Scheherazade, Part 2 (Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Final Fantasy XII)

[moemachina]

SCHEHERAZADE (Part 2)

(Part 1 available here)

"...and thus, with his last riddle answered, the imp granted the High Queen and her Consort health and happiness. 'But you will only have these things for so long as you stay together. For, if you should part, the enchantment will begin to unravel.' The imp vanished in a puff of smoke, and the High Queen and the Consort were happy for a time, until they forgot the imp's warning, and the Consort went to fight a valiant battle on the High Queen's behalf..." Delita's voice trailed off.

Ovelia blinked at the embroidered canopy. She felt something stirring deep within her icy chest. Something big. Something hot.

"Anyway," Delita said. "My mother used to tell that story to my sister and me. It was a ritual, I suppose, on the nights we couldn't sleep. It soothed us. We liked the riddles, my sister and me. And Ramza--"

"You monster," Ovelia heard herself say. The embroidered canopy began to blur before her eyes, and she blinked back furious eyes.

Delita said nothing, and then he said, tentatively, "Ovelia."

"You've got everything, don't you," she heard herself say in the same level, deadly voice. "You have the queen. You have the castle. And you let him go, alone, to rescue his sister. You bastard."

"Ovelia."

"Because it wasn't part of your plans, I see. You had to hurry back and secure me. I was your bloody trump after all."

"Ovelia." He touched her, gently, on the shoulder.

"No!" she cried, and she lashed out blindly with her arms and legs, striking him on the chest. She could not feel anything, but she could feel her frenzied feet and elbows making contact with his soft trousers and warm skin. She felt like the mindless center of a whirlwind.

Then the bed dipped alarmingly and Ovelia felt her arms seized and her legs pressed down into the bedding. She blinked away her tears and saw Delita above, easily restraining her. His hands were tight around her wrists; his knees were locked against her thighs. He had no expression as he regarded her.

"You monster," Ovelia said. It seemed like the thing to say.

Delita looked toward the head of the bed and then back at her. "So here we are."

Ovelia breathed raggedly.

Delita exhaled softly. It was the smallest of sighs. Then he leaned his head down, lower and lower, until Ovelia felt the faint stubble on his jaw slide past her left shoulder. Ovelia went rigid. He stretched his legs along her legs. Ovelia felt her belly contract with a feeling almost like nausea.

He let her hands go.

Of course, she immediately began to hit him again, even if her legs were firmly imprisoned. She silently beat her palms against his broad back; he silently lay there, enduring her blows, weighing her down.

The whole time, Ovelia could feel the steady heartbeat of the body pressed against her.

At last, she grew tired, and her arms slumped to her side. She lay there, exhausted and helpless, and he lay there, silent and warm. From below, they could hear the faint sounds of the ongoing celebrations.

"You think," she whispered at last, "you think that you have achieved the treasures, that you have finished the story. But it is not that easy. This isn't the end of it."

"No," Delita said, stirring at last. "It is the start."

*****

"...and thus the High King Delita achieved both his crown and his queen. But his trials were not at an end, for there was a furious monster still loose within the land, and so--"

"God's blood, woman. Are you telling him faerie tales?"

Merlose jerks her head up, and there stands Hardin, frowning down at her.

"Women," he says. "They always tell the lies about princesses and dragons."

"No, a true story," Merlose says. "Some history, in fact."

Hardin shakes his head. "History always honeys up the truth. It doesn't get the dragons right, and I'd surprised if the princesses smelt so sweet in life either. History, feh. It's just another kind of faerie tale."

Merlose thinks to herself, rebelliously, How many faerie tales end with the princess stabbed to death?

Hardin spits thoughtfully to one side, and Merlose hears the monsters, her silent audience, pull back further. Joshua, in contrast, turns his attention to their captor like a dog hearing his master's footstep. He nearly wags with delight.

"And how goes the hunt?" Merlose asks. "Had any luck with Agent Riot yet?"

Hardin spits again. "Oh, he'll get what's coming to him, never fear. He won't be coming for you, woman."

"Of course not," Merlose says complacently. "He'll be coming for Sydney. And I don't think you can stop him."

Hardin regards her dangerously for a moment, and then his features relax, and he bursts into laughter. "Gods, woman. I won't stop him. Nor will Sydney. Lea Monde will stop him."

"Ah, Lea Monde," Merlose says with an insouciance she does not feel. "Fabled Lea Monde. I do not know that Lea Monde is such an insurmountable place, if the efforts of one city cannot impede Agent Riot's progress."

"It's not yet trying to--" Hardin starts to say, and then he shuts his mouth with a mulish expression.

Merlose hopes she is regarding him with an expression of disdainful ease, but apparently she does not entirely succeed, for Hardin's face once again creases into a grim smile.

"Ah, woman," he says. "I see now. The city terrifies you, doesn't it? How strange. For such is not its aim with you. You are naught but a small fish in great waters. It barely perceives you, and it hardly aims to crush you."

Merlose says nothing.

Hardin crosses his arms. "If anything, the minor creatures crawling through this shrine bear more fear of you than you do for them." He laughs at her face. "No, you don't believe me? I would hardly leave you and the boy in a place where you might be devoured. You may not believe it, but Sydney is treating you most courteously. Here, come and see."

He moves behind her, and Merlose feels his swift fingers among her bonds. Finally freed, she winces as she pulls her arms forward and rubs her sore wrists. She stands and closes her eyes as blood tingles along her limbs.

"No escaping now," Hardin chuckles, and Merlose shoots him a look of loathing. She knows she lacks the strength to overcome him, and even if she did, she would not be able to rescue herself and Joshua from this fell place. Hand-to-hand combat and breakneck escapes are not her strengths. They are more in Agent Riot's line.

"Come and look," Hardin says, taking her gingerly by the crook of her elbow. Merlose stoically allows herself to be led beyond the lit space among the crates and down the murky steps. She can hear rustles in the dark at their approach.

