The Stranger's Woes (14 page)

Still, I tried. I tried thinking about how dangerous this fellow must be, since Melamori was so unnerved by the trace. I decided I simply had to find the scoundrel who was sauntering through the forest leaving traces that spoiled the moods of perfectly decent people. All this smacked of a one-man play in an amateur theatrical hour.

Then I relaxed, and my mind was cleared of extraneous rubbish. I walked, attending to the sensation in the soles of my feet. Tracing circles around this absurd stump chased all the trivial thoughts from my head. Then I froze, as if struck by lightning. I couldn’t budge from the spot. I stood there, immobile, slowly but surely turning into a statue. Now my breath was becoming more labored, and my tongue was numb and lolled around in my mouth. Still, I had time to summon help.

“Come on, get me out of this, on the double!”

I didn’t have to ask twice, praise be the Magicians. A sharp blow at the back of my knees from Melamori’s foot did the trick. I found myself on the ground, stunned. Since I managed to land on both my elbows and my knees, I hurt in four places at once.

“Thanks,” I groaned. I noticed with relief that my tongue, and after that the rest of my body, was beginning to function again. “You level a mean blow, honey.”

“I should hope so,” Melamori said. “You see? You did do it, but the trace got the better of you. You succumbed, even worse than I did. I just felt queasy and frightened. Apparently our gift is a double-edged sword: the stronger you are, the harder you fall if something goes wrong. What kind of trace is it? Do you have any idea, Max?”

“Sure I do. It’s the trace of a dead man,” I blurted out, startling even myself. Right then and there I knew that I wasn’t mistaken. What else could it have been?

“But that’s impossible,” Melamori said, looking at me fearfully. “Dead people leave no trace.”

“Your information is out of date, my lady. Sometimes they do. It’s the trace of Red Jiffa, I’m afraid. This is a sweet little case. The old geezer dug himself out of the grave. He was homesick for his old stomping grounds. I understand the poor guy. What I want to know is where he dug up the new Magaxon Foxcubs—from the neighboring villages or the neighboring graves? Too bad I can’t step on his trace. I start dying myself—you saw it with your own eyes.”

“Yes, you nearly scared the wits out of me,” Melamori said. “Your face even started turning blue.”

“I must have made a handsome sight,” I said. “Well, what are we going to do?”

“Whatever you do, don’t try that trick again. Besides, the blue of your face didn’t match your clothes at all. It positively clashed. Send a call to the boys, Sir Max. There’s no other way. I have to follow this sinning trace on my own.”

“Won’t the pleasure be too much for you?” I said. I didn’t want to have to give the green light for this performance, but what choice did I have?

“There’s no getting around it,” Melamori said. “I’ll have to grin and bear it. It won’t be the first time. But let’s really hustle, okay?”

“Like greased lightning,” I promised.

“Good.” Melamori smiled wistfully and buried her nose in my shoulder.

We stood like that until the first heroes of the impending battle burst forth out of the nearby thorn bushes.

Anday Pu brought up the rear. He looked so panic-stricken, and so eager at the same time, that Melamori and I couldn’t help laughing.

“We’ll follow behind Lady Melamori, the faster the better,” I commanded my fiery but bumbling regiment. “I advise you to prepare for the worst. One of them is already dead, that’s certain. I’m not sure about the others. Try not to lose your heads, whatever happens. Let’s go!”

Melamori stood on the trace, cringed, stooped, and put her arms around her body, as if she were cold. I really wanted to help her, but there was nothing I could do. She made a few uncertain steps, shook her head resolutely, and started running. We followed her.

I tried very hard to keep to the side of the invisible and dangerous trace. The last thing I needed was to collapse in the middle of a chase.

Luckily it was only a few minutes before Melamori was brought up short before the edge of a shallow ravine. She leaped down into it, dropped onto all fours, and started to howl. The unearthly sounds made my skin crawl.

“What are you doing?” I said, alarmed, jumping in after her.

“Nothing. The trace ends here. There’s some kind of passageway—the trace leads right into it. I . . . I had to call him out, Max. Don’t ask me why. I didn’t want to, but somehow . . . the trace told me I had to,” Melamori said. “Help me climb out of here, please!”

Her voice had returned to normal again. It was impossible to believe that this sweet lady had just been howling like an inconsolable werewolf. I helped her scramble out and followed close behind her.

“Max, he’ll be here soon,” Melamori said. “It will either be Jiffa by himself, or . . . much worse. Anyway, Jiffa’s trace is the only one here.”

“You got that, gentleman?” I said, turning to the policemen. “A bunch of living corpses are about to crawl out of that ravine. If you have a weak stomach, you’d better not look.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to handle them, Sir Max?” Captain Shixola said.

“How should I know? We’ll soon find out—if we’re still alive, that is. I told you Lonli-Lokli was the one to call on in a case like this, but you didn’t believe me. That’s what you get.”

I stared into the bottom of the ravine. For some reason it seemed funny to me rather than terrifying, although I was not given to heroics and never had been. No, I had never tried to play the hero. I guess I just couldn’t believe in the reality of what was happening.

Finally I spied something truly suspicious. Something was moving around down there.

“The Magaxon Foxes lived in dens, didn’t they, Shixola? Looks like these guys just moved into an empty apartment. That’s good. It means they’ll be crawling out of their foxhole one at a time. It’s a den, after all. Melamori, you said you ‘called him,’ right?”

Melamori nodded. She looked none too cheerful.

“Do you know what’s going to happen now? I mean, the one you called, is he going to be coming out of this foxhole and no other? For sure?”

