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 The Vanishing Has Swallowed The Terra Draconis

It is a morsel of common wisdom too kind to reflect reality that anything Avan Weatherstrong did not know about magic was probably not worth knowing. It is certainly true that the youngest son of the House of Weatherstrong was the most versatile practitioner of the magical arts to ever walk among the lands of Faerie.

For this reason the storm that consumed the dark side of the Okulas Moon did not impress Avan the way that it intimidated his young companion Saeed. All magic, fundamentally, was elemental. To make a rain cloud one could easily combine air and water manufactured from raw mischief. A gigantic black-hearted storm was air and water bound with raw white plasma and amplified using power and chaos. A gigantic storm was devastating, but it was a show piece for the easily cowed.

There was no subtlety to Okulas's working, it was achievable by any idiot with a rudimentary grasp on the basics and the coin to drop on the equipment to make it happen. It was hard to explain to an individual seeing the awesome power of the storm first hand. For this reason Avan didn't even try.

If Avan were to be honest about matters, and he tended to be, he would be forced to admit that the flying potions that enabled Saeed and himself to arc over the storm and settle upon the rim of the crater at the storm's eye was no more impressive to a master alchemist. The ingredients of the potion altered the gross weight of the flesh until it could slip through the air. There was a question of balance, a good flying potion was a hard thing to prepare, but once one had the technique the application was pretty tedious.

Again, it was hard to communicate to a non-magic user how unimpressive a thing a decent flight potion was except in the degree of its responsiveness. Avan's flight potions were something he was proud of but for technical reasons, not merely because the gifted the imbiber with the power to fly for one turn of the hourglass.

There were several flourishes that any alchemist would have been happy to tell you were very hard to pull off in Avan's potion. The potion allowed for mental control of the relative density of the flyer's flesh, the control was quite precise, different parts of the body responded the need to move in harmony with the flyer's wishes. Essentially, when you flew with Avan Weatherstrong's potion you found the business of flight surpassingly easy. The end phase was nicely feathered also, a soft landing at the end of your flight was almost always guaranteed.

This marked the difference between Avan and Okulas. The Count had money, which he had used to buy power to use as a bludgeon. Avan possessed diligence and wisdom, which he had used to craft elegant solutions that got the job done in the spirit of efficiency.

In a completely fair world it would be Avan and Saeed who easily triumphed over the rich bully with the expensive toys. Anyone who has ever encountered a rich bully with expensive toys will tell you that the world is hardly ever fair at all.

By the time Avan and Saeed landed Okulas's plan was already at an advanced stage. As Saeed crested the dark, swirling cloud bank that surrounded the crater a long silver thread became visible, emerging from a structure at the centre of the crater and curving around almost doubling over to cross the moon's horizon and disappear downwards towards the vague craggy outline of the lands of Faerie below. (For the scientific among you wondering how the sky could be filled with the distant image of the lands below, suffice to say that if geography in Faerie is eccentric, interplanetary spacial location is totally insane.)

"We need to aim for that building!" Avan shouted over the whirling, crackling mass of stormclouds.

Avan and Saeed swooped down, on a course to land outside the structure. They didn't make it halfway before an arrow zinged through the space between them. One arrow was quickly followed by more. Before long the air was filled with hurtling arrows, some of them on fire. Saeed and Avan dodged and weaved as much as they could but in the end they were forced back, eventually landing half a mile from their intended destination.

"I really hope that there aren't more glass monkeys," Saeed said.

As hopes went it was not a large one, if heavily armoured guards were an acceptable replacement for invisible simians then Saeed should have been well pleased. For a short while more arrows attempted to find them but Avan put up a glowing shield the arrows bounced off. Eventually a horde of cavalry soldiers reached the pair but, galloping past, they could not penetrate Avan's defenses.

"We must not be delayed," Avan said. "This shield cannot be moved but I can make us fast. Get ready!"

With that Avan threw a small clay pot onto the ground hard enough to shatter, a black-gold glowing powder bloomed outwards, engulfing the two men.

"Stay sharp," Avan instructed, once the dust had cleared. "I'm taking down the shield."

He did so and Saeed looked about to find himself in an even stranger world. Okulas's army was all around him, twisted faces snarling, strong arms bristling with weapons, all intent on cutting down the two men who would seek to interfere with the events unfolding in the nearby building. All of these soldiers were moving as if caughtin treacle, the air was filled with the slow throbbing growl of their cries, slowed down by Avan's magic.

"You still have to tread carefully," Avan said. "But this should last until we reach our destination."

And so they went, jumping over enemies, treading lightly upon the backs of trolls, lizard men and burly folk. Avan and Saeed raced across the army that was trying to kill them. As they reached the outer walls of Okulas's hide away the growl of the army had raised in pitch and tone, the motions of the soldiers a little faster.

"We haven't got long," Avan noted, "let's get up the wall."

Saeed and Avan scrambled up the outside of the building and ran across the roof dropping down into the courtyard just as the effect of Avan's speed bomb wore off. Saeed considered that it must have looked to the observers as if Avan and himself had skimmed over the roof like swooping birds landing precisely at a single spot each already focused on the scene before them. Saeed understood how intimidating such a display would be and understood a little more of what had made the name of Weatherstrong a central pillar of Faerie legend.

Okulas, a dark-haired, pale-skinned oily kind of individual who was, unsurprisingly, shorter than one might have expected, acted as if the arrival of the Prince and Saeed were expected and on schedule.

"Welcome, Prince Weatherstrong," Okulas said. "You will be disappointed to hear that your valiant efforts to preserve the Terra Draconis are all in vain. The skybow's arrow has tethered my moon to the continent and the apparatus I had built by a team of witches has distilled its energies into a single crystal, the crystal of quintessence. All that remains is for the quintessence crystal to be placed within the mounting on an amulet, linked to a ring of power and my claim to the title of Faerie's most powerful sorcerer will be passed into the pages of history."

Okulas was so intent on his gloating that he failed to notice Avan make a subtle hand gesture to Saeed that they had settled upon previously whilst quelling the riot in Dracopolis. They had only decided upon this signal less than three weeks ago but Saeed noticed it with some surprise.

The signal meant 'create a distraction'. Providing such a distraction as Saeed could was appropriate when you wanted to lead a group of trolls into a blind alley where they could be stunned and bound away from the main throroughfare. In this situation Saeed could not imagine a distraction such as he might take responsibility for that did not end with him being frazzled, throttled or otherwise demised by a powerful wicked sorcerer.

Saeed tried to put all of that into a double raised eyebrow aimed at Avan. Avan, lacking an organised response merely waved his thumb in a vaguely upwards direction.

"If I meet death today," Saeed muttered under his breath as Okulas finished explaining his plan. "I will not be impressed in the slightest."

"Even so he thumbed a little smoke bomb that Avan had made for him from the hidden pouch in his belt and smashed it on the ground. As Okulas's personal guard reacted by waving their pikes in his general direction Saeed took the opportunity provided by the confusion to punch a couple of them in places that Saeed knew would temporarily cripple them. Even so, these soldiers were the best that Okulas had under his command. Saeed could not hope to best them alone.

"Grab him!" Okulas shouted pointing in Saeed's direction. After that things went bad for him very quickly indeed.