"Here," Hardin says, and he cups his hands until a faint luminous ball appears between his palms. "Stay," he says to it, as if it was a recalcitrant pet, and it obediently floats to hang over his right shoulder.

"Look, Callo," Hardin says. "Aren't they beautiful?"

The problem is that they are beautiful. The creatures writhing up and down the stone walls are an iridescent emerald in color, and their segmented joints make them look like wiggling pieces of lacquered clockwork. They are only a few inches in length, but there are dozens, maybe hundreds, moving along the face of the wall. They have wings, Merlose sees suddenly. Their wings, ceaselessly fluttering, account for some of the overwhelming sense of motion.

"God's sleeve," Merlose breaths.

"Here," Hardin says with childish satisfaction. He reaches out and plucks one creature from the wall. It whirrs its wings in increasing agitation, but it remains otherwise docile. "Here, catch."

Merlose catches the tossed monster only from reflex, and she freezes as soon as thought penetrates her brain. She can feel the tiny feet, sharp and plentiful, rippling along her palm. At last, her heart in her throat, she looks down at the creature in her hands.

It marches back and forth across her palm, with occasional excursions up her thumb. From here, Merlose can see its two heads and their gaping purple mouths lined with tiny teeth. It seems blind, for it presses the antennae from its two heads against her hand to determine its route. Merlose finds herself curious about the advantages of two heads for the creature. Did it have two separate digestive systems, or does it share a common stomach? And the blindness...but no, of course, if it lived only in the dark, that is only natural. Merlose remembers her lessons in dissection and anatomy from the Academy, and she finds herself trying to trace the lineaments of the creature. Her first reaction--the shriek of a six-year-old girl--is ruthlessly suppressed by her scientific Academy-trained curiosity.

The thing is horrible. It is also, faintly, wonderful.

"Ah," Hardin says in tones of satisfaction. "Sydney was right. He said the place would call out to you."

Merlose stops smiling. She coolly drops the creature, and it rushes back to its countless companions. "Did he?"

Hardin shrugs. "You may be as you please. But I've brought you and Joshua lunch, for we must be moving soon."

"Oh?" Merlose asks as she follows him back to the candle and Joshua. "Some new prison?"

"We must go deeper into the city, but not yet. First, you must eat."

They break their fast with stale bread, hard cheese, and warm water. It does not rank as one of the most savory meals Merlose has ever sat before, but she has not eaten for hours, and hunger is its own salt.

Joshua happily eats everything, and Hardin watches him with an expression that Merlose might have, in another man, called paternal.

"You were telling a story, when I came in," Hardin says. "About that King Delita fellow, yes?"

Merlose shrugs.

"Ah, the nobility always tells stories about him as a king, him as a great man, but I prefer the stories about his early life, when he was naught better than a bandit."

"And you accuse me of faerie tales," Merlose says. "Those stories are even more dubious. We have fragmentary evidence of his later life but almost nothing about his early life."

"Writing is only good so far as it goes," Hardin says. "But stories...they have a mind of their own, you know. They don't want to be forgotten. That's why they tell themselves, again and again. They're like a plague, of sorts. And once you've been told a story, you've got to tell that story yourself. Stories keep themselves alive. Books...well, they're already dead. They're born dead. No better way to kill a story, I think, than to set it down in a book."

Merlose lifts one sardonic eyebrow.

"As I was saying," Hardin says. "My favorite story was the time he kidnapped that princess."

Merlose rolls her eyes. "That was the story I was telling, Hardin."

"Then I know a different version, Callo," Hardin says. "And it has a sight fewer tragic princesses and sighing monsters, you may be sure." He turns to Joshua. "Would you like to hear the tale, m'boy?"

Joshua wiggles ecstatically.

"Well, then. Once upon a time, in a land far away, the Good King Delita--although this was before he was king, you understand--went riding in a woods when he came upon a princess being kidnapped..."

*****

"But what about bears?"

There was a long silence in the dark. "There are no bears in these woods."

She bit her lip. "But...perhaps not native to these forests, but maybe they traveled...?"

When Delita spoke, there was a fine note of patience in his voice. "No. No bears."

"Oh. But--"

"There's a creature who lives in these woods," said Delita, "who eats bears."

Ovelia swallowed. Her fears were not assuaged.

"And you need not ask," Delita said, "for that creature is not around either. I assure you, princess."

Ovelia nervously hiccuped, but she bravely forbore asking him for more details. She dimly suspected such details would not be a comfort.

"Good night, Princess," he said with an air of finality, for he had said the same phrase several times. His voice, quiet and deep, came from a point perhaps three meters to Ovelia's left.

She could not escape from him--not that she so wished, not any longer, not after he had explained his secret mission to rescue her from the grasp of treasonous traitors. No, she did not wish to escape, even should such a thing have been possible. She trusted this dark, laconic knight. She did. Honestly.

She also had faith that he would not allow wild monsters to devour her during the night, but this faith would have been stronger if he had been nearer. Perhaps the monsters were supernaturally silent? Might he not wake up tomorrow to discover her bedding empty and bloody?

"It's just," she said shrilly, "that bears are unpredictable. They might even have killed this creature you mentioned."

There was a long-suffering sigh. "Is there anything I could do," he said, "that would make you go to sleep?"

Keep talking to me, Ovelia thought, but she said instead, "Maybe if we slept...um...closer together. That way, nothing could come for one of us without the other knowing."

Delita sneezed, or at least she thought he sneezed; it sounded a little like a sneeze. "Very well, princess."

Ovelia heard rustling leaves getting closer and closer, and she was just congratulating herself on her own cunning when she felt the edge of his bedding brush her elbow.

"Here," he said. "Close enough?" And without waiting for her answer, she felt him straighten out the bedding and stretch out along it. She was close enough to feel the warmth from his body, as if he were a radiant sun.

Ovelia swallowed again. Somehow, she had not anticipated that he would be this close. Bears now seemed the least of her concerns.

