Not a light, refreshing drizzle, nor yet a fierce and swift cloudburst; it was dull, plodding, *steady* rain, that had come on at some point during the night, pounded the road into mud, and showed every sign of doing the same thing to the health and good humor of anyone stupid enough to set out in it.

    Lina Inverse's first reaction, on hearing it on the roof, was to roll over, pull the covers over her head, and go back to sleep.
 

    The rain was still there when her stomach finally prodded her into getting up, getting dressed, and wandering down into the inn's common room to see if there was anything there suitable for eating.

    Despite the fact that both Gourry and Amelia were up and downstairs ahead of her, there was, and plenty of it. For a while there was no sound at that table save for the noises of eating to the soft accompaniment of Zelgadis (who had undoubtedly been awake before all of them) drinking his coffee.

    Sylphiel didn't show up until Amelia had finished her breakfast and the two others were down to the last few plates. She looked at the table a little incredulously before tentatively saying "Gourry-sama?"

    "Here," Amelia said, moving a little closer to Lina. "Scootch over next to me, Zelgadis-san, and make room for Sylphiel-san."

    Zel obediently scootched, and the black-haired cleric seated herself between him and the blond swordsman. "Um... am I holding you up?"

    "Mno, s'fine," Lina said around a mouthful of smoked salmon on the regional specialty roll -- a strange torus-shaped thing called 'bagel.' She swallowed. "Order breakfast."

    "You'll probably finish right after we do," Gourry agreed. "Or would it be right before?" His brow furrowed.

    "Around the same time," Zelgadis told him, finishing the dregs of that particular cup of coffee. "Waiter!"

    The chimera had been quite right: Sylphiel nels Lahda pushed her plate away at almost the exact moment that the blond and redhead declared themselves full.

    "I'm stuffed," Lina yawned, stretching. "Well, there doesn't seem to be much sense in starting out this morning."

    "It's kind of wet, isn't it?" Gourry agreed.

    "Very wet," Amelia confirmed. "This is the kind of day when, when I was little, Oneechan and I would stay in the big nursery room and Nanny or Mother would come and tell us stories."

    "My great-grandmother used to do that, too," Gourry said. "What a coernkydink."

    "Well, there's not much else *to* do in this kind of weather," Zelgadis pointed out. "My stepgrandmother always knew the best indoor stories, just the way Granny Jada in the house next door knew the best outdoor ones."

    "Does it rain like this a lot in this part of the world?" Sylphiel asked.

    "This is the season for it," Lina informed her. "A nasty surprise the first time I ran into it; I wasn't used to it any more than you are."

    "It's worse by the coast," Amelia said. "I think the weather comes in south of Sairaag and starts dropping rain as soon as it can, so there's not as much left when you're as inland as we are."

    "That's right," Zelgadis agreed.

    "It can't get over the mountains," Lina added.

    "My grandfather, and then my father would tell me stories when it was snowing outside," Sylphiel offered. "About all kinds of things."

    "Mother's stories were always the best," Amelia said. "They were much more interesting than Nanny's or Aunt Opabinia's."

    "I don't think I've heard that much about your mother," Lina said.

    "I know a little," Zelgadis said. "That she came out of Ceiphied-knows-where and married your father, and that she was involved in a lot of public works before she died."

    "Your mother's dead, Amelia?" Gourry said, looking distressed. "That's too bad."

    This was not exactly answerable.

    "I think I have heard of her, then," Sylphiel said. "Didn't most of your father's family oppose his marrying her, and he did it anyway?"

    "That's right," Amelia said. "She'd told them that she was the Warden of the Marches of the West, but she never said exactly where that was and nobody else knew, either. They wanted Daddy to marry someone from an important noble family or from another country or from a really rich family like Clan Inverse -- "

    Lina swallowed wrong and started a paroxysm of coughing.

    "Are you all right?" Gourry asked.

    "Any relation?" Zel asked.

    "We're... sort of a branch way out on the edge," Lina answered the second question. "Yeah, Gourry, I'm fine."

    " -- but Daddy said he would marry Mother or no one, even if she came to the wedding in rags and barefoot."

    "It was one of the most romantic stories I'd ever heard," Sylphiel sighed.

    "And then she became universally beloved among the common people?" Zelgadis offered, in a tone that suggested that he found it very pat.

    "Not just like that," Amelia said. "She was about as tall as I am now -- she used to ride on Daddy's shoulder -- "

    The other two girls at the table had the same sort of stunned look on their faces that they had had when they first saw the reality of the Prince Regent of Sailoon for themselves.

    " -- and she had a terrible temper, even worse than Lina-san's -- "

    "Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

    " -- and she wasn't really fond of dealing with a lot of people at once. But she was very fair, and she built the first sickhall in Sailoon -- "

    "What's a sickhall?" Sylphiel asked.

    "It's like a large hostel with lots of individual bedrooms and a whole bunch of healers and physicians and chirurgeons and apothecaries and nurses in it all day. So when you get really sick or badly injured, instead of staying at home and trying to get a healer or a nurse or a physician there, you go to the sickhall and they're right there to take care of you, and you don't have to pay the sickhall that much because the Royal Treasury helps pay all the people working there and for supplies. It's a great in-no-vation, and we've been putting some up in other cities too."

    "Wasn't that expensive?" Lina asked.

    "Well, before Mother built the sickhall, she and Daddy changed the tax system so tax gatherers got paid a steady fee instead of just whatever was left over from what they collected after they got the amount the Treasury wanted. I don't quite see why, but somehow when they did that they made taxes lower and even more money went into the treasury than was going in before."

    "Yes, *that* would have made them very popular," Zelgadis agreed. "Except with the people who used to gather taxes."

    "I think some of them were mad," Amelia acknowledged. "But I *still* don't see why. And Mother enlarged the sewer system so it went under *all* of Sailoon City because she hated the way it smelled, and she paved the city streets because she didn't like walking in the mud."

    "I don't like walking in the mud," Gourry said. "Cobblestones are nice when it's wet, except when they're slippery. Then it's not as much fun."

    "Uh... yeah, Gourry-san. Right."

    "All that paving and digging must have been very expensive," Zel remarked.

    "Well, she used a lot of magic with that too."

    "Your mother was good at magic?" Sylphiel asked.

    "She was really good. Mother knew lots and lots of spells, and she was very powerful. She could even see glimpses of the future now and then," Amelia finished up. "Like in the story she told where Rezo was the bad guy."

    "What story was this?" Zelgadis asked, curious.

    "Oh, it was a really good story," Amelia said happily. "She put Oneechan and me in it, and one of the heroines' names was Lina."

    "What was the other heroine's name?" Lina asked.

    "Lala."

    "Oh, no *wonder* you -- "

    "Hey!" Gourry protested.

    "I don't think I know that story," Sylphiel commented, breaking the tension.

    "Mother made it up when Uncle Randy complained that she shouldn't be telling us so many stories about guys falling in love with other guys," Amelia explained. "I don't see why, because they were good stories, but anyway, she made up a story about a princess bride instead."

    Her four listeners had blinked a couple of times during this.

    "I know a story about a princess bride," Sylphiel whispered to Lina, leaning across Gourry. "But it doesn't sound much like this one."

    "Why don't you tell us the story?" Lina suggested. "It's not as if we have anything else to do while it's so rainy."

    "Okay!" Amelia said brightly. "The Princess Bride. Chapter One: The Bride... "
 

    Lala grew up on a small farm in Ookami. The year that she was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a singer named Minmay. She had the face of an angel, the grace of a Ryuuzoku, and the voice of a Mazoku. She also was extremely determined to become a famous singer, and it didn't take the greatest warrior of the land long to notice that there was someone really extraordinary singing in the streets.

    The hero was also involved with the general of that country, who was not as beautiful as Minmay but was far wiser. She instantly set spies to find out her rival's weakness, and soon she discovered it.

    Candy.

    Soon Minmay found dishes of candy everywhere she went, and people eager to offer it to her in every household. Before the warrior's bewildered eyes, she went from a slim young thing to a happy, walking sofa within a few months, changed her career from idol singer to opera diva, married a confectioner, and lived happily ever after. (So did the warrior, when he had wed the general -- proof that she was, indeed, wiser.)

    The year Lala turned ten, the most beautiful woman lived in Kaffolay, the daughter of a successful tea merchant. This girl's name was Kei, and her skin was of a tawny perfection unseen in Kaffa for two hundred years. (There have only been eleven perfect complexions in all of Kaffa since accurate accounting began.) Kei was seventeen the year the Kaffe River flooded her hometown of Kaffolay and all the surrounding area. The girl and her skin survived, although her will to stay there did not; she ran away and signed up as a tro-con for the Three-Double-A, gaining the chance to see the universe, shoot really big guns, and get blamed for more disasters than Clan Inverse runs through in eighty years.
 

    "It's not *that* many," Lina muttered. "Well, except for my aunt's sister Jacelyn in Korel Free Port overseas."

    "Maybe they were thinking of her," Gourry offered.

    Lina and Zelgadis stared at him, wondering if they had actually heard Gourry say something tactful.

    Nahhh.
 