The world became filled with flying crossbow bolts and swishing blades. Okulas's personal guard had clearly prepared well to take down individuals causing trouble in the vicinity of their employer. Saeed tried to see where Avan was, even as the noose of wood and steel attempted to close about him, but he could not see the prince anywhere.

Making a snap decision Saeed decided that he had to make a break for it. He couldn't hope to survive if the full focus of the guard remained on him. Saeed back flipped over a pair of surprised guards and ran away from the courtyard and into the building through a tall pair of double doors.

The only thing that saved Saeed's neck in that moment was that he had developed a sixth sense for the layout of unfamiliar archectural structures. He found a way down into the building's cellar and from there a trapdoor sealing an escape route into the caves below the moon. The guard, who knew the building far better, stayed in pursuit, but only because they had the home advantage.

Whatever the reason Saeed hoped that he had not made a fatal miscalculation. The narrow passages of the Okulas Moon's cave system were not an ideal place to escape from a horde of pursuing guards. Before long Saeed had exhausted all the obvious routes, perpetually finding looped passages, dead ends or sheer vertical shafts. Without any magic of his own it seemed that he had cornered himself.

In the end he found himself in a passage, hemmed in by guards on either side. Roughly half way down the passage was a shaft showing a way upwards but the rock was smooth and slippery. Saeed could not gain access to the upper shelf of rock and his small spider-silk grapple had nothing to hook onto. As the guards approached Saeed watched his options decreasing. He drew his sword but there was no real way he could defeat a small army all by himself.

As the guards drew together under the chimney, completely sealing Saeed's available escape routes Saeed focused on the fiercest looking guards and waved his sword about.

"I may be reintroduced to my mother this day," he shouted, "but I will be taking some of you with me, mark my words!"

The guards did not look impressed, Saeed swung his arm back preparing for a first blow. As his arm reached its ready position there was the sound of a crack and someone shouted: "Shiner!"

Saeed closed his eyes and blocked his ears as he always did when he heard the word shiner. The shiner was a small bomb developed by Avan that put out a loud noise and a bright white light that could stun anyone who did not protect their eyes and ears when it went off. The devices did not do much physical harm but were immensely useful in asserting a surprise tactic against a group of adversaries.

With the short warning the sound of the shiner was louder in Saeed's ears than he might have liked, but e managed to shield his eyes from the light. When he opened them again the guards were all clutching their heads and moaning. A sliver of white cord was hanging down to Saeed's side.

Saeed did not hesitate, he scaled the rope up the chimney and was greeted by Avan at the top.

"You cut that about as fine as I think you possibly could," Saeed said. "Thank you."

"Sorry," Avan said. "I had to lose pursuers of my own, then, I found these."

Avan held up a number of crystals, all of which looked like they could be the quintessence crystal.

"What is this? More magic?" Saeed asked.

"Raw mischief, trapped in dragon crystals as luminosity," Avan said. "Only one of the crystals is the one that contains the Terra Draconis, the others are decoys."

"So, the Terra Draconis is safe?" Saeed asked.

"Trapped in crystal," Avan nodded, "but out of Okulas's grasp. We need to make sure it stays safe, until the magic can be reversed safely."

"Can you do that?" Saeed asked.

"Not easily," Avan said. "I think the safest extraction method will prove to be alchemical but whoever does it will only get one chance. The responsibility for restoring this land is a grave one. I fear that, although I will be able to start upon a solution it won't be easy and I may not be the one to complete the work."

"So what do we do now?" Saeed asked.

A small light appeared in the passage behind Avan, it was about the size of a hornet, coloured a pale yellow.

"Hello, Starspark," Avan said, then to Saeed: "This is Starspark, I found her in one of Okulas's dragon crystals. She was an experiment in preserving mischief inside the lattice structure of the crystal. She was also my first experiment in extraction. Starspark, this is Saeed, an honest thief."

"Hello, Prince Weatherstrong," Starspark said. "Hello, Saeed."

"Starspark knows these caves, she can take us back through the roots of the tree to the light side of the moon and I can use magic to take us back to the haunted house in Faerie," Avan said. "After that you and I will hide the decoys, and, of course, the real crystal. Hopefully that will buy us some time to seek a remedy for this wicked act."


And this is exactly what they did, but as for the rest that will be told another day.

Vespula Velvet's Problem

The Patchwork Market may not be the most remarkable place in all of Faerie, but it is certainly unique. As has been noted elsewhere the notion of geography is applied somewhat liberally in the Faerie Realms. The most geographically stable location is the area covered by the Hundred Kingdoms, even that has its back ways, turnabouts and confusions.

The problem with Faerie geography is the existence of places that are at the centre of the world. The way that you can tell such a place is that you can traverse such an area and get to any other destination in fairly short order, as long as you know the way. That last part, that's always the bit that misleads people. Knowing the way is not as easy a thing as many suppose.

The most obvious, and also the most difficult, central location in Faerie is the Forest of Grymm. That's the name of the forest but really it may as well be called 'The Forest', because all wooded areas are connected to it, so there is, at some level, only one forest in the whole of Faerie. The problem is that some of the kingdoms separated by other forest areas don't see it like that. Someone could circumvent, for example, Sommerslip Woods near the Faerie Archive and never see any part of the Forest of Grymm. However, once they step among the trees, even on a well maintained path, they could take the wrong fork and end up in Grymm, from there they could emerge anywhere, not necessarily back in the county of Sommerslip.

There are other places of a similar nature, the great city of Luminis, the Black Ocean, the Soft Places on the edge of the Undone (those get _very_ complicated), the Celestial Sphere and the NeverWill. All of these places can be reached from almost anywhere and lead to absolutely everywhere. The Patchwork Market shares this distinction, the Market and Luminis are the only two such places that are built. The difference between the two is simple, Luminis is closed, the Market is always open.

As such the Patchwork Market is the most welcoming of all the inbetween places. If it were as wilful as Grymm or as bizarre as the NeverWill or as outright dangerous as the Black Ocean then it would make it hard to sell things to people, this is the Market's entire reason for existing. If trade were not facilitated in the Market the Market would cease to exist.

Even so, the Market has it's dark secrets and hidden corners. Not everything that goes on among the tiered plazas of this world within the world is clean and legal as anyone might wish. Of course, the Market permits the existence of its Master and the Master's Watch, they do the best they can to maintain peace and order conducive to the spending of a substantial amount of coin.

They can't be everywhere, from time to time evil still works its way into the Market. A fact Eos came to appreciate in an entirely new way when she awoke in chains fastened to the wall of a ruined structure in the darkness of an abandoned plaza.

There was one thing in Eos's mind beyond her own immediate inconvenience, concern and discomfort.

"Rachel?" she asked, unabashed, not whispering, the importance of knowing that her charge was in good health overriding other concerns.

"Eos?" Rachel's voice brought a flood of relief.

"Tasty little snippets," a third voice interrupted the auditory reunion. It was a quiet voice, a voice soft like sucking mud dangerous as a whippingcord serpent. Eos recognised that voice, she was pleased that Rachel had never heard it before.

"Vespula?" Eos asked.

"Enjoying myself I was," the witch replied, not bothering to confirm her identity to Eos. Vespula Velvet knew that the mermaid princess whose kingdom Vespula had usurped would not forget the voice, or be in any doubt as to its owner. "I was in my little undersea cave, rebinding the bristles to my broom when I feel a stabbing pain, as if someone had thrust the blade of a steel knife through my old heart."

