Scheherazade, Part 1 (Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Final Fantasy XII)

[moemachina]

    Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Final Fantasy XII: In which we share stories with monsters.
    Written for IcyBrian All That Glitters Is Cold 4; subsequently posted to ffxii_fic.



SCHEHERAZADE (Part 1)

There are monsters in the dark. She can hear them as they creep beyond the light of the solitary candle. Their toenails clack against the rough stone floors; their scales slide against the damp walls.

No, Merlose has no doubt that there are monsters in the dark.

She shifts, and even that slight movement brings pain to wrists rubbed raw against coarse bonds. She sighs, and even that faint exhalation triggers some excitement among her unseen watchers, for she can hear them rustle against one another with renewed energy. She waits, and the waiting stretches on.

Merlose is not sure which she prefers: long waits in Lea Monde's uncertain oubliettes or brief encounters with her captors. Shall she choose the monsters in the dark or the ones who speak with the sweet tongues of men? It is not an easy decision, and Merlose has the leisure to consider its every facet.

Time passes. Merlose concentrates on the steadily melting candle and the endless whispers in the dark. The boy wakes up.

Merlose watches him as his eyelids flutter and his unfocused pupils seek first the candle and then her. Sleep has ruffled his hair and flushed his cheeks. Merlose knows him as Joshua. She has never heard him speak.

"Hello," she says anyway, because she must speak to someone or go mad. She is beginning to long for the return of her captors.

The boy sits up from the dusty sacking that had served as his bed. He is not bound. They have no need to bind him.

Merlose licks her lips and wonders if she could convince him to untie her. It is chancy at best: he is likely deaf, or an imbecile, or worse. And he has displayed a marked preference for the man who tied her up.

"Did you sleep well?" Merlose asks instead. The boy regards her unblinkingly.

"Are you hungry?" In response, he scratches his nose.

"Well," Merlose says, abandoning all half-formed plans of escape. After all, even if her bonds were loosed, she would be no closer to freedom. She is still stuck in the bowels of Lea Monde and hedged by unseen horrors on every side.

"Well," she says again, and she hears the word fall like a stone dropped into a deep well. The invisible monsters fractionally draw back. The boy scoots infinitesimally closer to her.

She would say anything to stave off that watchful silence, and so Merlose says, "Would you like a story?"

The boy inches nearer.

"What shall it be? Cinder Prince? The Mirror Queen?" Merlose licks her lips again.

The boy says nothing.

She is uncertain what stories would appeal to a young boy. She does not have much experience with children, and her own recollections of childhood are hazy. As a little girl, she had ignored princesses in preference for gruesome tales of walking corpses and murderous queens. As a student in the Academy, she had pored over antique bestiaries that bored her classmates senseless. She does not know stories; she knows fragments about regicide and trivia about wolves.

Still, it feels good to speak again after so many hours of silence in the dark. She does not want to think about her peril any longer. She wants to think about a story.

And so Merlose tells him a story jumbled together out of half-remembered folktales and fantastic beasts. It is spiced with abductions, darkness, and despair.

She can feel the unseen monsters leaning forward to hear her stumbling narrative. Joshua moves within a handbreadth of her.

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess..."

*****

She passed the day like a clockwork automation, blind and obedient. She could feel the blood ticking through her veins.

At dawn, her giggling ladies began the long process of dressing her. By the time their work was done, the sun was well-risen in the sky and she was weighted with yards of costly silk and chains of pearls. They brought her sliced oranges and peeled grapes, but she was unable to eat. From outside her solar window, she could hear the noise of an enormous crowd rise and fall like the breaking waves of some distant, senseless sea. Then her ladies ushered her from her rooms, which she knew she would not see again, and guided her down halls and stairs. At some dimly perceived point, a door opened to sunlight and a waiting coach. Her ladies bundled her inside, and another interval passed. The coach stopped, and she was pulled out for the waiting crowds, the waiting cathedral, the waiting doors, the waiting nobility craning their necks to see her--and beyond them all, the waiting man, too shadowed in the depths of the nave to make out.

Ovelia knew him anyway.

The priest spoke, and Ovelia heard herself respond serenely as she concentrated on the golden braids of his office, because to look elsewhere would destroy her final shreds of composure.

When the priest placed the heavy crown on her head, Ovelia felt a spike of panic that it would tumble off. Nothing so catastrophic happened. Instead, the priest turned his attention to her companion, who spoke at regular intervals when the priest paused. Ovelia heard nothing. There was a ceaseless buzzing in her ears.

Then she was standing up, and he was standing up, and the priest was pressing their hands together. Ovelia stared dazedly at the man. At some point in the ceremony, he had gained a crown himself. Then they were walking down the aisle and through the cathedral doors, and Ovelia saw mobs of people cheering.

Further things happened, but Ovelia was never able to remember them clearly. At some point, they were sitting before a great feast, where Ovelia stared dumbly at her suckling pig and candied apples and ate nothing. There was great movement around her as people toasted jugglers and dogs fought for scraps among the floor rushes. It was as if she and the man beside her sat at the center of a vortex.

A song, and then another one, and then a group of foreign tumblers, and then Ovelia was being ushered up some stairs by her ladies, who brought her into a room with an enormous canopied bed. They began the laborious process of undressing her. The silken yards, the nacreous chains: all were stripped from her.

At last, her ladies wrapped her in a patterned dressing gown and left her alone. Ovelia lay on the bed and stared at the underside of the embroidered canopy, which depicted a deer being hunted by a knight. The doe was stitched in golden thread. The knight was black. The buzzing had disappeared from her ears, and she could hear the silence, as heavy as a blanket, over the smothered whispers of the fete downstairs.

The silence lay heavy against her chest and limbs. She blinked helplessly. The knight was thundering close behind his glittering prey.

At last, she heard the distant creak of the door. She did not look away from her study of the canopy, but she heard the rustle of clothing, the thump of dropped shoes, the breath of her husband. And then: silence. He was watching her, she knew, and she closed her eyes.