"So," he purred. "Is there anything else you would like from me, princess?"

It was on the tip of Ovelia's tongue to stammer out an apology and then feign sleep, for nine tenths of Ovelia's personality comprised nervous self-effacement and free-floating anxiety. Instead, at this supremely inappropriate time, the remaining tenth--the saucy and rebellious tenth--reared its ugly head.

"Why, yes," she heard herself say. "I would most dearly like to hear a bedtime story, sir."

There was a moment of ominous silence, and then Delita chuckled. "Oh, you would, would you?"

"Yes, sir," Ovelia said primly.

"No," Delita said. "You go, instead."

"Excuse me?"

"Tell a story, Ovelia," he said. "It seems as if I've spent this whole day talking to you, and you've hardly said one word."

"I don't know any stories," she said immediately.

"Nonsense," he said coaxingly. "Go on. I don't care what it's about. Tell a story, any story."

"Well," Ovelia said, and she licked her lips. "Well, I always liked stories about the High Queen Ashelia. Have you ever heard of her?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, I have heard of her."

"So," Ovelia said, and she closed her eyes for a minute to steady herself. Her action accomplished nothing. It was still just as dark inside her eyelids, and she could still feel him beside her. She could have reached over and taken his hand, had she wished.

Instead, she opened her eyes. "Once upon a time," she heard herself say, "before the High Queen came to her throne, she went on a mighty quest and achieved a magic stone. This stone was blessed, for only a true hero would have been able to grasp it, and it contained a mighty guardian, a monster of gigantic proportions. But the High Queen tamed it, and ever after that, it followed her as might a loyal dog. The High Queen and her companions rode through the desert, and then..."

*****

The stone whispered in her ear when she slept.

Ashe stifled a yawn. Overhead, an enormous full moon swung over the Dalmasca Westersands. It was her own fault, she knew. She should not have taken the watch when she had been unable to sleep the previous night, but her pride and her fear had required it.

And she could tell no one about the stone's whispers. This she knew, instinctively and incontrovertibly.

She leaned against the rock, still warm from the day's sun, and cast an eye across her companions. Four were sleeping. Vaan was sprawled on his back with his arms stretched above his head. By morning, Ashe knew, he would have wiggled his way completely out of his bedding, unconscious all the while. Penelo, curled into a fetal position, lay to his right. On her other side, Fran was stretched out, perfectly straight, with her arms folded behind her head. Ashe suddenly doubted that Fran was asleep; she lay too perfectly still for that. She was watching the constellations, perhaps; Ashe knew that viera put great store by the stars. Balthier, on the far side of Fran, was a distant and faintly snoring lump.

She was still deciding how to feel about her companions. Irritation seemed the safest course, but it was polluted with a creeping, servile thankfulness. Without this motley crew, she would undoubtedly be dead now. On the other hand, everyone she had ever loved was dead now. Or nearly everyone.

The bedding of her fifth companion was empty, and Ashe stared at it for some time. The moon continued to climb above her.

Ashe straightened and stamped her feet idly against the packed sand. She was so tired, and yet she was so nervous of sleeping. She had such dreams, and the stone...

She deliberately pushed that thought away. There were stories about magic stones and the madness to which they drove their users, but Ashe could not afford to go mad yet.

Later, she thought. After my vengeance, I will be as mad as you desire. I promise. Cross my heart and pray to die.

She began walking the perimeter of their encampment. Just a few more hours of this, and it would be Balthier's watch, and then Ashe would have the opportunity to put her weary head down and...watch the stars, most likely.

She sighed. Even without the stone, she did not look forward to her dreams. Vossler--

This thought, too, she deliberately pushed away.

She crested a small dune at one corner of their camp and suddenly saw Basch, a silvery statue in the moonlight, a few meters down the hill. She cast a glance over the magical wards that Fran had set up around their camp. Nothing had disturbed them. She stepped over one silvery line on the sand and padded down the slope to Basch.

He straightened and turned at her approach. He held his sword in one hand, and Ashe now saw that he had been sharpening it. He looped his small whetstone around his belt and sheathed his blade. In the moonlight, he had brilliantly pale hair and an unseen expression. Between the stark planes of his forehead and cheeks, his eyes were shadowed; beneath the line of his nose, his mouth was dark.

"You Highness," he said, and even his voice was stripped of inflection.

"Basch," she replied, uncertain what else she should say. It had been easier, before, when she had been free to hate him.

Basch seemed to share her unease, for he folded his arms in a gesture that she remembered from her childhood, when he had been new and untried in her father's court. "I do not remember," he said, "the last time that I saw a moon that size."

"Yes," Ashe agreed dully.

"We will reach Rabanastre tomorrow, I believe."

"Yes," Ashe said. "Of course, we would have reached it sooner if our companions had not crashed our flyer."

"Mmm," Basch rumbled. "The imperial patrols are swarming in the area, after the destruction of the Leviathan. Balthier felt it would be safest to destroy the evidence, Your Highness, and I am inclined to agree with him."

"And now I lead a gang of sky pirates on foot."

"We are blessed," Basch said gently, "that they have accompanied us this long."

Ashe stiffened. "Do not presume," she hissed, "to lecture me on my blessings."

Basch looked away. "My apologies, Your Highness."

Ashe stared grimly at the swollen moon. After all her work, after her sacrifices, she was little better than a wandering desert pilgrim leading a crew of thieves and murderers.

She touched the pocket hanging from her belt. Still. She had some power. She was not completely helpless.

"Has Your Highness discovered anything new about your birthright?" Basch asked quietly.

"The Dawn Shard?" Ashe asked. "No. It might be merely a dumb stone, were it not for what we witnessed on the Leviathan. No, I cannot yet unlock its secrets but, perhaps, in time..." She frowned into the distance.

"And the other?" Basch asked. "The stone that summons the Gigas?"

