on, let’s go.”

  “Did Melifaro manage to report everything to you while I was on my way here?” I was a bit hurt. “And here I thought my tongue would drop off before I finished telling my tale.”

  “What do I need with someone’s report? I’m always with you, in a manner of speaking. And not because I so desperately want to be.”

  “Always!?” I was flabbergasted. “That’s news to me!”

  “Oh, Max. Don’t exaggerate. I would go off my rocker if I had to keep an eye on you all the time. But when I’m worried, it’s easier just to look in on how things are going than to keep fretting about you. Take it easy.”

  “Well, as long as you don’t peek when I’m in the bathroom . . . I guess I won’t fret about it. But were you really worried?” I asked uncertainly, and accidentally bumped my forehead against the doorframe.

  “Do you think yours is the only heart that sends out distress signals?”

  Juffin finally took pity on me and casually placed an icy palm on my sore forehead, which relieving the pain instantly.

  “Let’s go! If you stare at the door another minute, it may disappear altogether. Don’t get vindictive, now: you made two major blunders, which only someone as lucky as you could have gotten away with.”

  “Blunders?” I echoed, mortified. “But I thought this was when you’d start praising me.”

  We entered the Glutton.

  “I am praising you. In our profession, being lucky is much more important than being thorough or quick on the uptake. Luck isn’t something you can learn. Don’t pout, son. You don’t need me to tell you about all your genius and the consequences thereof. What will you order?”

  “Nothing!” I exclaimed in disgust. “After a spectacle like that . . . Well, maybe I’ll have some pastries. Anything, as long as it’s not meat.”

  “Are you that impressionable? Well, it’s up to you. How about a drink?

  “No. That is . . . If only . . .”

  “Good golly! That potion’s going to be the death of you! Fine. Take it—but just a drop, mind you.”

  Juffin held out the invisible bottle of Elixir of Kaxar.

  “Oh, you brought it along!”

  I broke into a grateful smile and took a sip. That was all I needed.

  “Tell me about my blunders, Juffin. Now I’m ready even for a public thrashing.”

  “To begin with, Max, you forgot to ask Sir Kofa to go to the morgue to sniff out and identify the smell. He would immediately have told you what it was. And you might have been able to get along without your uncanny good luck. What made you decide to eat at the Hunchback, of all places? Can you explain that to me?”

  “I can. My preternatural intuition,” I said, and burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself. “Not really. It was my preternatural pettiness. Melifaro owed me a good meal in exchange for the use of my favorite blanket. I value my blanket very highly, so we had to go to the most expensive restaurant.”

  “Hm. Life hasn’t seemed this entertaining in a long time! All right, then. You got the point about Kofa?”

  “Got it,” I said. “Sheer stupidity on my part. At least I did send all the others down there.”

  “A sound decision. Never mind, it happens to everyone.”

  “What else?” I asked dully. “What else did I do wrong?”

  “You and Melifaro didn’t sense the danger. Do you know the hunchback had every intention of poisoning you? From the very first, he was sure you had come to look for Boboota, and because madmen have their own logic, I myself didn’t anticipae it until it was too late. Or maybe it’s just hard to see through a madman. In short, after you had sniffed the King Banjee, Itullo was determined to treat you to a good dose of poison.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing, obviously. I was all ready to intervene, but the hunchback just forgot to do it! As soon as he entered the kitchen, the decision evaporated from his sorry head. So you were spared, and I was very surprised. I haven’t been so surprised in, well, about five hundred years! That a poisoner forgets to add the poison—well, that flies in the face of the basic laws of the universe.”

  “You said yourself I was lucky,” I said with a shrug. I finally decided to ask a question that had been bothering me for a long time. “Did you say about five hundred years? How old—”

  “How old am I? Not as old as I might seem. Just seven hundred, an
d then some. Compared to Maba Kalox I’m just a spring chicken.”

  “Seven hundred? You’ve got to be kidding!” I shook my head in admiration. “Will you teach me?”

  “This, coming from the fellow who frightened poor Melifaro with his talk about immortality? Better keep quiet . . .”

  At that moment, a flaming red comet seemed to burst into the Glutton, collapsing in the chair next to me. Melifaro’s speed astonished me—this force of nature had even managed to change his clothes!

