The Stranger's Magic: The Labyrinths of Echo: Book Three (10 page)

The boss gave me a mocking bow—Sir Melifaro himself would have died of envy—and opened a heavy, ancient door.

The cozy windows we had seen from afar were on the second floor. We ascended a wide staircase covered with a very soft carpet, in case, I guess, one of the crazy inhabitants of this hospitable
house decided to count the stairs with his own lower jaw.

“Good night, Sir Hully. I see you as though in a waking dream, Sir Max. The Refuge is honored by your visit. I am happy to say my name: Slobat Katshak, Master Keeper of the Peace of Mind,
or Chief Nocturnal Wiseman, to put it simply,” said a delicate young man in a light-turquoise looxi.

“Also, the former Junior Magician of the Order of Spiky Berries,” said Juffin. “And as much of a night owl as you are, Max.”

The little wiseman was about to burst from his enormous hospitality. “Be my guests, gentlemen. My heart will be broken into a million pieces if you decline this humble meal.”

“Secret Investigators turning down free food?” said Juffin. “Rest assured, Slobat, Sir Max and I will not leave as much as a crumb of bread on our plates.”

Calling it a “humble meal” was, of course, an understatement. The table was densely populated with all manner of trays with food. Still, all Juffin’s Rabelaisian bravado
notwithstanding, the meal didn’t take more than a quarter of an hour: the boss was eager to get down to business.

“Slobat, Sir Max and I must inspect the rooms of the charges in your care,” he said. “Perhaps we will need your help, but perhaps not. I think you should come with us and wait
in the hallway. This is a classified affair. I am sorry. I know this is not the most entertaining way to spend the night. I guess tonight isn’t your lucky night.”

“Not the most difficult or unpleasant undertaking, either,” said the wiseman. “Where would you like to start?”

“From the most hopeless cases, those whose spirits roam the Universe like waifs and strays during the Troubled Times.”

“Sinning Magicians,” I said, getting up from the table. “You’re a poet, Juffin.”

“Nothing to brag about. The premises dispose one to it.”

We had to leave the house and walk toward the middle of the garden. Finally, we reached a relatively small one-story building.

“This is the final abode of those who have no hope of ever finding their light half,” said the wiseman. “You may inspect the bedrooms. I’ll wait outside, if you
don’t mind.”

“Not only do we not mind, we insist,” said Juffin, smiling.

We entered a dark hallway. In an effort to economize, the administration of the Refuge hadn’t bothered to put up a lamp or even a candle here. This wasn’t a problem: I had long ago
learned to find my way in darkness, and Juffin, like any other inhabitant of the Unified Kingdom, had had this ability since birth.

“What do I do?” I said in a whisper. “How do I take part in your ‘medical exam’? I’ve never tried it on people before, you know.”

“For starters, just watch me. Maybe you’ll figure it out on your own. Or maybe we won’t have to do anything at all. There’s no guarantee that we’ll find what
we’re looking for here. Praise be the Magicians, I only need to enter a bedroom to see if its occupant holds any interest for us.”

“By the way, why here? Is this Refuge for the Mad special?”

“You bet it is. It’s the only Refuge for the Mad in the Capital. The others are all in distant provinces,” said Juffin. “Maybe even this one will move soon. Some
respected wisemen believe that staying in the Heart of the World thwarts the healing of mental patients. Now those who’ve decided to sneak through Xumgat, on the other hand, need all the
power of the Heart of the World they can get. I doubt that they’d want to go all the way to somewhere in Uryuland. If our Rider really gains his power from the mentally ill, his victims
should be here somewhere.”

We entered the first room. The soft part of the floor, which served as a bed, took up almost all the available space. At the farther end of the room, someone was breathing heavily under a pile
of blankets.

“Okay, this lady is definitely of no interest to us,” said Juffin. “Her poor spirit is wandering Magicians know where, and it has never descended to Xumgat. Of that, I am
certain. Let’s move on.”

“How did you know it was a lady?” I said, carefully closing the door behind me.

“It was a lady—a beautiful one, too. Wait a second, why are you so surprised? I understand that at your age all women seem like mysterious and wonderful creatures, but did you think
they never went mad?”

“Of course I know they do. And how,” I said. “So we’re in the women’s ward?”

“You’re talking nonsense again. Why would anyone build special wards for men and women? This is a hospital, not a Quarter of Trysts. Another tradition of that homeland of
yours?”

“Indeed,” I said, blushing. “In our hospitals, women and men are kept separately.”

“Are the inhabitants of your world so unrestrained in their passion that they are eager to jump on one another at any opportunity?” said Juffin, surprised. “Even the crippled,
the lame, and the sick? I just can’t wrap my mind around this. Strange that your behavior is fairly decent. I’m sure you could easily pass for a basket case and end up in one of your
horrible and well-guarded Refuges for the Mad back home.”

“Spot on, Juffin,” I said. “But I deceived them by keeping a low profile.”

“Okay, we’ll have plenty of time to discuss your ruined youth later,” said Juffin. “Now we have pressing business at hand.”