The platform on whic Eos found herself was shrouded in darkness. She could see the edge of a ruined wall defined by the glow of a low, orange-flamed fire burning beyond it. She could not see the witch who had taken away her birthright. All she could hear was the wheedle of the ancient sorceress's thin voice.

"Bound to our enchantments we are, magic workers," Vespula said, Eos could hear soft footsteps, the voice sounded louder, nearer. "I knew when you bought that ring, so you could walk upon the land, that didn't trouble me much. I hired me some trolls, to find you, bring you to me. Must have hooked up with some clever sorts though, disappeared from the Hundred Kingdoms, found you in the soft places, then all on a sudden you were here, in the market and I was on the floor in pain. So much pain."

Vespula was very close now, but still not visible, somewhere on the other side of the partial wall to which Eos was bound.

"So I contacted my troll master, and told him where to get him a cloud of sleeping dust. He found you on the Market Floor, near to the Master's Island. Had to get you before you reached the Master of the Market. Too much trouble, not that you were hard to find, just walking around without a fear in the world. Had you forgotten fear, dearie?"

The breath of that question warmed Eos's left ear.

"I'm not afraid of you Vespula," Eos said, although she knew she was lying.

"Don't bother," Vespula said. "I can smell the terror on you, marinating you, making you and your little friend ready for Vespula's pot. You know how much power I can get from the bones of two young maidens such as yourselves?"

"The little girl is nothing to do with this," Eos said. "Let her go!"

"You have forgotten what it is to be a wicked witch, Teleosti Shaleshore," Vespula chortled. "It does not matter what that girl is to whom. She had the bad luck to fall within my power and that means that now she is no more than soup. Can't you smell the stock cooking, bubbling away in my cauldron? Sweet with wolfsbane and nightshade, hemlock and brimstone."

Eos knew that Vespula would happily swill down Eos and Rachel broth. Vespula was one of the vilest witches in the far shadows. She thrived on poison, fear and heartbreak. Even so, one could not simply give up, defeat may be inevitable but ultimate victory should always be withheld.

"Let us go, Vespula, or you will be hunted down and killed," Eos said, she was uncertain, in herself, that this would be the case but Eos had made friends, and Rachel certainly had people behind her, even if the chief among them was a talking mouse. There was a chance that Phoebe September or Frederick Cobb would care enough to avenge their disappearance, if they knew who to look for. It was a slim hope and not one of much use if they had, in the meanwhile been eaten, but it was all Eos had.

Vespula Velvet chuckled again, a hoarse, bubbling sound. The twisted shadow of the witch's form cut between the broken wall and Eos's field of vision. Eos still couldn't see the gnarled enchantress but she knew the old woman was there.

"And who will ever know that it was my doing, little one?" she asked. "Who will there be to tell. The kind of folk that would look for you would not even think of asking trolls so full of the darker blood as I would hire. Trolls such as them would rather kill friends of yours anyhow. No, sweet morsel, Vespula shall drink your blood, and no one shall ever know that it was done."

"Excuse me, ma'am," came a voice from far away, beyond the broken wall. "I think the stock is prepared but I have not the tongue to taste it."

Vespula did not appear best pleased at this interruption, she spat back:

"You have the tongue to spoil my delicious moment, though," to her unfortunate henchman.

Actually, Eos considered, welcoming any distraction from the consideration of her present dire circumstances, it did sound a little as if it might be a hench-woman. Distinguishing the gender of a speaker, if that speaker was a troll, which this was, was not an easy task for anyone other than another troll. Those of dwarven stock were pretty similar.

"Apologies, mistress," the troll replied. "Our stomachs are not able to take in any food save rocks, stones and earth, we may only drink water. We cannot taste a stock for meat-people, nor would it do our insides any good at all."

"Well," Vespula grumbled, "I suppose this will be one of the more important meals of my life. Very well, I shall taste the stock. Hopefully it will be fine and fulsome in its flavour, ready for the addition of my tender tasty morsels."

The troll came forth from behind the wall with a ladle in its hand. Vespula took the ladle, lifted the bowl of it to her lips and sipped at the liquor within.

"Hot, spicy," Vespula crowed triumphantly. "A full, sweet, flavour that just needs the addition of flesh and bone from a pair of maidens, to fill Vespula's stomach and warm her old meat through with every vile type of magic. Perfect for hexes and curses and-eep."

For the barest fraction of a moment Eos wondered if an 'eep' was some kind of dark magic that she had not previously encountered. The grey cast to Vespula's usual greenish countenance told Eos that she may have received a reprieve from the cooking bowl.

A hard noise, like stones cracking against one another, came to Eos's ears. She could see that Vespula was starting to petrify, turning to rock from the feet up. Nothing as refined as becoming a statue. No, Vespula's legs were turning into dark rocky pillars of uneven shape.

"Your one and only mistake," said the troll walking round so that Vespula's furious eyes could see it. "Was to think that you could casually decide to eat my daughter."

In a falling sift of sparkling fairy dust the visage of the troll fell away to reveal the face of a woman that Eos had never seen before.

"Its you!" blurted Rachel from her own wall adjacent to Eos. Since Vespula had arrived the little girl had been too terrified to speak but her surprise trumped her fear for a moment. "The Green Lady."

"Her name is Rebecca," said another voice that Eos recognised as belonging to Rachel's mouse, James. "And she is your mother."

The owner of the voice, it transpired was no longer a mouse, but a tall, thin man, who emerged from the shadows beyond the wall to join the slim woman who had disguised herself as one of Vespula's trolls.

"How?" Eos asked.

"Mischief probably," James said, smiling at Eos. "Lester and myself were lost in the Undone, a magician helped us get back here after we helped him out with a wolf problem... there's a lot to explain..." James turned away from Eos to look at Rachel. "Not least of all to you, Rachel."

"James?" Rachel said. "Is that you? You're a man again! Oh, I am so pleased for you."

"There's more than just a transformation here," James said to Rachel. "We have a lot to discuss. First, though, we should probably see about freeing the both of you. Lester, do you mind lending a hand?"


So James and Lester helped liberate Eos and Rachel from their chains and the whole group went on to the Patchwork Market to find a place for tea and a complicated chat. What they did after that is a story for another day.

Sir Cobb and the Amateur Rogue

Frederick had not often had the privilege of staying in an actual castle. At least, not one local to his own time and place. When he had trained with Avan Weatherstrong in the time of heroes, of course, the opportunity to stay under a roof with nobility had cropped up more often.

Frederick liked castles, they had high walls, portcullises, gatehouses, guard stations and, on occasion, moats. Until Frederick had settled on the course of his life he had always slept well. In the early days of being a knight errant the number of nights actually spent in beds had dropped dramatically. During his training the unpleasant nature of the world became more apparent. Sleeping in a large stone structure with forbidding entry ways and a round the clock guard started to show itself as a sensible precaution.

Roadside inns that called themselves 'The Castle' were, at the least, optimistically named. They were just as secure as any other dwelling place. Experience had taught Frederick that this meant nothing. Guards were a rare thing indeed and miniature portcullis features had never really caught on, being a pain to install.

