The Princess Comes Home

This week's tale comes via the interaction of the claimant of the first-subscriber treat Seri. He chose to roll (with the assistance of yours truly) the Fairy Tale dice and opted to re-roll the full allotment of four dice to make the images referred to in this tale. The images were: Moon, Jail, Storm, Hourglass (time), Bow and arrow, Witch, Forest, Castle

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Wish Forbetter was a little disappointed. The far future appeared to be, in most respects, identical to the present. If anything there was less in the future than there was in the past.

As a street thief brought up in the City of the Seven Spires Wish didn't know all that much about Faerie time and space. He knew that tomorrow never came and yesterday had a nasty habit of catching up with you. Other than that time was a way of telling whether it was before lunch, during lunch or after lunch. Space was a way of telling whether the Watch had caught up with you or not.

Even given this limited understanding of these big concepts Wish was underwhelmed. Only the Twenty Kingdoms had grown bigger in the thousands of years since he and Anabyl had trapped themselves in a magic crystal. Even then apparently there were only a hundred kingdoms now.

Add to this the things that were lost and it appeared that Faerie had actually shrunk. The stories had it that Araby had fallen to dust. Of course the Terra Draconis had vanished but that had been a year or so before Wish was even born.

The basic properties of Faerie had not altered, not in all that time. The Patchwork Market had a new master, but it was still there. There was a giant forest that connected all places. The shadow kingdoms were still full of magic and mayhem. The Undone still chewed its implacable way through the soft places. All fishermen were miserable and lunatic.

What was the point of travelling through time, Wish wondered, if all the places you could go were exactly the same?

Right now Anabyl and Wish were riding on Anabyl's horse through the Forest of Grymm. They were heading towards Anabyl's home kingdom of Spireshine. She had promised that Wish would be welcome there and that he would be safe. Anabyl, meanwhile, would not be able to stay. She had her small wooden box to deliver. Until she had completed her task she was in great danger.

Wish understood that the Dragon Guardians had held a meeting, they had put the Quintessence Crystal in a box. Then they had put two similar looking dragon crystals in two more identical boxes. Then each party had taken one box somewhere safe. They hoped that they might, this way, keep the real crystal safe. Safe enough for someone to have some time to work out how to extract the continent contained within its lattice safely.

So right now maybe Anabyl was carrying the crystal that had been a prison cell for her and Wish for millennia untold. Or maybe Frederick and Phoebe were taking it to the place that Phoebe had nominated. Or maybe Eos held it in her underwater kingdom. The only ones that knew for sure were the Dragon Guardians.

None of them liked the name, bestowed upon them by the little girl Rachel Rummage, nevertheless it had stuck. The thing about having an important name was that it made you look silly if what you did wasn't as important as the name. In this case what they were doing was so important it kind of made the name look silly. That was probably even worse.

Phoebe had told Wish a little about the Princess when she was young. These were stories Wish had some trouble believing. Stories about mechanical dragons and chicken tsunamis and general havoc. The Anabyl Spireshine that Wish Forbetter knew was quiet, intense and determined. He could not picture the Last of the Dragon Warriors jousting from the back of a pig.

As evening drew on the wind picked up a little through the trees. Anabyl took a path signposted for a nearby town.

"We can't be out on the road in bad weather during the night," she said. "We'll have to stop at an inn."

"Is it too far to get to Spireshine now?" Wish asked.

"It's still at least half a day. We'll carry on tomorrow," Anabyl replied. "Tonight we'll stay in Lesser Barlow, that's right on the borders with my kingdom."

"Have you been there before?" Wish was curious to see somewhere near to where the princess had been born.

"I think they instituted a lifetime ban against my return in the year of the stuttering phoenix," Anabyl replied. "I have to hope that will have been lifted, even though, technically, it was only three years ago at this point."

"What did you do to get a life time ban?" asked Wish.

"Was that the sheep and the flying potion or the frogs and the peanut butter?" the princess mused. "It was something anti-social."

"Were you really like that?" Wish asked. "A little terror? That's what I was told."

"I lacked purpose and direction," Anabyl replied. "I had to learn to focus my energy productively."

"Harness your energy," Wish said. "Like a horse or something?"

"Something like that," Anabyl smiled.

The sound of rain could be heard in the tree canopy above. As they came into Lesser Barlow the rain began to fall in earnest. In the distance a fork of lightning split the sky, soon after a rumble of thunder followed.

Lesser Barlow was no more than five streets and a tiny market square that would host no more than twenty stalls at a push. The local inn 'The Tasty Squirrel' was one of the largest buildings in the whole place.

The princess tied up her horse by the stables and looked about for the ostler.

"Come on, Wish," she said. "I bet he's inside, hiding from the storm."

Anabyl and Wish made their way into the bar of the Squirrel. Only then did it occur to them that there might be more to the quiet streets of Lesser Barlow than an instinct to hide from bad weather. The Squirrel's bar was empty aside from the barman and a couple of men slumped in the corner, neither of them drinking.

Wish didn't even see the other man. The one that Anabyl reached out and grabbed by the collar. She flung the shifty individual against the bar. He struck the edge of the counter with a worryingly loud crunching thump. There was a knife to his throat before anyone could even react.

"What's going on?" she asked the man conversationally, as if she wasn't threatening his life. "Where is everybody?"

"Curfew," the man replied. "Everyone's home after curfew."

"So why aren't you at home?" the princess asked. "It being after curfew and all."

"I live here," the man said.

Anabyl didn't shift her eyes away from where they locked the man in place like an insect caught on a pin.

"No you don't," she said. "So why are you here. Last chance before I'm having to mop your blood off the floor of this inn and apologising for the upset."

"Evlin Shadowcrook," the man said, gabbling the words out now. "She told me to sit here every night, look out for strangers headed toward Spireshine."

"Who is this woman? A sorceress?" Anabyl asked.

"Witch," the man said. "Wicked witch."

"Last question, why does this witch care who goes to Spireshine?" Anabyl eased her feet apart slightly, bracing herself in case her captive chose to fight back. He didn't.

"She owns Caer Spireshine now, the shadows have come in, three deep, this is the shadow's edge now," the man said.

"What about Lord and Lady Spireshine?" Anabyl demanded forgetting she'd promised that previous question as the last.

"In the dungeon is what I heard," the man said. "Only been a few days, we were waiting for a response, from the other kingdoms."

Anabyl eased back on her heels. She brought her knife down.

"You'd best get home," she said to the man. "It's after curfew."

The man made his way past Anabyl and Wish. He ran through the door as if the devil was at his heels. The atmosphere at the bar of the inn did not get any lighter.

"I don't want any trouble," the innkeeper said. He stood at the far end of the bar. The innkeeper preserved the greatest possible distance from Anabyl. Anabyl did not make any move closer to the man from her position near the entrance.

"It's a little late for that, don't you think?" Anabyl asked. "Or was it this quiet in here before an evil witch set up home in my kingdom?"

"Your kingdom?" the innkeeper asked. "Who are you? Elspyth? Marjyram?"

"No, they're both happily married and living the lives of ladies in kingdoms far away," Anabyl said.

"Surely not Sophya!" the innkeeper said. "Word was that your marriage is imminent."

"Oh, yes," Anabyl said. A chime of recollection rang in her voice. "Now that I'm of age I will have to remember to send a gift, thank you. No. Sophya is, no doubt, preparing for her own nuptials in far away Sommerslip."

"Then... but that means... oh no..." The tremor that shook the innkeeper's voice only deepened as the understanding dawned in his mind. "Anabyl?" he asked. The three syllables were wreathed in dread.

The man had shown less concern to have a woman threaten a man with a knife over his bar a few moments earlier. Now he knew the identity of his mystery patron it appeared that he could wish for nothing more than the ground to open and swallow him whole.

"You remember me!" Anabyl said, her voice light with joy. "Glad to see I am not easily swept aside by the passage of time."

"But how?" the innkeeper said. "You were small... so small... and you looked so sweet and... Ohhhh... How?"

"I think it had something to do with the Master of Mischief," Anabyl said. "But you know how dreadfully hard he can be to pin down."

The question of Evlin Shadowcrook and her assault on Spireshine was forgotten for the moment. Wish marvelled at the effect the princess was having on those near to her family home. The stories of pig jousting were no less fantastic but he couldn't argue with the evidence.

Evlin Shadowcrook was evidently not keen on being upstaged. An almighty thunderclap shook the inn building. The vibration so hard that all the oil lamps extinguished, plunging the inn into shadowy darkness. The only light illuminating the scene came from the moon.

"Moonlight?" Anabyl said. "That's not... I hate wicked witches."

With that she spun on her heel and stormed over to the door. Wish, receiving no instruction to stay put, followed her out into the inn yard.

Outside the storm was raging. Dark clouds swirled in the sky and the source of Anabyl's exasperation was now clearly visible. A fat, yellow moon hung in front of the storm clouds in bald defiance of the way things usually worked.

As if on cue the shadow of a broomstick bearing a single passenger swooped in front of the strange glowing sky circle. The broomstick wheeled round and soared down towards the inn yard. As it approached the sound of evil cackling became louder and louder.

"Always with the aerial attacks," Anabyl muttered. She pulled her bow from her back and thumbed the catch to make it full size. "They never learn."

With that she pulled an arrow from a pouch in her boot, put it to the bow string and fired the shaft directly at Evlin Shadowcrook. The arrow scored its target, the cackling ceased as the witch tumbled from her perch with an undignified squawk.

"Don't mess with Spireshines," Anabyl said, pouting. Her jaw set with pugnacious determination.

At last Wish saw it. The whole time he had known Anabyl she had appeared quiet, intense and a little sad. Now he understood that the princess had not coped well with being lost and homesick. The fire that burned in her heart was fierce indeed.

Even in the long ago days and trapped within the crystal it had burned so all could see it. Now she was home, near to her family and someone was interfering in her return. That fire had become an inferno and Evlin Shadowcrook should probably be very, very frightened indeed.

"I'm going to get her," Anabyl said to Wish as she mounted her horse. "You stay here at the inn. I'll be back soon."

"I want to stay with you!" Wish objected.

"We don't always get what we want," Anabyl said. "Mind you, when I was your age and I didn't I used to burn things. Are you going to burn things?"

"No," Wish said before he could think of a better answer.

"Then stay here, I'll be back soon," Anabyl said.

So Wish did, and Anabyl returned with the wicked witch in tow, but what happened next is a story for another day.

