The pixie met us in the room with the strange black emerald altar. He was shivering, but even so, the ice shouldn’t have melted that fast. Therefore... we’d gone forward in time, not been frozen. But my goddess had noted the passing for me. It was now as late as what we’d seen outside Myrra’s window. Perhaps later, near midnight.

  The pixie smiled up at us, his voice was high and piping, though melodic all the same, nearly as much as my own, “Thank you kind sirs, thank you! You have freed me from the warlock’s trap and ended their terrible ritual. Water in the Painted Lands was being poisoned, you know! Poisoned with my essence. I’ve cleared it now. The moment the rift is mended, their spell will break. I wish no harm on anyone, as I am a pixie sir, and not a mortal.”

  “And are you alright?” I asked the small man, his shivering was slowing but his lips were still blue.

  “I am a pixie,” he said again, as though that were confirmation. Perhaps it was. They were immortal after all. Untouched by life or death, yet kind despite that. If I dropped dead at his feet he wouldn’t care, nor even think of me tomorrow, but while I lived—

  “I must thank you both properly!” the pixie cried before I could finish my thought, “Let me grant you something. Health? I know the cure to all ills! Wealth? I know where all treasure is buried? Love? I know the secret to each woman’s heart! What is it you most desire? I will grant three blessings upon you. Divide them among you however you wish.”

  “Attar’s voice,” I said without hesitation. Every sound he made bore the risk of drawing the denizens of the dungeon down upon us. Every warning he tried to utter, every trap he discovered, none could be communicated. I could travel alone, and regain my safety, but I preferred to travel with him and his ghosts.

  “Everything leaves its scars,” the pixie warned, “but I shall see what I can do! What is the problem?”

  He slid across the floor and skipped across the air to land on Attar’s head, then he bent into a deep bow, as if trying to touch his toes, and stared directly into Attar’s face, upside down.

  “Open your mouth please, dear Attar.”

  Attar look startled, but nevertheless opened his mouth.

  The little pixie tutted and hummed, “Yes, yes, that would do it, that would do it. Hmmm. Yes! I have it.”

  The pixie jumped into the air and stayed there. Hovering as though riding an invisible horse.

  “This soul here, is it yours? It is connected to you, but it doesn’t share your curse.”

  Attar’s eyes widened. I could only presume he could also see the soul. He shook his head and pointed at me.

  The pixie squinted at me and frowned.

  “This is your soul? But you already have one—two—three? How many souls do you need? How many of those are actually yours? You’ve got more layers than an onion, sir. Please, do explain.”

  “I know little of souls and there workings, my good fellow,” (pixies were kind, but it still paid to be polite), “but I’ve been touched by two gods, this sorceress’s house behind us, the Mushroom King, a dryad’s memory, the stone of a druid, and more. I have also travelled back through time and to the afterlife. I have no clue what all I contain.”

  The pixie laughed in delight and clapped his hands, “Well now, this is even better than being rescued! I’ll grant you three more favours if you tell me your tale.”

  I smiled at him and bowed, “Gladly. The soul on Attar is one which was taken from my own flesh to form his own when I went back in time. Of course, he was cursed into female form then, and the body was then sent back in time by the goddess who now touches my own—”

  The pixie held up his hand, “Not a moment more. Not a cent. I must hear it all in order without the ending spoiling before the beginning is through. Keep it fresh!”

  He tapped his chin thoughtfully, “Yes I can fix this. You have too options, my dear voiceless friend. Option one (just raise a finger so I know which you choose) is that I borrow the voice from this soul here. It isn’t using it anyway. Then you may Oswic’s voice, though not I suspect, the voice he has now, or even had previously.”

  Attar frowned, conflicted.

  “Option two!” The pixie was undeterred, “Your shadow (you can see your shadow yes? No? It is right there! Hmmm, you see souls in the present, not in the past? Ah, there is our problem, I’ll have to teach you trick of it. Not the future though, the gods don’t take kindly to that. The future is our secret.) Your shadow has a voice as well. Your voice as... Attart, was it? Yes, you may reclaim what was once yours, for it was always yours, even if it was won’t be yours rather than was will be. So, Oswic or Attart, or scrap my favour all together!”

  Attar started to raise a finger, than stopped, then crossed his hands and shook his head.

  The pixie nodded sympathetically, “I understand. Oswic’s voice is his own, and you’d rather not speak at all than be cursed again (though you could simply regain your voice and still not speak if you choose either option), but I shall leave well enough alone if that is what you wish. Call on me whenever you wish for your other favours and I shall hear and obey!”

  With that the pixie turned to go, hopping off my soul to glide back down the ground like skipping down a stair. I stopped him with a word, “Wait! I happily give up my voice if it means Attar can speak. His companionship is invaluable and his voice as it is is a danger to us all.”

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  The pixie turned and cocked his head at me, Attar raised an eyebrow, though relief was written on his features.

  “Are you sure?” asked the pixie, “What is given freely can not be freely reclaimed, though it may be discarded without care, for such is the nature of gifts.”

  “I am entirely sure.”

  And I was. Our path was yet long, and other ways to regain my voice might present themselves, and if they didn’t, the pixie’s fix would be the least of my obstacles. Gods and goddesses and dark magic would have to be dealt with first.