'Sleep with one eye open' was not a piece of advice for a knight-errant, more a description of how they slept all the time. Even so, a good rest was a vital weapon in a knight's arsenal. There were not many aged insomniac knights, in fact, Frederick had never met one.

Frederick often found that looking out of the window and enjoying some night air before retiring helped him to drop off. This evening, staying in 'The Castle', a coaching inn on the Sommerslip Road, it allowed him to catch sight of a suspicious, shadowy figure mooching about the stables.

There was a time, not so long ago really, when a shadowy figure, moving in a series of darting shuffles from point to point, shortly after sunset, might have caused Frederick to raise an eyebrow, shake his head and continue on with whatever he was doing. These were the days before the hero's paranoia had taken hold.

Now all Frederick could see was a threat, skulking nearby, waiting to strike. Maybe the threat wasn't directly aimed in his direction, this was irrelevant. Frederick was a knight-errant. Whoever was endangered by the presence of this black-clad rogue was someone Frederick was honour bound to protect.

Frederick was not yet so jaded by his role that he regarded this fact as tedious. It was still inconvenient, he mused, casting one final glance towards the warm and inviting blankets neatly arranged upon his bed.

One of the things that really annoyed Frederick about common rogues was their inability to master even basic roguing. If you hired a guild-approved rogue for light espionage and workaday dirty deeds then most of those seeking to foil them would be entirely unaware of their presence until it was too late. If people just had the common indecency to have these things done properly then assassination attempts would be far less regularly foiled.

The fact Frederick had seen this chap by glancing out of his bedroom window told him that his quarry was in no way affiliated to any of the major thieving federations, he was, essentially, a bodger in the world of stealth.

This made him a nuisance, the longer the incompetent rogue were free the more he contributed to the common misconception that a proper thief was not such a big deal. Frederick wasn't just stopping this fellow for the good of his target and the detriment of his employer but, in a very real sense, Frederick was helping to erase the notion that stealth was easily achievable by the common man on the street.

As Frederick crossed the stable yard in the shadows, knowing he was only visible, and even then as an indistinct black lump, for less time than it would take for fifty grains of sand to settle in the lower chamber of an hourglass, he considered that he was a knight and would never pass the basic exams for affiliation to any self-respecting thieves' guild. Yet, here he was, silently lifting the substantial mass of a spade from against a wall, hefting it in his hand to assess weight and balance and swinging it down upon this foolish man's head. Frederick had not made a single sound, his breathing was calm and controlled, his tread careful, his actions fluid and discreet.

Frederick knew 'knight-stealth' a short term, quick and dirty profile of tricks used by men who preferred to fight face-to-face wherever possible. Yet this idiot had completely failed to detect him. If this man was any sort of rogue Frederick should have a knife between his ribs right now. As the spade made contact with the amateur's head Frederick glanced down to check he wasn't being triple bluffed.

Thankfully there was no stealthily concealed knife jabbing at the side of Frederick's stomach, the poor-man's thief was unconscious on the floor.

"I'm almost disappointed," Frederick muttered, bending down and pulling two lengths of cord from the belt loops at the top of his breeches. Having some lengths of cord handy to tie people up with was a trick Frederick had learned from Avan Weatherstrong. Of course, Prince Weatherstrong had a bewildering array of magicks at his command to restrain those who required it, but Avan, like Frederick, was a guy who liked to be prepared.

As Frederick was tying the man up he noticed a large amethyst signet ring on the pinkie of the man's right hand. There was a crosshatch of silver holding the amethyst down, five lines diagonal across the circular surface of the stone.

Recognising evidence when he saw it Frederick removed the ring to show to Phoebe and Harvey. Then he hoisted the man onto his shoulder and headed for the inn entrance. Before he made the mistake of blundering through the door carrying an unconscious rogue, an action that could lead to discovery and questions, Frederick stopped.

He returned with his burden to the stables where Gerda and Ferris waited impassively by Tabarnas's coach.

"Lads," Frederick said to the golems. "I found this fella sneaking about the stables and I would like to discreetly question him in my room. Any chance you could help me get him upstairs quietly?"

The golems were very helpful. Frederick went back to his room and Gerda stood on Ferris's shoulders. Between them all they lifted the thief in through Frederick's window.

A few moments later Harvey and Phoebe had been summoned. Harvey was the first to arrive and he cast an appraising eye over the bound thief as Frederick explained what had happened in more depth.

"So, you're basically saying that you saw someone you didn't like the look of and took it into your head to swipe him over the head with a shovel?" Harvey asked as Frederick's account came to a close.

"There was a bit more to it than that," Frederick complained. "Trust me, he was up to no good."

"There's a town in the Skyleg mountains where they award the largest swine of the year's herd to the person with the best knee-jerk reflex," Harvey said. "I think you should seek that place out, you'd be eating fresh bacon the next day for certain."

"I think it's better to apologize for over-caution than die for complacence," Frederick said.

Harvey's sly, narrow gaze fixed on Frederick's earnest face for a few more moments. The faint smirk twitching the corner of the djinn's lips communicated a level of smugness it would have been hard to describe in actual words.

"I'm only teasing," Harvey admitted eventually. "I think it's great that you're taking the law into your own hands, very chaotic. I'm a big fan of chaos. The right to a fair trial is highly overrated."

"I'm not trying to deny anyone..." Frederick snapped.

"Boys!" Phoebe said from the doorway. "I am about sick and tired of your arguing. Harvey, you know I have the power to apply a severe attitude adjustment to you so don't bait Frederick so much. Frederick... well... try to be a bit less easily baited. You have to understand that every word that falls from Harvey's lips is utter nonsense. The sooner you do the better for all of us."

"Every word?" Harvey objected. "Isn't that just a tad harsh?"

Phoebe only had to look in Harvey's general direction to get the mischievous sprite to lapse into silence.

"He's still not awake, then?" Phoebe said, inspecting the still unconscious rogue. "How hard did you hit him exactly."

"I tend to hit hard enough to give me a decent head start," Frederick shrugged. "Anything softer and you'd end up on the wrong end of a cross country pursuit, or a term in a castle dungeon with the looming prospect of probable execution."

"I never realised that whacking someone with a shovel was such a precise science," Phoebe remarked drily, uncorking the small bottle that she'd fetched from her room. "Get ready," she said, holding the bottle under the rogue's nose and moving it back and forth.

The rogue's head rolled, twitched and then jerked upwards as the man came back to consciousness. The muscles in his shoulders bunched as he attempted to reach up to massage the sore spot on the back of his head. As he realised he was bound to a chair his eyes widened as he focused on the three people intent on his every move, standing too closely for his comfort as the inn's lodging rooms were not intended for gatherings of this size.

"One false move," Harvey said to the man, truculence dripping from every syllable, "and we'll give you a smile from ear to ear via your throat, get me?"

The man panicked and started straining at his bonds, muffled yells tried to find their way through the gag improvised from Phoebe's collection of coloured handkerchiefs.

"You are treading the line," Phoebe warned the djinn. "Apologies sir, whilst you are, temporarily our captive we do not intend to kill you, my associate believes that he is funny."

"We just want to know what you were doing sneaking around the stables in the middle of the night," Frederick said. "And, more importantly, on who's behalf. Don't bother telling us it's none of our business and there's no point acting innocent. I'm a knight, she's a witch and he's a djinn. We can practically smell mischief."