Ashe was silent. "No," she said. "It has done nothing untoward, but...it is always warm, and I can feel it throbbing when I touch it. It is a thing living, Basch."

"Yes," Basch said gravely.

"I have heard legends of King Raithwall's monster," Ashe said. "But I had never dreamed of seeing it myself. Do you know ought of it, Basch?"

"Of Raithwall's Gigas? No, not really. As much as you do, if that. It's just..." He frowned at the sands.

"What?"

"It reminds me of another story, one that I heard as a boy, but I can not think why. I do not think it is connected to your Gigas."

"Ah," Ashe said. "Do tell."

"But..."

"The story, Basch," Ashe said impatiently.

"Very well, Your Highness," Basch said, in the tones of a man choosing his words with care. "Once upon a time, in a land far away, there existed twelve magic stones, and each contained a most horrifying monster. These stones were responsible for great evil over the years. In some fashion or another, the twelve stones all came within the possession of one knight, who was pure enough of heart to overcome the cursed stones. And so he traveled the land with these twelve stones, for to stay in any one place would mean tainting the land with their evil."

Ashe slid a furtive hand within her pocket. She ran a protective finger against the pulsing orb wherein slept her Gigas.

"But he did not travel alone," Basch said. "For beside him rode his sister on a snow-white chocobo. The sister was surpassing fair, and the knight had a goodly countenance, and so the people who saw them attested that they must be on a holy pilgrimage. But it was not so. For the sister also bore a curse, a curse linked in some way to the twelve magic stones in her brother's possession. She was possessed by a dark spirit, something unclean, and it used her as its mouth.

"Whenever she spoke, it was to prophesy disaster and catastrophe. All who heard her knew that she spoke with a demon's voice, for her voice was the voice of the flaming pits. All who saw her thought her most comely, but all who heard her knew her as a puppet of the dark. And beside her walked her brother, the knight, who tirelessly towed both her and the stones from place to place, never resting long enough to do mischief to the land. They traveled ceaselessly, like eternal vagrants. And so they sought a respite, a way to rid themselves of their curses, but it was not to be found. And finally they disappeared into distant lands, and so the twelve magic stones passed from history. None know where they may be now."

Ashe withdrew her hand from her pocket and pulled the stone with it. In the moonlight, it glowed faintly red: darker than rubies or roses, brighter than blood or rust. It fit comfortably within her hand with the sturdy weight of a sword hilt.

"Cursed stones?" Ashe said. "I know naught about them, but I know that power may always be used or abused by we mortals. Left alone, it is...nothing. It is merely power. I wonder if these stones of which you speak were truly evil, or if they were merely stained by the actions of others. Or if that sister was merely misunderstood."

"A tool, badly used, may become too warped for its needed role," Basch said.

Ashe laughed dryly. "But I have no time for such reflection, Basch. I must seize what tools I may. I will pay whatever price I must, but I will not shy from what is needful."

"No," Basch said. "I would not ask you to do so, Ashe."

She glanced at him sidelong. "Do you think I act as one cursed, Basch?"

"No."

"Because," she said slowly, running a trembling thumb across the stone's smooth surface, "I believe the stone speaks to my dreams."

Basch said nothing.

"I have dreamt such strange things these past nights," Ashe said. "About my father, and Rasler, and you, and Voss--about other people, I mean. And the Dynast-King himself. It seems as if I half-remember stories that nobody has ever told me. Are you not concerned, Basch?" she asked sharply. "Is not this the first sign of a cursed madness?"

"No," Basch said quietly. "Your Highness, it is not. You have undergone great hardship and sacrifice, and it troubles your sleep. Nothing more."

Ashe lifted her arm slowly. "Here, Basch. Take it. Hold it to your ear. Tell me that you do not hear it muttering."

Basch took it from her; his warm hand briefly grazed her fingers. He pressed the red stone to his ear in the manner of a man listening to the sea through a shell.

The moon hung overhead, waiting.

"No, Your Highness," he said slowly. "I hear nothing but the heartbeat of some sleeping beast. It breathes, I think, but it does not speak. Yet."

"Does it not?"

"And even if it does," Basch said slowly, lowering his hand, "I do not think you should take alarm, for I do not think it means you harm. I do not think that your ancestor, the Dynast-King, would have left his descendants anything so pernicious. If it tells you stories, Your Highness, perhaps you should listen."

"They are only stories," Ashe said tonelessly. "They are not the truth." She felt tremendously tired.

"I once met a tribe, far to the south," Basch said, "who collected stories. They believed that stories lived a life outside mortal affairs. Or, rather, that stories swam in the shared dream of the tribe. Two people, separated by miles, might yet know a common story. Whether a story was true or not...well, that was beside the point. The tribesmen merely wanted to fish out the story in its entirety. They asked all visitors for their histories, for they expected a multitude of people to possess scattered fragments of a common truth. They revered the story, and I do not think that was any bad thing."

Ashe said nothing.

Basch hesitated, and in his hand, the stone glowed more intensely. "You have...dreamed about Vossler, have you not?"

Her head snapped back. "Do not speak his name to me."

"Your Highness," he said, "I cannot defend Vossler's actions. He...he was much changed, and I do not know that I truly know his mind. But he had not changed so much that I could not read his heart. What he did, Your Highness, he did for you and for Dalmasca. He followed the path that he thought would serve you best."

"And instead of serving me," Ashe said, "he served our enemy." Two years ago, she might have sobbed like a child of six at his desertion, but she had no tears now. She was a desert now.

Her shadow, her single support during those two years of agony, had ripped off his mask to reveal the face of a monster. And the monster whom she had reviled as the slayer of her father? He had emerged from the darkness, and now he stood before her. In a company of thieves and children, he was her most loyal ally.

She felt the familiar flare of irritation and gratitude.

"What shall I do now, Basch? I once saw my path so straight before me, but now...now, things seem to cloud my vision. What do I now seek?"