The Long Road Home

The little girl in the green pyjamas watched the snow fall out of the upstairs window. She had, to her own certain knowledge, never seen snow before because she had lived almost her entire life in a jungle, living in a tree hollow under the shadow of the Great Skull Rock. The little girl, whose name as we should realise by now was Rachel Rummage, had lived a peaceful life, never wanting for anything, never cold, never hungry but a prisoner all the same, sleeping nights in terror of the giant bat that lived in the hollowed out cave at the summit of the Great Skull Rock.

Rebecca's father, James, assured her that in Levercastle snow fell every Christmas, after which he had kindly explained Christmas to her. Rachel imagined that being cold was always unpleasant, that long nights would make her feel sad and that having to wear wellington boots to avoid wet feet in snow would be a tiresome chore. She was surprised to find that all these things were bearable if you could live in a warm, cosy house called Rainbow Reach with your mother and your father. She had also imagined that living in the world of men, far away from Faerie, would mean she missed all the friends she had made after she had left the Skull Garden.

Happily she did not have to get used to a life where she never saw the brave Sir Cobb, the powerful Phoebe September or the mighty Princess Anabyl Spireshine. Levercastle was a town unlike many others where the little holes in reality that allow the world of men and the world of folk to interact are many. The residents of Levercastle are generally happy with the arrangement because many of them have stories like Rachel's and know that there is more to the world than might, at first, meet the eye.

"Hey you, time for bed means time to get into bed, not time to loll around on the window seat in your pyjamas," said dad, James, coming in to Rachel's bedroom.

"I was just looking at the snow," Rachel said. "Remember I've never seen snow before."

"So which would you rather?" James asked. "Look at snow or hear a bedtime story."

"How about hear a story while watching the snow?" Rachel asked.

James sighed and sat down next to his daughter on the window seat. He watched the snow flakes with her for a minute. Then he asked:

"What story do you want to hear?"

"Tell me a story about when we came here, when Lester opened his brother's grave," Rachel said.

"That only happened in September, honey," James said. "Don't you want a story about Avan Weatherstrong, or one of the stories about Anabyl when she escaped the Terra Draconis after the Vanishing, I just got a parcel from the Archive chronicling Sir Cobb's journey through the Upside Out."

"No, I want to enjoy remembering what happened three months ago," Rachel said. "I just want to hear it like it's a story, but to know I was there."

"Okay," James said. "I guess that would be fun, in a weird kind of a way."

And so James recounted the events of three months previously, as if it was a story, but both of them knew that all of this had really happened:

So the story goes there was once a man who lost his brother and could not find him no matter where he looked. In the end, out of desperation, the man tracked down the Master of Mischief to ask for help with his quest.

"Are you quite sure you want to find your brother?" the Master of Mischief asked. "You may not like what you find."

"All I want in this world is to see my brother's face once more," the man said. "Please help me, or if you will not then send me on my way, for I know that you are prone to play games. I know that not all of your games are kind."

"Do you understand the threads I would have to pull? The patterns I would have to break? The mischief I would have to do to give you your heart's desire?" the Master of Mischief asked.

"If I knew what needed to be done to find my brother," the man replied. "Then I would not bother you. Please, will you help me?"

The Master of Mischief smiled his smile, the only part of the Master of Mischief that remains the same no matter which particular face he has chosen to wear that day. The Master of Mischief knows more than he ought to, for which reason the Master of Mischief lies to people, but always for the betterment of all worlds, or so he tells us.

"I am in a good mood today," the Master of Mischief said. "So I will help you. Go to death's garden and dig with a spade. You will find your brother under the earth."

And that is where the story ends. Well, most versions of the story, for stories are lies, and stories are mischief of the purest kind in all places but one. The one place where all stories are reflections, or chronicles, or accounts is the Faerie Archive at Sommerslip. The story is told there almost as rendered above, but there is one major difference. After the Master of Mischief says 'So I will help you' the sentence ends. Underneath is printed, in neat block capitals:

CONTINUED IN 'THE TALES FROM BRIDGETOWN - BOOK ONE'

Of course Lester Topping didn't know any of that. As far as Lester Topping was concerned he had received a letter from his twin brother Chester recounting that Chester had stopped off in Bridgetown to pick up some supplies and was heading on in three days to a distant shadow.

Having become quite lonely without the companionship of his brother Lester had raced to Bridgetown, got himself lost, missed the window to meet up with his brother and been asked by a curious man in a tall hat to watch a mermaid in a tank. None of that resembled the story of the man who had sought the assistance of the Master of Mischief for help with looking for his brother, for that reason no one who knew the story and travelled with Lester put the two things together, not even Lester himself.

This is how the Master of Mischief works. He lies. For the betterment of all worlds, or so he tells us.

So when Lester Topping found himself in death's garden, looking down at a small wooden box revealed within the tomb that, allegedly, marked the remains of his twin brother, his confusion was, perhaps, understandable.

He was glad that the tomb did not appear to contain Chester's remains, Lester could only imagine how upsetting that would be. Still, that did not completely rule out the possibility that within the small wooden box was an urn containing Chester's ashes. There was no note or inscription to explain the tomb's contents, Chester had proven himself an avid communicator, the content of his communications was gnomic at best.

"You should probably open it," Phoebe said, standing with the others, respectfully, at the edge of the grave site. "You have looked for this place for a long time. Whatever is in there will be your answer."

Would it? Lester wondered as he approached the box and lifted it out of its hollow by the two brass handles hanging from the sides. He knew that it should but now that he was, in theory, at the end of his journey he couldn't convince his brain that the moment was at hand.

The box was not heavy. It had, rather, a reassuring solidity that strongly implied the container's importance. The wood of the box was a nice golden brown, not too dark, not too light, like the burnished surface of a fiddle. Brass corners had been fitted to prevent the wood finish from scuffing or splintering. The handles in the side held firm, appearing as if they were part of the wooden body of the box itself. The craftsmanship of the item could not be second guessed, it was impressive in its simplicity.

There was no lock on the box, just a simple latch, a switch that moved from right to left, embossed with the symbol of the hourglass. With a smooth click the lid was open, Lester lifted the lid on well-oiled hinges to reveal the contents.

The box did not contain an urn filled with ashes. It contained a brass hand mirror, its reflecting surface turned down to rest on a cushion of red velvet. Without even thinking about it Lester picked up the mirror to look at his face.

"What is it?" someone asked, he thought it was Eos.

"I don't know, exactly," Lester said, studying his face in the mirror. "Oh, this mirror is broken."

"What do you mean?" Frederick asked. "Is it cracked? It must have cracked before someone put it in there, no shock would reach it through the earth and the rock and the box and the padding."

"No," Lester said. "It's not cracked. It's just when I talk my lips don't move. My whole face is stuck, like a photograph. I can't even... ah, no. I can wink. I can see my eye it looks like its inside something, like I'm wearing glasses or..."

"Your face," Phoebe said. "It shows you that your face is a mask."

"It does," Lester said. "I've worn a mask, all this time. I didn't even know it." He stopped for a second, he could feel his face smirk although the image in the mirror remained completely still. "That means that when I was at Lady Crimzona's party I was wearing two masks, one on top of the other. How silly."

"Well," Rachel asked. "Aren't you going to take the mask off?"

"I had better," Lester said. "It's been far more fun than I thought it would be to wear a mask for all these days, but now I think, somehow, that it is far more important that I take the mask off. So, here goes."

Lester reached up under his chin and caught the edge of his Lester mask. He felt his false face lift off the surface of his real one. It came away easily, not even fixed to his head by a length of cord. Magic had kept Lester's mask in place, in the mirror it was easy to remove for it was all part of the same spell.

Before Lester could see his real face he turned away from the hand mirror to look at the blank white object in his hands. He looked up at the faces of his friends and smiled.

"How do I look?" he said, playing a game for he already knew.

"Honestly?" James said. "Exactly the same."

Chester's grin broadened, for now Lester knew that he was Chester, his own missing twin brother. The absurdity of disguising oneself as one's own identical twin brother was delicious to both of them. Chester realised that it was he who had felt a small twinge of regret at the need to remember all the things that made up Chester Topping, eccentric, traveller and alchemist. Lester wasn't good for much, that was all part of the mask, what Chester had discovered through Lester was a constant and abiding sense of innocent wonder at the world and all it contained. Sometimes, Chester knew, he was far too clever by half.

"I don't get it," Frederick said. "I don't mind being the first to say it but I am willing to bet I'm not the only one. I don't understand what's happening."

"It's all part of the plan, dear boy," Chester said to Frederick. "All part of my plan to get the Quintessence Crystal into the hands of people better suited to its guardianship than myself and poor Professor Rummage there."

"Professor Rummage?" the gnome asked looking up at James. "And here was I just thought he was a common or garden talking mouse when first we met."

James coloured red.

"I didn't, I don't... remember," he said. "I'm a professor? What of?"

"Well, mostly, folklore," Chester said. "It's a little more complicated than that. As far as the world we come from knows, Jimbo, you are an anthropologist and expert on the mythical beasts of world cultures. Anyone inside our social circle knows that you are the foremost expert on the natural history and evolutionary biology of such creatures, that's a key part to how we ended up in this pickle."

"Dragons," Anabyl chimed in. "James found out about the Vanishing, what had happened, where the crystal was."

"Indeed, brave knight," Chester said. "Most unfortunate for he was not the only party interested in the acquisition of such knowledge. As a consulting alchemist to the Grand Order of the Covenenant of Lies I was sent to Levercastle, Professor Rummage's place of residence, to ensure his safety, and the safety of his beautiful family.

"Alas, I was too late, by the time I arrived the wicked agents of Count Bartolomeo Okulas had already turned James into a mouse, saying that they would give him twenty-four hours to see sense and that they would return on the morrow when they expected he would share his secret. I had to think fast, I came up with a plan that was the child of expedience more than prudence.

"I am, in fact, rather glad that things have played out as they have. I cannot claim any particular good judgement on my own part in that, I rather think that I provided an opportunity for several wrongs to be righted in the great tapestry. Our stopgap measure was, therefore, exploited by the Master of Mischief rather than expedited by him."

"Oh, my dear Monsieur Topping," said a new voice that everyone recognised but nobody could place. "How desperately cynical of you. Why could I not merely have found myself in a giving humour?"

The curious man in the tall hat emerged from shadows that no one could remember being there a moment before.

"Apologies," Chester said to the Master of Mischief. "I did not intend my invocation to carry such strength."

"No apologies necessary, alchemist," the Master replied. "I came of my own volition. Mostly because I like to see those who do not wish to deal with me squirm. Partly because I am tired of this business and would like to see it done."

