Макс Фрай - The Stranger

“Open it, Max. Don’t hold back.”

“Oh, I forgot—your hands are tied up, in a manner of speaking.”

I grinned, and opened the door. Somewhere in one of the numerous magazines I devoured long ago in a previous life, I read that they asked Napoleon what the secret of his victories was. “The main thing is to throw yourself into the fray. After that you can sort out the details,” he quipped. Or something to that effect. Quite a fellow, that Napoleon—though he met with a rather unfortunate end.

By the window, with his back turned to us, sat a completely bald, withered old man in a bright looxi. Suddenly, a ball of lightning, white as snow, flew out from under Lonli-Lokli’s looxi. It struck the bald man right between the shoulder blades, and he flared up with an unpleasant pale light, like an enormous streetlamp. The ball of lightning didn’t seem to hurt the stranger in the least, but he turned around.

“Greetings, Fishmonger,” said Sir Kiba Attsax, the former Grand Magician of the Order of the Icy Hand.

The most horrifying thing was that Kiba Attsax looked very much like Lonli-Lokli himself. I remembered that Juffin had said our Shurf had an unremarkable appearance—that people who look like him are a dime a dozen. Blockhead that I was, I hadn’t believed him!

The many years he had spent in a non-living state had not made him more attractive. The bluish, pock-marked, unnaturally gleaming skin was what really compromised his charm.

The whites of his eyes were dark, almost brown, and the eyes themselves were light blue—a lovely combination, it can’t be denied. I even felt a bit calmer when I got a good look at him. How could such a pathetic, dilapidated old creature possibly harm the fearsome Lonli-Lokli?

Oh, how wrong I was!

The dead Magician, it seemed, welcomed the opportunity for a chat. Completely ignoring another ball of lightning, which struck him in the chest this time, he went on with the performance.

“You succeeded very well in hiding from me, Fishmonger. You hid yourself very well indeed! But you weren’t smart enough to stay away from a place like this. Did it never occur to you that a newborn World is like a dream? Here your powers don’t work. You don’t believe me?”

I turned to Lonli-Lokli. I still thought that this dead man would put the fear of the Magicians in us, and then we would make short shrift of him, as the genre required. But the expression on Sir Shurf’s face—Sinning Magicians, what’s happening to him? I wondered, starting to panic. He was really afraid, and—it looked like he was falling asleep!

The jangling voice of Kiba Attsax jolted me back to reality. “I have no quarrel with you, boy. You may leave. Don’t interfere. We have old accounts to settle,” he said. The dead Magician waved the stump of his left arm in front of my nose. “He stole my left hand. How do you like that?”

A cold lump of panic shot into my throat. The situation completely knocked me off course. Until that moment I had been sure that I could calmly observe this World full of dangers safely behind the shoulders of the invulnerable Lonli-Lokli. But “even old ladies make mistakes,” as they say where I come from. And today we had mistakes galore—enough to share among widows, orphans, and other have-nots, if they wanted them, I thought with crazed glee.

And then I stopped thinking and went into action. It seemed I had been pinned against the wall. For a start, I spat at the dirty mug of the dead Magician. It wasn’t that I seriously believed this would help matters, but I couldn’t come up with anything more original. To my surprise, the spitting improved the general situation. Of course, it didn’t kill my opponent—he was already dead on his feet, so to speak. But I was lucky. It turned out that my spit left proper holes in corpses—just like the ones that adorned my rug at home. The dead Magician seemed very surprised. For the time being, anyway, he was distracted from his cryptic plans for giving Lonli-Lokli his comeuppance.

Behind my back I sensed Shurf coming to life again. He would still need a few moments to recover. I’d just have to buy a little time.

I charged forth, almost up to the alcove where the dead man was sitting. I decided that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to spit right into the dark pupils of his eyes—eyes are so fragile and vulnerable. But I had never been a crack shot, and this time the poison landed on his forehead! Some sniper I’d made.

I laughed nervously, moved closer, and spat again. This time I did myself proud—where his right eye had been, there was now a gaping hole.

Kiba Attsax backed up toward the window in confusion.

“Are you dead?” he asked, with such intense scrutiny that it seemed nothing on earth was more important to him than a candid report on the state of my health. “In this place, the living can’t stand up to the dead in an argument, so you must be dead. Why are you on his side?”

“That’s my job—to be on his side,” I said.

And then I got just what I deserved. I felt Kiba Attsax’s right hand on my chest. Idiot! Why did I move so close to him? I berated myself.

Suddenly, I grew cold and calm, and I had no desire to fight with anyone anymore. I just needed to lie down and think a bit. It felt like the most primitive sort of narcosis. That infuriated me, so instead of shaking his hand off, I spat into the dead Magician’s face, already seriously disfigured by now.

“Shurf, hide him, quick!” I shouted. “Between your fingers, like I did with your glove. Hurry!”

I dropped to the floor to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally shrink me to keep the dead man company.

I just had to hope that Shurf was feeling well enough again to follow my advice, or to think of something better himself. I had run out of ideas.

Then, to my intense relief, I realized that Magician Kiba Attsax was no longer beside me. I turned around. Lonli-Lokli silently showed me his left hand. His thumb and his forefinger were pinched together in a peculiar fashion. It had worked!

We left that inhospitable room and went downstairs. I was shaking all over. Sir Shurf was silent, as before. I think he also needed time to come to his senses after his ordeal. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what this had been for him.

Outside there was a cold wind and a soft dusky twilight. We were alive, and we were walking away from the small two-story building. I turned around almost mechanically, and froze in my tracks.

“Look, Shurf! The house is gone!”

Lonli-Lokli turned around and glanced indifferently, then shrugged.

It’s gone all right, said the expression on his face. I realized it didn’t really make much difference to me, either. We kept going. Still, I couldn’t master my trembling. Even my teeth were chattering.

“Try some of my breathing exercises,” Shurf said suddenly. “They seem to have helped me.”

I tried. Ten minutes later, when we dropped into a tiny, deserted tavern, I could already hold a cocktail glass in my hand without spilling it or crushing it to pieces.

“Thanks,” I said. “They really do help.”

“What would they be for, if they didn’t help?” Lonli-Lokli asked stolidly.

“What are we going to do with him?” I said, trying to think practically. “Or do you want to keep him as a souvenir?”

“I doubt I’ll be needing it,” Lonli-Lokli replied. “In any case, I have to say your idea was praiseworthy. So simple, and at the same time it was something even I could do, although my chances of success were slim. You realize you saved much more than my life, Max?”

“Well, I think I can guess. I’m very impressionable. Your story about the dreams of the Mad Fishmonger are still ringing in my ears. Did this fellow do the same thing again? He managed to inform me that meeting him in Kettari wouldn’t be such a good idea, that here your chances would be no higher than in your dreams.”