    The year Lala turned twelve, the most beautiful woman in the world was a teenaged street brawler called Ayukawa, or Madoka the Pick by those she had defeated. All that fighting had given her muscle tone and stripped the fat from her bones, leaving her lithe and beautiful. As she grew older, she had become bored with brawling and nearly ceased when she was involved in a terrible road accident that smashed the bones of her face and left her badly scarred. Her high-school sweetheart married her the next day, and told her that the beauty of her heart had always overshadowed her face for the next ten years. Considering that he was an esper, it might even have been true.

    The year Lala turned fourteen, the most beautiful woman in the world was named Priscilla, and she was a mercenary with a small, elite quartet. Unfortunately, good as she was, she got in a fight with someone who was better. In order to beat them, she went out and had herself turned into a chimaera, and then nearly went insane trying to deal with her new potential --
 

    Amelia broke off, horrified. Lina and Sylphiel found something very interesting about the tabletop. Gourry just looked clueless.

    "Go on," Zelgadis said evenly. "What happened next?"

    "Um, she managed to pull herself back, and then she and her allies utterly destroyed their enemies in a battle involving giant golems, alchymical formulae, and giving a device with the destructive power of a Mega Brand into the hands of one Ohta -- which Mother said was not *quite* as stupid as insulting the Rabbit General Bun-Bun to his face, but not by much."
 

    When Lala was sixteen, the most beautiful woman in the world was Marta of Xoana. She had hordes of suitors who compared her to a rose carved out of ice and the keen blade of a sword and such, but she favored none of them above a smile. And then one day one of them exclaimed that without question she must be the most ideal thing ever made.

    Marta, flattered, examined herself all night in her mirror. It took her until daybreak, but she concluded that the young man was right: she was, through no real fault of her own, perfect.

    As she watched the sun rise, she felt happier than she had in ages. "Not only am I perfect," she said to herself, "I'm probably the first perfect person in the whole entire history of the universe. Not a part of me could stand improving, how lucky I am to be perfect and rich and sought after and sensitive and young and... "

    Young?

    The mist began to rise as she began to think. Well, of course I'll always be sensitive, and I'll always be rich, but I can't quite see how I'll always be young. And if I'm not young, I won't be perfect any more. And what else is there? What indeed? Marta's brow furrowed in desperate thought. It was the first time in her life her brow had ever had to furrow, and when she realized what she was doing she ran back to her mirror and spent the whole morning making sure she hadn't done herself any permanent damage. Even when she was sure, she wasn't as happy as she had been.

    She had begun to fret.

    The first worry lines appeared within a fortnight; the first wrinkles, within a few months. She married the man who had accused her of sublimity -- her monarch, as it happened -- and nagged him for the rest of her life.
 

    "Well, that explains Martina," Lina said.

    Zelgadis nodded.

    "But -- " Sylphiel began.

    "Trust me, you should have seen her *before* she had to grow up," Lina interrupted.
 

    Lala at this time was barely in the top hundred, and that was mostly on potential; sure, she had lovely long blonde hair, but she practically never brushed it or scrubbed behind her ears, preferring to spend the time out riding her horse (which she had named Horse; Lala wasn't much for imagination) or tormenting the girl who lived and worked on the farm. The farmhand's name was Lina, but Lala never called her that.
 

    "Isn't that a great beginning?"

    "Sure, Amelia," Gourry said happily. "Except the tormenting part doesn't sound that nice."

    "It gets better," Amelia reassured him.

    "Why was Lina working on a farm?" Lina Inverse asked.

    "Her sister left her there."

    "Oh, that's all right then."
 

    "Farmboy, groom my horse."

    "I'm a girl, you idiot!"

    Lala blinked. "Are you sure? You don't have that sort of a figure." She looked down at her own, which had developed early and been refining itself since.

    "LALA, YOU IDIOT!"

    Mistress Face, please let me introduce you to Mistress Fist.

    Variations and expansions of 'Lala, you idiot' were all Lina ever said to her.

    "Farm... uh... girl, make me some dinner." Lala paused and looked at the redhead, who was busy forking hay. "... please?"

    "Lala, you idiot, we ate everything there was in the house for lunch. I can't make dinner out of hay."
 

    "Can *you*, Lina?" Gourry asked.

    "No." She looked thoughtful. "There was a sorcerer in Sairaag who was working on a spell like that, but... "

    "He was in town when Rezo's copy... " Sylphiel verified.
 

    "Farmhand, fetch me that pitcher."

    Lina sighed. "Lala, you idiot, it's right in front of your nose. If it were a snake, it would have bitten you."

    That day, Lala was amazed to discover that when Lina said "Lala, you idiot," what she actually meant was "You're my best friend in the whole world." And even more amazing was the day when she realized that Lina was truly her best friend as well.
 

    "I can't remember if it was amazing or not," Gourry said, puzzled. "I mean, it's just the way Lina is, right?"

    Lina stared at him.

    "She's kind of short-tempered and stuff, but I don't see how we could not be friends."

    Lina quickly patted his arm, then glared at the other occupants of the table as if daring them to comment.

    "This is all very warm and fuzzy," Zelgadis said, "but where's the stuff about Rezo? Where's the story?" He paused and then asked suspiciously, "Is this one of those girls' stories?"

    "It's coming, it's coming," Sylphiel reassured him. "Keep your shirt on."

    Gourry blinked. "Why were you taking your shirt off, Zelgadis?"

    "*Where* did you get a phrase like that from?" Lina hissed. "And how do you know what's coming?"

    "My grandfather used to tell me a story like this," Sylphiel explained, "and that's what he'd say when I got impatient."
 

    Once she realized this, Lala hung around Lina and did friend-type things more often. She cleaned herself up -- because Lina refused to be seen willingly with anyone who looked as if they'd just been dragged through a haystack backwards -- and while she had often been mildly depressed before, since none of the other girls for miles around were nice to her --
 

    "Why not?" Gourry asked.

    "It's kind of hard to be nice to someone while you're gnawing your liver out and hoping at least *one* boy will be nice to you for a change," Amelia explained.
 

    -- now that she had a friend, she brightened and grew happier every day. Within a week, she was in the top fifty. Within a month, the top twenty, and rising steadily.

    Neither Lina nor Lala were the sort of people who *like* living on a farm all their lives, so they decided to go off adventuring, build up a reputation, wrong rights, depress the oppressed, fight with evil, rob the rich to give to themselves, and in general have a fun time.

    Unfortunately, neither of them had any money. Lina decided to go overseas, acquire a reputation and some cash, and send for her friend to join her. It was a very emotional time for poor Lala.
 

    "I don't believe this," Zelgadis muttered.

    Sylphiel elbowed him (and then winced, hissing).
 

    "I'm afraid I'll never see you again," Lala said, eyes quivering.

    "Nonsense," Lina told her. "Of course you will. I will always come for you... so you'd better be ready to pick up and leave."

    "But how can you be so sure?"

    "Lala, you idiot, we have Ishin-denshin, such as only the closest of siblings or the truest of lovers or the best of friends share. Do you think this happens every day?"

    And while, as I said, Lala had been amazing before, it was nothing to the way she looked after Lina's departure. She exercised daily, and it was hard and boring and she thought her arms would fall off, but she kept at it because suppose she got all the way overseas and Lina said "Look at you! You get tired out walking uphill and you can barely wield a broom, let alone a sword. I'm going to forget I ever knew you and be partners with Cloud Strife."
 

    "Cloud Strife," Gourry said. "Now where have I heard that name?"

    The rest of the party shrugged, for once equally clueless.

    "I don't know either," Amelia said.
 

    And not only did she brush her hair, she brushed it with two hundred strokes every day until it was thick and shining and golden and fell like a waterfall, and then taught herself to choose outfits that were both flattering and comfortable, because what if she got all the way there and Lina said "You look like an escapee from a rag-bag. I'm going to ignore you and go into partnership with Millennium Feria Nocturne y Stargazer."
 

    "Milly -- " Gourry began.

    "No clue," everyone chorused.
 

    By the end of the first week, she was in fifteenth place. By the end of the second, in tenth. She moved up to ninth and then eighth easily enough, but then was deadlocked until she got a letter from Lina, and the sheer burst of happiness from that bumped her up three places.

    For more than anything else, it was her feelings for Lina that was responsible for Lala's transformation. The letter itself was no example of sterling artistry -- "I am at the port; wish you were here. The sun is shining; wish you were here. The food's great here; wish you were here, provided you didn't steal MY dinner." -- but Lala understood it perfectly.

    And then one day, Lala returned from her ride to find her grandfather reading a letter.

    "Is it from Lina?" she asked. "What does it say?"

    Her grandfather looked at her. "I'm afraid Lina's ship was attacked. By the Dread Pirate Emeraldas."

    "Who never leaves captives alive," Lala said very quietly. "I wonder how they killed her? Sword? Arrow? Magic spell? Maybe they cut her throat while she was asleep? Or did she drown? She was very brave; it probably took them several men... oh, don't mind me." She wandered up to her room and locked herself in. For days she neither slept nor ate.
 

    "Murdered by pirates is good," Zelgadis said.

    "What do you mean, 'good'? She got killed off in the first chapter! What sort of Lina is that?" the redhead demanded.

    "Maybe she won't stay dead," Sylphiel offered. "You didn't."