  “Everything’s fine, Sir Juffin. I can imagine how upset you were, but at least a few dozen days without Boboota are guaranteed. He has been taken to Abilat Paras. This great healer claims that bringing Boboota around will be difficult—and Boboota was lucky. The others can already be buried: the changes were irreversible. How crafty that hunchback must have been to lure them into his clutches!”

  “Have a drink, you poor fellow! I won’t offer you food, if even Sir Max turns up his nose at it.”

  “Well, perhaps a little something sweet,” Melifaro drawled. “Only, please—no meat!”

  “How fastidious my reps are! Who would have thought,” Juffin said grinning. “Eat your pastries then. I’ll get down to something more serious.”

  The chief solemnly lifted the lid off the pot filled to the brim with Madame Zizinda’s renowned hot pâté. Melifaro and I exchanged queasy glances, before launching right into the platter of sweet confections—just to take our minds off the days’ horrors, of course.

  “All right, let’s hear it, son,” Juffin demanded with his mouth full. “Max here is bursting with curiosity; and, I must admit, it’s not all that clear to me, either. How do you think he lured them there?”

  “Rumors about that blasted pâté had been doing the rounds in Echo for a long time. Lots of people went to Itullo’s to partake of the secrets of old cuisine. The fellow really had learned to make the dishes without resorting to Forbidden Magic. I found his papers, and the police questioned the servants already, so I can explain everything with some certainty. This is how it worked. The hunchback made a list of gourmets. He collected information about them, and then invited them, preferably those who both lived alone and were prosperous, to his establishment. There he fed them his foul delicacy. As soon as they tried it, some people—not all, only the weakest and most vulnerable—were instantly hooked. They felt they couldn’t live without it. When a customer like that came to Itullo in the middle of the night, fell on his knees, and offered his whole fortune in exchange for a serving of the pâté, the chef knew that he had caught another one in his snares. He started making them pay in earnest; and they had to pay a high price to be led down the garden path to the grave-yard. The poor fellows sank into debt and would even begin selling their property to buy the cursed dish. One of them sold two houses, at least; I know that for a fact. Within a few dozen days, the hunchback succeeded in reducing the poor gluttons to rags. By then they were ready to be lured to the next step. One fine day, the customer would just fall asleep over his plate. To be more exact, he would fall unconscious. It didn’t take much effort for the hunchback to put him into a cage in the cellar. Then the last stage of feeding began. The denizens of the cellar were fed another mixture of ingredients: the vile invention of the great chef, resembling the pâté itself in taste and aroma, but much more radical. Another few days, and a heaping portion of King Banjee was ready to be served to a new batch of unfortunate gourmets. What will they do now, poor things?”

  “Go to the wisewomen,” Juffin said. “Better late than never. So the pâté itself reduced them to a state of stupor, then knocked them out completely. After which they were fed some other junk that turned them into pâté themselves. Extraordinary! What a brilliantly devised vicious circle! And he did all this without resorting to Forbidden Magic? Now that’s talent, a hole in the heavens above him! What a waste.”

  “Poor Karwen!” I blurted out. “Hunting for culinary secrets turned out to be a dangerous pastime. He no doubt found his way into Itullo’s covert kitchen and swiped the first pot he came to that smelled like King Banjee. He took it home, studied it, tasted it, of course—then perhaps got carried away and ate it all at one sitting. What terrible luck!”

  “Ah, the hapless proprietor of the Tipsy Bottle,” Juffin sighed. “This is not an auspicious start to the New Year, boys. Echo has lost two of its finest cooks. We’ll have to do something about it.”

  “Still, there’s something not quite right here,” I objected. “If the hunchback chose his candidates so scrupulously, how did General Boboota get caught up in this mess? He can’t be considered a lonely man by any stretch of the imagination. After all, he’s the Head of Public Order. Did the hunchback go completely mad?”

  “He certainly did go completely mad!” said Melifaro. “But there was more to it than that. There was a curious misunderstanding. One day Boboota took his wife to Itullo’s. It was a festive family outing, everything was very sweet, until the General saw Sir Balegar Lebda, one of his former colleagues, in one of the booths. He was a lonely old retired General of the Royal Guard. The same one, by the way, whose appearance just about did me in today.”

  “The one who had become pâté above the belt?”

