The Stranger - Max Frei [9]
Then I was on my way home. As it had ever been in my life, nighttime still proved to be the most enchanting time of day. Sir Juffin, by his own admission, had had a temporary quarrel with his blanket. After dinner, he didn’t retire, but steered me into his study, where we undertook to “meditate on the memory of things.” This aspect of Invisible Magic, the most abstract and obscure science of this World, was the simplest and most indispensable one for my future profession.
There are few in the World who have any inkling of its existence. A knack for Invisible Magic, as far as I understand it, is in no way linked to the wondrous qualities of the Heart of the World. Indeed, this talent had been discovered in me, an alien. Sir Juffin himself, the undisputed expert in this area, hails from Kettari, a small town in the county of Shimara. The residents of that place lag significantly behind residents of the capital when it comes to knowing how to enhance their lives by means of magic.
But back to the lessons. I discovered very quickly that if you let your eyes rest on an inanimate object with a “special gaze” (I don’t know how else to describe it), the object would reveal its past to the observer—that is to say, events that happened in its presence. Sometimes these events were quite horrific, as I learned after an encounter with a pin for a looxi that had belonged long ago to a member of the Order of the Icy Hand, one of the most sinister and wicked of the ancient orders of magic. The pin showed us the rite of passage into the Order: a frenzied, exultant bear of a fellow voluntarily hacked off his left hand from his arm, after which a handsome, spry old fellow in a shiny turban (the Grand Master of the Order, as Juffin informed me) launched into some bizarre, incomprehensible fumblings with the amputated piece of anatomy. During the finale, the hand was presented to its former owner in the center of a glittering ice crystal. It turned my stomach.
Juffin explained that as a result of this procedure the fresh-baked invalid had gained an eternal inner fountain of marvelous youthful energy, and his missing digits would become a kind of “supersponge” that provided him with the powers indispensable to that occupation.
“Does he really need that?” I asked in naïve wonder.
“People will do strange things to sate their hunger for power and glory,” Juffin replied with a shrug. “You and I are lucky. We live in a much more moderate age. The opposition is complaining about the tyranny of the King and the Order of the Seven-Leaf Clover, yet they forget the true tyranny of several dozen omnipotent orders of magic, of which almost none has ever chosen the path of rejecting vice and ambition altogether.”
“Why didn’t they tear the World to shreds?”
“They almost did, Max. They almost did . . . But we’ll have time to talk about that later. This is the night when you to begin your studies in earnest. So, grab that cup there . . .”
This was all too good to be able to last for very long. The idyll was shattered on the evening of the third day, when Kimpa announced the arrival of Sir Makluk.
“Strange,” Juffin said. “In the ten years we have been neighbors this is the first time Makluk has ever honored me with a visit. And so casually! Too casually, by far. My heart fears that there is some business to take care of.”
Little did he know how right he was.
“I’m afraid circumstances force me to request a service of you!” Makluk exclaimed, still standing in the threshold, holding one hand to his chest, and gesticulating wildly with the other. “I beg your pardon, Sir Hully, but I am in great need of your help and advice.”
They exchanged a long, meaningful glance; the old fellow had switched to Silent Speech. A moment later, Juffin frowned, and Sir Makluk shrugged, looking a bit shamefaced.
“Let’s go,” Juffin said abruptly, and stood up. “And you, Max, come with us. Don’t bother to dress up. This is business.”
For the first time I was witnessing Juffin Hully on the job—or, more