The bed shifted and dipped as someone climbed into the other side. More silence. Ovelia opened her eyes. With great effort, she turned her head.

Delita sat cross-legged on the other side of the bed, regarding one of the bed's posts. He was still wearing a loose linen shirt and hose. Ovelia watched him silently. He did not look at her.

"Did I ever tell you," he said at last, his voice low, "the story about the wedding of Queen Ashelia and her consort? My mother used to tell it to me, when I was young." He ran a hand through his dark hair. "I kept thinking about it today. It had a genie in it."

Ovelia was silent for a long time and then, reluctantly, she whispered, "No."

"What?" he asked, cocking his head towards her.

"No," Ovelia said helplessly. "You never told me that story. What happened at the wedding of High Queen Ashelia?"

"Well," he said, "once upon a time, before the High Queen had ascended her throne, she was promised in marriage to the prince of a neighboring land. Guests came from far and wide, and the celebrations went on for weeks. And on the evening before the wedding, a strange old beggar-woman came to the gates of the High Queen's city and said that she had a gift for the High Queen..."

*****

Ashe spent the night before her wedding listening to horror stories.

First, Lord Perlot, her great-uncle, spent an hour at dinner explaining the grisly details of the latest political intrigue in Archadia. The whole table had listened with relish, but Ashe had stopped paying attention at "disemboweled" and instead watched as Perlot stabbed his knife in the air for emphasis and incidentally scattered drops of gravy on everyone sitting near him.

Then, after dinner, she had been button-holed by Duchess Tully, who had risen from her bedside despite the express orders of her midwife. After all, darling, nobody could expect her to miss the wedding of little Ashelia, although it had been such a difficult time, not that she could expect little Ashelia to know anything about it yet, but yes, she had bled for days, and the midwife had despaired, as she had always been delicate, not that little Ashelia had anything to worry about, as the Duchess Tully was sure that she was sturdy as a bear, not like her dainty self, but, oh, her son was already a trial, and they had gone through three wet-nurses finding one, and--

Lastly, after finally making her escape from bloody births and comparisons to bears, Ashelia was pulled aside by the terrible Lady Aeilinn, her second cousin once removed, who wanted to hint dark and salacious things about the coming marriage bed. Ashe pried her off with difficulty; Aeilinn was as tenacious and abrasive as a barnacle.

But after Aeilinn finally scuttled off to engage the Lady Uterl, who had crushingly snubbed Aeilinn earlier, Ashe slowly exhaled and leaned against the wall. In the corner of her eye, she could see her shadow pressed against the wall to her left.

She should have felt suffused with satisfaction. Here she was, surrounded by her kin-folk, barraged with attention and gifts, on the eve of a prestigious alliance. Her father's feasting hall was filled with guests, replete with wine and gossip, sprawled on floor cushions. The air was perfumed with the smoke from their after-dinner bubble-pipes. Someone was plucking a tambur, slowly and sadly. What more could a princess want on the night before her wedding?

Through the gloom, Ashe could see the Lady Uterl waddling in her direction with an air of determination. With barely a conscious thought, Ashe found herself sliding across the wall until she came to an open door, through which she ducked. Her shadow slid a second behind her.

She walked briskly down the quiet hall, across a tiled receiving room, and out into one of the walled gardens within the palace of Rabanastre. Her shadow was a step behind her. The fountains were murmuring, the air was blessedly cool, and the stars were out.

Then:

"I suppose that was badly down. To run out on your own bridal dinner."

"No, milady," said Vossler. "You were over-warm. You needed a walk in the gardens to clear your head."

"I was afraid of Uterl," Ashe said grimly. "She always knows the worst stories."

"Certainly," Vossler said gently.

"And if one more lady takes me aside and offers to explain the facts of life, I think I will...I will..I will...!"

Vossler was tactfully silent.

"I will spit!" Ashe said finally. "Who do they think I am? I am hardly an innocent."

Vossler's silence took on a strained quality.

"As if I were a lamb going to the slaughter," Ashe continued heedlessly. "And they're all licking their lips and waiting for the carnage."

Vossler cleared his throat.

"I am going out," Ashe said abruptly.

"Milady?"

"Out into the city," Ashe said. "I want to walk its streets one last time as...as myself. As my father's daughter. Before I am Rasler's bride."

"Milady, the city is...unruly tonight. The people are celebrating your wedding, you know, and--"

"Even better that I should partake of their goodwill," Ashe said coldly. She added, impatiently, "I shan't go in full royal regalia, Vossler. I shall go...incognito. Lend me a cloak, and no one will recognize me."

Vossler sighed. "We shall walk as far as the cathedral."

"No, the bazaar," Ashe countered.

"The Centaur's Fountain," Vossler compromised with a note of steel in his voice.

"Fine," Ashe muttered.

They made it no farther than the palace gates.

Ashe and Vossler found the palace guards involved in a spirited discussion with a trio of murky shadows standing on the other side of the gates. The guards stopped shouting when they saw Vossler; they stopped laughing when they saw Ashe.

Vossler looked to the three standing outside the gates and grinned. "Well-met by moonlight, Basch."

"Vossler," the tallest shadow nodded. "Your Highness."

Ashe ignored him. "Why have you not opened the gates?" she growled at the nearest guard.

"But...milady...we were not sure...they would not identify themselves..."

"Basch!" Vossler cried. "Can it be? Do these tadpoles not know your heroic visage by heart?"

"No," the other man rumbled from the other side of the gate. "I have not yet had a chance to introduce myself."

"Open the gates," Ashe said quietly and distinctly as she pressed the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. Had she known it, this gesture was her single mannerism that Vossler found endearing. It was a reminder of her as an overlooked eight-year-old: her hair full of ribbons and her mood prone to long, rage-filled silences.