"What is there left?" asked Chester. "I think I have explained everything."

"Well," Frederick said. "There you and I are going to have to differ. I still don't really understand what's going on. You're not Lester, you're an alchemist who looks like himself and James the mouse is really a professor of dragons and there's something to do with Count Okulas, aside from that... I don't really know what we're all doing here."

"Allow me to fill in the gaps," the Master of Mischief said as his famous grin slowly painted itself from one of his ears to the other. "Chester and James were sought after for James's forbidden knowledge by Count Okulas. The one place Chester knew that James could be hidden that Okulas would not find was the same place that the Quintessence Crystal was hidden. James, his family and Chester came here, to the Skull Garden.

"When they all began to forget things Chester understood what was happening. He forged the Lester mask using the garden's own magic to make the enchantment more powerful," the Master shot a sidelong glance in Chester's direction. "That was very cunning by the way," he said, and then returned to his story. "Knowing nothing but the story Chester had told the mask Chester sent himself away to Bridgetown, Lester arrived. Such a bizarre and powerful magic suddenly manifesting in the Patchwork Market attracted my eye. I settled to study it immediately.

"When I understood what was happening I saw the potential to undo one of the most heinous acts that has ever been committed in all the lands of Faerie. The Vanishing of the Terra Draconis was a work of sorcery and witchcraft that, although literally diabolical, was outside my direct influence. Nobody said that I wasn't able to assist those who wished to put things right.

"My only problem is that, as Master of Mischief, I am one of the most powerful figures in the whole of creation. I have to be subtle if I want to weild my powers, hard as it is to believe I am not invincible. In short, I must be perceived to be neutral.

"So, I nipped reality, I tucked it, tipping people on particular paths down little back alleys of my own devising, ensuring that the great mechanism of mischief brought things out as they have become. Frederick, Phoebe, Anabyl, Eos, you are, between you, quite capable of guarding the Quintessence Crystal from the hands of evil doers. James, Chester, Rebecca and dear little Rachel, you are to be freed from a burden too great for you to bear."

"And what about me boss?" the gnome said. "When does the little girl's wish end?"

"It's not your place to ask such questions," the Master snapped at the gnome. "You'll live as I wish and be grateful for the opportunity."

"Yes boss," the gnome said miserably.

"Don't you talk to my friend like that!" Rachel cried out, outraged.

"Darling," Rebecca said. "That's the Master of Mischief, he's very important."

"I don't care how important he thinks he is," Rachel insisted. "The gnome's given me and James our wish, and helped out with all the other stuff too. I think he deserves to be free now and nobody should be rude to him, not even a scary man in a big hat."

"Dear Rachel," the Master said, kneeling down to bring their heights closer together. "You misunderstand. This gnome is not your friend. He is with you because he is bound to you. He is just an accidental random conglomeration of mischief that calls itself a gnome. I doubt he can feel emotions. He's nothing, really, beneath your notice."

"He's my friend," Rachel said. "And he's never done anything mean or horrible. I don't know what you're talking about but it sounds mean and horrible to me. Mean and horrible people are nothing. The gnome is the gnome."

The grin disappeared from the Master's face. Most were silent, the gnome and Rebecca drew in breath sharply.

"Sometimes," the Master said sadly. "It seems even I can forget my place. Very well Cholmondeley, you shall have your own garden, but first we should see to the end of the wish."

"And how do we do that, exactly?" Rachel asked. "If you know so much then you can help us. We haven't done very well at the job ourselves."

"Why, all the answers your poor father ever needed are behind this door," the Master said pointing to a simple wooden door in the base of the Skull Rock that had certainly not been there a moment before.

The Master opened the door and it was as if they were looking out of a house onto a street. Opposite their position was a small wooden fence, painted blue, that surrounded a two storey detached house completely surrounded by well defined, but slightly overgrown flower beds.

"Rainbow's Reach awaits Professor Rummage," the Master said. "And all the stories that you hold within your head will return within its walls. Once that is done so will Cholmondeley's work."

Saying goodbye to all the friends they had made on the long road home James, Rebecca, Rachel and Chester went through the Master's door and back to James's home where their long adventure had begun so many years before, or so it seemed.

When James remembered exactly who he was, and where he had been, and the nature of those things, he understood that life in the Skull Garden unfolded at a vastly different rate to time in his own world and he had, in fact, been gone only a single night as far as his world was concerned.

Unfortunately this meant that, unless Rachel wanted to squash into a crib, which she did not, she had to sleep that night in her parent's bed. None of them minded that arrangement at all and the next day a brand new bed was bought for the little girl who had grown up in the Skull Garden not knowing anything of who she was or where she came from.

The Guardians of the Quintessence Crystal took their responsibilities very seriously indeed, and their stories are even now depicted, along with all the rest, within the deep, dark stacks of the Faerie Archive. That would probably be the best place to read them for, although the Master of Mischief will claim that he can tell you what came next everyone knows that the Master lies to people. Although, you can be assured, he only does so for the betterment of all worlds. Or so he says himself.

THE END

Chester Topping Rest In Peace

Before the gnome lost his temper completely everyone had a moment in which they all believed that the wish would end. Lester, in fact, was pulling for this to happen almost as much as he imagined the gnome was. Once the gnome was free then he could spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find his brother's grave.

The idea of being keen to find the grave of his beloved sibling was not sitting well in Lester's head. It was almost impossible to separate the notion of someone having a grave from the notion of someone being, well, dead. Whenever that particularly unpleasant idea came around on the carousel of Lester's thoughts he reminded himself of what a remarkable and tricksy individual Chester Topping was. Lester wouldn't show much surprise if this whole thing hadn't been cooked up by Chester and Loki working in tandem.

Still, a gravestone. Surely even having a gravestone was an ill-omen. It might not be alchemy but it was certainly witchcraft.

"Oh... bother it!" the gnome cried eventually. The little sprite ran up to the base of the skull rock and gave it a hearty kick. "Owww!" the gnome cried. "That hurt."

"Kicking a gigantic rock generally hurts," Eos said. "That's why it never took off as a pastime."

"I should be free!" the gnome shouted. "This is it, the loop is closed, the journey is ended, the adventure has concluded, so why can I still feel the wish? Why am I flopping around, bound to the people who freed me? Why am I not allowed to make my own way in the world?"

"It would seem," said Rebecca gently, "that we may have misread the small print, so to speak."

"No!" the gnome replied. "No! I reject that completely, utterly, the terms of the wish were quite plain. Rachel wanted to leave the Skull Garden so that they could go on an adventure and he could see all that the world could be. That's what she said. Now I am aware that the phrase 'see all that the world could be' does leave some room for interpretation but the powers of mischief are not usually that particular."

"Not usually," said Rebecca, "but sometimes, sometimes there is something that they are waiting for, something that will just cross the last 't' or dot the last 'i'."

"Maybe," Lester said, without really knowing which part of his mind was providing the words, "the term used is tied to something James should see. Maybe when James feels that he knows all that he needs to know then he will have seen all that the world can see."

Everyone was looking at Lester. The gnome scowled.

"That," he said, "sounds exactly like the kind of stunt the forces of mischief like to pull." The gnome swivelled his eyes to fix on James, quiet now, still not as steady on his feet as he should be. "So what is it that you feel you're missing out on?" it asked. "Come on now, out with it, let's show you what you need to see so I can clock off."

"I... I don't know," James said.

"You have to know!" the gnome wailed. "Folk. Honestly, I am going off the lot of you. Born as babies, dying arbitrarily, don't know what you want, or where you're going, or how you feel. Why is the world filled with folk?

"Sprites are nice and simple. Pop into existence, do what you do, go where you have to, and then just fade away once your time is done. Why can't folk be more like sprites."

The gnome tramped over to the foot of the Skull Rock and sat down, defeated.

"I'm sorry," James called after him. "I just don't know."

"It's okay," Rebecca said, putting her hand on her husband's shoulder. "You're still confused. Take a moment, take a breath, let the thing you want come to your mind naturally."

James closed his eyes and took a breath. Another few moments passed.

Maybe James wants to know what happened to my brother, Lester thought. He banished the thought immediately as being inherently selfish.

"Maybe," Rachel said. "Dad just wants to know what happened to Lester's brother. I know I do, and dad's been travelling with Lester since we first popped into the market."

Lester held his breath while the others weighed up this suggestion in their minds.

"It can't hurt to find out, can it?" Eos asked.

Lester felt a sudden flip in his guts, like his stomach was trying to pop out of his mouth and run away. They were going to search, it was finally time to search.

"There's only one problem with that plan," James said. "The area we refer to as the Skull Garden is all of the jungle as far as we can walk by day and still be back here by night. If you expand that line so it becomes the radius of a circle and then plot out the area of that circle... I mean, we could be months searching for this grave, if it's even here."

This pessimistic, but unfortunately rational, appraisal of the situation was interrupted by the flopping noise of a rope hitting the side of the Skull Rock.

"Hello!" cried a voice from above.

The unhappy party at the foot turned their gaze upwards to see who had hailed them.

"Frederick!" James called out. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh you know," Frederick replied. "The usual kind of thing, killing giant bats, rescuing princesses trapped inside a crystal along with an entire lost continent, taking in the afternoon air."

Following Frederick down the rope was Phoebe, and above her a young boy that Lester didn't recognise. Above the boy was another young woman that Lester thought he didn't recognise, then from other angles he thought he did.

The four adventurers reached the ground and a general round of greetings and introductions was carried out. Lester was introduced, firstly, to the small boy whose name was Wish Forbetter and then to the mysterious young woman.

"Hello Lester," the young woman said. "How are things?"

Not being the kind of opening one might expect from someone you had never met before Lester was rendered momentarily speechless.

"Found yourself lost in any sorcerer's dungeons recently?" the young woman asked. "James is looking well, distinctly less mousey than the last time we met."

She followed the comment up with a cheeky grin that Lester couldn't help but recognise. He went instantly from speechless to gaping. Eventually he found his tongue:

"Anabyl?" he asked.

"Took you long enough," she said. "Although I have to concede that some water has passed under the bridge since last time I saw you."

"But... you're here, in the Skull Garden and, I mean, what happened?" Lester asked.

"It's a long story, I travelled with Avan Weatherstrong, escaped the Vanishing, trained as a dragon warrior and helped protect the quintessence crystal from evil-doers who wanted to possess its power," Anabyl said. "It was an interesting time. What have you been up to?"