    "Oh. Yeah."
 

    When Lala finally came out, she had lost some weight. Her face, earlier lovely in its joy, had been stamped with sorrow and was the richer for it. She understood the nature of suffering and the anguish of what might have been. She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years. She didn't care.

    "I will never care that much about anyone else, ever again," Lala said.

    She never did.
 

    "Chapter Two: The Groom," Amelia said, then paused. "Mother said that usually this is the part where you'd have the history of Ookami, but you sort of had to have been there in order to enjoy it. She told it to me once when I was having trouble going to sleep, and I dozed off in no time."

    "Then by all means skip that bit," Sylphiel said.

    "Please do," Lina agreed.

    "Huh?"

    "Never mind, Gourry-sama. Amelia-san is going to continue the story."
 

    Nobody knew where Rezo the Red Priest had come from; he had arrived in Ookami as part of his wanderings, stopped by to help King Gorlimac, and stayed.
 

    "Gorlimac?" Zelgadis said.

    "Isn't that the king of Mipross?" Lina asked, twisting her face.

    "Uh... yes, it is! He's married to my Cousin Mary," Gourry said, smiling happily as he placed a reference for a change.

    Lina's, Zelgadis', and Sylphiel's eyes bugged out.

    "G -- Gourry-sama, you have a cousin who's a *queen*?" Sylphiel finally managed.

    "Oh yes. She's my third cousin twice removed... or is that fourth cousin once removed? Well, it's *something* like that, and she always comes to the monthly family reunions unless she's making a stated visit to one of the mainland countries."

    "Don't you mean a visit of state?" Zelgadis asked.

    "That's what I said, a stated visit."

    "Gourry, *you're* from Mipross?" Lina asked.

    "Um, well, sort of."

    "Mipross is full of Gabrievs," Amelia clarified. "Great-Aunt Aspasia said that if you ever run into one, it's a safe bet that he or she's from Mipross, and that they do say that you can't swing a cat in Mipross Town without hitting a Gabriev."

    "My cousin Teddy and I tried that once," Gourry said. "We'd just gotten Tama going when we whacked her right into Cousin Larry, and he got REALLY mad. Then she threw up all over all three of our's feet, and he got even madder. And then Mom found out because we had to have her do a healing on Tama, and she got even madder than Cousin Larry because we could have killed Tama and you should never ever swing a cat."

    This, unsurprisingly, reduced his audience to stunned silence.

    "Uh, anyway... " Amelia finally said, "although Rezo was able to take care of the immediate problems..."
 

    Gorlimac's main complaint was old age, and no one has ever come up with a cure for *that* to this very day. Since he and Queen Mary had no children, he adopted Rezo as his heir,which pleased everyone in the kingdom who cared about such things except for all the miracle men who got put out of business; Rezo said they were unphilosophical.

    For Rezo's own, *philosophical* researches, he built himself a secret underground laboratory with five levels. The first level below ground was devoted to white magic, and to clerical skills. Within it were many items of power and so forth, some of which were highly dangerous for a normal person to use.

    The second level was devoted to shamanic practices, ranging from the simple books of spells such as Lighting or Flare Arrow, to the more dangerous such as golems, Copy Homunculus, and so forth, and so on.

    The third level was devoted to black magic; not only spells of destruction, but spells that called up black and slimy Things that could be forced to one's command, Things that eat at one's mind if one keeps them too long.

    The fourth level below ground was given over to the Forbidden Magics. Spells of forced shifting, spells of mind-washing, spells of time-twisting, spells calling on powers imperfectly bound -- many of which had not been used since the Kouma War. And one spell for the most powerful sword in existence.
 

    "Ragna Blade," Lina said. "Gotta be Ragna Blade."

    "Probably," Amelia agreed.

    "Forbidden Magics?" Zelgadis asked, face keen on the trail of a possibility.

    "No, Zelgadis-san!" Sylphiel protested. "Most of them are far too dangerous, and better left sealed!"

    "My sister told me that my mother said," Lina amplified, "that after the Kouma War, people more or less got together, worked out which spells didn't have an acceptable return ratio for the risk or were just too nasty, and put an interdiction on them. Exactly *which* spells were interdicted depends on where in the world you are, but most of the basic ones tend to stay the same, and for a long time afterwards people were wary of trying *any* new spells.

    "Come to think of it, if you go far east enough, there's supposed to be some place where they still keep people with the talent to hack spells under ward. There are also supposed to be more places to *find* the older spells on the eastern continent, too."

    "East?" Zelgadis asked. "East you run into the desert."

    Lina rolled her eyes. "There's a *sea* to the northeast."

    "Yes, so?"

    "Did you switch brains with Gourry when I wasn't looking? There's more land *across* that sea!"

    "Across?" Zelgadis said.

    "Sea?" Sylphiel asked.

    "You mean... sail east?" Amelia wondered.

    Lina sighed. "They *told* me most of the continent had a sort of blind spot in that direction, but I didn't realize... yes, sail east, across the sea."

    "Wouldn't you run into the barrier?"

    Gourry blinked at Zelgadis. "What barrier?"

    "The one the Mazoku Lords set up to keep Suiryuuoh in while Maryuuoh Gaav attacked her," Sylphiel explained.

    "But they didn't want to lock *Gaav* in -- at least not then they didn't -- " Lina explained, "so they left him a back door, and that's what we use."

    "How can you have a back door in a magical barrier?" Zelgadis said, completely puzzled.

    "Maybe there's a tunnel under it?" Amelia offered.

    "I don't think you could have a tunnel in the sea," Sylphiel frowned. "The water would fall in on it. And anyway, the kekkai goes up into the air, so it must go down into the earth as well."

    "Of course it's not a tunnel." Lina rolled her eyes. "You sail to a certain point in the sea, and suddenly you're twenty leagues east of where you were and on the other side of the barrier. It works the same way coming back, too."

    "You mean there's actually a route through the barrier?" Amelia was starting to look excited. "I should tell Daddy about this!"

    "If it was meant to be a way for Gaav to get in and out," Zelgadis wondered, "why didn't they close it when he rebelled?"

    "I think they'd forgotten about it," Lina shrugged. "If most of the continent never thinks about it, maybe they do too."

    "Never thinks about what?" Gourry asked.

    "The secret way through the barrier to the land on the other side of the sea," Lina sighed.

    "How do YOU know about it?" Zelgadis said.

    "According to the family legend, my ancestress was told about it so she could escape the Kouma War, by some Mazoku who was sweet on her."

    "A Mazoku, sweet on someone?" Amelia's mind was clearly boggling.

    "It's a *family legend*. Who knows the real story? Anyway, her descendants are immune to the eastward forgetfulness or whatever you want to call it, so not only do they do a lot of business shipping overland to points east of Sairaag, my family has a monopoly on the trade oversea to Korel Free Port. And ships goods from there to other ports, for all I know-- we send each other semiannual reports, but I've never actually *been* there, and Ze -- the place where I lived wasn't exactly a major branch of Clan Inverse Cartel."

    Amelia, Zelgadis, and Sylphiel blinked, trying to process the new concept.

    "So if you go east, you come to a lot of water, and when you cross it you come to the port place where your family lives, and then you go east more and come to the place with the Forbidden Magics, right, Lina?"

    "*Gourry* -- actually, that is sort of right. Except I'm not *sure* that there are some there. And it's the wrong time of year for crossing the Ihrine, anyway."

    "Storms?" Zelgadis asked.

    "Like you wouldn't *believe*. And currents, and winds, and things -- you probably don't want to go there for about six months now, and the best time to make the trip *there* comes right after the best time to make the trip *back*."

    "Interesting," the stone-faced man murmured, eyes alight.
 

    The fifth and bottommost level was empty. Rezo left it so in the hope that, some day, he would discoversomething as dangerous as he was.

    He hadn't.

    Yet.
 

    "Ominous," Lina remarked approvingly.

    "It's supposed to be," Amelia told her. "Chapter Three: The Courtship -- "

    "Wasn't this chapter kind of short?" Gourry asked.

    "Well, I left out all that boring stuff at the beginning. Chapter Three: The Courtship... "
 

    Now that Rezo was the heir, he ought to acquire a wife, being of the age to have one. Queen Mary suggested that he wed Eris, the princess of Yamainu, which was the sworn enemy of Ookami -- the two had raided each other back and forth into poverty across the channel that divided their nations, except during the Dola Clan Peace, when they recouped their fortunes by teaming up and pirating every other vessel in sight.

    Anyway, Eris came over for a visit, and matters were progressing nicely right up until her wig blew off.
 

    "*Amelia* -- " Lina said, trying not to laugh.

    "That's the way Mother told it!"
 

    Rezo absolutely refused to marry a bald princess, so Eris was packed off back to Yamainu making threatening noises, and Rezo shrugged, made plans to invade Yamainu, and called for Count Shtaindorf yil Fluegelschweitzermitzengollum Sailoon, who was his closest companion.
 

    "Who's Floggleschwozzerbogglebonk?" Gourry asked.

    "He was a great-uncle of mine," Amelia explained. "He tried to kill Mother so he could marry his half-sister off to Daddy, when I was just a baby. Only Mother knew lots of nasty spells, and she blew up the assassins, and my step-aunt and great-uncle turned out to be vampires, and Mother tied my step-aunt up in the bell chamber of the temple but Great-Uncle Shtaindorf got away. And Mother never forgave them for it, either."