But Ashe did not know, and her unwavering gaze remained on the trio standing beyond the gates. The guards tripped over themselves to be the first to open the portal.

"We missed you at the banquet, Basch," Vossler said easily. "They served pickled eels, to which I know you are partial."

"Alas," Basch said. "It pains me to hear, but I was summoned to a pressing duty."

Ashe ignored him. She was watching the man standing beside him, who was looking back at her with a barely suppressed grin.

"A pressing duty? More pressing than eels? Nonsense."

Basch gestured to his companions. "I have been showing Rabanastre to Prince Rasler, and we found a fortune teller who insisted on offering a wedding gift to Your Highnesses."

"A wedding gift?" Vossler asked. "What kind of wedding gift?"

"She would not say," Basch said. "She insisted on presenting it in person."

The gates were open now, and the guards hurriedly lit more lamps. Under their yellow light, Ashe could see her betrothed standing beside a small, hunchbacked figure, wrapped so heavily in striped cloth so as to be unrecognizable. Both gender and species were indeterminable, but there was no reason to doubt she was a woman. Of course, there was no reason to doubt she was a set of acrobatic moogles. All things were possible beneath her bindings.

"The fortune teller, I presume," Vossler said with a faint note of exasperation.

"You have a wedding gift for me?" Ashe asked, and her voice rang like a hammer hitting an anvil. Vossler and Rasler both took an instinctive step back. The fortune teller, unfamiliar with the princess' tone and what it betokened, simply cocked her masked head in Ashe's direction.

"Yes..." the lumpy figure said at last. "Yes, I have a gift for Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca." One bundled hand reached within the creature's robes and fumbled invisibly for a moment. Vossler coughed, and the dimples in Rasler's cheeks grew slightly more pronounced, although his mouth was still set in a strenuously sober line.

The fortune teller pulled forth something small: a glass orb. It took Ashe a moment to realize that it was shifting colors under the flickering light of the lamps.

"It can prophesy, but only for a price," said the robed fortune teller. Her voice was low and hoarse.

"Ah," Vossler said. "Naturally. And what should this price happen to be? Pearls? Souls?" He scuffed his feet impatiently against the ground, and Ashe recognized the familiar note in his voice that signaled a shift from amusement to irritation.

"Neither," the fortune teller said. "It eats stories."

"Eats?" Vossler asked at the same time Rasler said, "What kind of stories?"

Ashe leaned closer, and the clouds within the orb began to thicken to dark blue.

"Any stories, but the newer and truer, the better. Of course, it all depends on you, my lords and lady. But it offers better results to those who tell it fresh tales in good faith."

"But then," Ashe persisted, "how does it prophesy the future?"

"By various and diverse signals," the fortune teller sniffed. "After years of study, I can interpret the creature that lives within the glass. But it must be placated first, and it dearly loves stories."

"I have heard of such things," Basch rumbled softly. "There are monsters who have delayed devouring wayfarers in exchange for a good yarn."

"Are we in any danger of being devoured?" Ashe asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course not, milady," the fortune teller burbled. "The thing is harmless at all costs, especially contained within the glass, but he...he sleeps. If you wish to rouse him to tell your story, you must feed him your own tales."

"A fair exchange," Vossler said dryly.

"And it would be most lucky," said the fortune teller, reaching out to Ashe's sleeve but not quite touching her, "for the bride. It is the custom among my people, and I felt, since I was here in Rabanastre..."

Ashe looked at the walking mound of scarves and wraps, and then she glanced at her companions. Vossler was sardonic; Basch was thoughtful; Rasler was regarding her with intensity.

"In my homeland, too," he said quietly. "We don't tell fortunes, but we...we tell stories during our celebrations. And I do not think I have heard many stories from Rabanastre yet."

Ashe felt a small rush of guilt and shame. She had forgotten him. He, too, was worried about tomorrow. He was looking for comfort. She was a heel.

She held out her hand, and when he took it, she could feel the calluses across his warm palm.

"Certainly, my lord," she said. "We shall proceed to my grandfather's chapel in the rose maze. I think we may not be disturbed there. Sirs?" she asked the two knights.

"We come, Your Highnesses," Basch said. "I, too, would dearly love to hear your fortunes read."

Vossler snorted. "Very well."

The fortune teller bobbed in frantic excitement. "Yes, yes."

And so, hand in hand, Ashe and her betrothed led their small company past moonlit pools and silent marble statues. In the distance, the banquet was a murmur like the sea, but the gardens were quiet and heavy with the scent of flowers.

Rasler bent his head close to Ashe's ear as they walked. "What will you bet, milady, that our fortune teller will predict bountiful crops, decades of peace, and bonny grandchildren as our coming dues?"

"No bet," Ashe muttered. "I think it far more likely that our fortune teller is the vanguard for thieves seeking some weak spot in my father's treasure houses."

Rasler chuckled. "You don't believe her tale about a hungry stone?"

"Hardly," Ashe said. "But we will allow the fortune teller enough rope to hang herself. I do not think that Vossler will let the creature stray too far from the garden path."

Behind them, as if on cue, came Vossler's gruff bark and the fortune teller's murmured apologies: so sorry, so dark, so difficult to see the path, did not mean to step off the paving stones, so sorry.

Rasler squeezed Ashe's fingers. "I am sorry for bringing a viper into your father's house. Truly, I did not mean to. I thought we might convince her to disgorge her wedding gift without entering the grounds, but then you arrived."

"But, my love, I would not miss her predictions for the world," Ashe said dryly, and Rasler laughed.

The chapel was a small marble building that gleamed in the moonlight. Low pillars supported the roof, leaving the interior's low-slung table and scattered cushions open to the air. When Ashe and Rasler had been children, the chapel had been the perilous place where they rescued one another from imaginary dragons. Ashe had valiantly slain no fewer than three cushions in the pursuit of her abducted prince. But that had been long ago.