"Um, went to an evil masked ball, then I was chased down a mountain by a troll, got lost in the Undone, helped rescue a mermaid from a witch and now I'm looking for my twin's grave, here in the garden.... my twin's grave... is," Lester managed to recount his recent history, just about.

He couldn't help but note that the full catalogue of events sounded, maybe, more impressive than he'd imagined. This was a thing about adventure, at the time you were just scrambling desperately to survive, only afterwards did you realise that, having survived, your exploits had graduated from terrifying to exciting.

"Sounds like you've kept busy," Anabyl said. "How are you planning to find your brother's grave?"

"Well," Lester sighed. "That's kind of the thing. You see we have no idea where it is, and James was just pointing out how large the garden actually is. If we stay here too long then we will start to forget who we are, or why we came here in the first place. So we need to find the grave before that happens obviously. It could take a long while. Maybe we could think about shift work or something, but I bet the gnome won't be too happy about that."

"Why would the gnome care?" Anabyl asked.

"We think he might not be able to become a full gnome until James sees Chester's grave. It's a wish magic thing," Lester explained.

"Well," Anabyl said, "If I remember correctly you and Chester are twins, are you not?"

"Yes," Lester said. "We are."

"Well, then, maybe in the matter of choosing a grave-site you both think alike, it's worth a try," Anabyl said. "I've got lucky like that on more than one occasion."

This suggestion appeared to Lester to be far too sensible a one to actually work but, because it was so sensible, it was also mandatory to give it a go.

"Okay," Lester said. "Let's have a think. Well, first of all, if I were Chester the whole point of this grave is to hide it so that only I can find it."

That didn't immediately make Lester think of a location. After all, Lester had to admit, he wasn't the most imaginative of people. If he'd have come to this place alone, seeing the gigantic stone column with a skull on the top at the centre, he probably would have headed straight for that. Here they were, for other reasons, there was no grave.

Of course, the idea of putting the grave here did not exactly make it hidden. Unless, of course, the grave was unmarked. If that were the case then it would probably be somewhere here, under the column. In which case, there would probably be some sort of indicator that only Lester would understand, probably on the column, at the bottom.

Lester stalked around the base of the column, searching for something, anything. It didn't take him long to find it. There was an arrow carved into the stone, it pointed North, you could tell because it said 'N' at the top of it. Underneath was the number '58'.

"Here!" Lester said, excitedly.

The others came to join him.

"What does that mean?" the gnome asked.

"It's the orientation course," Rachel said. "I followed it a few times, started really early in the morning. I don't know how far I got. You walk in the direction of the line for that many paces and you reach another rock with another arrow and another number. I got about forty of them before I had to come back, because of the bat."

"But now the bat is dead," Frederick said. "So we can just follow the arrows to the end."

Everyone seemed very excited at this prospect and preparations immediately got underway to start the course. Lester was happy with the explanation but something still seemed off to him. After all, Chester could not know that the bat would be dead when Lester got there.

Chester had to have thought this through. Why would Chester send Lester off running around in the woods like that? For a start Chester and Lester both had one leg longer than the other. They couldn't easily walk in straight lines, they always veered off to the right. Something was wrong with this.

It was only as the party got ready to stamp off north for fifty-eight paces that Lester thought he understood what it was Chester had done.

"Stop!" he cried out before anyone had taken more than two paces north.

Everyone stopped. Lester's heart was beating in his throat at the idea that for once he had worked something out. He was the one with the answer, he was not just some oddball standing on the edges. For the first time since he had started his quest Lester felt like he might have the makings of a hero.

"We shouldn't go," he said. "It's a trap."

"What do you mean?" Rebecca asked. "What kind of a trap?"

"We lived in the garden for years and years," James said. "We never found a trap."

"No," Lester said. "But you did completely forget who you were, or why you were here."

"So?" Rachel asked.

"Think about it," Lester explained. "Someone evil comes here, they find the course, they kill the bat. The bat killing, in particular, is something I don't think I could do. But the evil person they have no problem with it. So they follow the path. Eventually the path is so long they have to rest. So they rest. Then they keep following the path.

"At first they accept the difficulty of the task, after all if Chester's grave was easy to find then it wouldn't be a challenge. Eventually they get annoyed, maybe they give up. If they don't, one day they wake up and, maybe, they can't remember exactly why, but they know they're following the arrows. So they go further.

"Now remembering things gets harder, they can't remember if they've seen arrows before. Eventually they either forget who they are give up and wander away or they keep mindlessly walking in circles lost in a labyrinth of arrows and pacing until they die.

"The whole task is a trap. Chester knew I would know that because the apparent simple task is one that both he and I would be singularly awful at if we were on our own."

"So, what does that mean?" James asked. "That we don't know where the grave is after all?"

"No," Lester said. "It means we know exactly where the grave is, because we're standing on it. The other thing Chester and I have in common is that we're very very lazy. The marker doesn't tell me to go tramping about in the forgetful forest. No, what it says to me is, Chester made a mark, so there must be something here worth marking."

Frederick ruffled in his pack and brought out a small collapsible spade.

"Only one way we're going to see if he's right," Frederick said. "I'll get digging."

Nobody said much as Frederick found a piece of earth that was soft enough and dug straight down. The hole went deeper than a regular grave but after about forty minutes he hit something solid.

"Oh, wow," Frederick said. "That's deep. We could be here until nightfall."

"Oh, no, Frederick," Phoebe said. "Come out of that hole. I think I can help."

"No offence," Lester said. "But I've seen how you help, I don't want to cremate my brother's remains in a massive plasma explosion, I just want to uncover the grave."

"I think I might be of assistance here," the gnome said, rather unexpectedly. He looked about at everyone regarding him, surprised expressions on their faces, and his brow knitted in annoyance. "I'm a gnome people, a gnome? Earth elemental? Really, and I thought you were an educated woman Miss September."

Phobe looked a bit awkward, she had spent many years in Faerie's premier magical academy.

"I just didn't really think about it," she said by way of explanation.

"Why didn't you mention this half an hour ago?" Frederick asked, still sweating from his own exertions.

"I didn't know whether you would find anything," the gnome grumbled. "Not going to put my back out blasting away a big hole in the earth for no reason, now, am I?"

The logic, irritating as it might have been, was irrefutable. The others all stood back and gave the gnome room to work. With very little effort the sprite shifted all of the earth from Chester's grave and even landscaped the surroundings into a sweeping natural curve.

The grave stone was about eight feet long and three feet wide. In the centre of the slab was carved an ornate embossed hourglass, the carving, elegantly swirled around this central motif outwards to a geometric frame about half an inch in around the edge of the stone.

"That doesn't look like it's going to be fun to move," Anabyl said.

"Ah," Lester said. "But you're failing to take into account that this place was designed to be uncovered by a single lazy man with a spade and a couple of days to spare. By the time I'd got down to this on my own I imagine I would be so tired I'd probably just take my spade and have a good old lean, like this."

Lester grabbed Frederick's spade, walked into the middle of the slab and placed it point down on the hour glass. He leaned on the handle and there was a deep and audible click as some hidden mechanism was pressed into service.

The two halves of the grave stone separated along invisible seams and lifted gently upwards to reveal the contents of Chester's tomb. But what was beneath the gravestone and how it brought our friend's adventures to a satisfactory, if not permanent, conclusion, is most definitely a story that I will tell you. Just, not right now is all.

The Princess Liberated

Frederick hadn't acted in his capacity as pest-controller for a while now. He had heard that, in the age of dragons, a jobbing knight would start small with giant rodents and work their way up through lizard men and vampires as a way of scaling their monster killing abilities to the level of dragon.

As the giant bat expired on the blade of Frederick's sword he found himself doubting this theory. Of course, to the layman the idea of working your way up the food chain to dragon slaying appeared reasonable. Frederick did not know for certain that it was not. However, if what he had heard about dragons, and their smaller, sentient cousins the draco, was to be believed the king of all mythical beasts was in a different league to the rest.

You could hack your way through armies of trolls, gryphons and giant snakes but it probably wouldn't serve you well when it came to facing the old, wise and wily dragons of yore. It was as desperate a comparison as saying that taking out a goblin horde was any sort of preparation for taking out an Ogre Champion. The two games were fundamentally different.

It didn't really matter, as far as Frederick could tell, how many foot soldiers you carved up, when you faced the lich in command those experiences counted for nothing.

Even taking on a giant bat was a different game to besting a minotaur, for example. The two monsters had completely different temperaments, strengths, weaknesses and common strategies. The one lesson taking on a bestiary of hostile creatures taught you was that no two were alike enough to be the same fight. There was enough variety within a single species to fox those who did not exercise the proper caution.

That said, sometimes you got lucky. The transformed Lady Crimzona had proven a much weaker foe than this similarly sized giant bat. Frederick imagined that this was due in no small part to the fact that Lady Crimzona was not used to being a giant bat, this fella had got very used to his capabilities. He had even landed a couple of nasty swipes on Frederick's chest and thigh.

So, possibly, there had been some variety in the capability and threat presented by dragons of various types. Maybe some dragons went down easier than others. If there was one comforting thought a knight could take into such a confrontation it was that maybe this dragon would be having an off day.

"Are you alright?" Phoebe asked from behind Frederick as he stood, instinctively holding his left hand over the scratches on his chest and hanging his weight so that it favoured his right leg.

"I'll be okay," he panted. "He was... feisty, is all."

"If I wasn't filled with magical potency," Harvey said. "I would have to get someone to remind me never to annoy you."

"You annoy me all the time," Frederick said. After a battle etiquette choices frayed and crumbled. Frederick allowed himself to be more blunt.

"Yes," Harvey said. "Because I am filled with magical potency. You might be good at monster slaying but you can't follow a simple logical through-line, can you?"

"Not the time, Harvey," Phoebe said absently, pulling a jar of unguent from her knapsack. "Then, it never is, is it?"

Harvey shrugged and subsided as Phoebe approached Frederick and started smearing the greasy paste onto his wounded leg.

Frederick had listened to lurid bardic accounts of fighting men and the women who tended to their wounds. The poetic temperament would have you believe there was some sort of romance, or passion, about a nurse tending a wounded soldier. In some instances maybe there was. However the undoubted, undiscussed presence of unsavoury ingredients in most of these pastes presented large challenges to the development of such a heady emotional atmosphere.

The unguent was enhanced with enchantments but that didn't stop it smelling of vinegar, fat and bad milk mixed together. Neither did it abate the deep burn it put into the wounds upon its application. The burn quickly faded, the odour of the healing medium lingered, in some cases for days.