    Sweat beaded on Sylphiel's forehead. "What an... *interesting* family you have, Amelia-san."

    "Oh, that's nothing," Gourry said cheerfully. "I should tell you how we met Amelia sometime."

    "Or about how Prince Phil faked his own death earlier this year," Zelgadis added.

    "Shtaindorf, Shtaindorf," Lina muttered. "Hey! I think I ran into him, about four or five years back. Arrogant as all get-out, and he tried to make me into his servant... so I defeated him and carried off his treasure!"

    "Just as I might expect from you, Lina-san!" Amelia cheered. "Gallantly ridding the world of a blot on the noble name of Sailoon... with no thought for the wrath you might be invoking!"

    "Eh-heheheh..."

    "She was probably thinking of the treasure," Zelgadis muttered to Sylphiel.

    "I think there's still a reward offered for him!" Amelia concluded.

    "I wish I'd known that then!" Lina shot back.

    "Uh, excuse me... "

    "Yes, Gourry-san?"

    "How did your vampire uncle know Rizzo?"

    "The ones in the story are close companions."
 

    "Find me a wife," Rezo told Count Shtaindorf.

    "Uh... anyone in particular?"

    "Find me," Rezo clarified, "a really spectacularly beautiful wife. The sort of person who turns heads as she walks down the street. The sort of person who makes people say 'Gee, that Akahoushi no Rezo must be some guy if he has a wife like that.' The sort of person for whom men kill, suicide, and send everything to Shabranigdu for."

    A bead of sweat stood out on Shtaindorf's forehead. "I'm not sure about that last part, but there's someone pretty amazing on a farm in the south of the country."

    "Are you saying," Rezo inquired, "that you think I should marry a peasant?"

    "Why don't you come and see -- I mean, sense -- her for yourself?"

    So Rezo did.

    "You are right," he told Count Shtaindorf. "She is indeed extraordinary."

    And he went inside to propose to Lala.

    "I require a wife," he told her. "As my princess, you will have every honor and luxury that Ookami can provide."

    "What if I say no?"

    "Why, nothing," Rezo told her, smiling with such intensity that one expected cat ears to pop up on his skull. "But if you agree, your family won't have to pay taxes, and the court will steer its business your way."

    "I have sworn never to love again," Lala told him.

    "I can deal with that," Rezo shrugged. "Very few royal marriages are made for love anyway."

    "Then I will marry you."
 

    "Oh, so this is why it's a story about a bride!"

    "Uh... yeah, Gourry-san. Right. Sure."

    "But where's the part about the princess?"

    "Oh, they made Lala the Princess of Chelm so she could marry Rezo."

    "Where's Chelm?"

    "I don't know!"

    "It doesn't matter to the story. Let Amelia-san go on, Gourry-sama."

    "Chapter Four. The Preparations..."
 

    Well, what with one thing and another, three years passed.
 

    "That was quick," Lina remarked.

    "Well, it was full of boring court stuff, like the Chelm thing. If you really want to know what it was like, next time we're in Sailoon I'll hunt up Great-Aunt Ermengarde's diaries and you can read all about the fuss when Mother married Daddy -- or when Uncle Christopher married Aunt Ethel."
 

    What with one thing and another, three years passed.
 

    "Now, what was it... oh, yes... Chapter Five. The Announcement... "
 

    And at the end of those three years, the populace of Ookami City gathered in the square before the palace. On the palace balcony, first King Gorlimac, then Queen Mary, and finally Rezo appeared. The Red Priest took two steps forward, raised his arms, and addressed the crowd.

    "My people, I have at last chosen a bride -- a lady who was once a commoner, like yourselves." He paused for a moment. "But I believe you will not find her... common... now."

    The royal trumpeters blazoned a fanfare, and --
 

    "Was it 'Hail to the Victors' or 'Tanabata'?" Gourry asked.

    "Huh?" everyone else intelligently answered.

    "Most of them are cousins or friends or friends of cousins," the blond clarified, "and they only know how to play 'Tanabata' and 'Hail to the Victors.' Well, that is, they were trying to learn 'Little Goldie, the Super Goldfish' when I left, so maybe they can play *three* pieces of music now."

    "Uh... Gourry-san, these are the Royal Trumpeters of Ookami, not of Mipross. They know how to play real fanfares."
 

    The royal trumpeters blazoned a fanfare, and a figure appeared in the arch of a smaller door of one of the palace's side wings, a Lighting spell bathing her in radiance.

    Lala was gowned in shimmering white, and her hair was pulled back from her face with ropes of pearls. As she slowly walked forward, the crowd parting before her, she seemed an embodiment of fairy tales come to life.
 

    "Was Lala doing the Lighting spell?" Sylphiel asked.

    "No, somebody else was. Lala didn't know any magic."
 

    The crowd was silent, unable even to ooh or ahh as this thionite dream approached them.

    But one person in the crowd was not overcome by her presence.

    One person was not lost in admiration.

    In the shadow of the church --

    In the darkness of an arch --

    Behind a pillar, the maroon-clad one stood --

    Watching --

    Waiting.
 

    "Um, Amelia?"

    "Yes, Gourry-san?"

    "What's a thionite dream?"

    "I don't really know... it's something my mother used to say about things that were particularly nice, especially beautiful people -- she'd call *them* 'seven-sector callouts,' too."

    "Hey, my grandmother used to refer to beautiful girls as seven-sector callouts, too! She said it mean that they were among the most beautiful women of seven kingdoms."

    "Really, Gourry-san? I always wondered about that... "

    "The story?" Lina reminded them.
 

    However, Lala was not happy. Although she was engaged to Rezo, she did not like him.
 

    "It's called 'good taste,' " Zelgadis muttered.
 

    Despite Rezo's assurances that she would *grow* fond of him, Lala's only happiness came from her daily rides. She put her hair up in the style called 'lop-eared rabbit' and rode for as far and fast as she might.
 

    "Lop-eared rabbit?" Zelgadis raised an eyebrow.

    "Mother used to do my hair and Oneechan's like that sometimes, and I wore it like that for years until I got it cut so it'd be easier to take care of," Amelia explained. "That's why I did Gourry-san's hair like that when we were being Lulu, Lili, and Lala."
 

    On the particular day in question, Lala was in fact pondering whether it were wrong to marry someone without liking them, and, if so, if it were too late to do anything about it. As she saw it, the answers were firstly, no, and secondly, yes.

    It wasn't exactly *wrong* to marry someone without liking them; it just wasn't right, either. If everyone in all the worlds did it, that wouldn't be so great, since everyone would be kind of grunting at everyone else as time went by. But not everyone did, so THAT was all right.

    The answer to the second problem was even easier: she'd given her word to marry Rezo, so of course she was going to. She certainly wasn't about to dishonor her ancestors and her cousins and her sisters and her aunts by going back on her promises, after all. And she could always have said "no" when he asked; although what would she have done then? Raised cabbages?

    Everyone had told her, ever since she pledged to marry Rezo, that she was probably the most beautiful woman in the world. Now she was going to be the richest and most powerful as well.

    "Don't expect too much from life," Lala told herself seriously as she began to turn Horse around, hand gliding across the skirt of her usual impractical pink gown. "Learn to be satisfied with what you have."

    And just then she was waved down by three people, out where no people could be expected to be. All three of them had black, black hair. The first one wore her hair long; she was very tall and had a full-breasted, wasp-waisted figure, well revealed by her battle bikini, which had been designed on the 'visual suspense' principle.
 

    Lina winced.

    "What's the 'visual suspense' principle?" Zelgadis asked.

    "That's 'will she or won't she fall out of her clothes?'" Gourry told him. "They never do, but you keep hoping."

    Lina whacked him.
 

    The second was a short girl with short hair and a more modest figure, enshrouded in sensible off-white tunic and trews. The third was a little kid with a page-boy cut and a ratty violet tunic, and it was he who spoke to Lala.

    "Shitsurei desu ga, oneechan... " he said, face angelically sweet.

    Lala reined Horse in. "What is it?"

    "We are poor lost traveling performers. Is there a town nearby?"

    Lala blinked. "There is nothing. Not for miles."

    His face twisted, becoming almost terrifyingly cruel. "Then there will be no one to hear you scream."

    Lala, frightened, was about to turn Horse to flee when the tall woman cast a sleep spell.
 

    "Ugh."

    "What is it, Zelgadis-san?" Amelia asked.

    "I just had a bad Hellmaster flashback."

    Lina rolled her eyes. "There's another kind?"

    "Anoh, Lina... should I know who Hellmaster is?"

    "G -- Gourry-sama! He was the Demon Lord who killed Flagoon and revived Sairaag for his own purposes and controlled the dead -- he looked like a child -- "

    "He kidnapped you and hypnotized you and nearly killed everyone and I cast the Giga Slave against him and nearly got swallowed up by L. O. N. and -- "

    "OH! That bratty little kid, right before the big black thing and the crystal stair! I remember him!"

    "What crystal stair, Gourry-sama?"

    "Wasn't there a crystal stair?"