Vossler lit the lamps with one lazy snap of his fingers. Under their sudden light, Ashe settled at the head of the table and regarded the fortune teller over steepled fingers. The rest of the company ranged themselves around the table.

The fortune teller awkwardly sank to a cushion and placed the orb on the table. It was now deepening into a royal purple.

"Now," she said, "you must all tell it a story. It can be a true story, but it should sound interesting. It can be a false story, but it should sound authentic. It can be an old story, but the stone hungers most specifically for the new and fresh."

Ashe opened her mouth, and then closed it once more. Her mind was abruptly blank. What story did she know that was appropriate for the stone? What story did she know that was appropriate for these three men? Vossler was rubbing a finger along his close-cropped beard; Ashe knew he would judge any story as a personal portrayal of the teller's level of honor and morals. Vossler was very literal. Basch, on the other hand, would be shocked at nothing she could tell; he would solemnly accept any tale, no matter how impossible or freakish. Basch was watching the orb now with the quiet calm of a man who saw prophetic orbs every day of his life. And Rasler...well. Ashe knew the type of stories a woman was supposed to tell her beloved, accompanied with lowered eyes and a suggestive smile, but these were not things she could say in front of Vossler.

Vossler stirred. "I will go first, for, to tell the truth, I heard a most interesting tale this morning, when I was conversing with the Prince's old tutors."

Rasler smiled. "Oh? I always knew they were a fount of fabulous histories. Which story did they tell you?"

"A strange tale," Vossler said, his forehead creasing. "I've had it stuck in my head all day. I can't quite figure it out, but I suppose it suffices for this purpose."

"Once upon a time," he said, "in a land far away, there lived a king. Now this king was a great king, and he had ruled over a mighty empire, but he was also an old king. He had no children; his wife, the queen, had died young, and the king had never remarried."

Ashe watched the moths beat their ashy wings against the glass of the lamps.

"So it came time for this king to choose an heir among his lords, but he hesitated, for he presided over a vicious court and he feared surrendering any of his power. And so, instead, when the frost sat heavy on his hair and his brow was lined with years, this king announced that he would wed the princess of a neighboring land and beget a new heir."

The orb on the table began to lighten in shade.

"Now," Vossler said, "many in that king's country did not like this, and they liked it even less when the princess arrived for the wedding. For it seemed that there were strange things about this lady. She always wore a heavy veil. She was never observed eating nor drinking. And animals could not abide her. The chocobos in the royal stables went wild whenever she came near, and no dog in the palace would consent to remain in the same room as she. The people of the king's country began to whisper that there was something unholy about the princess, that she was a witch, that she had tricked the king into wedding her through black sorcery.

"But the king was deaf to these concerns and, in due course, the wedding day dawned. The king's subjects came to see their lord married. The ceremony began and, in due course, the time came for the royal couple to utter their vows. The king said his portion in a strong, commanding voice, but when it came time for the princess, she said nothing.

"Then, very slowly and deliberately, the bride threw back her veil, and the assembled masses groaned in horror, because standing there in the bridal gown stood the queen--the king's first queen, dead these many years and stained with grave-dirt--"

"Wait," Ashe said, unlinking her fingers. "How could they recognize her if she had been dead? After years and years, would she be anything more than bones?"

Rasler laughed. "You're expressing skepticism over the wrong part, milady," he said. "You're supposed to be shocked that a dead woman is standing there, not that everyone recognizes her worm-eaten head."

Ashe shrugged. "I've heard tales of undead brides," she said. "I've just never understood how they are so quickly identified. What if another skeleton stole a march on this long-dead queen and took her place?"

"But the story, Your Highness," Vossler said with a hint of irritation, "goes on. For as the king and his court stood there, staring at the dead bride, there came a mighty clatter at the church doors.

"The queen said, 'I have come back, my love, even after you thought yourself rid of me. I have come back, at last, for my vengeance. You shall not escape from your sins, my love.'

"There came another furious knocking at the church doors, and the queen said, 'You, whose hands are stained with innocent blood, you shall suffer at last. I had a hard road back to you, my love, but I am finally here.'

"There came another banging on the church doors, and the church doors finally opened. There, on the threshold of the church, stood a dusty knight leading a chocobo, upon which rode a young priestess. The knight and the chocobo marched into the church, and the congregation fell back before them.

"Seeing them, the king groaned, 'Oh, am I dead? Is this why I see these past shades before me?'

"'No,' said the knight. 'No, dear one, we have come for you too. It is time for you to come away from your kingdom and join us on our journey, as you should have from the first, years ago.'

"'No!' cried the queen. 'No, how can you forgive him after his sins! He must suffer! He must be punished!'

"'He has already suffered,' said the young priestess, and at her voice, all the windows of the church shattered, for her voice was not human; it was the voice of the gods and not meant for mortal things. 'He has suffered all these years on his throne. And now he must come with us.'

"The king and the queen shrieked in one breath. The queen said, 'He shall not escape my vengeance,' and the king said, 'I shall not leave my kingdom.'

"'Oh, you are well-suited,' the knight laughed. 'But the time for all that is past. You must abandon these little concerns, my loves. My poor friend,' he said to the queen, 'you must return to the ground, for the affairs of the living have moved beyond your control. And you, my dear,' he said to the king, 'must put aside this petty responsibility, for my sister and I tend a far greater garden, and you must take your place among us. And maybe, a long time from now, the two of you may stand properly reunited, but I do not know when that time may be.'

"'The queen wept, and all who saw her wept also. But the priestess raised her hand and said, 'You must go back that dark road you came.' And there was no denying that voice, for it was not human. So the queen walked slowly down the aisle, past the knight and the priestess, and out the chapel door, and no one in that country ever saw a sign of her again.

"The knight and the priestess turned to the king, who was still standing there. 'Are you coming?' the knight asked.

"'I cannot leave my kingdom,' the king said. 'It will crumble without me, and all my hard work, all my sacrifices, all of you--all will have been for naught.'