"Well, now that we have that over, we should probably find that tricky crystal," Harvey said, standing by the entrance as if he were inspecting the hold of the arrow trailing rope embedded in the rock. The head of the arrow was a clockwork device powered by an alchemical crystal that burrowed into rock to form a tight bond.

As the mouth of the cave was where the party had entered the chances that the Quintessence Crystal was lying there, unremarked upon and undiscovered, was vitually nil. Everyone could tell that Harvey was mooching about adjacent to the nearest source of fresh air to avoid the smell.

"Good idea," Phoebe commended him. "Why don't you start somewhere other than where we came in?"

A look of disgust evident on his face Harvey complied with Phoebe's request. Frederick had learned that the djinn often did things voluntarily, rather than wait to be bound by Phoebe. Frederick believed he could understand the sprite's motivation. In a way it was a cruel trick of the binding that the one bound would often prefer to do something because they were obedient, not because magic was compelling them to do it against their will.

That left a question though: Was Harvey really doing what he wanted? Was he truly acting on his own agency? Just because he chose to obey did that mean that he had somehow 'beaten' the binding, or did it just serve to enslave him at an even deeper level?

Frederick's tricky philosophical puzzles would not be answered now as Phoebe cried out. She didn't say 'aha' but it was a noise that meant 'aha' so more or less the same thing. Phoebe carried a small wooden chest out from a dark corner in the back of the bat's lair. The front was closed and bolted but not locked. Frederick reasoned that the person who had left the chest here had believed that anyone who would slay that bat to get to the chest probably deserved the contents.

That bat itself had not been a terrible problem, any mediocre knight should have found it within themselves to dispose of it effectively. The chest's real security was that it was in one of the most distant shadows, right at the limits of organised reality, cloaked in deep magic that would hide the garden's existence from seekers and interfere with the memories of those who had visited. The bat was just a further inconvenience for one who had beaten the heavy duty barriers to entry.

Phoebe opened the chest to reveal the quintessence crystal. Frederick had hoped for something more than your basic glowing crystal, in this he found a small note of disappointment. The quintessence crystal was certainly a bit larger than other magic crystals Frederick had seen but it was, otherwise pretty much identical in every other respect. It glowed a soft yellow-white that filled the cave, there was a high, clear note, resonating from the crystal at a low volume.

"Let's see if this ring that the story-gatherers gave us does the trick then," Phoebe said, donning the small piece of silver jewellery. As it sat on Phoebe's finger the crystal in the ring began to resonate in sympathy with the quintessence crystal. "Oh," Phoebe said, alarmed. "It does work! Quick, grab my hands!"

She held out her hands, Frederick took hold of the left and Harvey of the right, there was a moment of uncertainty, an odd see-sawing feeling in Frederick's gut and then they weren't in the Skull Cave any more.

They were in a long stone corridor that stretched on for as far as the eye could see in either direction. Stone arches divided the corridor into sections at regular intervals. Frederick's ever-present knight paranoia noted that there was just enough space for an attacker to hide in the small recesses in the corners of each section. Doorways, tipped with pointed arches, were visible in some of the sections.

The corridor was lit from above with a soft, flat, grey light. Frederick looked up to see that the light was cast from a roiling layer of luminous clouds above their heads. The shapes of dragons heads, and the forms of people and buildings were occasionally visible in the ever-shifting cloud bank. As soon as you saw a shape, so clear that you could make out the pattern of a dragon's scales, the windows in a tall building or the lines on a person's face, it disappeared back into the mass, invisible once more.

"Well, this is in no way sinister," Harvey said.

"So, what now?" Frederick asked. "We've got into the crystal, what do we do now?"

"I don't know," Phoebe said. "I guess we just have a look about, see if we can pick up Anabyl's trail."

They took a few steps along the corridor, their footsteps making flat clamping sounds against the stone. Frederick found the noises quite disconcerting. He had been expecting a confident ringing echo, not this barely audible slapping noise. He imagined it was something to do with magic, these things usually were.

"Wait," Harvey said after they had gone about twenty paces. "I think..." he paused, closed his eyes and lowered his head. "I think I can feel the... her. I think I can feel Anabyl."

"What do you mean?" Frederick asked. "Feel her how?"

"This," Harvey motioned at the ceiling and the floor with some airy hand waves. "All of this is our minds interpreting the crystal lattice and the energies contained within. We're not part of the qualic stream, the, uh, essence of the Terra Draconis, locked into the crystal lattice. I think the energies are represented by the clouds up there. I don't think that Anabyl is part of that either. She's locked out of the stream, so she's somewhere else in the lattice. I'm made of pure magic so I can feel the resonance of her presence, it's not even that far away."

"Okay then," Phoebe said. "Well, let's get moving."

Harvey lead the other two down a number of corridors that looked, at least to Frederick's eye, exactly the same as the first one they had arrived in. The corridors were all identical and appeared to cross back and forth at random. The corridor intersections were not at the traditional ninety degree angles from one another but often at more a forty-five degree slant, some sloped up, or down, the passages themselves appeared straight but Frederick began to believe that they were subtly curved. Each segment was straight but connected to the next at an almost imperceptible angle.

After walking through this labyrinth for about ten minutes a figure became visible in the distance, standing at an intersection.

"Come on," Phoebe said. "That must be her."

As they drew closer they realised that rather than being a properly defined person the figure was like a three dimensional opaque black shadow. It was roughly person shaped but a little blobby on the right hand side.

"This isn't her," Frederick said.

"No," Harvey responded. "It is, but it's just... I think she's out of phase with us. The crystal resonates with a particular tone, when we're inside its lattice we are riding the waves of that tone, experiencing the crystal's reality as a series of tonal moments at the same part of a repeating wavelength. Anabyl's just experiencing the same thing on a different part of the same wavelength."

"I was with you right up until you said 'resonates'," Frederick said. "Look, I don't need to know what's happening. I just need to know that we can fix it."

"I can fix it," Harvey said. "Although it may bind us more tightly to the lattice. Getting out of here might be trickier than we thought."

"We can't worry about that," said Phoebe. "You'll have to do... whatever it is you need to do, Harvey."

"Very well," Harvey said. "Could we all, possibly, link hands again?"

They all did and Harvey closed his eyes again, concentrating. Frederick began to feel very giddy, the vertigo was sudden and he was forced to drop onto one knee.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Quiet," Harvey said. "Need to focus."

Frederick's senses were beginning to see-saw, the corridor bending and shifting about him. There was a moment when he believed he could see a stone plaza in a great city beyond one of the stone arches then the image was gone and there was just the voice.

"...be long now Wish, you'll see, these shadows probably mean that..."

There was the sound of a sword being drawn.

"Who are you?" the voice demanded, its tone had switched from soothing to harsh in the time it had taken to draw the sword.

"Princess Anabyl Spireshine?" Harvey's voice asked. "I believe you know my companions. Give them a moment to recover."

"It's us, Anabyl," Phoebe said, her voice sounded shaky, Frederick's vision was still blurred and he felt very much as if he'd like to be sick. Frederick blinked a couple of times and tried to take a steady breath.

"Phoebe?" the woman with the sword asked. "And... Sir Cobb."

"Yes," Frederick managed to bite back the nausea and speak. "It's us. We've come to get you out of the crystal."

"Hear that, princess?" said a voice Frederick didn't recognise. "We're getting out of here."

Frederick's vision finally settled down enough that he could see who he was looking at now. Anabyl certainly looked a lot different than the last time they'd crossed paths. For a start she appeared to have ditched the penchant for frilly dresses for a quieter gender-neutral look in breeches and a thin wool jacket. She wore a long dark cloak bound on the left shoulder by a large metal brooch.

As Anabyl had grown her face had lengthened and become leaner, the light of chaotic mischief in her eyes had not burned out but now came with a kind of controlled danger. Her long dark hair was wrapped up in a bun on top of her head.

Standing to Anabyl's right was a young boy in more ragged clothing, the other speaker. Putting things together from the story they had read in the Archive Frederick realised that this must be Wish Forbetter.

"How long have we been in here?" Anabyl asked. "A while, I imagine, if you're the ones to come rescue me."

"We saw you off from the market after facing down Sir Vaskorn about a month ago," Frederick told her. "We understand that you found a way to visit the Terra Draconis in the meanwhile."

Harvey cleared his throat.

"As much as I hate to break up the reunion it's time I dispelled my own magic to get you all out of here," he said.

"Yes, probably a good idea," Phoebe said. "So how will that work?"

"You just all need to place your hands on me, preferably about the shoulders from my point of view and we'll soon have you all back to the cave."

"What about you?" Wish asked. "Aren't you coming with us?"

"I'm afraid not," Harvey said. "I have... other things to devote my energies to."

"What?" Phoebe's question sounded like some sort of reprimand, this wasn't unusual.

"Sorry, Feebs," Harvey said. "Guess I lied to you again. A while back, just before I found you, I was actually floating in the Undone. Didn't even know myself, to be honest, I was just stuff. I annoyed the wrong person, ended up dispersed. So the boss comes to me and offers me an out, not just out of the Undone, out of service to you, a chance to be something else, more than just Harvey Raine, the chaos sprite.

"He told me that if I took the out I would be bound to you again, the way Ma Moorshade always wanted it but the boss explained that if I sacrificed myself for a wish that I would be allowed to move on. The boss is like that, always talks in riddles. Guess it runs in the family. Anyhow, when I saw that the young lad here was called Wish I knew what was coming. If I'd told you about it earlier you might have argued or delayed and, honestly, I don't think you have time.

"If I expend every iota of magic I have I can probably get the four of you out of the Quintessence Crystal lattice, but there won't be enough of me left for me to exit. I guess I will just have to trust the boss to come get me."

"But we can't just leave you behind," Frederick said, he wasn't sure either why he said it or why he meant it but both were true.

"You can, and you have to, your journey's not over by a long chalk," Harvey said. "Come on folks, time's a-wasting."

Frederick could tell that Phoebe was itching to start a row about this. At the same time he could see the realisation on her face that Harvey intended to do this. Plus it was possibly the first selfless thing he would do in his existence. How could she argue with that?

So she didn't. Along with the others she put her hand on Harvey's shoulder. Once they were all in place Harvey looked around them all as if to say goodbye and then he began to glow. Harvey's glow, set against the flat grey-white from the ceiling of the lattice, was a warm and comforting orange-pink. It shone from his eyes and from the lines on his face. The light caught the djinn in a bright halo until Frederick thought that the sprite was no longer present in person, he looked, rather, like a painting of himself. Then the glow from his halo became too bright and Frederick's nostrils were suddenly filled with the scent of bat droppings.