The rogue looked from Frederick to Phoebe, not liking the expression on her face he tried looking at Harvey's face, although everyone could have told him that would be a waste of time and energy.

"Thief," he said eventually, "Horse thief... I am... just looking for horses... to thieve."

"So," Harvey said, moving in closer to the man. "You are so scared of your employer you'd rather pretend to be a horse thief than reveal your true allegiance. That means you're working for a noble. Probably one with a fair degree of power and influence, someone whose name is known in the region."

The rogue's eyes widened and his mouth opened, even at amateur level this fellow hadn't been rogueing for long.

At that point the door to Frederick's room opened and Tabarnas shuffled in.

"I heard voices..." Tabarnas said before catching sight of the prisoner. He stumbled to a stop with a perturbed 'ah, I see'.

"Sorry," Phoebe said. "We didn't want to disturb anyone."

"Who is this?" Tabarnas asked.

"That's what we're trying to find out," Frederick said. "Although now I come to think of it we may be taking the wrong angle. Tabarnas, does this tell you anything?"

Frederick reached into his pocket and retrieved the signet ring he had taken from the unconscious rogue's finger. Tabarnas adjusted his eyeglasses and squinted at the ring.

"Ring of fealty," Tabarnas said. "Silver would indicate a moon tribe, the circle is usually a light stone, the purple, particularly occluded like that is the new moon. Unfortunately these items are not really traded. If I were to buy one I would have to melt it down for parts, they're not magical but they do have very particular meanings in the One Hundred Kingdoms. Any kind of civil servant should be able to tell us specifically who this belongs to in the morning."

"So," Phoebe said, looking over at the prisoner. "Either you are a horse thief in the employ of a local noble, or, as we already worked out, you are lying to us. You also must be aware that it is only a matter of hours before we know who you are working for anyway."

"You have two choices," Frederick chipped in. "Either you come clean and, as long as we like what you say, we may even let you go. Or I can go get the constable now and you can go to jail for... what was it, horse theft?"

The rogue didn't look as if he really knew what to do. His gaze travelled around all of the room's occupants, the light his eyes distant as if he were doing some immense calculation. Before any concrete result manifested an explosion outside sent a shudder through the inn's frame and rattled the window panes.

"Too late," Harvey chimed in.

It definitely looked that way, and the wise man knows that when things look that way, often they are that way, and, indeed, in this case they were. But the why's and the how's of what followed are a tale for another day.

In The Undone

Surrounded by white mist, melting away, Lester realised just how complicated he, in fact, wasn't. He imagined that some people, Phoebe September for example, might take a long time to be undone. Lester got the impression that Phoebe was a very complicated person. Not nearly as complicated as Chester, of course, Lester's brother was an extremely complicated man.

For a moment it seemed totally appropriate that Lester's last thoughts should be of his missing brother. After all Lester didn't have much motivation beyond that. Lester could comfort himself with the thought that, even though he would no longer exist to be reunited with Chester, Chester would continue to exist elsewhere, finding remarkable things, doing remarkable deeds.

Then the moment passed and Lester remembered Chester had left Lester a small vial of potion with instructions that Lester should consume it when the time was right. Well, soon there would be no more time to be right, and what was a righter time than that?

Lester picked the vial, wrapped in a handkerchief, from his left jacket pocket. He took the stopper out and swallowed all the liquid that he could. It tasted of nothing but had an electric texture that poked and prodded at his tongue as it passed over. The strange, jangling, spiky sensation continued down his throat and proceeded to spread through his limbs.

Lester began to feel less like he was drifting and more like he was standing in a huge white hall on a white floor, lit in white from all directions. Lester was lost in the fog of the undone, alone, saved temporarily by his brother's potion. Lester held the vial up for inspection, there was still about half a teaspoonful of the liquid left in the bottle.

His thoughts beginning to circulate more rapidly Lester scooped the wispy form of James from his pocket.

"Quick, drink this," Lester said holding the rim of the vial up to James.

James appeared to be incapable of drinking unaided so Lester forced the lip of the vial into James's mouth and upended it. The drops of potion slid out of the vessel. Lester hoped fervently that James could still swallow them. Drowning the mouse with the potion that might otherwise save him seemed a very cheap and unsophisticated irony.

As it turned out James could swallow and within a few seconds he sat up on Lester's palm and looked about himself. The mouse's eyes had regained their usual sharpness, much to Lester's relief.

"Well, here we are," James said.

"Yes," Lester said. "We're definitely here."

"In the undone," James said.

"In the undone," Lester agreed.

"So, I guess the question is," James said. "How do we get out of the undone?"

"I don't know," Lester said. "There's no indication where the exit might be."

"It would be handy," James said. "If we could have some sort of map."

"A map?" Lester asked. "What, of the undone?"

"Well, I guess, just a plan of where the edge is. The undone must have an edge, we were on the other side of it about an hour ago."

"That's true," Lester said. "I think to find the edge we would have to know where we were and the problem is it doesn't matter where you stand everywhere else looks just the same."

To demonstrate his point Lester took a few steps away from where they started out, there was no sound to indicate movement and the atmosphere remained undisturbed.

"See," Lester said. "Everything in every direction just remains white."

He spun round on the spot showing James the complete lack of detail or reference points. Lester's demonstration was slightly undermined by the presence of a small square of paper lying on what, for want of a better phrase, could be called the floor back where Lester and James had come from.

Lester walked back over to the paper, bent down and picked it up. Holding it out in front of him he read the four words across the top: "Map of the Undone"

To the right of the title was a small compass rose indicating that North was towards the top of the map. This might have been helpful were it not for the fact that the rest of the paper was entirely blank.

"Very amusing," James said. "Not even a 'You Are Here' marker."

"But, this wasn't here a few minutes ago," Lester said.

"How do you know. It looks like you might have been standing on it and not even known."

"Until I took the potion," Lester said. "I don't even think there was anywhere to stand. I felt like I was just drifting apart, there was no up, no down, nothing but undone. I don't believe the potion both pulled me together and provided a novelty map."

"So where did it come from?" James said.

"You were talking about it," Lester said. "You were talking about it and then we found it."

"Well, that does look like my kind of punchline," James conceded. "So, you think that if we can conceive of something out here it comes into being."

"Maybe that's how the undone becomes the done," Lester said.

"So if we think about it hard enough then we'll find a way out?" James asked.

"Excuse me," said a third voice from behind them. "I don't suppose you've seen a jungle around here anywhere?"

Lester turned around. Standing a few feet away from him and James was a slim woman wearing a light green dress that matched with her long, shiny hair. Lester could see a pair of translucent wings fluttering at the woman's back showing that she was some species of sprite, possibly an elemental.

"Uh, no," Lester said. There were many other things that he would have liked to say but he found the sheer number of questions available to him so bewildering that he couldn't focus on any one in particular. "I don't think there's one nearby. But then, I didn't think there was, strictly speaking, anything nearby at all and in the last few moments I've found a map and, uh, well, you found us but you see where I'm going..." the fairy did not respond immediately, just stared at the curious, gabbling man holding a mouse in his left palm. "I mean... I'm... we're... not possibly the best people to tell you what is, or isn't, nearby."

"Oh, dear," the fairy seemed disconsolate. "I was looking for my husband and my daughter, for a long time. I heard that Okulas had put them into a jungle he had made, with a rock at the centre, shaped like a skull. It's not really a jungle, it's a prison. I wanted to find them and then I got lost, something happened... I don't know. Oh. I don't think I shall ever find them."