"Sleep," Basch said promptly. "We will make our plans when we arrive in Rabanastre and have a clearer view of the situation. But for now, Your Highness, you should sleep. I will take the remainder of your watch."

Ashe considered this for a moment. "No," she said at last. "No, Basch. It is my watch, and I will keep it myself. I will not ask any more from my men than what I ask of myself."

"Very well," Basch said, and he held out the red stone to her.

"But you," she said, "you should sleep, Basch. Consider it an order."

"Very well," he said, his face without expression.

He trudged up the hill to their camp, and Ashe watched him go. In her hand, the stone pulsed faintly, like the tiny heartbeat of a chick within its egg. Ashe closed her eyes.

No, she thought firmly. Not yet.

The stone subsided. The moon waited overhead.

She walked around the camp in circles that alternately widened and contracted. She prowled over cliffs and gullies; she scuffed a parallel line around Fran's silvered ward-line. The quiet of the night comprised the hum of distant insects and the scuffles of unseen rodents. Once, she startled a brown fox burrowing into a rabbit's hole, but otherwise the larger creatures of the Westersands were hunting elsewhere on this night.

When she returned to camp, she sat on the rock and watched the moon. Ashe could feel Fran watching her, but they did not speak; they allowed one another the illusion of solitude.

Ashe heard Basch's steady breath as he slept, and she remembered how the sound of sleeping men had been one of her childhood comforts. She could remember slipping through her father's moonlit palace on some illicit mission and feeling reassured by every snoring courtier she passed. Her father had possessed a rattling snore that could be heard in distant hallways at night. Her husband, in contrast, had barely made a sound when he slept; he merely exhaled deep, warm whispers. Ashe could remember waking to the sound of his breath and the beat of his heart, like two muffled clappers to the same ringing bell.

Her Gigas throbbed.

Vossler had talked in his sleep. On more than one occasion, Ashe had sat upright in bed, shedding sleep and seizing her sword in the same second, only to realize the sound of an enemy interloper was only Vossler holding a gruff and fragmented conversation with his dream self. Every time, she sighed and went back to sleep. She had never bothered to puzzle out the conversation. She had never asked her shadow about what haunted his dreams. They shared enough ghosts to make the question superfluous.

She rubbed her eyes wearily.

Basch, sleeping before her, did not quite snore, but there was a slight rumble, the faintest edge, to his respiration. He sounded hoarse, as if he bore some long-past injury to his throat that had never quite healed. His breath rasped like the rising waves of some faithful tide.

The moon waited. Ashe closed her eyes for the merest second only.

*****

The monster gnawed on the thighbone of a goat as he watched the boy climb the cliff.

The boy had spent the morning crossing the sands, and the monster had spent the morning shadowing him, unseen, from the high cliffs. The monster knew that the boy had come to kill him. That was the only reason that people came to the outer reaches of these sands. The monster was accustomed to their pilgrimages. Normally, he cracked open their skulls and drank the pulp of their brains, but that was only after he had grown bored of following them. He had not yet bored of the boy.

The boy hoisted himself onto a ledge and paused to brush grit from his hands. He was dressed in the leathers of the tribes to the south, the monster observed. He had originally come riding a chocobo, but the chocobo had died from the desert heat on the previous day. The boy had left the bird behind and continued forward on foot. The monster had circled back and devoured the dead mount. Sticky feathers still clung to his beard, no matter how often his four hands brushed them out.

The boy resumed his precarious clamber upwards. He did not look like the usual type of hero who came to kill the monster. He was a young hume, barely older than a colt. He bore no sword and no armor. He had been carrying a long pack over his shoulder, but that had been lost at some point. And, even more puzzling to the monster, he was going the wrong way.

At some point in his hike over the sands, the boy had gotten turned around and started retracing his steps. The cliff he was climbing now was a cliff he had climbed yesterday, only going the other way. He might have lost his way, but he did not look like a boy who had lost his way. His movements had a firm, determined quality.

The monster hunkered down, out of sight, and watched him. The sun was blisteringly hot overhead, but the monster liked the heat. He felt it soak through his arms and his heads, stoking a fire banked beneath his skin. The monster had been born within fire. This shimmering desert seemed a cold and lonely place in contrast.

The monster tossed the stripped thighbone aside and began to pick at the bits of flesh stuck between his teeth.

The boy reached the top, a flat face of stone that abutted yet higher cliffs. The boy brushed the sand from his hands, brushed his hair back, and disappeared.

A few seconds passsed before the monster reacted. He stood up and ambled closer to the cliff edge, but even with this new vantage, he could not see the boy. The boy might have eeled his way through a narrow crevice along the cliffs; the monster was used to hunting prey who tried to escape him thus. As a rule, the prey did not reckon on the monster's slender fingers and opposable thumbs.

On the other hand, the prey only did such things when they saw him. The monster had not realized that the boy had seen him. The monster felt a flutter of confusion and unease.

The monster swung forward and leapt from the cliff edge. He landed on the lower ledge with a crack like a thunder, and all the pebbles skittered an inch to the left or the right. He now stood where the boy had last stood. There was no sign of the boy.

There was, however, a gap in the cliff face: a crevice gouged out by the running waters of a past rainy season. A higher mass of rock had collapsed against the top of the opening, providing a crude archway and virtual invisibility from above.

The monster shattered the roof with one blow and pushed himself through the gap. Rock crumbled away at his rough passage. He dragged himself from the confines of the cliff and stepped forward to stand on the wider avenue on the other side. Instead, he fell.

He went down with a crash and a roar, and part of the cliff face came with him. Rocks and monster together tumbled into the pit's net.

The monster hit the ground with an earth-rumbling crash. A second later, he thrashed upright, and by then it was too late. His movements had wrapped him more tightly within the netting strung beneath the deceptive ground, and its weighted edges had snarled themselves around his limbs. He wrestled with the net, and the net tightened its grip.

The monster collapsed against the ground and panted heavily. He thought of fire, and the threads of the net began to smoke.