Now there were four of them, stood in the skull cave staring at the Quintessence Crystal. For a moment they could not speak.

A voice from outside broke across the silence.

"If you expand that line so that it becomes the radius of a circle," said a voice that Anabyl, Phoebe and Frederick all recognised. "I mean, we could be months searching for this grave, if it's even here."

The three adventurers exchanged a glance.

"James?" came from Frederick's mouth before he had even really understood the concept fully.

And indeed it was James although no longer a mouse, and Lester, and Rachel, along with James's wife, Rachel's mother, Rebecca. But what they did when they all met once more in the Skull Garden I shall tell you next time.

In Which Saeed and Avan Find Vasky Jantnor

"I don't deal with criminals," Avan said flatly.

"Too bad for you," Vasky Jantnor replied. "What are your options? I'm already under threat of execution, you can't harm me without becoming a criminal yourself."

"I can force you to share what you know," Avan growled, he pushed his face closer to the bars. Vasky Jantnor met Avan's glare steadily, his yellow eye glittering in the light from the torches on the walls.

"You won't," Jantnor said coolly. "You don't believe in using that kind of magic."

"I can deal with criminals," Saeed cut in. Since he had met Avan he had been happy to allow the prince to lead. After all Avan Weatherstrong was a legend and Saeed was just a thief who had made some poor decisions. Over time, however, Saeed had come to realise that there were disadvantages to being Avan Weatherstrong and advantages to being Saeed. An example was the fact that Saeed did not feel compelled to indulge in a circuitous political pantomime to associate with street trash.

"Look at you, Prince Weatherstrong," Jantnor said, a white toothed grin spreading across his face, "fraternising with the enemy."

"What do you want me to do?" Saeed asked before Avan could become defensive. "Ask and, if I am able, it shall be done."

"You could take a leaf out of your servant's book," Jantnor said standing and coming towards the bars of the cell, looking Saeed up and down. The draco was very tall, his movement lithe and sinuous. Saeed would not have liked to face Jantnor in unarmed combat, even half-blind as he was, thankfully the mercenary was caged. "This boy is very polite. I like it when people are polite, makes me cooperative."

Jantnor delivered his statement without removing his gaze from Saeed.

"I just want some comfort in here, son," Jantnor said to Saeed, "in my last days, something to bring a little light into this dark cell. I'm sure you'll find this a hoot. I keep a pet, a small white mouse, the type my more backward cousins regard as a snack but I call him Snowdrop and I keep him at my home. I left him two days ago with fresh food and water. If I don't have him returned to my care he will die. Probably he will anyway when I am executed. Until then I would appreciate it if you would bring Snowdrop to me, so I can tend to him as long as I am able."

"That's what you want?" Avan said. "Your pet?"

Jantnor still hadn't looked away from Saeed. He held a hand up, dismissing Avan.

"This ain't your deal, Prince," Jantnor said. "This is on the boy now. What do you say, junior? You bring a man his only comfort and joy in exchange for the information you seek?"

Saeed opened his mouth to do the deal and Jantnor moved his hand waving at Saeed to be quiet.

"Be careful, son," Jantnor said. "If you agree to this you have to enter the White Woods alone to go fetch. I won't take kindly to you sharing the burden. So only accept if you're up for the journey."

"If this is what must be done to find Miranda Felix," Saeed said. "And it is I who must do it, then that is how it shall be."

"Excellent news," Jantnor said, his tone quietly satisfied. "The prince and I shall eagerly await your return. You will know my house by the wooden training dummy in the front yard. I painted the symbol of my old troop on the wall, so that friends would know a welcome and enemies would be warned."

Jantnor displayed a brand burned onto the inside of his left forearm before turning his back on them and crossing his cell to lie out on his bed.

"If you want me," he said, "I will be napping here, be advised Prince Weatherstrong, I will hear you leave, and if you do I will never tell anyone where Felix is, whatever they bring to me for aid and comfort."

Saeed looked over to Avan. The prince did not appear to be in the best of moods. He turned to Saeed.

"I suppose you'd better be about your business," Avan said although his eyes betrayed another conversation lurking in his mind.

"I suppose I better had," Saeed agreed. Saeed did not know what objection Avan would have to this enterprise but, at this stage, he did not really care. "I will be back as soon as I am able."

With that Saeed left the dungeon, on his way to the White Woods.

Saeed was not so much of a fool that he had believed that acting as a companion to the greatest hero who had ever lived would be a position free of problems. However he had been badly mistaken as to the nature of those problems. The dangerous situations and fighting were inevitable, of course. However, Saeed had believed that the problems between himself and the noble prince would mostly be ethical, or differences in approach to a particular problem.

Actually, that's exactly what most of the issues were. However the final resolution of such issues was usually an urgent requirement. The sooner objectives could be completed the better for everyone. What was left behind, however, was a vast ocean of problems unresolved and conversations that there simply wasn't time to have.

Saeed was surprised that he felt some hurt that Prince Weatherstrong actually didn't appear to really like him. Of course, their initial meeting had not been optimal in this regard. Saeed was a thief and had engaged in an act of mercenary thieving when Avan interceded. Add to this the fact that Saeed proved himself a dupe, fooled into actions whose consequences were far in excess of what he had expected and he could fully understand the disapproval of wiser minds.

Where the hurt came in was that this first impression never appeared to be replaced in the Prince's eyes with anything closer to the person that Saeed was trying to put forward during his tenure as Avan's companion. Saeed wanted to show a greater consideration of ethical concerns, a deeper wisdom with its roots in the humility and shame of ill-advised actions that could not easily be undone.

Saeed had committed to this atonement and that commitment had not changed. However, he couldn't help but feel that Avan was, in a rather mean-spirited way, not giving Saeed any credit for these decisions.

It was this array of points: how Saeed's reform was not acknowledged in any way by his travelling companion, why the fact of this bothered him, and what he could do to reverse the situation, that occupied Saeed's mind as he rode his horse into the White Woods.

So distracted was Saeed that he quickly found himself at the end of the trail near to an abandoned hunting lodge. It didn't take Saeed long to see that this was not Jantnor's home so he turned his steed around and picked his way back to the last fork he had taken.

The White Wood was a quiet, cold place and Saeed had not encountered another living soul since he had arrived. Trying out a few more paths lead to more dead ends. Abandoned paths, paths that had been overgrown or turned into swamp, circular paths to abandoned mines or clearings that may once have furnished herbs but were now no more than barren scrub.

The day was almost over as Saeed realised that Jantnor had not been honest and straightforward in his request. The White Woods were a larger space than he had implied and Saeed, even given his excellent sense of direction, realised that he had no way of telling where Jantnor's home might be. There were hundreds of paths criss-crossing the wood, if the home were off the path in a secret corner of the forest then Saeed had no hope of retrieving the prize.

Saeed had never experienced such frustration, he felt foolish, but beyond that there were unpleasant currents of anger and humiliation. The prospect of failure in such an apparently simple task filled Saeed with a cold dread. What made it worse was that it wasn't the mockery of Jantnor that upset him so much as the quiet disdain that was almost inevitably going to come from Avan's direction.

Here was the issue with projecting new wisdom and humble acceptance of one's own past failings: once you realised that you still had failings after that acceptance things got complicated. You could easily begin to understand that your new wisdom wasn't as deep as you might have hoped; present humiliation had even more burn to it when stacked on the embers of past humiliation.

"Sad boy! Sad boy!" a voice rang out from up above.

Saeed looked up to see a small bird, a sparrow, sitting in a tree.

"Sad boy! Sad boy!" the sparrow chirped.

"Are you talking to me?" Saeed asked the sparrow.

"Technically," the sparrow replied, "I was talking about you. Now I'm talking to you."

"You have an impudent mouth for one so small."

"Small birds are always impudent," the sparrow replied. "We have to tease the bigger birds to maintain our territory."

"I see," Saeed said. "I had always heard of talking animals, but I have never met one properly. Oh, I once encountered a talking mouse but I understand he used to be a man. I don't know how that changes things."

"Is this why you are sad?" the sparrow asked. "Because you have never met a talking beast. Maybe you have and you just weren't ready to hear what they had to say."

"I can imagine that being the case," Saeed said. "I think... It makes some kind of sense. But no, that is not why I am sad. I am sad because I promised to do something and now I find I cannot do it."

"Well, that was a stupid thing to do," the sparrow said. "I never understand the actions of folk. You appear, at least to me, to be entirely contrary creatures. I have never promised to do something I could not do, nor would I."

"I didn't know I couldn't do it," Saeed said. "At the time I imagined it would be a simple matter to find a house with a wooden dummy in the yard and a strange symbol painted on its wall. I had no idea how big the White Woods were."

"I see," the sparrow said. "If that house had bread or seeds in it would you give them to me?"

"If you could show it to me and if it has any kind of bread or seeds inside its walls then you could happily have as much as you could eat," Saeed replied.

"Then I hope for my sake that you can keep this promise," the sparrow replied. "Follow closely, I have no time for laggards"

The bird hopped off its perch in the tree and flew into the forest. Saeed followed the bird closely, never losing sight of the fluttering black punctuation mark of its body. Sure enough the house was found within the hour, Jantnor's pet was retrieved within its home (a large skull that may once have belonged to a beast man or similar large animal). Using his thieves senses Saeed found his way out of the woods and returned triumphant to the jail.

Upon being presented with his pet Jantnor's expression became shifty and awkward.

"I am much obliged, son," the draco said to Saeed. "Now I must admit that I cannot tell you exactly where Felix hides herself away, but I do know a step along the route."

"I knew this would all be a big waste of time," Avan said.

"Hold on there," Jantnor said. "I'm a mercenary, that makes me a business man, I don't believe in short changing folk. What I've got may not be everything but I think it's close. You probably know that in our line of work there are people you can deal with that you may not exactly trust one hundred per cent. Felix, well I'm not sure I trust her even ten per cent. So when I took that job from her, the one that ended with me in here, I tailed her after the meet."

"She must have known you were following her," Avan said. "She's like that."

"Normally I would agree," Jantnor said. "It was one of those things that I figured wouldn't pan out, but in the back of my head I thought 'what if it does', so I did it anyway. I followed her to an abandoned tollhouse, used to stand to the side of the bridge connecting the Twenty Kingdoms to the Okulan Empire. Obviously Okulas didn't take too kindly to having the forces of order so close at hand, his men destroyed the bridge."