The fairy looked about for something to sit down on, but there was nothing about except for her and James and Lester. A silence fell between them. Lester's question count had escalated even further, his head was starting to spin. The fairy appeared to have lost all will to do anything.

For the second time in the last day Lester believed, having talked with James about his past, that this woman had been searching for James and Rachel, the only question was: would James be overwhelmed by the situation a second time?

The words "Well, are you?" found their way out of Lester's mouth aimed at the rodent sitting in the palm of Lester's hand.

"Put me down!" James said. "Put me down on the floor! Right away!"

At the sound of James's voice the fairy's gaze suddenly snapped in the direction of the mouse's small grey-furred body. A look of incredulity came upon her face.

Lester knew when James was using his urgent voice and complied with his companion's instructions. James scampered across Lester's fingers but by the time he had reached the empty white pseudo-ground of the Undone he had taken a step with an actual foot, a human foot. Lester, who had been watching this, couldn't quite remember how it was that he had been looking at a mouse and now he was looking at the blue of a pair of coarse-cloth trousers but that was what had happened.

"Am I the only one who doesn't understand any of this?" Lester asked, stepping back to look at the man James had turned into.

"James!" the fairy cried out. "It's you!"

"Rebecca!" James replied as the two embraced, holding onto each other tightly.

It was clear that the two were overjoyed to be reunited, especially as one hadn't remembered the other until a few seconds ago and the other one hadn't recognised the first until the same time. Lester felt it was probably high on the list of things not to do to interrupt immediately.

Touching as the scene was it didn't change anything else around them so Lester felt he had to interrupt.

"Um," he said. "Glad you two have found each other and everything but, well, I can't help but point out that we are still lost in the undone. I'm not positive how long the potion's effects will last so, jungle or not, we do need to get out of here, quickly as possible."

James broke the embrace with his wife and stood back. Now that he had been de-moused Lester could see he was a tall, thin man with a mop of floppy dark hair. He was wearing a long-sleeved grey tunic cut in a manner Lester had not encountered before, blue trousers and a pair of very strange looking shoes.

"You're right," James said. Lester was already finding it strange to see the mouse's voice coming from this non-mouse form. "I think that finding Becky here demonstrates that we are affecting the undone with our thoughts, even the ones we're not aware that we're having. Somewhere, when we were understanding the map a part of my brain thought about Becky and then... well... here she is."

"I'm not entirely sure that I understand that in its entirety," Lester said. "Still, it seems the best explanation we have, however not very good it is. So, what? I just try to picture the forest around the house and we return back to Eos?"

James shrugged.

"Worth a try," he said.

There followed a few moments of odd facial expressions and furrowed brows.

"Apparently not that simple," James said with a sigh. "We must be missing something."

"Well," Lester said. "We'd better stop missing it pretty soon, because I don't think our magic will protect us forever."

"James, what's happening?" Rebecca asked.

"We're lost in the undone," James said. "Lester here had some potion that stopped us floating away and also appears to make the undone respond to our thoughts. We need to get out of here before the potion wears off. So far, not as simple a task as we might have wished for."

"Where's Rachel?" Rebecca asked. "What happened to her?"

"Well, that's the thing," James said. "She was with a friend of ours, a mermaid called Eos, when Lester and I wandered into the undone. I'm sure she's safe. It would appear, however, that we can't just will ourselves back to the point where we got lost."

"I had wondered whether this was one of Okulas's torments," Verda said. "Then I realised that if it was then there would surely be glass monkeys about. Of course, there might be, it's always so hard to tell."

"Becky," James said. "I'm afraid that I've suffered some memory loss. Since Rachel and I left the Skull Garden things have been coming back to me, but not many and not all in order. I don't know who Okulas is, or what a glass monkey is."

"Okulas is the man who put you in the garden," Rebecca said. "Although why a Count would care about you and your work I don't honestly know. Something about it made him unhappy. One of his glass monkeys was spying on you. We didn't know it at the time because they're invisible. Wherever we went they would find us. If we get out of here then there's a chance they will find us again, then what will you do? How will you stop yourself being imprisoned again?"

James didn't say anything, Lester guessed that was because the former mouse, having half his memories missing, had no real answer to Rebecca's question. One thing, however, was totally plain.

"It doesn't matter if glass monkeys or wooden tigers or even copper badgers will catch us out in the world," Lester said. "If we stay here eventually we will definitely be undone and then we won't be any kind of animal made out of any kind of non-traditional material. So could we please focus?"

"Absolutely," James said, the most wholehearted agreement that the sarcastic mouse had ever shown for anything Lester had said. Lester didn't flatter himself that his own sarcastic comment had carried any more weight than anything else that he had said so far. Lester imagined that James had seized on the need to get out of the undone as a distraction from the ever-present fact that what he didn't know (or at least couldn't remember) could get him in very deep trouble indeed.

Lester watched James look up and about, pondering the current predicament. Lester flattered himself to believe he could still detect traces of the mouse that had been about the lanky, long-faced individual he had become.

"Reference points!" James said suddenly.

"What?" Lester and Rebecca said, almost simultaneously.

"Imagine somewhere," James said to Lester, "anywhere, imagine it."

"Okay," Lester said, thinking of the Patchwork Market.

"What colour cravate is the tall gentleman with the green eyes standing behind your left shoulder wearing?"

"I hadn't been thinking about a tall gentleman with green eyes," Lester said.

"That's the problem," James said. "Although we could all imagine the same location we would all imagine it differently. Only if there is a singular image in our minds will the undone respond properly. I imagine that we both thought of the map the same because we both understand my sense of humour. Becky came straight from my subconscious without interference from you. I think that's because someone dispersed her into the undone and I forgot her: so you didn't even know she existed. I could re-imagine her because she was here to be re-imagined."

"Okay so, what do we do?" Rebecca asked.

"To make an exit," James said, "we all need to think of something that we can agree on, something that's pretty much the same for all of us whenever we interact with it."

"Like the moon?" Lester asked.

"That'll do," James said. "Everyone, concentrate on the moon, then look for it."

Lester concentrated and looked up and around to where he expected to see the moon. Amazingly it was exactly where he thought it would be. The undone made it look a little indistinct but it was definitely the moon.

"Over there," he said, pointing.

Following the moon Lester, James and Rebecca emerged from the cloudy expanse of the undone onto a road cloaked in night leading towards the cheery lights of a small town in the distance. What they did when they got there is a tale for another day.

The House on the Edge of the Undone

Lester did not remember what turn of events had drawn him to the point where he was running down a hill with a mouse in his pocket and an unconscious gnome slung over his shoulder. He had come a long way since entering the Patchwork Market looking for information about his brother. Had any of his journey been in a direction that could be described as 'correct'?

The mysterious man in the top hat appeared to have confidence that every crazy step that Lester took was a step closer to Chester. This was borne out by the discovery of a letter and a small bottle of potion in the House of Mirth, both apparently left behind by Lester's missing twin. Now there was this diversion with the unconscious gnome, the little girl and the mermaid with legs.

Life hadn't been boring for quite some time. Lester missed boring, a lot.