We inspected several more bedrooms.

“No, not this one,” Juffin would say, and we would move along. We had covered well over half of the hallway when I felt an unpleasant sensation at the threshold of one of the
rooms.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I just sensed that the person who was sighing deeply underneath a blanket, several paces from where I was standing, felt very cold and lonely. I was all too
familiar with that piercing, ice-cold, absolute loneliness—the loneliness without self, without the slightest chance of understanding what was happening to you, without the hope of ever
coming back. I had once felt something similar when I fell asleep in the amobiler in the Magaxon Forest and found myself in the Corridor between Worlds. Boy, was I scared then!

“Even if I didn’t know anything about such matters, I could easily use your face as an indicator,” said Juffin. “It’s as crooked as it can be. Looks like
we’ve found what we were looking for, unless the disconcerted spirit of this poor fellow slides back and forth along Xumgat in complete solitude.”

“You’re definitely on a roll today,” I said, letting out a nervous laugh. “I don’t remember you ever using such turns of phrase before.”

“Indeed. As I said before, the premises dispose one to it,” said Juffin, sitting down on the floor. “Pay attention now, and don’t distract me. I’m going to ask the
poor fellow to tell us his story, so to speak. You sit down beside me and try to tune in. Do what you’d normally do, as if this weren’t a person but a regular box or, I don’t
know, a broom. You use the same principles when working with people; it’s just more difficult to establish the connection. Unlike inanimate objects, a person is reticent by nature—any
person, mind you, not just a madman.”

I sat down next to Juffin and leaned against the wall. The wall was soft and elastic. In this respect, the bedrooms in the Refuge for the Mad on the outskirts of Echo were similar to regular
rooms for the violently insane in my “historical homeland.”

Then I stared at the shapeless dark hump at the edge of the bed. Our subject seemed to me to be a frail creature. His blanket was pulled over his head. I understood, however, that it
didn’t really matter. He could just as well be hiding from an X-ray machine under that blanket.

For a few moments, I didn’t sense anything special. I just sat on the floor and stared at the sleeping lunatic. If I were interrogating his blanket, I already would have gotten all the
information I needed. Then I felt something like a jolt from within. It felt similar to the way your heart pushes against your ribs when a truck turns from around the corner and heads right toward
your car.

Following the jolt came a steady stream of mixed visions that seemed to lack any plot or narration. These bright pictures, however, were pitiful inkblots in comparison with the overwhelming
loneliness of the creature lost in the Corridor between Worlds, or “sliding back and forth along Xumgat,” as Juffin had put it—though this wording sent shivers down my spine.

Juffin shook my shoulder.

“Hey, come back, Max. We’ve got to hurry. I already found out everything I needed to know. You also felt something at the end, didn’t you?”

“I think so.”

I shook my head to pull myself together: some part of me was still wandering in that mysterious place—a significant part of me, I should say. My existence without it was hardly complete.
Shaking my head didn’t help much, so I had to resort to slapping my face. I did it from the bottom of my heart; it even came with a complimentary ringing in the ears.

“Need a hand?” said Juffin.

“Thanks, I think I can manage on my own. What I really need is five minutes and a bucket of cold water.”

“Done. This little door leads to the bathroom. But I can’t give you more than two minutes. We need to hurry.”

I went to the bathroom, took off my turban, and stuck my head under the spigot. The water temperature was ideal: not quite so freezing as to give me another cold, but cool enough to wash off the
residue of that poor person’s emotions. Juffin stood in the doorway contemplating my suffering with apparent curiosity.

“I’ve learned some amazing things, Max. I’m sure you’ve also learned them, but you don’t have the experience yet to translate them into a language you
understand.”

“To transmogrify,” I said. I thought the word was very appropriate in this context.

“Another strange word . . . Anyway, we can find more victims of our mysterious Rider in this Refuge for the Mad. A lot more. Many more than I suspected. But let’s not waste time: the
culprit of this whole ordeal is also in this Refuge. In fact, he has been here for a long, long time. He has kept this last fellow we’ve interrogated in captivity for eighty years, right from
the moment the guy arrived here. I’ve got to hand it to him, though: the old man is a master of disguise. And who in his right mind—pun definitely intended—would search for the
most powerful of the Senior Magicians of the Order of the Staff in the Sand in a Refuge for the Mad? Even I wouldn’t think of it. Even I!”

“So, I take it you two know each other,” I said, grabbing a towel.

“And how! Magician Gugimagon and I go way back. Back in the Epoch of Orders, he stuck to me like a wet raincoat, hoping that I’d break down and agree to teach him the secret of
Invisible Magic. As if it were up to me. The guy had no talent for those things. It was written on his forehead in letters this big.”

Juffin stretched his arms like a fisherman boasting to the world of his latest whopper. It seemed as though it was important that I learn, once and for all, how big the letters had been.

“Some friends you’ve got, Juffin,” I said. “Did that poor fellow tell you which room we could find your old buddy in, by any chance?”