"So how did she get across?" Saeed asked.

"She didn't," Vantnor replied. "From behind a rock I watched her pay a ghost with silver and he opened up a different kind of bridge, a rainbow bridge, up to the moon over the Empire."

"You expect us to believe that?" Avan asked, his face impassive.

"Believe whatever you wish," Jantnor shrugged. "I traded my mouse for what I know, that's what I know."

"I know the bridge he's talking about, it is some distance away," Avan said to Saeed. "We shall have to use magic to get there."

Having no other option Avan prepared a magic portal that brought them within half a day's walk from the tollhouse. Vast mountains stretched upwards around a broad valley path in which were visible the remains of an old brick road. Many of the stones from the road were missing, weeds and grasses grew up in between those that remained. Avan and Saeed walked with silent purpose along the road towards their destination.

At the end of their journey the companions cautiously approached the ruined tollhouse that stood at the lip of the great chasm.

"I have travelled extensively for one so young," Saeed said. "But this is the first time I have ever trafficked with a ghost."

"They're really just a form of sprite," Avan said. "They are a sort of elemental, filled with the powers of death."

"That's not reassuring," Saeed said.

"It is not intended to be," Avan replied. "The dead can see the forces of the weave and the wheel with a clarity that the living seldom achieve. They have knowledge because they are almost totally unable to use their powers of insight. They know all the consequences of telling you about things that are to come, as a result they tend to keep their own counsel. It is almost impossible to coerce them, so they are often aloof."

"A fine grasp of the academics Prince Weatherstrong," said a voice from the shell of the tollhouse. The ghost emerged through a wide crack in the wall, a gentleman in a formal tunic, he had the appearance of wearing a wig and carrying a lantern. His face was thin, deeply lined and grave.

All Saeed could think of were questions about this apparition. One found its way out of his mouth before he could think better of it:

"I always thought," he said, "that ghosts could walk through walls."

"One day, no doubt, you shall learn better, Saeed ibn Abihi," the ghost replied. "Today, however, you are here on a business other than metaphysics."

"We seek access to the rainbow bridge," Avan said in the formal tone of voice the prince used whenever rehearsing a matter of protocol.

"Then it is best that you furnish me with the toll," the ghost said.

Avan pulled a silver piece from his money pouch.

"Will this suffice, tollkeeper?" he asked.

"Only honest hands have touched that metal, Prince Weatherstrong," the ghost answered. "I cannot take it in payment."

"Give it to me," Saeed said. "I am a thief. If it's dishonest hands he wants well, mine are as bad as anyone else's."

"Noble humility," the ghost addressed Saeed, "but you misunderstand, great sage. The silver itself must be dirty; stolen, to employ the vernacular."

"The toll to cross the rainbow bridge is a piece of stolen silver?" Avan asked, more in the spirit of confirmation than actual enquiry.

"Just so," the ghost confirmed.

Saeed reached into his own belt pouch, even as he did so he felt his cheeks begin to burn. The topic of the silver key that he had placed within the pouch had never appeared relevant to the current situation. As long as no one asked about it directly he was not compelled to talk about it. Paying the toll with it was going to raise questions, but if their journey was to continue without delay there was nothing to be done about it.

"Will this suffice?" Saeed asked the ghost, holding out the small silver key.

"Indeed it will Saeed ibn Abihi," the ghost said, a humourless grin lighting upon his face. "Then, you already knew that it would."

The ghost held out his right hand and Saeed dropped the key onto it, curious as to what would happen. As the silver hit the palm of the ghost's hand it sparked bright white for a second, a flat chime appeared to sound and the key disappeared.

"I shall open the way," the ghost said and raised his lantern up. The light within the housing intensified, starting to shift within the glass like a thing alive. The liquid glow spilled forth from one side of the lantern in a spray of unexpectedly intense colour stretching up over the chasm, piercing the clouds above and continuing on to the flat silver orb of the moon in the sky.

"Step forth, travellers," the ghost said. "The continuation of your journey is at hand."

Avan and Saeed stepped into the rainbow light and were transported along its length towards the Okulas Moon. What they found on the moon and what they did when they got there are stories for another time.

A Bad Night For Lord Mumphrey

"Give no indication that you can hear me," the voice whispered into Lord Mumphrey's left ear.

Failing to follow this instruction in the most spectacular manner Lord Mumphrey spun round, examining the masked faces of his fellow party-goers for some indication that the directive had come from them. Nobody gave any signal that they had heard him but he did spot what he believed was a rather attractive young woman standing near the ornate punchbowl set in the centre of the trestle table closest to him.

Lord Mumphrey sidled up to the slim young woman.

"I don't believe we've been introduced," he said.

The woman regarded him from behind the turquoise feathered mask she wore, she smiled gently.

"You are correct, sir," she said, smiling. "Tabitha Lumpworthy, a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Lord Vilpus Mumphrey," Lord Mumphrey said. "A similar pleasure to make yours."

"My Lady," interjected a third gentlemen approaching them from Mumphrey's left. "It appears that I have arrived to effect your liberation from this tedium at just the right moment."

The new speaker was a rakish young knave wearing a mask that appeared to have been fashioned from scraps of cloth sewn together hastily into a fool's motley. A spray of wiry red hair emerged above the top of the mask, a broad, unpleasantly mocking grin hung underneath it.

"Dance with me, milady," the young man said. "I will induce a feeling one may best liken to floating on air."

He offered his hand. Technically, as he had asked for a dance the only thing party protocol allowed Miss Lumpworthy to do was decline the invitation because she had already arranged to dance with someone else. If Mumphrey wanted the young lady's attention again he would have to wait until the dance was over.

"Your arrogance tells me that you had better be right, sirrah," Miss Lumpworthy said, accepting the proferred hand, the two went off together towards the dance floor.

Slightly deflated Lord Mumphrey cast his eye over the buffet.

"Shall we try that again?" whispered the voice that had hailed Lord Mumphrey a few moments previously. "Just keep looking at all the food. Don't eat any. It's cursed. Don't let on you know."

Lord Mumphrey froze. He didn't know what to do. He found himself looking over the buffet table, turning the concept of cursed food over in his mind. The prawns looked nice, he liked prawns. They looked tasty, not cursed. How could prawns that looked so tasty be cursed?

"You can't let on you can hear me," the voice continued. "So I'll tell you how to respond. If you understand, clear your throat."

Lord Mumphrey didn't know if he did understand, but he did know how to clear his throat, so he did, it made him feel like he was participating in a conspiracy rather than experiencing the onset of lunacy.

"Good," the voice said. "Now, I'm going to tell you a few things, you'll find them difficult to believe, more difficult still because of all the curse magic in this place. I'll start with something easy. That man who went off dancing with the lady, he's a djinn called Harvey Raine."

Lord Mumphrey felt a little prickle of righteous happiness, he had known that that young man was trouble.

"He is working with me, although we haven't had a chance to communicate since we got here. He's trying to rescue you," the voice explained.

Lord Mumphrey had to bite his tongue not to blurt out: 'Rescue me from what?' Cursed prawns, he supposed. Although he didn't see how poaching a dance partner could be viewed as liberation from the effects of tainted seafood.

"The fact is," the voice said, a weary note came into its cadence, "you are not who you think you are. You are a knight who has been trapped at this party and given the mask of Lord Vilpus Mumphrey. Your identity is a prison."

At this Lord Mumphrey's mind revolted. Who was saying this? Who was whispering this nonsense into his ear? What treacherous, villainous...

"You're hearing the voice, aren't you squire?" a voice asked behind Lord Mumphrey, another voice he recognised, although lower than it had been. It was the voice of the djinn who had taken away Miss Lumpworthy.

"What? No! I mean. What do you mean?" Lord Mumphrey said spinning round to face the dance partner stealing knave.

The boy's features had changed in the last few minutes, gone was the cheeky grin and air of arrogance. Actually the arrogance hadn't really gone anywhere, just transformed into a bizarre electric intensity. The grin had collapsed into a long thin scowl. The djinn's eyes were narrowed beneath the motley mask, making the cast of his features too dark and serious for a light and jolly celebration.

"You want to get rid of the voice and its lies meet me in the garden in two minutes, come alone," the djinn said. He dodged past Lord Mumphrey with a remarkable speed and agility. By the time Lord Mumphrey had turned to follow the young man's path the djinn had disappeared, leaving Lord Mumphrey in a state of distress and confusion.

"If you want rid of me," the disembodied voice whispered, "you had better do exactly as he says."

"Whuh-huh," Lord Mumphrey said. A woman in a cat mask was halfway through gesturing with a small novelty sceptre in conversation with a man wearing the ridiculous proboscis of some tropical bird, inexplicably holding a small shovel such as one might take to the beach. They both stopped to look at him. Knowing what bad manners it was to be miserable at a party Lord Mumphrey smiled at them and gave them a little wave. "The prawns are delicious!" he called over to them, he picked up a prawn from a display bedecked in small ornaments in the shape of mermaids.

The masked party-goers smiled at Lord Mumphrey before returning to their conversation. Lord Mumphrey believed the amount of perspiration caught under his mask was starting to become uncomfortable. He carefully replaced the tainted prawn onto the dish.

"You are, in fact," the disembodied voice said, adding to the giddy delirium of the moment, "a young knight by the name of Frederick Cobb."

"Please be quiet," Lord Mumphrey whispered, desperate for peace to come to his churning mind.

The crowd in front of Lord Mumphrey parted and the hostess appeared. The young Lady Scovina Crimzona, who's debut in society was the occasion for this delightful evening. Lord Mumphrey suddenly became acutely aware that he was feeling a bit ill, and this illness may have manifested in the physical appearance of something less than rapturous joy.

If there was one thing Lady Crimzona did not appreciate in the slightest it was someone having a less than wonderful time at her big night.

"Lord Mumphrey," she said. "A little bird told me that you were looking a little... lost. Is everything to your satisfaction?"

The question, everyone present knew, was rhetorical, but Lord Mumphrey's answer was required however redundant it was in reality.

"Oh, yes, milady," he said, finding a hearty smile somewhere in the back of the mental cupboard containing his emotions. It was possibly a little dusty and definitely past its best but he hoped it would serve as a confirmation of Lady Crimzona's benevolence and generosity. "The food is excellent, the music delightful, you bless me with your company."

At that last statement a hot little spark kindled in Lady Crimzona's eye. Acting out of some desperate and passionate need to be on the better side of the tyrant in charge of this shindig Lord Mumphrey's smile set hard onto his face, beaming out across the room but at Lady Crimzona in particular.