  The pixie turned his regard to Attar, “Well sir?”

  Attar nodded and held up a single finger: Option one.

  “Wonderful!”

  The pixie hopped back into the air and danced around on (presumably) that strange piece of my soul which cloaked Attar. His hands caught something, drew it forth like water from a well, then he skipped forward and slapped his hand against Attar’s throat.

  The same droning endless wail we’d heard before began to fill the room, but this time, Attar’s mouth was closed.

  “Aha! There you are!” cried the pixie. Suddenly, a bottle was in his hand, though the pixie was still naked, and he lashed out with the bottle. The wail took on an echo, muffled by the glass. The pixie slammed down the cork in his bottle and the wail was cut off, silencing it for the last time.

  My eyes were to the exit the moment the wail was secured. No creatures dared investigate the sound. We’d gotten lucky.

  “Can I...” Attar’s hands jumped to his throat in surprise. It was my voice, though a voice of mine he’d never heard emanating from between his lips. Even Attart had never heard my original voice save for the first moments when we’d gone back in time. Besides her it had only been the guards and warlock I’d slain. The altar had corrupted me early on, and the druid’s stone had made me sound like a faerie lord rather than myself.

  “I can speak, but,” he cleared his throat, “It sounds wrong. It is like I’ve got a cold,” he cleared his throat again, “I keep expecting my own voice. This will take time to get used to.”

  The pixie clapped his hands, “Dear Attar take your time. You can speak now, or not speak, you have now a choice where before you had none! I am happy for your and your freedom. Let us celebrate freedom together!”

  So saying, the little man leapt into the air, landed on his hands on the cold stone floor, then tumbled forward in a handspring and landed on top of the strange pair of hemispheres at the centre of the room. The black emerald cap hemisphere swayed on its steel rod, but did not fall closed.

  Everything that could be clenched I had clenched and they didn’t relax as I saw the pixie wobbling around, “Please, come down from there. Even Myrra was concerned about that structure.”

  The pixie’s eyes widened comically and he clasped his hands to his face, “Of course! Terribly sorry. I forgot myself.”

  He stepped lightly off the plinth, sunk through the air like a stone in water, struck the floor like an arrow, and bounced off, bouncing along the ground towards us.

  “What else? What else! Or shall I come back later?”

  I dug my ring free from my pack and handed it to him, “Can you fix this?”

  “Fix or fit? One is the same as the other, but who shall wear it?” the pixie rolled the ring about in his palms, and pressed the twisted hole up to his eye to look through.

  “Myself.”

  The pixie skipped forward and grabbed left hand, ran his fingers along my own, and carefully studied my palm, “Yes, yes this can be done. A day and a night. I must return to my workshop.”

  “Thank you little one.” As far as I knew, pixies had names, but I knew as well as anyone it was considered very rude to use one on them.

  He smiled at me, almost shy, “It is I who is thanking you, kind Magus, and I shall thank you again as I can!,” then the little man skipped back and vanished behind the pillar. By the time I reached the pillar, he was gone.

  “Strange creature,” Attar said.

  “You don’t have them on the Bronze Coast?”

  “We have a Thousand Sealed Gods and their servants, but nothing so free. Perhaps the Horse Rider.”

  “Pixies are immortal. They know know blessing or ban. Nothing brings them fear, everything to them is wonderful. But they also don’t view time the same as us. He would not shed a tear if we died tomorrow, for we will be dead a thousand years from now, and to the pixie there is little difference. ‘If purple hose-in-hose withered last night; Tomorrow will have its rose’.”

  “Innocent creatures, then.”

  “As innocent as can be. Though good all the same. And kind.”

  I led the way back through the teleportal as we talked. The room with the female Bleaktuar’s corpse was safer than the pedestal room, both because it only contained two entrances, and because it lacked the pedestal itself.

  I now contained something of Myrra’s soul, after all. And if she feared the pedestal, I would draw on her experience, even though she was a practitioner of dark magic. What it meant to draw on her experience, I still wasn’t sure. My mind felt clear, nor did my actions seem incongruous with my previous, so my personality had not been warped either.

  Still, to be safe, “Attar, let me know if I deviate wildly from myself. I do not know what effect those quilts had on my soul but I fear it.”

  Attar studied me closely, “I will, though I see nothing as of yet, manifest or metaphysical. The goddess may have protected you entirely.”

  The thought was gratifying, but also sobering. I’d agreed to the deal long before I’d met the goddess, and her influence on me had been mere chance. If Attart had never stepped on that hourglass she would still be here... and I, I a slave of Myrra and her house, or a copy of Myrra, spreading like a fungus through the forest.

  It was too late for such dark thoughts. I needed sleep, “Do you wish to rest here with the poor taur, or in the filth and safety of the ogres’ den?”

  “The den is too far. Let us rest here, that I may give her her last rites and we may not stumble into a trap in our tiredness.”

  And so it was. I set up the bone barrier barricade while Attar spoke the words and the rang the bell in the manner his psychopomp duties demanded. A quick path to Elysium, for those who did not know the way, and a mending of her sundered soul. All wounds would be healed in time, yet doctors and priests still had their place.

  Even without fear, life had meaning.