"I wouldn't do that," came a high-pitched voice from above him. "I wrapped the selkie hairs over a framework of binesi bones, and I do not think they take fire well."

The monster strained against the netting and looked up to see the boy perched on a ledge. The dirt and dust thrown up by the monster's plunge was still thick in the air, and the boy was surrounded by a cloud of sunlit motes.

The monster howled with terrible promise.

"Yes, I know," the boy said sedately. "I have interfered with your noble plans to eat me. You cannot be too hungry, though. After all, you dined upon my chocobo only yesterday. I hope he was a toothsome morsel, for he was a noble steed and a difficult sacrifice. As I strung up this very net, I kept thinking of the two of you back there. I hope you made his death quick. I hope he proved a delicacy to you."

The monster growled menacingly.

"Yes, I know," the boy said. "You want to drink my blood and braid my bones into your beard. You, the great and terrible beast that roams the ends of the earth. You, the monster the southern tribes know as Blaze Walker and Four Hands. You, the creature the western sailors know as the Fire With Two Mouths. You, that one the northern philosophers call the mythical Gigas. You, that the gods named Belias. Yes, I know you."

The monster snuffled irritably.

"You don't know me, though," the boy said. "I am not like the others who have come to find you here. I have not come to kill you, Gigas. I have come to enlist you."

If the boy had expected surprise at this statement, he was disappointed. The monster shrugged and turned partly away. He was more familiar and more weary with would-be masters than the boy may have thought.

The boy drummed his heels against the cliff wall. At last, he said, "Yes, I know you. You, made to be guardian and gate-keeper of the gods, if the musty scrolls of the philosophers are to be believed. You, man and monster and mistake. You, thrown from the heavens and denied their ethereal flames. You, you are necessary."

The monster slumped sullenly.

"I had a dream two years ago," the boy continued in the sing-song cadences of someone reciting a well-rehearsed story. "I was out on the plains, watching my father's herds. Night came, and I sat among the warm bodies of the slumbering animals and watched the moon--the largest and brightest moon I have ever seen--rise over the grasslands. And perhaps I slept for a time, for it seemed to me that the moon descended to earth like a soap bubble falling to the ground. And when it hit the ground, it broke apart into smaller bubbles of light, and those bubbles spoke to me with inhuman tongues. They called me Future-King. They called me Emperor. They called me Chosen One. They said I would be lord of all the lands between the two seas, the conqueror and the unifier of all peoples in those lands."

The monster pricked one ear up.

"All I must do, they said, was come to their city," the boy said. "Just come to their fabled, hidden city. There, they would give me the tools to build an empire and a history that would ring in the ears of man long after I am dust. I shall be the selected instrument of their fate. Or so they said." The boy laughed. "And then the moon was simply a moon again, and I found myself amidst my father's slumbering animals. The next morning, I stole one of my father's knives and a wheel of my mother's cheese, and I left my tribe. I have spent two years in the world: walking across the plains, rowing as a galley slave, fighting as a merchant's guard, learning to write in the great cities of the north, winning a sword and a steed and, finally, a name. The priests named me Raithwall and promised me a grand destiny, but that one I already knew. For I have spent two years searching for the city of the gods, and at last, I have discovered it. Down in the fogged forests that lie in the farthest southern reaches, there is a city. And a gate. And a gate-keeper."

The monster looked up at the boy, and at last he realized what he had missed about the boy before. There was a gleam in the boy's eye, an unnatural light shared by madmen and prophets alike. The boy housed a flame of destiny. The monster had seen the look before; he had felt its devouring heat.

"And so I have found you, Gigas. But I have not come to command you or enslave you. I know that you have been exiled by the gods; I know that you now wail in this wilderness. And so I offer you something better. I offer you a partnership. Come with me, and help me scale the walls of Giruvegan. Come with me, and help me build an empire. I offer you a purpose and a place. I offer you my friendship. Come with me, and be not a monster any longer."

There was a silence. And then, in a voice grown cracked and acid-eaten in centuries of disuse, the monster said, "The gods are not to be trusted."

"No," the boy said easily. "I would not suspect that they are. But I shall be emperor, with the gods or without, and I believe they are a tool fitted for me. I believe the story they told me, even if I do not believe in their good intentions. And I believe in you, Gigas. I do not believe a thousand years of living like a mindless beast have robbed you of your higher instincts. The old stories say that you are loyal, so long as you are repaid with like coin. And I believe the stories."

The monster stood there, with netting fast around him and blood in his beard, and thought about things that had not troubled him since the world was young and he was new-made. Finally he said, "Tell me, first, about this kingdom you would cut from whole cloth, little princeling. Tell me about this promised empire."

The flame leapt higher in the boy's eyes, and he began to tell the monster about the nation he would build. The monster let the boy's voice spool past him and peered between the words to the other tales bound to the boy's dream. There were histories both dead and nascent, and the monster saw they shared common threads, the same pattern of rebellion and power. Images skittered through his mind: a broken plinth, a rusty crown, a sunken city.

The monster had heard this story before, and he would hear it again. It was either part of the same long story that unwound into eternity, or it was one of the many echos of a forgotten story, like concentric halos marking a stone vanished within well-water.

The monster let the boy tell his story, and then the monster opened his two terrible mouths to say--

*****

"Hello, Princess. Sweet dreams?"

Ashe started and cursed herself for starting in the same spurt of consciousness.

"Keeping a close watch on the camp, are we?" Balthier asked in a voice that was as light and as sharp as a stiletto blade. "Keeping an eye out for vagrant monsters and wandering Imperials?"

Ashe crossed her arms furiously. "I only had my eyes closed for a moment. I was still awake."

"Well," Balthier drawled, "I perceive you possess strange and powerful abilities of sight, Princess, because your eyes have been closed for ten minutes. I stood here and watched you. You will be pleased to know that you do not snore when you sleep. You make little kitten-like rumbles. They are oddly endearing."