    "I don't think so," Zelgadis said.

    "Well, it seems like there ought to have been..."

    "No, no," Amelia said. "The boy was my mother's little brother Philodim Brezirao Ragnarokkthrasir -- we never met him because Mother really, really hated him, but she told us that if we ever were stupid enough to go work for him she'd disown us."

    "She actually threatened to disown you if you chose to work for her brother?" Sylphiel asked, shocked.

    "That and that the pay scale wasn't that good and that the retirement plan stank."

    "Well, then," was Lina's comment.

    "That's what Oneechan said."

    "So what happened next?" Gourry asked.
 

    At the river, which was right nearby, the tall woman manhandled Lala into a boat while the little boy held Horse with one hand and tore some cloth with the other.

    "What's that you're ripping?" the girl, whose name was Amelia, asked.
 

    "Actually," Amelia interrupted herself, "Mother used my full name all through the story, and Oneechan's full name, because that's how she always referred to us. She even called Daddy by *his* full name, except when she was being very affectionate and shortened it to Philionel."

    "Your mother was very formal, wasn't she, Amelia?" Lina asked.

    "I suppose so. Except maybe when she was swearing -- she had a vocabulary worse than any sailor. I never really thought about it. She was just -- Mother."
 

    "It's fabric from the uniform of an army officer of Yamainu," Philodim, the Maha'asura, said.

    "Anoh... what's Yamainu?"

    "The country across the channel! The sworn enemy of Ookami!" he snapped, finishing his tearing and artistically arranging the shreds underneath Lala's saddle. "Hyaa!" He slapped Horse, sending it bolting for its stable.

    "When Rezo finds the fabric on her horse," Philodim continued, "he will suspect that the Yamainujin have abducted his love. His suspicions will be totally confirmed when he finds her body on the Yamainu frontier."

    "Wait a moment!" Amelia said. "No one said anything about killing anyone."

    "We were hired to start a war, neechan," Philodim rolled his eyes. "It's an ancient line of work with a long and glorious tradition."

    "I just don't think it's *just*, killing an innocent woman."
 

    Regrettably, all four of her listeners cracked up.
 

    "Think?" Philodim gasped. "I didn't hire you to *think*, you cow-handed would-be Magical Emi!"

    "I agree with Amelia," the sorceress Gracia said, coming to the rear of the boat. "It's just not right."

    "Oh, the lush has spoken," the little boy sneered. "Well, remember this. Never forget this! When I found you, you were so slobbering drunk, you couldn't even buy brandy!" He whirled on Amelia. "And *you*! Friendless! Brainless! Helpless! Hopeless! Do you want to go back to where you two were? *Unemployed*? In the DESERT OF DESTRUCTION?"

    The two young women looked at each other in helpless anger before setting about making the boat ready -- pulling up its sail, that sort of thing.

    As Gracia shoved the three-people-laden boat off and hopped aboard -- a task delegated to her because she had the longest legs -- she turned to Amelia and said soothingly, "You know that we'll do what we... *must*."

    "Though what he -- " Amelia pointed to Philodim -- "wants is seldom... *just*." She began to straighten.

    "It might be," Gracia said dubiously, "that he means no... *harm*."

    "He's very, very short on... *charm*!" The smaller girl's face broke into a wide smile.

    "Are there any rocks ahead?" the boy called from his position in the low middle of the boat, watching over Lala.

    "If there are, we'll all be dead!" Amelia called back gaily.

    "Stop that rhyming now! I mean it!"

    "Anybody like a peanut?"

    "AAARGHH!"
 

    "Um..." Gourry said, scratching the back of his head. "Amelia, what was with all that rhyming stuff?"

    "When I was young, I couldn't get enough," the princess of Sailoon assured him. She then clapped a hand over her mouth. "Sorry.

    "Seriously, though, when I was little I thought rhymes were the neatest thing ever invented, and I'd spit out a rhyme to anything anyone said and drive them up the wall and back again."

    "I can see how that would happen," Zelgadis said dryly.

    "Mother said I must get it from her side of the family," Amelia said proudly.

    "When did you stop?" Sylphiel asked curiously.

    "Oh, Aunt Ethel asked me what rhymed with 'orange.'"

    "What does?" Gourry asked.

    Amelia looked blank. "I have no clue. Do any of you know?"

    "Borage?" Lina offered half-heartedly.

    "No... that doesn't have any 'n' sound." The dark-haired girl paused. "What is borage, anyway?"

    "Beats me."

    "I think it's something you launder with."

    "You're thinking of borax, Zelgadis-san," Sylphiel corrected.

    "So what happened *next*?" Lina asked.
 

    The boat was well out to sea when Lala woke up.

    "No matter what you may think," she told them with as much dignity as it is possible to have when slumped against the side of a small wooden boat feeling queasy, "my fiance *will* catch you all. And when he does, he will see you all hanged."

    "Silly!" Philodim giggled with a child's mirth. "Of all the necks on this boat, the one you *ought* to be worried about is your own!" He laughed some more, rolling until he noticed Gracia (in the stern of the boat) peering out behind them.

    "What are you doing?" the boy mastermind demanded.

    "I, the Serpent Enchantress," Gracia proclaimed, tossing her long hair, "am making sure that no one follows us."

    The boy snorted. "Inconceivable!"

    "Are you quite sure that no one is following us?"

    "Look," Philodim said, irritated (and it is seldom the better part of valor to irritate my mother's brother Philodim), "it is *absolutely inconceivable* that anyone could be following us! No one in Yamainu knows we're out here, and no one in Ookami could have gotten here so fast!" He paused for a moment. "Out of curiosity, why do you ask?"

    "Oh... no reason. I just happened to look behind us, and something is there."

    "WHAT?"

    Philodim and Amelia rushed to the stern, leaning out to see the dark sail against the black sky.

    "It's probably a local fisherman," Philodim said dismissively, "out for a midnight cruise... through... wani-infested waters."

    "They must be terribly brave," Amelia sighed as a cloud passed over the moon.

    There was a loud splash.

    The three kidnappers spun to barely see Lala swimming vigorously if not skillfully away from the boat, hampered somewhat by her frilly pink riding gown.

    "Go in!" Philodim yelped. "Go after her!"

    "The Serpent Enchantress," Gracia informed him, "does not swim."
 

    "The Serpent *sorceress* sure floats well, though," Lina muttered.

    "What was that, Lina-san?"

    "Nothing of consequence, Amelia."
 

    Amelia shrugged. "I only dog paddle."

    "OOOOOH!" Philodim was hopping in his rage, on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum befitting the age he preferred to appear to be. "Go left! Left! Your other left!"
 

    Lina made a face. "Now I'M having a Hellmaster flashback."

    "Hellmaster was the bratty little kid, right?" Gourry said, in the tone of a schoolboy who really *has* memorized it this time, honest!

    "Yes, Gourry," Lina said in the particular longsuffering voice indicating that although she was making an exception this *one* time, she didn't intend to go on suffering. (She'd perfected it dealing with him.)

    "Gee, his parents must have hated him. Giving him a name like Hellmaster and all... "

    There was liberal bedizenage of sweat around the table.

    "... if I'd been him, I'd've changed my name to Shion or Fred or Meriadoc or Shann Lantee or Takamura Taishi or Hoshino Tetsurou or Pazu or Asterix or something normal like that."

    This produced a long moment of silence, which Sylphiel finally broke.

    "They certainly have interesting names where you come from, Gourry-sama."

    "Yes, we do, don't we? My cousin Gally actually named one of her twins Rikkitikkitavi."

    "What did she name the *other* one?" Zelgadis wondered.

    "Oh, she decided to use one of the old family names and call him Tomservo."

    Zelgadis looked as if he were sorry he'd asked.
 

    As Lala struck out in the direction which she was almost positively maybe possibly nearly sure was that of the land, she heard a strange and ghastly sound like that of a thousand women discovering that a thousand male kinsmen had left the privy seats up AGAIN.

    "Do you know what that sound is, Denka?" Philodim called from the boat. "Those are the Raging Wani!"

    Lala slowed down, doing her best not to splash.

    "They always get louder just before they attack," the boy continued with ghoulish cheerfulness.

    The sound -- not scream nor roar nor groan, but some hideous combination of all three -- seemed to be louder than it had been.

    "Do you know what happens to the wani when they sense blood in the water? They go mad. No one but their Doyenne has any hope of controlling their rage. They rip, and shred, and chew, and devour.

    "Now *we're* safe in the boat. There isn't any blood in the water now, so you're relatively safe, but there's a knife in my hand, Denka, and if you don't come back I'll cut the sisters' arms and I'll cut their legs and I'll catch the blood in a cup and I'll fling it as far as I can and the wani can sense blood for klicks -- you won't be so lovely for long."

    Lala stopped swimming and started treading water.

    "If you swim back now, I promise that you will feel no pain. I doubt you'll get such an offer from the wani."

    *Something* large... moved past her... in the water.

    Lala barely even remembered to breathe. She was dreadfully ashamed of herself, but there it was; she wished she could see for a moment whether the wani were still nearby or whether it had gone away, and if the Maha'asura's companions really would let him cut them.

    Gracia made a strangled sound.

