The Stranger's Magic: The Labyrinths of Echo: Book Three by Max Frei

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