“Right, disguised like the secret passage into the garden of the Order of the Seven-Leaf Clover? Not likely, Max.”
We descended a narrow ladder. Melifaro replaced the false floor behind us, and we found ourselves in utter darkness.
“You don’t have a problem finding your way in the dark, I hope?” I asked.
“Do you?”
“I think I do. I don’t know. In any case, I can’t see a thing.”
“Fine, I’ll guide you. Some Child of the Night you are.”
Hand in hand we groped our way toward the divine aroma that grew stronger with every step. Gradually I discovered that I instinctively knew where to turn so as not to bump my forehead against a wall, and where to raise my foot a bit higher to step over an invisible, but hard impediment in our path.
“Are you joking at my expense?” Melifaro asked, trying to withdraw his paw from mine. “You sure don’t miss any opportunity to make me look like an idiot.”
“My whole life I’ve dreamed of holding hands with you, and now I’ve found a pretext. Don’t be so touchy. I’m absolutely serious. I don’t know whether I can find my way around in the dark or not. I never know anything for sure about myself beforehand.
“You are a lucky fellow, after all. What an interesting life you have. Here we are. We still need some light, though. You are a smoker, I recall.”
“To the degree that I can tolerate the rubbish that passes for tobacco around here. I do have matches, though, don’t worry.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be enough light. You’ll have to smoke your pipe. It’s the only light-bearing apparatus we have that gives off a steady glow.”
“Are you trying to hasten my demise? Well, so be it.”
I quickly filled my pipe. The idea was brilliant. I had only to draw on the pipe, and the dim reddish glow dispelled the darkness around us. We we were standing on the threshold of a small storeroom, stuffed to the brim with huge, oddly shaped cupboards. Strange furniture. I had seen things like this a number of times at home, but never here in Echo, where the spare, elegant objects that functioned as domestic furnishings looked more like works of art.
Since the capacity of my lungs was limited, we were once more plunged in darkness.
“What was that?” Melifaro tugged on the sleeve of my Mantle of Death. “Puff on that pipe one more time, please.”
“If you want to boss me around, you’d better learn to smoke,” I growled.
“When I was eighteen I swiped my older brother’s pipe, smoked nearly all the contents of the snuffbox, and got terribly sick. Please, Max. Give us some light! What are these things?”
I went right up to the nearest ‘cupboard’ and took a mighty draw on the pipe.
Holy cow! It wasn’t a cupboard at all, but a cage! And a person was trapped inside it. He seemed to be sleeping. In any case, the fellow didn’t react when we appeared right in front of him, and the clouds of tobacco smoke that enveloped him didn’t faze him, either.
“He’s neither alive nor dead,” Melifaro observed after a brief silence. “Try sending him a call, Max! Very curious sensation. It’s like talking to a sausage.”
I immediately regretted it. The ‘curious sensation’ turned out to be one of the most uncanny and horrible experiences of my life. I suddenly felt as though I myself was a large, living sausage that had somehow preserved the very human characteristic of being able to contemplate his essence and his fate. I was a sausage that dreams of the moment he will be eaten. I couldn’t extricate myself from the sticky spiderweb of nightmarish sensations. A slap in the face, fairly powerful, made me drop my pipe, then sent me reeling to the opposite wall where, I banged my knee against the corner of yet another cage.
“What’s wrong, Max?” Melifaro asked in a trembling voice. “What is happening to you? Who taught you to do that? What is it?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured, fumbling around for my pipe, which had gone out. Now a good draw on the pipe was just what I needed. Sausages don’t smoke, I knew that for certain. The foul taste of the substance that they mistakenly consider to be tobacco here in Echo convinced me I was a human being, and a moment later, I even remembered who I was.
“You know, friend, I sometimes surprise myself,” I admitted. “I’m afraid of myself. I’m a danger to my own existence—that’s what I think.”
“Maybe you’re just some former Grand Magician? And Juffin gave you a good whack, so you lost your memory?”
“I hope not. Speaking of good whacks, thanks for slapping me around there. You seem to have saved my life. You ever tried that with the deceased? Maybe it would work on them, too.”
“Nonsense, Max. I wanted to slap you around a long time ago, and now there was a reason. But really, what happened to you?”
“I sent him a call, and I probably tried too hard. Some hundredth degree of your blasted magic, instead of the second. It’s always that way with me. My whole life I’ve always put too much salt on my omelets, too. That’s the sort of thing that happens to me.”
“Hey, look over there, Max! There’s another curious spectacle.”
I turned around to look. That cage contained a person, too. I puffed on my pipe so we could see it better. Sinning Magicians! It was a piece of meat that still hadn’t lost the outline of its human form. A piece of aromatic meat dressed in a skaba and a looxi!
My nerves were ready to snap. We seemed to have unraveled this cursed affair, and much more quickly than we had anticipated. But I still felt no sense of relief.
“Do you see what I see, Melifaro? He
“Yes,” whispered Melifaro. “And I really need the bathroom. I feel sick. We just ate what he cooked.”
“Go ahead and hurl,” I replied with a forced calm. “Don’t be ashamed. But I don’t think they fed us human flesh. I have a feeling the hunchback has only one Speciality of the House.”
“Lonli-Lokli will be here soon,” Melifaro reported. “I requested that he bring a few boys from the Police Force. What is this filth we’ve dug up, Max? Let’s go look at the rest.”
“Are you sure you want to? Go without me, then. I don’t want to barf after a good meal. I wasn’t raised that way. My mother thought that after visiting a good restaurant you shouldn’t even do number two for a week.”
“Still joking, Mr. Bad Dream? How would you have known about expensive restaurants living in the Borderlands? It can’t get worse than it already is. But what if there are live people in the other cages?”
“Maybe there are. Go take a look. I’ve seen enough.”
I turned away from the loathsome House Special and puffed on my pipe with genuine pleasure. Honestly, it wasn’t so bad after all, this local tobacco.
“Max, I was wrong!” Melifaro’s voice sounded improbably loud. “It just got worse! Come here and shed some light. Come on, puff on it one more time. You can close your eyes if you don’t want to look.”
I looked, of course. I had always known that my curiosity would be my undoing. A piece of meat in a looxi— that’s disgusting enough. But when above the belt there’s meat, and below, a pair of legs . . . Nevertheless, I didn’t get sick. My stomach is quite a reliable piece of equipment. No matter what kind of filth crosses its path in life, it continues to function. All of a sudden, though, standing upright became too much for me, and I sank to the ground with a dull thud, like an overloaded shopping bag.
Only then did I realize we were no longer alone.
The rest was like a dream. A second that seemed to last a whole lifetime—that’s what they usually say. “A whole lifetime” is an exaggeration; but that a few hours fit into the span of this second is something I’ll stake my life on.
In the doorway, I saw a darkness thicker than that which surrounded it and a short, stooped silhouette. The chef was hurrying to restore order to his kitchen. He was enraged, and wasn’t thinking about the consequences. One split second was enough for me to become this person, then to stop being him, and to realize—he’s a madman.