"The priestess and the knight looked at one another, and the priestess said, 'Very well. But remember: we have given you opportunities beyond measure, and each time you have forsaken us. I do not think you will be given another such opportunity.' And the knight led the chocobo out of the church, and they steadily climbed down the church steps until they could no longer be seen by the congregation.

"And then the king gave out a mighty cry. He tore the crown from his head and went running from the chapel. And, like, his queen, he was never again seen in the land. As he had predicted, his country fell apart in his absence: his nobles waged various wars against one another until the land fragmented and fragmented again, and finally its name fell from history."

"But who were the knight and the priestess?" Ashe asked. "And did the king ever find them again?"

"No one knows," Rasler said. "It is not part of the story that the scholars have uncovered, so far as I know."

"It's a strange tale," Basch said. "I can see why it might stick in the mind, Vossler."

Vossler grunted. "It feels like only half a tale. The first half."

"Or the last scene," Ashe said. "It says nothing about the sins of the king, after all."

"Assuming that they were sins," Vossler said. "I don't know that the queen is the truth-speaking hero of the piece, milady."

Ashe rolled her eyes, and Vossler grinned, and Rasler watched them both from the corner of his eye.

Basch said, "Whether a whole tale or not, does that suffice, fortune teller?"

"Oh, yes," the fortune teller said. "Yes, a prestigious effort, milords. But who will go next?"

"I'll go," Ashe said. "But unlike Vossler, I have only a brief story, and it bears no dead brides. Once upon a time, in a land far away, an emperor married a queen, and they had four sons. But one day, the emperor discovered the queen had conspired with her two eldest sons against him. Part of this conspiracy involved secret marriages, for the two eldest sons had married without their father's consent. The queen killed herself before she could be tried for this foul treason; the two sons were not so lucky. They were executed by another brother, one who had stayed loyal to his father despite the blandishments of the queen. Being of royal blood, their executions were a complicated affair: dismembered, disemboweled, dishonored. Slowly. And not just the two princes but also their households: their wives, their young children, and even their dogs were snuffed out with ruthless efficiency."

Ashe was aware that her voice had reached a dangerously high note in her last words. The three men were staring at her with wide eyes. Even the fortune teller had lifted her head to regard Ashe with interest. Ashe closed her mouth and blinked steadily back at them.

"And?" Rasler said at last.

"And?" Ashe repeated.

"What happened next to that most enigmatic family? How fared the figure of fratricide?"

"And the youngest son," said Basch. "For were there not four brothers?" His mouth was set in a grim line.

Vossler merely smiled at her. He knew her very well, and he, too, had been sitting near Uncle Perlot for dinner.

Ashe regarded the cloudy orb with a meditative air. "And, then...the blood-stained brother was covered with remorse. He dreamed of his dead brothers at night. He became strange, hard, twisted. And people began to fear him, and he cast about for some way to make them love him. He told them stories about his own valor, his own bravery, his own loyalty, but no one listened. So one day he went riding out to kill a monster, and in the fight, both he and the monster were killed. But, alas, when the people brought back the hero for a hero's funeral, it was not the prince they bore. It was the monster."

Rasler burst out laughing. "Neatly done. And all our problems are solved in a single blow."

"Your turn, Basch," Vossler said. "What story will you choose? Any deaths? It seems a veritable night for funereal stories."

"And wedding stories as well," Ashe murmured.

Basch was silent for a long moment, and then he reluctantly said, "There is a story in my own family that we sometimes tell, and I suppose that will answer." He stared down at his hands with a frown, and his voice was low when he began to speak.

"Once upon a time, in a land far away, a prince came riding into the estate owned by an ancestor of mine. This was, you understand, a very long time ago, so long ago that we have lost all the names and minor details of the story. It may not be true, but the women in my family have always told it as if were the truth.

"The prince saw the eldest daughter of the lord and fell in love, as princes in stories are wont to do. The lord was not loath to match his daughter with a prince, even an itinerant prince, but the woman in question was more resistant. In truth, she was already secretly pledged to another man in the neighborhood, but she knew that this explanation would convince neither her father nor her unwanted suitor. So, instead, she demanded proof of the prince's attachment. She demanded that he slay the Black Knight.

"Apparently, the nearby estates were troubled by a marauding knight, dressed all in black armor, who was terrifying the people and murdering the farm animals. He was a mystery, but it was agreed that he was not human, for his strength was unworldly. So, the woman demanded that the prince defeat the Black Knight in exchange for her hand in marriage.

"Thus, the prince set off to find the Black Knight. He at last discovered him in a farmer's field at midnight, drinking the blood of a slaughtered calf. As soon as the Black Knight saw the prince, the Knight fled on his horse (which itself had fangs and ate red meat). So the prince pursued him all night and all the following day until the Black Knight at last arrived at a strange cavern that led deep into the earth. The prince, of course, followed him. The cavern led to an abandoned underground city, itself a place of horrors far worse than the Black Knight. The prince pursued the Black Knight through a terrible labyrinth and alongside an abyss from which there was no return.

"Finally the prince confronted the Black Knight, and they had a terrible fight. Back and forth they fought for hours, but finally, bleeding from a dozen cuts, the prince pressed the tip of his sword at the Black Knight's throat and said, 'Surrender, knave!'

"'Very well,' the Black Knight said. 'But first I must tell you what you have won by defeating me. For I was charged with wearing this terrible armor and living apart from humanity until I could find someone strong enough to defeat me. And so now you have won the burden of this armor and its solitude, and you must carry them until you can find someone stronger than yourself.'

"The prince did not believe him, but as the Black Knight spoke, the dark armor came loose and wound itself around the prince, as if invisible hands were binding him within it. He could not speak. He struggled to tear off the heavy burden, but it was fixed immovably in place.