Behind the fleeing party there was the sound of cracking stone, followed by an unearthly howl that seemed to rattle the very living rock of the mountains around them. Receiving an additional boost of adrenaline, Lester pumped his legs harder trying to sprint even faster to catch up with Eos carrying Rachel in front of him.

"Careful!" James cried out from Lester's pocket. "I'm trying to keep this potion bottle in one piece for you. You need to be less hasty and more steady!"

"You want the monster to catch us?" Lester replied. "I'm trying to keep us alive."

"We haven't even seen this monster," James said. "It could be a rabbit with a sore throat and overdeveloped vocal cords."

"And the noise of cracking rock?" Lester asked.

"Just keep running, gently," James said.

So Lester kept running. He could hear the thudding sound of enormous footsteps start up the track behind him. Rachel, clinging on round Eos's neck as the mermaid sprinted down the path ahead, took a moment to look up at what was following them. From his position Lester could see her face drain of colour as her gaze took in the full horror of what was bearing down on them.

"Note to self," Lester muttered, "don't look back."

"Life was so much simpler when I had my pumpkin," James wailed. "Then I only had a giant bat to deal with, not memories, or mysterious monsters, or random quests to find lost brothers of people I don't even know."

"This way!" Eos called from the path up ahead. She suddenly broke to the left and started down a thinner trail in between two shelves of rock. Lester followed and saw what Eos was running towards, the narrow mouth of a split in the mountain side a short distance ahead.

"We can't go there!" he shouted. "We'll get trapped."

"We can't stay on the mountainside," Eos threw back. "We'll get eaten."

Without pausing to discuss the matter further Eos put Rachel down on the floor and urged her to clamber in between the two jagged walls of rock into the darkness beyond. After Rachel had slipped through Eos followed. Lester unshouldered the, still unconscious, gnome and passed him through to Eos. Finally Lester himself turned sideways to slip between the two edges of the split.

He had to concede that beyond this threshold they would be safe from any monster larger than Lester himself. As he tried to push his chest into the tiny sliver of empty space his ribs jammed, even when Lester inhaled he found he could not move any further.

"I'm stuck!" he cried out. The thudding of their pursuer's footsteps was getting louder and louder down the mountain path. Lester was having to try very hard not to turn his head to assess how bad a situation he was in. All he knew was that this was one piece of information he could definitely do with out.

"Push harder," Eos told him. Lester couldn't help but note a frosty edge to her tone, she was probably still sore about the whole keeping her enslaved in the tank thing. He was really going to have to find a way to apologise for that.

Lester kept pushing and straining but his shoulders were just a little too wide to step through the rock, he couldn't fit. The footsteps of the monster pursuing them closed the distance even further. As the last few feet of space between Lester and the pursuer disappeared, not even really thinking any more, Lester turned to look up into two bright crimson eyes with slitted pupils staring out of a dark leathery face. Long, taloned fingers reaching out to grab at him.

And then the mountain rock, and everything else, melted.

For just a fraction of a second it was as if Lester was caught up in giant cloud, in an endless sky, then everything came back to normal except that Lester had popped through the slim crag and fell in a heap on the other side of the cave entrance.

The monster that Lester and James had inadvertently freed from its imprisonment some way below the structure where they had arrived in this shadow realm waved its forearm through the gap. Really not much more of itself would fit through, however. The small party retreated back into the cave passage away from the frustrated snarling of the thwarted monster.

The light from the crack filtered down into the upper reaches of the cave but it didn't last for long. The cave did broaden but they had no light to find their way around in the dark.

"We'll just have to feel our way along one wall," Eos said.

"Um, I think I may have a better suggestion," said James from Lester's pocket.

Lester reached into his pocket and withdrew the vial of potion from the House of Mirth. It glowed with an intense white-yellow light.

"Well," he said. "That's unexpected."

"But useful," Eos said. "Come on, let's see if we can find a path through this place."

Eos lead the way down through the caves, after a while they could hear the sound of running water and the walls began to run with moisture.

"I can feel the flow of water, just by touching it," Eos explained, "come on, I think I can find us a way out of here."

So they continued to pick their way through narrow dark passages, the atmosphere was both oppressive and claustrophobic. Along the way Rachel became quite upset.

"I should never have made that wish back in the Skull Garden," she complained. "Then we wouldn't be lost wandering around in caves under a mountain."

"Hey, no," James replied. "Don't be upset. If you hadn't got us out of the garden I would never have remembered anything about who I used to be, and you wouldn't know anything about the world beyond the great Skull Rock."

Lester waited for James to say something about the family connection but it appeared as if James had nothing further to say on the matter. After setting a monster loose last time they had argued on the point Lester decided to let the matter slide this time.

The trek through the dark, wet caves was laborious and tiring but it was, at least, uneventful. A few hours later on they emerged from the caves by a small brook. The daylight was fading, the magnificent panorama of the eyrie was replaced with the murky expanse of a marshy forest made up of slim, twisted trees placed sparsely throughout a green-yellow floor saturated with water. Visible in the distance, no more than quarter of a mile away, were stone walls surrounding a tall house.

"I suppose we'd better see if anyone is at home," Lester said and the party began to make their way towards the structure.

The walk through the caves had been arduous and all of those party members who were on foot were hungry and tired. The dark shape of the lonely forest house was not particularly reassuring. The view into the distance was obscured by a light mist that grew thicker as they walked. By the time they reached the gate before the path leading up to the house the light was very poor indeed.

"I hope that whoever lives here is in an understanding mood," Eos said.

"It doesn't look, to me, as if anyone does live here, not any more," Lester said as he opened the gate, it stuck, squealing and complaining as he pushed it on its hinges, the noise supported his argument.

"Look," Rachel said, pointing over to the right side of the house. "Is that a ghost?"

They all looked at where Rachel was pointing. There was something, a slow moving blob of white light drifting across the grounds floating about a foot over the sodden turf.

"I don't know what that is," Lester said. "James? Any memories regarding odd, floating balls in swamps?"

"Ignis Fatuus?" James said. "From the Latin 'foolish lights' also known as Jack o' Lanterns or Will o' the wisps. Although usually they look more like lantern flames, and they tend to appear as if they're a lot further away."

"I met a Jack o'Lantern once," Lester said. "I was walking through a forest and I bumped into one coming in the opposite direction. I shared some soup with him. Turns out that they use their lanterns to light sparks in the eyes of baby animals, that's why they travel so far off the path, and why they appear to move so erratically. That's not a Jack o' Lantern."

"So what lit the spark in my eyes?" Rachel asked. "Was it one of those things?"

"Folk have their own fire," Lester said. "At least that's what the Jack o' Lantern said when I asked him. He seemed to think that this was a political compromise of some sort. He didn't go into it."

"But that isn't one?" Eos asked.

"Not like the one I saw," Lester said. "The light of a Jack o' Lantern is like a lantern flame because, well, it is."

"It's getting dark," James said. "We'd better check to see if anyone is home."

Lester knocked on the door of the house, and pulled at a bell cord hanging to the right of the door. Nothing appeared to happen. Lester tried the handle on the door. The door was unlocked and it swung slowly and silently inwards revealing the house beyond.

"I don't like this," Lester said. "Remember the last time we found ourselves in an apparently abandoned house? I spent a long time believing I was a duke at a masked ball. Don't want to go through that again."