Ashe's retort was cut off at a motion behind Balthier. They both turned to look at Fran, still prone under the stars, as she raised one leisurely hand with every finger unfurled. After a beat, she lowered the hand. Her face did not turn from the sky.

"Ah," Balthier said. "My better half corrects me. You have only been asleep for five minutes, not ten. Clearly insufficient time for an Archades death squad to slit our throats while we slept. My apologies, my dear."

They stared at one another, and their teeth gleamed in the moonlight. Ashe had drawn her lips back in a snarl. Balthier was grinning.

"I suppose you wish to take your watch early," Ashe said, spitting out the words.

"Gods, no," Balthier said. "I wish to take my watch at the appointed time. Which would be...now, by my calculations."

Ashe shot an involuntary, incredulous look at the sky, and, indeed, the stars had wheeled into a later position than she had realized.

"Though I know that it is far too easy," Balthier said, "to lose track of the hour in the depths of dreams. Time moves differently there, and--"

There was another motion behind Balthier as Fran's hand rise once more, this time to perform a strange undulating wave motion that Ashe did not understand. It seemed to make sense to Balthier. His head was turned away, but Ashe saw the back of his right jaw bone, scored by the moon, shift as he wore several different expressions with great rapidity.

When he turned back to Ashe, he wore his familiar mask of sardonic solemnity, but his voice, when he spoke, held a strange note: nearly raw, almost tender.

"Pray, Princess," he said. "I think we are all unraveled with exhaustion, and you most of all. Sleep, Princess. I will take my watch."

"I wasn't asleep before," Ashe said stubbornly. "I was just thinking about something."

"I know, Princess, I know," Balthier crooned. "Some problems are best considered in the dark. But now it is time for me to bear the mantle of responsibility and for you to sleep."

He offered his hand, and she grimly took it as she rose from her stone seat. "Just so we are clear--" she started.

"Everything, Princess, is crystal," he said. "Now go to bed, Ashe. You are off-duty. I duly promise that I will eat my heart and wring my hands enough for the both of us."

She snatched her hand back, and his teeth grinned in the moonlight. She stalked away.

Even wrapped in her bedding, just past Penelo's warm form, it took Ashe some time before she fell asleep. She listened to the distant rise and fall of Basch's reassuring breath. She felt Fran's steady awareness, like a blanket across her companions, as the viera watched the stars. And Ashe saw, from the corner of her eye, the moonlit edges of Balthier's face, turned not to regard the sky but to watch her.

The Gigas stone pulsed faintly by her side.

But eventually she closed her eyes, and her restless dreams turned to the homeland she would recover. If monsters or ghosts whispered stories in her ear while she slept, they were no different from the tales she already knew.

*****

"...and so finally the High Queen climbed the sacred mountain, but there her companions and she discovered a most foul treachery." Ovelia yawned. "And I think...maybe...I will continue this story tomorrow night. If...if you still want to hear it, I mean."

"I still want to hear it," Delita said in the dark. "It was a good story, Ovelia."

"Thank you," Ovelia whispered.

"I had a friend, when I was a child," Delita said musingly, "and he would tell stories like that, only he could make them up off the top of his head. He and his sister both. They were such strange stories; I wonder now how they thought of them. And we would say, when we were children, that as soon as we grew up, we would go on our own fantastic quests. Together, as a family. He and his sister, along with me and mine."

"You have a sister?" Ovelia asked sleepily.

"Yes," he said shortly. "She is dead now."

Ovelia said nothing to this, but the thought that Delita had once had a sister made him seem somewhat different, slightly more vulnerable. He seemed more like someone with stories of his own.

"Good night, Delita."

"Good night, Ovelia," he said. "Sweet dreams."

*****

"...and then they had a most fantastic fight over a waterfall, and Good King Delita drove his sword through the gullet of the enemy commander, who was naught but aristocratic scum, and then--"

But Merlose and Joshua are destined to be deprived of the grisly particulars, for just at that moment, Hardin stops speaking. He tilts his head to one side and looks for all the world as if he is listening to something, but Merlose can hear nothing. The room is silent. There is not even the sound of monsters in the dark.

"Damn," Hardin says suddenly. "He has penetrated further than I expected. We need to go deeper now."

"Deeper?"

"Yes, yes," Hardin says impatiently as he stands. "Deeper into the city. Come along, Joshua. And you, you come here."

Merlose icily endures the indignity of having her wrists bound once again. "How much deeper do we go?"

"To the center," Hardin says. "Eventually. But no worries, lassie. So long as you stay close to me, there will be nothing that harms you."

Merlose snorts.

"Now," Hardin says, turning to Joshua. "Are you coming?"

The boy nods enthusiastically.

"And you, milady?" he asks acidly. "Will you be joining us on this pleasure excursion?"

"It seems I have no choice," Merlose says.

"No," Hardin agrees. "But your compliance is appreciated, all the same. Come along, then, children. And mind your steps." He turns and begin to pound down the crumbling steps. His magelight dances beside his head.

Joshua scrambles after him like a puppy. Merlose follows at a more stately pace, her hands tied tightly before her.

As she steps down, she sees one of the emerald clockwork monsters. This straggler is lurching along the edge of the wall and before it disappears down an inky crevice, Merlose sees a glimpse of its many shiny legs pumping along its side.

She thinks about that creature as she stumbles behind Hardin along wet tunnels and sunless roads. She keeps inspecting it within her mind. It has stories locked within it, she knows. Every bone, every eye, every drop of ichor is a key.

If I get out of here, she promises herself, I'll learn more about them. I'll teach myself about them. Have they ever been studied before? What things will they be able to tell us? She feels a buzz of giddiness.

And as she walks through the dark, the monsters of the sunken city rise from their scummed ponds and watch her pass.