"My lady," he said. "How could you doubt that your very presence in this place is the engine, the very heart and soul of this occasion? What would this be save for a paltry gathering had we not your radiant presence to bask in? How could we truly experience joy and merriment without knowing that it is your happiness that forms the core of our assembly? What need would there be for dancing or wit if not to serve as a delight for the most beautiful woman in the room, the hostess of this dream occasion?"

There was a moment's silence in which everyone wondered if Mumphrey had overegged the pudding.

"Lord Mumphrey," Lady Crimzona said, her voice low. The world balanced upon a knife edge, the guests collectively held their breath. "Do you really think I'm the most beautiful woman in the room?"

The room exhaled at Lady Crimzona's soft, but somehow still dangerous, tone. They all breathed out, slowly, so as not to alert the wrong person to the wave of party-inappropriate relief.

"That you could ask the question," Lord Mumphrey replied, not breaking eye contact with Lady Crimzona, "just adds humility and modesty to the lengthy list of your attractive qualities."

Lady Crimzona giggled and held out a hand decorated with an enormous ruby ring.

"Dance with me, Lord Mumphrey," she commanded him. So he had to.

Lady Crimzona, it turned out, was an excellent dancer. Lord Mumphrey couldn't help but feel that possibly he was not. He didn't miss a beat, put his feet in the wrong place or any other such clumsiness but he could feel the dance in his limbs as a series of barely competent close shaves. Somewhere in Lord Mumphrey's mind he wondered how much dancing he had actually ever done, even as his memory provided a full programme of social education that told him he had been schooled in popular dancing since the age of eight.

He wondered, as the dance came to an end, whether he would have a problem with Lady Crimzona wishing to continue their encounter with a second round of sycophantic flattery. As it happened the lady made it quite plain to her dance partner that he was surplus to requirements moments after the final strains of the band had died away. The vision of terror, wrapped up in red silk, bustled away into the crowd, ever the social butterfly.

"Good job," the disembodied voice whispered. "Now, quickly go meet Harvey."

Lord Mumphrey had stopped asking questions. He couldn't remember when the party had stopped being fun but that was probably because he now understood that it had never been fun. He made his way through the crowds and out onto a patio area where more guests conversed, enjoying the fresh, cool evening air.

Mumphrey looked about for the young man who had told him to come out here, he searched for a couple of minutes before realising that he had been told to come alone. Lord Mumphrey sidled over to the edge of the patio and out into the darkened shadows of the garden. On a path in between two rows of trees the djinn waited for Lord Mumphrey.

"You came," the djinn said. "If the mask glamour wasn't even stupider than you I'd give it the credit for this display of good judgement."

Lord Mumphrey wondered for a moment if he should take offence. He decided that he was too confused for that.

"What do you want?" he hissed at the djinn. "How can I make the voices stop?"

"Very easy," the djinn replied. "Technically. Very difficult in reality. You just need to remove your mask."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Lord Mumphrey scoffed. "The unmasking is not until midnight."

"And therein lies the problem," the djinn replied. "The glamour has a safety feature built in telling you not to remove the mask."

"There's no safety feature," Lord Mumphrey complained. "It's just not in the spirit of fun to take it off before the unmasking."

"Are you having fun?" the djinn asked quickly.

"That's not the point," Lord Mumphrey shot back before he'd even decided on a reply. Almost as if something else was answering for him.

"Nothing can completely dominate true will, Frederick," the djinn said. "If you want to, you can take off the mask. Be aware, though, that if you do no one will be able to compel you to put one back on again. Lady Crimzona might get a little short tempered about that."

Lord Mumphrey's mind was at war with itself. The only thing that he could say for certain was that he was afraid. When it came to wondering what he might be afraid of things started to get a bit trickier. He was afraid of taking off the mask, but he was afraid of what might happen if he didn't. He was afraid of confronting Lady Crimzona but, again, he was also afraid of allowing her party of thralls to dance and laugh their way to some terrible fate. Everything in this place was wrong but Lord Mumphrey was not the man to put them right.

Frederick Cobb, might be though...

Frederick looked down at the mask in his hand as all of his memories sloshed about in his head like water slopping around in a falling glass of water. The glass was the personality and history of a party guest called Lord Vilpus Mumphrey, it fell onto a hard surface that was the return of Frederick's personality and smashed into a billion pieces so tiny it was almost as if it never existed at all.

Lord Mumphrey's memories were like a puddle of water sitting upon the surface of his real mind, they were cold and wet and unpleasant. Frederick knew, within an instant that they would evaporate, until he would only remember them as something that had once been done to him, not with any depth or substance.

"Ordinarily," Harvey said gently in front of him. "I would mock you a little at this point, but that kind of glamour's about as harmful as magic can get, so I'll forego my habit in favour of telling you what we have to do next."

Harvey leaned in close to Frederick.

"You can't go running in there waving your sword around," he said. "Crimzona's magic has a lot of inertia behind it. She could kill you with a smile about now. She could disperse me so thin that I might not even be able to pull myself together. If either of those two things happen this party will go on for another few centuries and all of our companions will be lost. So we need to execute a clever scheme to leverage the one person who can lend me the power to deal with this, that being Phoebe. As it has to be a clever scheme I've devised it and all I need you to do is your part, without questions. Got me?"

Like the erstwhile imaginary Lord Mumphrey Frederick bristled at the way Harvey treated him. The arrogance of the djinn was infuriating. Frederick had to remind himself that if Harvey hadn't interceded he would still believe he was Lord Mumphrey. Frederick didn't know as much about magic as Harvey, so maybe doing his part without questions was exactly the right thing to do at the moment.

"So what do you suggest?" Frederick asked.

"If Phoebe removes her mask she will, of course, be incredibly angry and probably unleash masses of plasma and other elemental magic on impulse. This is just compounded by the fact that the way Crimzona's magic works is that the mask glamour continues to operate until the wearer chooses to remove their own mask. You can't just rip them off people's faces."

"Then it's hopeless," Frederick said. "I... I mean, Mumphrey, only took the mask off because he was pretty sure he'd gone mad, that was down to a double assault from you and my talking sword."

"You're welcome," the sword said in a tone of voice that let them both know how much it disapproved of being ignored.

"Not at all, my educationally sub-normal friend," Harvey grinned, ignoring the sword. "The geis which bonds me to Phoebe doesn't distinguish between Phoebe and the fake person Crimzona has put over the top of her. If Phoebe tells me to do something and ends her directive with the words 'this I do command thee' I instantly get the magic power to make that thing happen. Normally, I don't like it but in this place I can disperse a huge amount of sour magic and get you all of your friends back. Besides, whatever happens when this party ends is bound to be a hoot. Everybody wins."

"So what do you want me to do?" Frederick asked.

"I don't know," Harvey said. "Stay out here, talk to the trees, get in touch with your inner monkey. It wasn't you I was particularly fussed about, it was your mask."

"My mask?" Frederick said with the feeling that things were moving too fast again.

"By choosing to remove it you've essentially disempowered it," Harvey said. "Going in there with my improvised cloth mask was a bit of a risk. If Crimzona had spotted me she would have known that something was off. With your mask on my face I can swan about in there like an invited guest. I've already seen Phoebe I just need to convince her to command me to do something."

"So... you did all that, with the sword and the madness and what have you to get your hands on... this?" Frederick asked holding out the mask distastefully as if it might bite him.

"Now you're getting it," Harvey said. "It took a while but I knew it would."

"Well... here," Frederick said and handed the mask to Harvey. He was now irritated that Harvey had wanted the mask more than he had wanted Frederick but this was not the time for a confrontation. The longer he spent in the djinn's company the less he liked the unpleasant sprite.

Harvey slid the mask over his face.

"Oh yes," he said. "That's much better. Okay, well, if you hear screaming and see explosions, lights, other evidence of a heavy magic battle... well, that's all as it should be. Probably means the plan's going well. Until then just, uh, don't get into trouble."

With that Harvey walked away from the grove of trees and back onto the patio, heading for the party.

Alone, the full force of Frederick's resentment of the djinn washed over him. What right had that magical nuisance to pass judgement on Frederick's education or mental agility? Admittedly Frederick had always counted standing on the side of the angels as his chief attractive quality, he was a decent fighter and he liked to think that he had a healthy notion of the difference between right and wrong. Harvey, on the other hand, was a prime contender for the title of 'smartest sprite in the room' but seemed to have no moral compass, or, at least, one that had a bizarre notion about where north lay.

Now they were in this terrible situation, trapped in this nightmare party, dominated by the wicked Lady Crimzona and Frederick's moral goodness and strong right arm were not the useful attributes for the successful resolution of the situation. Frederick wasn't sure that Harvey's disregard for safety and love for sneaking around were quite the thing either but at least the djinn had a plan. What did Frederick have? Cold ears and no sense of purpose.

What was the point of being a hero when the villain could only be defeated by acts of skulduggery?

The question would go unanswered as a voice chirped up in Frederick's right ear:

"So, the djinn's gone. Thank goodness for that. I don't like him one bit."

"No, you're quite right," Frederick said to his sword.

"Sorry, what?" the sword asked. "I wasn't listening."

"I agree, the djinn's shifty," Fredrick said.

"Agree with whom?" the sword asked. "I didn't say anything."

"No," Frederick sighed, adopting an air of martyred patience. "You did. You just said you didn't like Harvey one bit."

"I said no such thing," the sword said.

Before Frederick could start getting seriously annoyed another voice piped up behind Frederick.

"The sword's right," it said. "I was the one who was speaking."

Now that Frederick heard the two voices one after the other he could tell they were separate. He still didn't understand what was going on, even now he remembered who he was. These strange voices were determined to convince him of his descent into insanity.

"Who's that?" Frederick asked.

"My name," said the disembodied voice, "is Tabarnas Riseandshine, I am a goblin merchant and I am protecting a scared little girl by the name of Rachel."

Before Frederick could come up with a sensible response to that there was a scream from inside the House of Mirth followed by a fork of lightning that flitted across the sky and a deep rumble of thunder. In the brief flash of light that preceded the thunder Frederick could now see an old and weathered goblin face standing nearby to Frederick's right.

Tabarnas's eyes met Frederick's. The young knight started back at the sight of the goblin merchant, who looked down at himself. Patting his clothes in surprise.

"It would seem," he said, turning his attention back to Frederick. "That midnight has come at last. This is not good, we shall have to hurry and make sure that Rachel remains safe."

So they did, and she was, but the particulars of their escape will make a story for another day.