Chatty dead man

Mystery of the Oak Leaf Club

Strange things happen in Echo: the night patrol of the police noticed a residential building flying through the air, and on the ground, while in its place as if there was another house - a clear obsession. No one lives in this house, however, once a dozen days, members of the Oak Leaves Club gather there - former junior and senior masters of dissolved magical orders who remained in a legal position. During the investigation, it becomes clear that it was not the club members who were naughty, but their servants — young people who had somehow recognized an ancient spell that allowed them to take the power of powerful magicians.

As a result of a series of accidents, Sir Kofa Joch arrests all eight of the young people. Upon reflection of the choice they had given, four of the lawbreakers choose several years of imprisonment in Holomi, and four choose several years of exile.

Chatty Dead

Yongi Melihais’s memoirs suddenly appear in the bookstores of Echo, which tells of numerous minor and not very crimes that could not be solved even by a secret investigation, as well as the fact that Sir Juffin allegedly leads a secret society headed by King Gurig VIII. Regardless of whether it is true or not, the townspeople will believe everything written. Moreover, all this is true, to one degree or another. It is not possible to withdraw the circulation - even before the opening of bookstores, many residents throw copies of the book under the door. Scandal cannot be avoided.

In the evening, the inhabitants of Echo, who read about the numerous violations of the Hrember Code committed by Yongi, break the brakes: people use high-level magic at every step - one managed to carry out the not-so-omnipotent Sir Juffin, which means others will succeed. The only thing left is to ask the king for permission to impose the death penalty for violating the code. And then Max asks Juffin about life after death, and they come up with an interesting decision: to bring the ghost of Yongi from the next world, so that he himself publicly says that his memoirs are pure fiction.

This method is found, and Max, under the influence of ancient spells cast by Juffin, goes on a very risky journey along the paths of the dead and brings the spirit of Yongi. In the meantime, Max wandered along the paths of the dead, Sir Schurf Lonely-Lockley, enters the city and with his right, paralyzing, hand "shies" all who begin to violate the code. Upon Max's return, Juffin forces Yongi, in the spectacle and amusement square, to admit that there is not a word of truth in his book. Thanks to this, the reputation of Sir Juffinn, the king and many other significant people is more or less restored.

Legacy for Lonely Lockley

Sir Schurf Lonely-Lockley asks Max to go with him to Hott County. A ghost of one of the distant relatives of his wife, a native of the county, came to him at night and said that he would bequeath to him all his property. And he said that he actually wanted to bequeath everything to his youngest son, but before his death, he disappeared somewhere. Thus, Shurf had to try to find the missing heir, since he himself did not need this farm at all.

He and Max go to Hott County. On the way, Lonely-Lockley tells his companion in detail about the inhabitants of the World - people, elves (keifayyah) and Kreia, who are now so mixed up that they call everyone human, even if they have very little human blood.

Arriving at the place, the metropolitan guests are faced with a clearly hostile attitude of the relatives of the deceased - a fairly large family. Almost all of its members are trying in one way or another to harm Shurf, and at the same time Max. They are trying to kill them repeatedly, but very ineptly, so nothing bad happens.

In the end, it turns out that the missing young man, along with his sister, was trying to learn how to pass through walls and was stuck in one of the walls. Max manages to repeat his path and save him. After that, he and Shurf calmly return to Echo.

Book of Fire Pages

Exactly 6 years have passed since the day Max appeared in Echo. On this occasion, a small party is organized, and Max gets two days of freedom from worries. At night he cannot fall asleep. In the end, having decided that the best way to sleep is an uninteresting book, he goes down to the book depository (his house used to be a university library). There, a book in a bright scarlet cover striking his eyes, entitled "The Book of Fire Pages." He opens the book and begins to read.

In the morning, Max wakes up and cannot really remember what happened the day before. After sending a call to Juffin, he receives an answer that there will be a meeting in an hour, and let him just try to be late. At the meeting, Juffin says that in a few days the Empty Heart will bloom - a magic flower, under the influence of which all the inhabitants of Echo and even the surrounding area will begin to strive for it, fighting for the right to be the first to approach the flower and give it their blood, after which the flower will calm down and that's it will end.

Secret investigators decide to put all the inhabitants of Echo in a dream. Sir Shurf, on the orders of Juffin, left Echo in the morning, Lady Melamori resigned because she did not want to participate in this madness.

Juffin explains to Max that, in fact, according to legend, the Empty Heart gives its chosen one a completely different life, a real life, fundamentally different, with great potential. And Juffin himself, of course, wants to take advantage of this situation. Max is trying to somehow counteract, but he does not succeed. In the end, when a few hours remain before the Empty Heart blooms, he decides to go to the dark side to stop Juffin, or to do at least something. But Juffin finds him on the dark side, and it turns out that Max cannot do any harm to him, because Juffin, in his own words, invented Max, he is his creator, and Max can’t do anything about it.

Max realizes that a little more, and he just goes crazy. And at the end of his answer, he, having forgotten himself, says to us familiar “yes burn everything with a blue flame!”. Since on the dark side his words take on unprecedented power, everything around him really flashes with a blue flame. Juffin also dies there, and Max is on the street in the city where he was born. He begins to go completely crazy, and a song sounds in his ears.

On her second couplet, everything is interrupted, and Max wakes up ... in the office of Sir Juffin. It turns out that the “Book of Fire Pages” is a magical legacy of the Order era, one of the strongest magic items. The one whose attention she has taken over comes under the influence of a powerful obsession: it seems to him that some events are happening to him, but in reality they are not. This is exactly what happened to Max. The reader of the book dies in reality after reading about his own death. Max had already read to the place where it was described how he was losing his mind, and he was extremely lucky that it was at this moment that Sir Schurf found him and took the book from him.

This story is considered one of the most depressing of the entire cycle "Labyrinths of Echo."

Literary critic L.F. Khabibullina in The Secret of the Oak Leaf Club sees a reference to “another purely English feature of the United Kingdom - that almost every citizen belongs to a particular club with all the attributes associated with the English identity - annual informal gatherings accompanied by abundant libations, the presence of unusual traditions ” ^[1] .