  “That’s the one. That night they had served the unlucky fellow his final helping. The door opened, Boboota saw his old comrade, ran to embrace him, and helped himself to a morsel from his plate, as a sign of their friendship. The next day he appeared before the hunchback demanding more. The hunchback tried to send him to the wisewomen; he realized the risk he was running. But Boboota raised a ruckus.”

  “I can imagine,” Juffin said with a grin.

  “In short, the hunchback was afraid that Boboota would bring the entire City Police Force to his door, and he chose the lesser of two evils. By the way, I saw the accounts. Boboota’s culinary pleasures were almost free of charge, in contrast to what the others laid out, of course. That’s the whole story, Max.”

  “Not quite all,” Juffin corrected. “The most interesting task is still ahead of us. Now we have to save the reputation of Boboota Box, brave General of the City Police Force. We’ll have to give him your laurels, boys.”

  “Why?” I protested, nearly choking. “You longed to send him into retirement, and this is the perfect pretext!”

  “Max, you’d better stay away from politics. Just leave it to your daytime half. No, on second thought, better not. I see the same baffled look on his face. I might have expected you to understand, Sir Melifaro.”

  “Do you mean to say—” Melifaro’s dark eyes lit up a flash of understanding.

  “Well, yes. Topple Boboota and make the City Police Force the laughing stock of everyone in Echo? And how will they work then, those brave boys? And who will do their job? The seven of us? No, thank you very much. Moreover, every cloud has a silver lining. We’ll report to the King how the brave General Boboota went right into the thick of it to expose the criminal. But we’ll keep the truer version on hand for future use. So Boboota will be as good as gold. Although, even without that the poor thing is so scared of Max he’s developed a nervous tic.”

  “And I was sure you’d kill us for finding him so soon,” I sighed in disappointment. “What a schemer you are.”

  “Scheming is the most exciting thing in the world, Max. Magic alone isn’t enough to provide first-class entertainment. Ah, Sir Shurf is here! Where’s my office, anyway: in the House by the Bridge, or here in the Glutton?”

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” Shurf Lonli-Lokli bowed with perfect aplomb and sat down next to Juffin. “I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Did you miss us, Lonki-Lomki?” Melifaro inquired acidly. “Did Mr. Bad Dream steal your job again?”

  “My name is Lonli-Lokli,” said the Master Who Snuffs Out Unnecessary Lives in an even tone. “And our colleague is called Sir Max. You have a terrible memory for names, Melifaro. There are many exercises for improving the memory, you know.”

  Sir Shurf grabbed the last cream
puff and popped it into his mouth. I was stunned. Could Lonli-Lokli have learned how to joke? No, I must have imagined it. There were no exercises for developing a sense of humor—not in this World, nor in any other.

  “Did you actually use your Gift, Max?” asked Lonli-Lokli. “I was certain that at this stage in our studies it wouldn’t be easy for you to lose your spiritual equilibrium. I probably underestimated the fieriness of your temperament.”

  “No, on the contrary. My temperament is just fine. Something strange happened, though. I wanted to tell you, Juffin, so I stored it away in my memory. I didn’t get angry, and I didn’t get scared, during all that commotion, although I understood that under the circumstances that was exactly what was required of me. But the hunchback was so pathetic, with his absurd hatchet and his turkey-strangler, that I decided to play around. I thought that after all the rumors about my poisonous spittle he might be afraid of regular spit, too. It’s good that I hadn’t tried any games like that before.”

  “Are you serious, Max?” Juffin stared at me with the most fearsome of his icy gazes. After a moment he sighed wearily. “Of course you’re serious. Well, it turns out you’re not the only one who can make blunders. On the other hand, it’s not a bad thing that questions of life and death don’t just depend on your unreliable emotions. You’re always dangerous! Always. It’s good that you know that now. We’ll just have to take life as it comes. You haven’t changed your minds about the pâté, fellows?”

  Melifaro and I shook our heads vigorously.

  “What affectation! Do you think I buy into your delicate spiritual sensibilities? Perhaps you’re even planning to request a vacation?”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” I protested, “especially if you’ll allow me to return what you have in your pocket to its proper place.”

  “No way! The amount you downed already is enough until the day after tomorrow.” Juffin was trying very hard to be a gruff boss. “All right, here’s what we’ll do. You’re in luck, Melifaro, you can go home. And Shurf, it wouldn’t do you any harm to relax for a while. This End of the Year has wound everyone up—everyone except Sir Max. So let him report to duty. That clear, hero?”