    "He just cut Oneechan's arm, ohimesama," Amelia called out, voice revolted. "He's catching the blood now. It's covered all the bottom -- eep!"

    Was that another one?

    "He, uh, just cut me," Amelia said. "The cup's getting full."

    "Amelia, will you knock it off about the blood?" Gracia squealed. "There's a reason *I'm* not looking!"

    Another wani moved, far too near Lala and far too fast. She had a scattered impression of smooth hide and teeth.

    "My arm is back to throw," the boy called gleefully. "Call out your location or not -- the choice is yours."

    Lala resolved not to make a sound.

    "Abayo!"

    There was the splash of liquid on liquid.

    The cry of the wani filled her ears.

    And then there was movement before her and something shot up out of the water right in front of her, and all Lala could see was the pale light glinting off of rows and rows of teeth marching down into its gullet --
 

    "She does not get eaten by the wani at this time," Amelia interrupted herself.

    "What?" Zelgadis blinked.

    "The wani doesn't get her," the princess of Sailoon clarified. "That's what Mother used to say to reassure us when we got scared, the way you were doing."

    "I wasn't scared!" Zelgadis and Lina indignantly denied.

    "I might have been a little *nervous*," Gourry offered, "but that's not the same as *scared*."

    Sylphiel's "No, of course not" came out at the same time as Amelia's "That's just what Oneechan always used to say.

    "Because," Amelia continued, "I can stop if you want me to."

    "No, no," everyone raggedly chorused. "Go on."
 

    "Do you know what that sound is, Denka?" Philodim called from the boat. "Those are the Raging Wani!"
 

    "You already did that part," Lina noted critically.

    "Oh. So I did. Excuse me." Amelia thought for a moment. "Okay, she was in the water, the wani was coming after her, she was scared, the wani started to charge her, and then -- "
 

    Odd, Lala relected in a moment of calm; the moonlight was actually sort of pretty glinting off those horrid teeth, even if they were about to rend her flesh. At least she got to see the moon once more before she died.

    Two voices called "Levitation!"

    She was unceremoniously hoisted in the air and levitated over to the boat.

    "Put her down!" Philodim ordered the sisters, waving a hand at the lower deck of the boat. He stalked over to Lala as soon as she dropped the last few feet, mocking smile on his face. "I suppose you think you're brave, Denka?"

    "Only," Lala replied as chillingly as she could, "compared to some."

    This was a bit of a conversation-stopper.

    "Keep her warm," Gracia said, tossing a bit of sacking to the smaller girl before casting a healing spell on herself.

    "Don't catch cold," Amelia told the blonde, wrapping the sacking around the taller woman, whose pink dress looked bloody in the wet and the moonlight.

    "Does it matter?" Lala asked. "You're going to be killing me tomorrow."

    "Oh, he'll do the actual work," Amelia said, waving a hand at the boy. "We'll just hold you. Besides, killing or no killing, you're wet and cold and OUGHT to be warmed up. Murder and assassination is no reason not to observe common courtesy, Mother always said."
 

    "Did she really?" Lina asked.

    "Of course," Amelia said. "There are plenty of good reasons to be rude too, after all. Besides, she got sort of deadly polite to the people she really hated right before she did something nasty and probably permanent. Like with my step-aunt Zoharrine and the bell tower."
 

    "Hold your stupid tongue," Philodim growled.

    "I don't think she's so stupid," Lala said. "Just because she's loud and naive."

    The boy rolled his eyes. "Look who's talking."

    Gracia hiccuped.

    "Besides, the reason people think she's so stupid is because she IS so stupid. Her naivete has nothing to do with it."

    "Well, I don't think YOU'RE so smart either," Lala said thoughtfully. "All that throwing blood into the water. That's not the sort of plan brilliant generals come up with."

    "It worked, didn't it? You're back, aren't you? Once humans are sufficiently frightened, they scream."

    "But I didn't scream. The moon came out."

    Philodim hit her.

    Amelia started to move toward him, but her sister jumped down and thoughtfully grabbed her, clapping a hand over her mouth.

    "She *would* have screamed," the boy grumbled, marching back to the stern of the boat and the rudder. "She was *about* to cry out. My plan was *ideal*, just the way *all* my plans are ideal. It was the moon's bad timing that spoiled it for me."

    Conversation in the boat was sparse until the next morning.
 

    "This is starting to sound more like the one my grandfather told me," Sylphiel said so quietly that only the two men next to her could hear her. "But... "

    "What's that, Sylphiel?"

    "Never mind, Gourry-sama."
 

    "There *is* someone following us!" Amelia said excitedly as the sun began to rise. "Look!"

    The sail behind them was revealed to belong to a small but very trim one-man skiff, obviously built for speed -- indeed, she had caught nearly up to them.

    "Whoever he is," Philodim exulted viciously, "he's *too late*! See?" He waved one hand at the shore not five yards away, and on top of it -- "The Cliffs of *Insanity*!" They loomed up four or five thousand feet high, impossibly sheer.

    "Quick!" the Maha'asura ordered the sisters. "Move the... the *thing*! And the other thing! MOVE IT!"

    In less time than it takes to tell about it, the boat had been trimmed, divested of its four passengers, and shoved off.

    "Only the Sailoon princesses are strong enough to go up our way," the nasty little boy gloated. "He'll have to sail around for hours before he finds a way up!"

    Lala, passively resisting,was chivvied into the middle of the group. The sisters linked arms and cast a Raywing bubble.

    Lala looked up, looked down, and promptly closed her eyes.
 

    "Four thousand is more than twelve hundred, right?" Gourry asked.

    "Much more," Lina assured him. "These cliffs would be about as high as the Kataart Mountains, only straight up."

    "I think the Kataarts get up to ten thousand," Sylphiel contradicted mildly.

    "Twelve," Zelgadis corrected. "At least in the middle. And there are some peaks that are even higher."

    "That's above *sea level*," Lina argued. "They're about five thousand above the *plain,* and that's what Gourry would envision anyway -- right, Gourry?"

    "Uh, sure," the swordsman said blankly. "Well, I don't blame Lala for closing her eyes."

    Sylphiel blinked.

    "Gourry's acrophobic," Lina, Zelgadis, and Amelia explained in unison.

    "No, no, I'm just fine with spiders..."
 

    The bubble ascended the cliff at a slow, steady pace. Below them, the skiff drew near, and a slim figure in maroon hopped out.
 

    "What's maroon again?"

    "It's sort of a very dark red, Gourry-sama."

    "Oh, you mean crimson. Why didn't Amelia say so?"
 

    The mysterious person was wearing *crimson* trews and a matching loose tunic with a skull and crossed bones on it, as well as a dark blue cape with a matching hood and half-mask, with a white scarf bound over the lower part of the face. The cloaked figure barely wasted a moment looking up before casting another Raywing spell.

    Amelia looked down. "He's gaining on us."

    "Inconceivable!" Philodim gasped. He stared for a moment before glaring at the sisters. "Go faster! Faster!"

    "I thought we *were* going faster," Amelia protested indignantly as the bubble sped up very slightly -- still far behind the pace set by the person in crimson and cobalt blue.

    "You were supposed to be these prodigies! This great, legendary THING! And yet he gains!"

    "Well, I, the great Gracia -- with the aid of my talented little sister, of course -- am lifting four people, and he's got only himself."

    Philodim made a noise like the Raging Wani.

    The blob and speck -- as they would have appeared to an observer in one of the boats -- rose ever higher, the pursuing speck drawing nearer and nearer.

    "As soon as we get to the top," the boy commanded, "cast your golem spell while the rest of us get the Princess away."

    "I thought you told Oneechan never to cast the golem spell again until she got the bugs worked out of it?" Amelia wondered.

    "Never mind that now! Shut up!"

    "Amelia, dear, what Philodim means is that you should button your lip."
 

    "What golem spell?" Sylphiel asked.

    "I don't know. Vu Vraimer isn't *that* hard... Lina-san, why are you making that face?"

    "No reason. Go on."
 

    And then they were at the top, and Philodim and Amelia manhandled the near-petrified Lala away from the edge as Gracia raised her arms, carefully holding them so that the spikes of her epaulets went to either side of her cheeks, and cast the spell that would raise a stone golem from the very rocks of the earth to do her bidding.

    The golem's mighty head roseup, and then its powerful neck.

    And then its puny body, seemingly far too frail to hold up the weight of that massive head.

    Which, as a matter of fact,it did not do.

    The golem tumbled out and down... and down... and down, until it struck the skiffs in the cove and smashed them to kindling.

    As Lala was currently flomped on a rock and showed every sign of not willingly moving for the next half-hour, the two Sailoon princesses walked to the edge and looked over.

    A tiny blue-clad figure clung to the rock face, the faint shimmer of a protective shield about it.

    "He's got very good arms," Amelia observed.

    "He didn't fall?" Philodim had joined them. "Inconceivable!"

    "You keep using that word," Gracia noted. "I do not think it means what you seem to think it does."

    "Having made a great study of death and dying," the boy continued, paying no attention to the sorceress, "as an expert, I happen to know that he can't possibly hold on for long. It may interest you to know that he will be dead long before he hits the water; the fall will do it, not the crash."

    "Shouldn't we be going soon? I thought you said we were in a hurry."