“Yes, it will be from this one, but he may not emerge right away. He might put up resistance for a long time. Sooner or later he’ll have to come out, though. Hey!”

“‘Hey’ is right,” I said, raising my left hand and snapping my fingers. (Come one, come all, step right up and see my new trick, compliments of the one and only Lonli-Lokli.)

The tiny ball of lightning did not disappoint. It appeared right on cue, shimmering with a greenish light. Then it pierced the darkness of the ravine with a moist, smacking sound. I saw a youthful face, completely distorted with fear. My lightning hit the fellow right between the eyebrows. He gasped slightly.

The poor guy was still in one piece, apparently. My shot, which was supposed to be a mortal one, filled him with renewed vigor. He crawled toward me like a cockroach on the run. A second later the fellow grabbed a small thorn bush growing near my feet, pulled himself up, and . . .

The city policemen didn’t waste any time. The first shot from the Baboom slingshot hampered his progress a bit. The explosion blew open his cheek and nose. I don’t think you could have called this a trifling wound, but the bullheaded guy kept coming and climbed out of the shallow ravine at the same time I did. Without thinking, I spat at the horrifying face, disfigured by the shot from the Baboom. Even if the guy were alive, after our first encounter his time would have been up. My poison kills instantly, however stupid that might sound. But nothing of the sort happened. The spit left a gaping hole in his forehead, similar to the one on the carpet of my former bedroom on the Street of Old Coins. Of course, my “patient” was as dead as the nerve in a rotten tooth.

Then something incredible happened. This unsightly dead creature raised his dull eyes to me and shouted ecstatically, “I’m with you, Master!”

I jumped up and spat again at my “slave,” from the sheer unexpectedness of it. This time I blasted a hole in his shoulder, but the fellow didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to it. The living corpse scrabbled along the edge of the ravine, his eyes fixed on me fawningly.

The policemen’s collective nerves couldn’t quite cope with this tender spectacle, so a volley of shots from their Babooms tore him to shreds. But even the shreds of his over-dead body kept crawling toward me.

“I’m with you, Master,” the leftovers of his head cried out again and again.

I was pretty much beside myself at this point. Sometimes, though, when I’m pressed up hard against a wall, my mind works at the speed of light.

“Take it easy, boys,” I said to the policemen. “It looks like I know how to get them to obey. And that’s not bad, not bad at all. So don’t rush to kill the others if there are any displays of tenderness toward me. We’ll soon find out.”

Down below something rustled again. I snapped the fingers of my left hand. There was another bright green flash of light, a disgusting
thwack
, and a weak, cracking voice that called out, “I’m with you, Master!”

I bristled but kept myself under control. The more people are with me, the better. Figuring out whether they’re dead or alive is something I can do later, when this hullabaloo is over, I thought, provided it ever ends, of course.

So I said calmly, “Well, that’s just fine and dandy, pal. Stand right where you are. Stand guard over me, and warn me the next time one of your comrades appears. That’s an order! And tell me, how many of you are there down there?”

“We are many,” my dead vassal said proudly. “Almost three dozen in number.”

“Not too much to worry about,” I said turning to the policemen. “Three dozen isn’t three million, after all. We’re in luck, boys. Only three dozen dead men, but at least we’ll have something to brag about.”

“We are alive, we will never die,” the garrulous deceased man objected. Then he added proudly, “We’ve been together a long time.”

“Ah, I see. Well, alive or dead, do you think you can tell the others to obey me?”

“They obey Jiffa. Jiffa ordered us to deal with you, though our time has not yet come. After a few hours we will become stronger, Master. There they are!”

“Many thanks.” I made a comic bow to him and hurled some more green lightning into the ravine. As I had come to expect, another voice rose up out of the murky darkness, “I’m with you, Master!”

Just at that moment, a tiny but lethal piece of shrapnel from a Baboom flew at my head. “What a surprise,” Lookfi would have said. My trusty slave executed a wild leap. The shrapnel was flying fairly high, but he managed to jump up several yards to intercept it, planting the lethal object in his own dead forehead. It blew off almost half of his head. I cursed everything under the sun, then snapped my fingers a few more times. The devil knew how many of these guys had come out. Bright green sparks melted into the chasm of darkness.

“I’m with you, Master!” A raucous chorus of voices convinced me of the wisdom of my action.

“Everyone stay put down there and guard us from the others!” I had learned to bark out orders remarkably fast. Turning to the policeman, I announced, “Now I’m going to retreat to the forest with my own handpicked band of merry men. With brave lads like these, even the Dark Magicians are nothing to fear.”

“Ask about their leader, Max!” Melamori’s voice returned me to earth again. “These fellows don’t carry a trace. They leave nothing at all. They don’t count. I was following someone else. I don’t think you’ll have such an easy time with him. I called him, he should be coming out, but there’s still no sign of him.”

What a girl! She’s brilliant to have reminded me, I thought. “Loyal slaves, tell Uncle Max—where is your Jiffa?”

“Underneath,” the voices muttered. “Jiffa was called, but he won’t come out. He sent us to take care of it.”

In the meantime, the crowd in the ravine was growing steadily. I heard sounds of struggle. My “subjects” were trying faithfully to disarm their comrades. I would have to intervene. After snapping my fingers a few times, I became certain that now I had no fewer than two dozen corpses at my command. The fellows were crawling out of their lairs with such alacrity that there was no time for oaths of fealty.

“Max!” Melamori cried out. “Their leader is coming, I can feel it! It’s something terribly powerful, much mightier than all the rest. Please take care.”