"The heavy helmet constrained his vision, so that he could only see a narrow slit before him, and nobody outside could ever see his face. Within it, the prince himself was invisible. He could only be a symbol of the Black Knight, only a thing to inspire terror and fear in everyone he encountered. He was never to be himself again.

"The man who had once been the Black Knight explained that once he had been a young lord who set off to free his land of a lurking menace. As soon as he had defeated the black-suited knight, however, he found himself encased in the armor and bound to its strange conditions. He was unable to speak. He was stronger than was natural. He had no need for food nor water, but the armor itself hungered insatiably for fresh blood. This was why the Black Knight lived apart from other humans, and this was the fate to which the prince had fixed himself until he could find a stronger swordsman.

"So the new Black Knight took his place in the cursed city within the earth, and the man who had once been the Black Knight traveled back to my family's estate, where he told his story. But when he led a company of men back to the entrance to the dark city, they discovered that the cavern had collapsed and the way was sealed."

"And so the Black Knight finally perished?" Ashe asked.

"No," Basch said slowly. "Because...well. The lord's daughter finally married her betrothed, and they began to raise their children. And, sometimes, the lord's daughter would watch the forest at the edges of her land and see a dark figure walking the perimeter. And not she alone, but also her children, and her children's children. There were many stories in my family of seeing the Black Knight, the prince who had loved our ancestor and was cursed to eternal separation as a result. It is considered...a sign of sorts. A sign of changes to come, within my family, if you see the Black Knight."

Ashe stared fixedly at Basch. "And have you ever seen him?"

"Once," Basch said. "Maybe."

There was a long silence as the orb clouded to a peach-like pink, until finally Vossler stretched his arms upwards and said, without preamble, "Very well. And now a story from our fortune teller, I think."

The fortune teller's head jerked up. "Me, milord? No, surely not. I am just here as the vessel. You are the ones responsible for the stories."

"Come, come," Vossler said. "If we're going to share all these glorious tales, I believe you owe us one as well. Tell us a story, fortune teller."

"Yes," Ashe said, fixing her gaze on the fortune teller with a disconcerting intensity. "Tell us a story."

The fortune teller flapped her arms in the direction of Rasler. "But the prince, he has not yet gone, and the orb, it must--"

"He will tell his story next, after you," Ashe said. "Tell us the story of how you came here."

"Tell us a story about how you received that prophetic stone," Vossler said.

"Tell us a story about a wedding," Rasler said. Vossler and Ashe both jerked their heads back to stare at him. He shrugged in partial apology at disrupting their pincer attack, but his attention did not waver from the little fortune teller. "We've been talking about weddings tonight, it seems. Or almost-weddings, at any rate. Do you know any stories about weddings? Happy stories, for a change?"

The fortune teller nervously moved her head, and Ashe knew she was scanning the room for the best exit. Vossler went very tense and still, and Rasler moved his hand toward his sheathed sword.

Then something in the fortune teller's twisted posture changed, and the creature tossed back her head so that Ashe caught a momentary glimpse of two glittering brown eyes within the heavy scarves.

"Oh, I know a story or two about weddings," the fortune teller said, and something had changed in the cadence of her voice. The earnestness had slid away, to be replaced with a dry note. "I have been to a few weddings in my time, and thus I look forward to tomorrow's festivities with great anticipation. But I doubt it will beat the wedding of Doctor Bunansa, for at that wedding...well. Well. I was not there personally, you understand, but I received the details from an excellent source.

"It all started, I'm afraid, when the Good Doctor fell in love with a proper young lady of a good family. The Doctor, you see, had neither propriety nor family, and thus his suit seemed doomed from the first. But the Good Doctor was never a sensible man, and thus he persevered. He built mechanical homing pigeons to fly messages to his love. These inevitably crashed through her family's windows en route to her bedroom.

"The young woman's family harbored no good will toward the Good Doctor, and they did their best to ruin his prospects and run him out of the city. The young woman, in contrast, was somewhat charmed. Certainly no other suitors were building her suicidal clockwork birds. They have a certain appeal, I suppose.

"And so, finally, the Good Doctor and his young lady arranged to elope with the aid of the Doctor's most cunning contraption. For, you see, the Good Doctor was designing a moving life-sized doll that resembled the young lady in every particular, down to the count of her eyelashes.

"The plan was that a switch would be made: the young woman for the moving doll, which would be a cuckoo's egg laid within an unsuspecting nest. Unfortunately, the Good Doctor took longer than he had expected to build the doll, and before the switch had been made, the young woman found herself engaged to a suitable member of her rank and class. The young woman received no word from the Good Doctor; she could not even be sure that the Good Doctor was aware of her plight, as she had already learned that he could be somewhat inattentive while operating in his laboratory.

"So, on the evening before her wedding, the young woman took matters into her own hands. She jimmied open a window in her bedroom and climbed down a rope made from knotted sheets. She took her wedding dress with her, and she disappeared into the night. She always had a certain gumption, that young woman. Her family did not discover her absence until the next morning, when they rose to attire her in her bridal finery.

"Her family, as you might imagine, was in a state of some distress. Calling off the wedding would have grievously offended the other family. But then there came word that the young woman was, strangely enough, waiting at the Hearth--the place of marriages, the place other cities might call a church or temple.

"So the wedding party hustled down to the Hearth, and there stood the young woman, dressed in her elaborate bridal gown. She was silent and downcast. Her family heaved a sigh of justifiable relief, but before they could join the young woman with the groom in matrimony over the sacred fire, there was a disturbance inside the Hearth. And then the young woman appeared, the same young woman, dressed in the same bridal dress. Now there stood two of them, staring at one another.

"'I am the real bride,' said one.

"'No,' said the other. 'I am.'

"The first gave a squawk, and the second gave a strange little hoot, and then they rushed at one another. They fought over the sacred flame, and bits of their dresses burned in the heat. The young groom tried to get away from the confusion, but the two kept hooking him back into the fracas. No one knew what was going on, and the young woman's family was helpless in terror and fury. Then the other brides showed up.