    "Oh, we are. But I can't miss a death like this. If he tries to fly up, he'll have to drop the shield, which means you can drop another golem on his head, and he knows that. What can he do but hang there?"

    At that moment, the blue-clad figure began to climb. Not easily, of course. And not quickly. But definitely moving upwards.

    "Inconceivable!" the boy breathed.

    "STOP SAYING THAT WORD!" Gracia shrieked at him.

    Philodim shot her a vicious glare before sighing theatrically. "Look, since I have the keenest mind that has ever been turned to destructive pursuits, you may take what I say as fact. And the fact is that this person in blue is NOT following us. The logical explanation is that he is merely a common sailor who dabbles in mountain climbing as a hobby and happens to be going the same way we were at the same time. But whoever he is, he's seen us with the Princess and must therefore die. Amelia and I will take Denka here and head for the frontier. You stay here and see him finished off. If he falls, fine. If not, magic."

    "Come on, it's all flat," the younger girl reassured the trembling blonde. "Well, sort of flat. Mostly flat. Hardly ever any cliffs."

    "I'm going to do him with shamanic practices," Gracia remarked as the other three took off.

    Philodim spun around. "Neechan, you KNOW what a hurry we're in!"
 

    "Shamanism has plenty of quick, decisive spells," Zelgadis pointed out.

    "Yes, but there used to be practically no teachers of it in Sailoon," Amelia informed him. "Mother and Aunt Ethel and Aunt Opabinia worked to get it sort of accepted, but even now the Ladies' Quilting Circle and Traveling, Drinking, and Debating Terrorist Society is the only place you can be sure of getting a good grounding in shamanic practices."

    "The *what*?" Sylphiel and Zelgadis said. Lina just rolled her eyes, posture giving the general impression that *nothing* the Saileese got up to would surprise her any more.

    "The Ladies' Quilting Circle and Traveling, Drinking, and Debating Terrorist Society. Mother and Aunt Opabinia set it up, and Aunt Opabinia and Aunt Ethel got elected its consuls for the eighth time last year. I think Aunt Ethel's thinking of dropping out of the running and backing Frederica -- that's her eldest daughter -- next election, though.

    "Anyway, before the Society, it was... lots of people know white magic, and if you look hard enough you can find someone to teach you black magic -- Mother was teaching shamanism and black magic to Oneechan and me, but I forgot most of the latter, except for Livy Grade."

    "LIVY GRADE?" Lina and Sylphiel exclaimed in unison.

    "That's one of the rarest spells in black magic!" Sylphiel managed.

    "Do you know how hard I had to *look* for that spell?" Lina demanded.

    "What does it do?" Gourry said.

    "It gets rid of damaging evidence for certain nasty habits," Zelgadis said, mouth twisted.

    "It turns all your garbage into dust," Amelia said. "Unless it was made of rock or metal or something. It's very useful for camping."

    "I use it every morning when we're on the road," Lina said.
 

    "It's the only way I can be satisfied," Gracia said. "If I use black magic, it'll be over too quickly. OHOHOHOHOHO!"
 

    The entire population of the inn's common room winced.

    "Don't DO that, Amelia," Gourry said. "You sounded like Melphina."

    "He means 'like Martina,' " Zelgadis corrected, "and it's very unnerving."

    "Actually, it's supposed to sound like my Great-Aunt Margarethine," Amelia told them. "She had the *scariest* laugh, and Oneechan used to try to imitate her."

    "Was she any relation to Martina?" Zelgadis asked. "Lina, is something wrong?"

    "No, no, of course not," Lina said, shaking. "So was she, Amelia?"

    "Not *directly*," Amelia said, "but my Great-Great-Aunt Demetria went off and married the king of Xoana... so I guess that makes Martina my third cousin or third cousin once removed or something. Ih."

    "Well, that's distant enough that you can pretend you're not related," Lina told her cheerily.

    "Maybe in the metropolitan areas," Zelgadis said dubiously.

    "Does that really count as distant on the mainland?" Gourry asked, eyes round.
 

    "Fine!" Philodim snarled, turning to go. "Have it *your* way!"

    And he left with the two girls, leaving Gracia alone with her thoughts.

    These not being very good company, she soon wandered to the edge of the precipice and looked at the figure in cobalt. "Slow going?"

    "I don't mean to be rude," the cliff-hanger called back in a light voice, "but this is not as easy as it looks. I don't need distractions."

    "Oh."

    Gracia wandered around the top for a bit more, then looked over again. "Could you possibly speed things up?"

    "Look, if you're in such a hurry you could lower a rope or a tree branch or refrain from more spells so I could lift myself or something."

    "I could do that," Gracia called back. "I don't like using too many spells in a row anyway. But I'm not sure if you'd accept my promise, since I am only waiting around to kill you."

    "That *does* put a damper on our relationship," the blue-clad figure agreed.

    "I could give you my word as a member of the Sailoon Royal Family... "

    The cloaked figure shot her a look that, even with the mask and scarf, was unmistakeable. "Are you kidding?" The back half of the word was nearly swallowed in the reach for another hold. "I've *met* Sailoon princes!"
 

    Zelgadis, Lina, and Sylphiel cracked up.

    "Hey!" Amelia said indignantly. "We've been TRYING to change that reputation -- at least Daddy and Uncle Christopher and h -- and *most* of his children and I have, and some of the collective aunts (which includes great-aunts), and Grandpa was before he was treacherously assassinated and Daddy took up the cause, and Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa did an awful lot before he died and she had her stroke."

    "Your great-grandmother would be Queen Lucita to'el ulNadia Sailoon, right?" Zelgadis asked. "What happened to her?"

    "She got old and had a stroke and made Daddy prince regent right after he met Mother and before they got married," Amelia explained, "and then she had some more and some other things went wrong, and she's being cared for by the Sisters of the Golden Horn, where my Great-Aunt Aspasia retired to become abbess. Well, first she retired there, and then they made her the abbess because she was the best organizer they'd had for years.

    "Great-Grandma doesn't really know anyone anymore; when I visit, sometimes she thinks I'm Great-Aunt Carolande, and sometimes she thinks I'm Aunt Katharinvictamaris."

    "Amelia, you cannot have had an Aunt Katharinvictamaris," Lina said firmly.

    "Yes, I could, because I did," Amelia said equally firmly. "She came in between Uncle Christopher and Uncle Randy, and she was bitten to death by a snake when she was fifteen."

    "How many times did it bite her?" Gourry asked curiously.

    "I don't know," Amelia said blankly. "I'll have to ask Daddy. And just because there are a few bad apples like Uncle Randy and Great-Uncle Shtaindorf and my first cousin once removed Margizelle and a couple of others is no reason for people to assume that the *entire* Sailoon Royal Family is like them!"

    "Maybe the figure in maroon had only ever met the bad apples," Sylphiel offered.
 

    "Is there any way you'll trust me?" Gracia called.

    "Nothing comes to mind." The small figure managed to climb another few feet in near-total silence.

    "I swear on the name of the Warden of the Marches of the West, you will reach the top alive."

    The blue-clad one looked up at Gracia for a moment. "Raywing!"
 

    "Why would swearing on your mother's name be especially believable?" Zelgadis asked, as Sylphiel muttered "I still say that title sounds familiar."

    "Mother had a very long and complicated name," Amelia shrugged, "and she pitched a fit if you got any of it wrong -- she finally agreed to let them shorten it to Ennosigaia for official stuff and such to save time, but only under protest. Daddy always called her 'Lady.'"

    "Hey, that sounds like the lady I worked for one summer," Gourry said. "Her name was Gilbereth -- or maybe Galadbereth -- or was it Galenbereth -- gee, it's a good thing she's not here, because she'd be getting really mad right now."

    "This was an elf?" Sylphiel asked. "Those names all sound elvish."

    "No, they'd just called her whatever-it-was and she liked her Ellindarin name so much she'd kept it."

    "What's Ellindarin?" Amelia asked.

    "That's what elves speak," Lina and Gourry explained in unison.

    "It's called that because they're the Ellindar," Gourry continued proudly.

    "It means 'Star-singers' in their language," Lina clarified.

    "They love stars," Gourry finished.
 

    "Thanks," the person in blue and red said, landing onto the clifftop and dropping into a combat stance.

    "No, no," Gracia shook her head, "we'll wait until you're rested."

    "Thanks again."

    "Oh, by the way... you don't by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand?"

    The hooded figure stared at her for a moment before wriggling all five gloved right-hand fingers and sitting down to pull off a boot. "Do you always begin conversations that way?"

    All that stretching, however, had made one thing abundantly clear.

    "Oh, you're a woman," Gracia said.

    "Of course I'm a woman, you spandex-plated roller coaster! What would make you think that I wasn't?"

    "Mou... " Gracia muttered. "Between the mask and the loose tunic, you couldn't do a better job of keeping people guessing what you were if you tried."

    "I suppose so," the woman in crimson conceded. "What was all that with the fingers, anyway?"

    "My mother was slaughtered by a six-fingered man."

    The wind whistled as it blew across the plateau.

    "How did it happen?" the woman in cobalt asked sympathetically.