"There are worse things," Eos said, making her way past him and into the house. "At least there was a buffet there."

"She has a point," James said. "Free food is always a bonus."

"Well, alright then," Lester said, following Eos into the house. "As long as we're throwing caution to the winds."

Inside the house was dark and smelled faintly of damp, not damp enough for it to appear unsafe for an overnight stay but definitely enough to put concern into the mind of an owner about the possibility of their residence eventually falling over into a swamp.

The floor was mostly bare boards covered over by the occasional rug. It was evident that no one had set foot inside the house for quite some time. Downstairs there was a large drawing room, a dining room and an expansive kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a bathroom.

Lester lost no time putting the gnome down gently on a bed in one of the bedrooms, a twin room that he imagined he would share with James over night. The beds all had bare mattresses, no blankets or pillows but they seemed sturdy enough and were better than the floor.

The gnome allowed to rest Lester returned to the kitchen where he quickly found a glass flask in which to decant his mysterious potion.

"Well, that's one thing taken care of, anyway," Lester pronounced happily.

"Why are so many dwelling places we visit apparently abandoned?" James asked. "I'm detecting a theme."

Before Lester could think of a plausible answer to the question the glowing blob from the garden came drifting through the wall, slowly moving through the kitchen apparently unaware of its surroundings. When the blob was a couple of feet past the wall and floating over the kitchen counter about seven inches from the surface a second blob joined it from a slightly different angle and began a lazy journey from one corner of the kitchen to the other.

"What do you think those things are?" Lester asked. "I've never seen or heard of anything like it in my life."

"I don't know," James said. "And I think that troubles me. Part of me seems to think that I had read about almost every known thing in the Faerie realm. It's not just that I don't remember this, it's that I've never heard of it."

"Should we be worried?" asked Eos, standing at the door.

"I'm not sure," James replied. "Where's Rachel?"

"I put her to bed," Eos said. "She was very tired. I found a small quilt slung over a chair in the drawing room. She'll be nice and warm."

"Good," James said. "I think we should all sleep, not for too long, then we should try to find our way back onto a more civilized path. The sooner we can get back to Bridgetown the better."

"Why are we going to Bridgetown?" Lester asked. "We spent enough time leaving it."

"Bridgetown is a market where you can buy anything, Lester," James said. "If we want answers to our questions then, well, maybe they won't be there in the market, but something that will help us to buy an answer most certainly will be."

"Seems logical," Lester said. "Well, then, I suppose we had better all get some sleep."

Lester, James and Eos climbed the stairs. Eos went into the bedroom where Rachel was, she said goodnight to Lester, although Lester got the impression that she mostly did it because she wanted to say goodnight to James and couldn't ignore the owner of the pocket James travelled in. Still, things had seemed to thaw out a little between them. Maybe there was a hope for friendship yet.

With that small candle of hope burning in his chest Lester lay down on the second bed in his own room and closed his eyes. He wasn't even aware that he had fallen asleep when he felt himself jerked awake again. Eos was shaking at his shoulder.

"Lester!" she said. "Wake up! Lester! Something is very wrong here."

Not entirely awake Lester tried to remember where he was and what he was doing.

"Eos," he said. "You have legs, no tail, neat trick."

"It's not a trick, it's an enchantment, I have a ring," Eos said. "Look, listen, that's not important, what's important is that I found a small chest, a jewellery box, in my room. I was just looking through it, there were some pretty things inside.

"Oh," Lester said. "That's nice. Anything saleable?"

"No, Lester," Eos was irritable, this was not unusual. "We can't sell any of it. Even if it was worth anything, it disappeared, while I was looking at it, it turned to mist, sparkly mist and just... it was like it was evaporating."

"Oh dear," Lester said, still not quite with it. "That's not good, unless it was a dream, could you have been dreaming?"

"I don't think I was, I mean, I don't remember closing my eyes," Eos said. It was clear that Lester's question had forced her to re-examine her own thoughts.

"The Undone!" cried the gnome, sitting bolt upright in his bed. "We're close to the Undone! We have to leave! I have to leave!"

Lester and Eos looked over at the suddenly mobile gnome.

"What's the Undone?" Lester asked. He had hoped for the longest time that at some point he would feel comfortable that he could handle the pace at which things progressed, he still hadn't got there even though it often appeared as if the moment that he should know everything he needed to know was just a little further away.

"No time!" the gnome shouted. "We have to run, right now!"

"What's all the noise?" mumbled a bleary eyed Rachel, coming through the door into the room.

"We have to go!" the gnome said, scrambling off the bed and grasping Rachel's hand. "We have to go before the Undone gets us."

Not waiting for his ranting to sink in he pulled Rachel after him, racing out of the room and down the house's main stairs.

"Hold on!" Lester said, swinging his own legs out of bed to give chase. "I think we need a little more to go on."

The gnome wasn't listening he was down the stairs and over to the front door of the little house. He flung the door open and plunged out into the grey mist that surrounded the house.

"Oh this is bad," he was muttering as he pulled Rachel after him down the garden path, "this is very, very bad."

Lester and Eos came running after the gnome in the garden they nearly caught him but as Lester's hand brushed the fabric of the little sprite's tunic he registered what was now surrounding him. Night had never fallen in the garden of the little house. Instead it was enveloped in a permanent misty twilight through which drifted the lazily undulating forms of the luminescent blobs, not just a couple now, more like thirty or forty.

"What's happening?" Eos asked, her voice as awed as Lester felt.

"This is it," the gnome said. "The precursor to the Undone. We have to leave before we fall into it. If we fall into the Undone we'll never come out again."

The gnome resumed his journey back to the garden gate. Lester could see trees in the distance, where the forest resumed. The house now appeared to be part of a different world, a world of mist and glowing blobs, trapped in permanent twilight.

"Come on," Lester said to Eos, "we can't afford to wait around."

The mermaid didn't argue, the four of them half-walked, half-ran from the misty area towards the more solid shape of the twisted, shadowy tree trunks.

"It looks like we've had a narrow escape," Lester said. "What do you think James?"

Lester looked down to his right pocket but it was empty.

"James?" Lester said. "Oh."

He stopped dead. Eos took a couple more steps after the gnome before stopping and turning.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I think James crawled out of my pocket to get some sleep," Lester said. "He's not here. He must still be in the house."

Lester turned back to look at the house, it didn't really look like a real house any more, it looked like a sketch done in light pencil, an impression rather than an actual thing.

"I have to get him," Lester said. "You go on, I'll get him and catch you up."

Eos opened her mouth as if to object but Lester wasn't going to give her a chance. He ran back towards the house and in through the front door, not stopping till he was back at the bedroom.

He found James in the furthest corner of a shelf in the bedside table. Lester reached in and picked the sleeping mouse up.

"Huh," James said, waking up, "whassamatter."

"The gnome woke up," Lester said, carrying James carefully as he jogged down the stairs. "We have to move, we're in trouble."

"Oh, no," James complained. "What kind of trouble?"

"Well..." Lester said but the sentence got no further. Lester stopped at the threshold of the house, foot waving above an empty bright white space where the ground had been only a minute before. "Ah," Lester said, looking up and about him.

Beyond the edge of the house was nothing but white in all directions. The house itself appeared to be melting away at the corners. Lester began to understand what it was the gnome had been worried about, but was the realisation too late?

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.