"There were, perhaps, a dozen of them, and they all looked identical to the bride, identical down to the eyelash. There was a great confusion as the brides converged in furious struggle. The onlookers managed to extricate the bloody groom and fled the Hearth, for the brides were not terribly discriminatory in whom they tried to dismember. They were aiming for one another, of course; each kept crying that she was the 'real' bride. They kept up the struggle for hours, until finally they were too broken to cripple one another. Their clockwork wound down; their furious thrashing stilled. The silent Hearth was littered with arms, legs, heads.

"Meanwhile, on a high building ledge, which had a splendid view of these proceedings, sat the young woman and the Good Doctor, eating peanuts. They watched the commotion with interest, and they discussed what further refinements might be made to the dolls. The young woman was no longer wearing her wedding dress, of course; she had been married the previous night, after she had finally managed to locate the Good Doctor. At last, they finished their peanuts--their wedding breakfast, if you will--and went down into the Hearth to collect the dismembered limbs of the false brides. They had to get a cart, for there were too many to carry. And then, whistling in tune, they trundled into the city and disappeared for a time, until everyone was a great deal less angry with them."

"And how long did that take?" Ashe asked.

"Oh, a year or so. Unfortunately, the Good Doctor was a paragon of cleverness, and his little devices were in great demand in their city. The various injured parties--the young woman's family, in main part--had to swallow the insult eventually."

"And the dolls?" Rasler asked. "Were they ever seen again?"

"Oh, no," the fortune teller said with dark amusement. "For one night, when the Good Doctor slept, his clever wife crept into his laboratory. She was pregnant with their third child, and she was suspicious that the Good Doctor's attention was turning overmuch to her clockwork sisters. So she smashed them all into tiny fragments and burnt her husband's notes, so that he would never be able to reconstruct her. She always had a certain spirit, that young woman."

The orb was golden and slightly glowing now.

"A good story," Ashe said at last, regarding her fingers.

"Happy, even," Rasler said.

"Maybe," Basch said quietly.

"Then I suppose it is my turn," Rasler was saying when there came a sudden bang and the air filled with smoke. The fortune teller reeled back from the table; the men cried out and came to their feet with weapons drawn. Ashe alone remained sitting quietly as she regarded the colored ball and the small creature seated upon it.

It was a tiny imp, blue-speckled as a robin's egg. It looked back at the company with minute eyes that gleamed jet.

"Good evening," said the unruffled Ashe. "Are you here to tell our future?"

The imp gurgled in amusement. "I am here to tell your story, Your Highness."

"What is this witchcraft?" Vossler growled at the fortune teller, who had rolled away from the table.

"Not...not witchcraft," the fortune teller nervously cried. "And the creature is hedged with protections, with my protections, and--"

"Enough," the imp said crisply. For such a tiny figure, its voice came deep and distinct. "That is merely a little thief, who bore me for a time. Now I am arisen, and I will fulfill the covenant of your stories."

"What sort of covenant?" Basch asked. Vossler edged nearer the fortune teller. The fortune teller edged further away.

"Nothing...unpleasant," the imp laughed. "I admit, I did place a minor curse on the little thief for his crime, but the little thief has managed to break the curse. He is cleverer than I thought."

The fortune teller--the thief--made a sound that might have been either terrified or amused.

"Was it the stories?" Rasler asked. "But, I didn't..."

The imp waved a spindly hand. "It was not the number of stories that mattered, Your Highness. If you'd like, I will listen to your story. But I warn you, it will engage you in a new covenant, and then you will be responsible for feeding me more stories."

"No," Ashe said. "If we have fulfilled the terms of your original bargain, that is enough. And what is your part now?"

"Oh," the imp said with surprise. "Did not you know? I am a judge of dreams, of stories, of lies. I eat them; I live on them. I will judge your offerings, and then I will offer one of my own. Who comes forward? Who will receive their story?"

"The princess," Rasler said promptly, before anyone else could speak. "This was supposed to be a wedding present, I think, so say something about the wedding."

Ashe frowned, but before she could speak, the imp said, "Very well. I have been listening to your stories with interest. They were good stories, although they did not always go as I remembered, or even as they should have gone. But that comes with time, I suppose. Eventually, you will see where you went astray and what the story deserved instead.

"You ask about the wedding, and I say to you, you have already recounted the wedding and its aftermath. You have offered stories about constancy, of union, of family. You have offered stories of despair, of departure, of death. And this, too, is marriage, for you have spoken of it in the same breath. And so too will be your wedding, Your Highness, for these are the stories that you and your companions have chosen.

"Highness. You stand in this room with your future husband..." The imp hesitated and shook its tiny head, as if to dislodge water in its ears. "Yes," it said at last, "you stand here with your future husband, and I foresee trials ahead of you. I see long separations, misunderstandings, mistrust. I see resurrections, masks, and doubles. I see a long, strange journey before you, one in which you will both walk alone at times. You will have choices between duty and pleasure, and I think you will chose duty. But the journey will not be forever lonesome, I think, for you will be a family, a family that binds others tight to you, and you will have your stories, and the time in which to correct them. And Archadia," the imp said as an afterthought. "I foresee a great deal of Archadia."

"Archadia!" hissed both Ashe and the fortune teller with the same shared note of horror.

"Maybe," the imp said, squinting at some unseen point. "This story is tangled, and I may not have its full measure yet. Maybe Archadia?" He spun around on his orb until he faced the fortune teller, who had stopped inching toward an escape. "And you, little thief. You have received more than you deserved, but you have lifted your curse, because you offered your own story in good conscience."

The fortune teller said nothing, although Rasler caught a murmur, furious and masculine, from beneath the striped cowl.

Ashe was still grinding her teeth over the imp's previous words. "It does not sound," she said slowly and carefully, "like a glowing prediction for my wedding, creature."