*****

"...and so then, the courageous secret agent was carried deep within the cursed city. She could have fought her way free at any time, but she bravely imperiled herself for the sake of the mute prince, who was under a terrible curse. The ghosts of the city came forth and told her their horrible stories, but the agent was unquailing. For she had a secret power: she could read the hearts of all around her. But she also had a terrible destiny, and she had been brought to the city to bear a terrible blessing."

"Terribly gothic," said the young man. His leathers were stained and travel-worn, but the hilt of the sword sticking out of his scabbard was tooled in silver, and anyone might have been forgiven for thinking he was a knight.

"Shhh," said the young woman. "It's my story, after all." She was leading a saddled chocobo. He occasionally tried to eat her hair.

The road stretched before and behind them.

"And what's her partner doing during all this, may I ask?"

"Nothing much," the young woman said cheerfully. "But he's hardly the hero of this piece."

"Naturally," her brother said.

"Well, I think it's better than your effort," she said. "I didn't even understand half the things going on. There were all these assassinations and double-crosses and coups. And everything important happens away from the heroes, who are just muddling around and doing unimportant things in the countryside!"

"So sorry, my dear. My next effort will be...it will be about a pair of poor but scrappy orphans who are sucked into another kingdom when they read a magic text. There, they become the princes of different houses and are unknowingly forced to war against one another. But then they discover the deception and team up to destroy the evil force that brought them there. The end."

She said nothing. The chocobo warbled happily.

"Only with more details, of course," he said thoughtfully. "And maybe some magic animal companions. Magic talking animal companions. Who just want to be friends with our heroes. And have tea parties."

She still said nothing, and at last, her brother looked over to her. "And...oh. Here, give me the reins."

Her head lowered, she handed him the reins. She was trembling; her breath came in shallow gasps.

They stopped moving, and the inquisitive chocobo made a preliminary taste of the young man's hair. He batted the beak away casually and continued to watch his sister. The trembling became more pronounced.

She shuddered convulsively and then went perfectly still. The young man continued to regard her as he absently stroked the chocobo's neck. The chocobo, well-used to this routine, happily twisted so that the young man could reach his best spots.

Around them, the birds were singing from the trees. The bees were buzzing sleepily over budding flowers. In a field beside the dusty road, sheep stood like distant clouds with stubby legs. Anyone might have been forgiven for thinking the scene bucolic.

When the young woman lifted her head, her eyes had rolled back so that only the whites were visible.

"Good afternoon," the young man said wearily.

"Thrice the stone breaks," said the young woman, but now she spoke in a different voice: a voice that crackled like burning wood, a voice that rang like shattered glass. "Thrice the unborn lamb is undone."

"Jolly good," said the young man.

"And you, you will be thrown down at last, like the wheat before the scythe, and blood will seep from the wells, and twelve shall be the number of the handmaidens who bring it forth like water, and--" The woman's head snapped back abruptly, and she went silent.

"Ah," the young man chirped. "That was quick."

The young woman lowered her head and ruefully rubbed the back of her neck. She opened her brown eyes and focused on her brother.

"Well," she said, in a high, shrill voice. "Well! Did I bespeak any good gossip?"

"It was the standard fare," her brother said.

She laughed a trifle hysterically and sank her face against the chocobo's neck. The chocobo hummed against her.

"You are getting faster," her brother said. "It didn't even have a chance to get into the boiling lakes or the flaming rain."

"Oh, yes," she said. "There's a trick to it, I think. You just have to...well. It's hard to explain. It's as if you adopt a certain frame of mind and pull it right from under his feet. Her feet. It's feet."

"Ah," he said.

"Ah," she agreed. "What did our friend say, though?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary," he said. "It was the usual drill. Talked about bleeding wells."

"God," she said. "Our friend has a fixation on wells."

"I wouldn't be surprised," he agreed.

"And it just repeats itself, over and over," she said. "As if it's trying to remake itself through words alone. It's as if it thinks, if it says the thing, then it will happen."

"Mmmm," he said.

She pushed herself away from the chocobo and began to calmly smooth back her disordered hair. "I do hate our friend, though," she said conversationally. "The feeling comes over me, and I know it's about to come out. Like knowing you're about to be sick and feeling that nausea grow and grow... I hate it. I thought it would be gone now, after everything, but...no. It has infected me."

"We have been marked," he said tonelessly.

"I have been marked," she said a little sharply. "You...you could go back, if you wanted."

"No, sister," he said gently. "I truly could not."

She looked at him and then away. "I suppose not. But at least you don't have that voice whispering in your ear when you sleep. It tells me such things."

"I know."

She giggled suddenly. "Oh, but it's all old material by now. It doesn't seem to realize that, by the fiftieth iteration of the plan to conquer the world, it has all gotten a bit boring. And I get the thing back, of course, for I just tell it all of our stories. And our stories are superior. I think," and she giggled again, "I think it has even getting interested despite himself. It wants to know how they turn out."

"Are you stringing our friend along?" the young man asked with amusement. "Good. Serves it right. Come on, there's a town over that next hill."

"Oh, yes," the young woman said as she fell in step beside him. "Our friend won't admit it yet, of course, but it wants to know how everything will turn out for the captive dragons and the marauding princesses. Strange to think of our friend that way. Strange to think that it has a personality."

"Maybe our friend is developing one," the young man said. "Maybe we were not the only ones changed."

"Hmmm," she said. The chocobo trotted behind them, and now mad-eyed goats were ambling down the hill to take a look at them.

"But I still worry," she said softly. "I still worry that I'll lose myself. That I will be submerged within him again. That I will forget myself."

"Unlikely," he said, and he reached out to tightly grasp her hand. "I'll find you again, if you're ever lost. And if you forget, I'll remind you. I know all your stories."

"Not all of them," she said tartly. "Speaking of which, I didn't get a chance to finish my story. You see, the subterranean city began to fall apart, and so the brave and beautiful secret agent had to reach the surface. It was a hard and arduous journey to the sunlight, as you might imagine..."

The two itinerant children, followed by the chocobo, passed over the hill and into another story.

(fin)