"You were the ones who chose the stories," the imp said. "And so you will be the ones who chose the path you follow. But you have time, like I said. You can still fix your stories. I must say, they are not quite the way I remember, nor the way they should be. They have pieces missing."

"Remember?" Vossler repeated. "Have you heard these stories before?"

The imp shrugged its tiny shoulders. "Perhaps. Or later. I am not as bound to chronology as you humes. In Ivalice, stories do not follow a straight line. They ripple back and forth. They repeat themselves as they work their way loose. They seek a proper ending, I suppose."

"And so you live on stories?" Rasler asked.

"We both live on them, prince," the imp said with steely dignity. "All thinking creatures are trying to be something else, something better, and they do that through the stories they tell themselves. Did not you know? But, yes, I suppose, in a purely objective sense, I eat them. Your stories tasted like ash, rust, roses, and curry, respectively. If you must know."

"Oh," Rasler said, blinking. "I think the fortune teller is gone."

Vossler jumped to his feet. "God's breath, that devil! He's escaped!"

"Go and see if he has gotten past the guards at the gate, Vossler," Ashe said calmly.

"If he's gone for the gates! He could be anywhere on the grounds by now--"

"And yet he will have gone to the gates, for his disguise is no longer worth anything," Ashe said. "Go to the gate, Vossler."

He growled something under his breath and went running from the chapel.

Basch watched him go. "Shall I alert the palace guards, milady?"

"You might as well," Ashe said, rubbing her nose. "Although I think we will not be seeing our thief in the immediate future."

"Even so," Basch said. He rose and bowed, in turn, to Ashe, to Rasler, and to the imp. "Good evening. And if I do not see you in the morning, Your Highnesses, may I also wish you every happiness on your wedding day."

"Thank you," Rasler said, but Ashe waved an impatient hand.

"No, you'll be seeing me in the morning, Basch, for I mean to speak with my father before the ceremony."

Basch bowed again. "Then, until tomorrow, princess." He strode away down the steps of the chapel and disappeared past a moonlit rose bush.

Ashe turned her attention back to the imp, who had watched these proceedings attentively. "And just who was that robed fortune teller?" she asked.

"Simply a thief," the imp said with equanimity. "He has not yet decided what his own story will be. He stole me from a tomb, and I cursed him with restless dreams until he should be selfless enough to sacrifice his own hoarded past for the good of another. Those are the tastiest stories, you know. Although, of course, I did not tell him the conditions of his curse."

"Of course," Ashe said dryly.

"And now, Your Highness, I must ask a boon. I have grown tired, and I must sleep. Is there a place where I might lie undisturbed for some time? Even years?"

"I suppose," Ashe said dubiously. "But my father already houses strange objects. What will I bring down upon his house by placing you here? Will you plague us with ill dreams?"

"Oh, no," the imp said earnestly. "I am quite unobtrusive while I sleep. Nothing, good nor bad, will befall your father's house because of my presence. I desire only to sleep, and all my power will remain within my glass ball."

Ashe looked to Rasler, who shrugged. She sighed. "Very well," she said.

The imp gave a little cry of delight before he winked out of existence. The orb turned blue, purple, and orange before settling on a mild teal.

Ashe stood up and reached for the ball. It was warm as blood to the touch. She dropped it within the pocket of her dress.

"Well," she said.

"Well," Rasler said.

"That prophecy sounded fairly dire," she said, smiling at him. They were standing near enough to touch, although they did not.

"Oh, I don't know," Rasler said. "It just sounded like the standard things that people say about marriage. Well, not quite the standard things, but close."

"Mmm."

"Unfortunately," Rasler said, "I did not get a chance to tell my story. And it was a good one. It had dragons. And you."

Ashe reached out and took his hand within her own. "I want to hear your story."

And, as the moths beat their ashy wings against the glass of the lamps, he began to tell it.

Meanwhile, deep within the labyrinthine streets of Rabanastre, a strange figure was hobbling down narrow passageways. In the unreliable shadows, the figure seemed to contort and elongate as it hustled along, shedding successive layers of hideous fabric at every step. The figure entered a passage as a short, swaddled demi-human; the figure exited the passage as a dapper hume of medium height. In the muddled light, his face was only dimly visible.

He was unwinding the last shawl from his shoulders when a throaty voice whispered into his right ear, "You're late. Where be the stone?"

He did not break his stride, and his taller shadow moved in step with him. "Ah, the stone. Well, my dear, I have some good news, and I have some bad news. Which would you prefer?"

"The bad news," the voice said decisively.

"The good news is that the stone is no longer cursed, and we can finally get a good night's sleep without that little imp invading our dreams," the hume said.

"Ahh," the voice sighed. "The bad news is that you no longer have the little imp."

The hume shrugged. "More trouble than he was worth. Meanwhile, there will be a wedding tomorrow. I met the central participants tonight."

"Ah? How be they?"

The hume chuckled. "Those poor little darlings. I predict that good feeling lasts only a year or two after the wedding. Then begins the fighting, the petty intrigues, the circuitous slander. The foreign prince will disappear on long trips to his homeland and become involved in strange, expensive hobbies. The native princess will conduct scandalous affairs with her men-at-arms. The marriage falls apart, the prince returns to his people, and the princess grasps her personal power with both hands. God help their children, should they have any."

The shadow said nothing.

"Or," the hume said quietly. "Or, instead, maybe they will have a time of misunderstandings and compromises. They will be separated by events. They will struggle over their individual vices on their own. And they will always have the model public relationship; they will always act with perfect propriety. But behind their external masks, they will be...themselves. And those masks may conceal hate as easily as love. They will have their roles to play, and they will only be themselves with one another."

"A benediction of sorts," the shadow said.

The hume laughed. "Or maybe it will be something else. I'm not good at weddings, Fran. Instead, let's scamper. There's good hunting in Bhujerba this season."

The shadow shrugged. Together, they moved off into the night and out of sight.

*****

(Part 2 available here.)