    "The man was trying to kill my father and uncle," Gracia told her, staring into the distance. "He thought that he could be named our guardian. My mother was talking with me in the hallway then, and she attacked him.

    "Without a word, the six-fingered man stabbed her through the heart."
 

    "That's pretty much the way Mother really did die," Amelia interrupted herself, "except it was a plot of Cousin Margizelle's, and Mother used this really nasty spell to take out all of her killers except one -- I think because Oneechan came in just then and attacked him, and Mother didn't want to hurt *her*. Oneechan killed him, anyway. And whomever in the plot they didn't get, Daddy and Uncle Christopher and Aunt Ethel and Great-Aunt Carolande tried and executed. Great-Aunt Aspasia said that it was amazing how many friends my mother turned out to have once she was killed, and Great-Aunt Margarethine said that it was probably the best public-relations move she could have made."

    Sylphiel and Zelgadis winced.
 

    "I loved my mother," Gracia continued in the same remote tone, "so naturally I challenged her murderer to a duel.

    "I failed."

    She might almost have been discussing the weather, such was the unnatural evenness of her tone.

    "The six-fingered man left me alive. But he gave me... *this*."

    She reached up and slipped off her golden tiara to reveal a long, white, ugly scar across her forehead, near the hairline, before replacing it.

    "For ten long years I studied and trained, so that the next time I meet him, I will *not* fail.

    "I will say, 'Hello. My name is Gracia the Serpent. You killed my mother. Prepare to die.'"

    "Very melodramatic," the woman in crimson commented.

    "Yes, isn't it?"
 

    "Um... I have a question," Gourry said.

    "What is it?" Amelia smiled encouragingly.

    "Crimson. Cobalt. Blue. Red. What color is the womanin the hood *wearing*?" He paused for a moment. "What's cobalt, anyway?"

    "Cobalt," Amelia said, "is the sort of blue that Lina's cape is."

    "Just like crimson's a kind of red," Sylphiel said.

    "As for the rest -- look, Gourry, am I wearing blue or pink?"

    Gourry looked at Lina. "Aren't you sort of wearing both?"

    "Exactly. So you could call me 'the woman in blue' or 'the woman in cobalt' or 'the woman in -- ugh -- pink.'"

    "Don't you mean 'the girl in blue'?"

    Lina elbowed him.

    "Only the shorter woman is wearing crimson instead of pink," Amelia finished.

    "I used to have a pair of crimson trews," Lina said reflectively. "They got holes in the seat, though, so I cut them up for pouches." She looked more thoughtful for a moment. "I think I even still have some of those pouches."
 

    "But it's been several years," Gracia continued, "and I am starting to lose confidence. I just work for Philodim to pay the bills and take care of my sister.

    "Well, shall we begin?"

    And the two women leapt to the attack, matching and countering spells.

    A shamanic sorceress, Gracia thought. This will make it interesting. "You are using Flare Arrow against me, ne," she said rhetorically.

    "I thought it fitting, considering the rocky terrain," the woman in crimson said mildly.

    "Naturally, you must expect me to counterattack with -- FREEZE ARROW!"

    "Naturally. But I find that -- FIREBALL! -- tends to cancel out Freeze Arrow, don't you?"

    "Unless the enemy has studied her -- FREEZE BLEED! Which I have."

    The battle continued for some minutes.

    "DILL BRAND!"

    "MEGA BRAND!"

    "I admit it," Gracia smiled. "You are better than I am!"

    "Then why are you smiling?"

    "Because I know something you don't know! OHOHOHO!"

    The woman in cobalt winced. "And what's that?"

    "*I* am not a shamanic sorceress! VALIS ROD!"

    And the tide of the duel sorcerous turned in the favor of the taller woman. A nearby slightly higher piece of cliff crumbled. Two small trees blew up.

    "You are amazing," the hooded woman said.

    "I ought to be, after a dozen years."

    "ELMEKIA LANCE!"

    Gracia almost insultingly leapt aside and slapped back a Zelas Gort. The resulting torrent of decidedly confused jellyfish left the cloaked woman perched on the very edge of the cliff. She spread her hands.

    "You can't see that I'm smiling under this silk scarf, but I tell you for your information that I am smiling now."

    "WHY?"

    "I'm not a shamanic sorceress either. GARV FLARE!"
 

    "It's GAAV Flare," Lina corrected.

    "Mother said that it was Garv Flare when they came up with the spell, so she was going to call it Garv Flare and if her younger brother the moron didn't like it he could lump it."

    "Philodim?" Zelgadis wondered.

    "No, Uncle Philodim Brezirao Ragnarokkthrasir was her little brother the jerk. Mother said that her legitimate family, aside from her father -- whose multiple personalities get into the most interesting conversations -- consisted of the moron and the jerk and the bitch and the creep, and that they made Daddy's relatives look like the Seven Holy Sages of Ceiphied."

    "No wonder she didn't like talking about them," Zelgadis said.

    "But wasn't Rezo one of the Seven Holy Sages... "

    "No, he was one of the Five Great Sages. Different group."

    Meanwhile, Sylphiel was explaining to Lina (and, by extension, Gourry) "Words change over time. Greater Beast Zelas-Metallum was called Xelas Metallum -- or Xelas Metallium in the Shivan Codex -- back in the days of the Kouma War, and Maryuuoh Gaav is mentioned in the records as Jaakuryuuoh or Akumaryuuoh Garv."

    "Why do they change?" Lina asked.

    "People garble things over time, and the version that's remembered tends to be the one that's easier to say," Sylphiel said. "There was a pre-Kouma War manuscript in the archives at the Maldeen Colleges that suggested that he might have been known then as Jaakuma-Ryuuoh Gaariv, Chaos-born Dragonlord; it was in among reports of Dynastarch Graurisherrya."

    "You studied at Maldeen?"

    "For two seasons -- I was in my third when I heard the rumors about what Hellmaster had done to Sairaag. I'd thought of studying there before, but Sairaag had always seemed adequate until... "

    Gourry was still puzzling over the last exchange. "Is it like the way everyone calls my cousin Vandariselle 'Vandy' unless they're really mad at her?"

    "Close enough," Lina said, cutting off a longer explanation from Sylphiel.

    Amelia cleared her throat impatiently.
 

    And now the combat mystical truly became a thing of legend. Rock boiled and steamed. The ground quivered. A spring rose twenty miles away and poured its force over the side of the Cliffs of Insanity.

    "Who *are* you?" Gracia gasped.

    "No one of consequence."

    "I must know."

    "Get used to disappointment."

    "DYNAST BRASS!"

    "DYNAST BRASS!"

 And then Gracia summoned up most of the last of her power, throwing it into one final spell. Even as she was releasing the Dolph Strash, however, her shorter opponent was moving her arms and chanting an incantation that Gracia had never heard before.

    "Tasogare yori mo kuraki mono, chi no nagare yori -- "
 

    The entire population of the table surged up as one and tackled Amelia, knocking her flat.

    "Words OR motions, but not both!" Lina yelped. "And don't point it at US!"

    "But Mother did that -- " Amelia protested.

    "And why were you pestering me to teach it to you last year, if you already KNEW it?"

    Amelia's mouth formed an O of surprise. "You mean THAT'S the Dragon Slave? But Mother said the whole thing with these motions -- " she sat up and demonstrated with her arms, keeping her mouth shut throughout -- "and nothing ever happened."

    "Maybe she wasn't that good at black magic! Maybe she cast Flipside before she told the story! Does it MATTER?"

    "What's Flipside?"

    "It's a shamanic magic spell that keeps any spell you cast from having an effect," Zelgadis told Gourry, "except for the spell that turns it off. They use it now and then in teaching."

    "Amelia, just THINK sometimes, okay?" Lina finished her rant.

    "Pots and kettles..." Zelgadis muttered.

    "Right," Gourry said, "it's not very good to blow up the inn when it's this wet and nasty out. Actually, blowing up inns isn't very good at ANY time, but it's even worse when it's raining like this, even if the rain would put the fire out sooner."

    "Precisely," Sylphiel agreed, retaking her seat.

    Everyone else sat back down, too.

    "Waiter!" Lina called. "Drinks all around!"

    "Anyway," Amelia continued while the waiter bustled about in the back, "the blue-clad one cast the Dragon Slave, and... "
 

    A large portion of the clifftop abruptly vanished without much of a trace.

    Gracia, black from head to toe and covered with abrasions, fell abruptly to her knees. "Kill me quickly," she said quietly, all her customary confidence lost.

    "I would as soon destroy an orihalcon statue as an artist like yourself," the woman in crimson said. "But since I can't have you following me, either... " She cast a quick sleep spell. Gracia crumpled.

    The woman in red walked over and straightened the Serpent Enchantress' limbs. "Sleep well," she told the scantily-clad woman, tying her hair to a tree, "and dream of deaf men."

    And then she ran in the direction which she had observed footprints to lead to when she first mounted the cliff.
 

    "I *think* this is where the next chapter begins," Amelia said. "No, wait, it doesn't. This chapter goes on and on."
 

    The land on top of the Cliffs of Insanity consisted of gently rolling hills, the occasional bluff, and a few deep ravines intersecting them, cutting far down to eventually intersect with the cliffs as hanging valleys or even now and then as steep routes from the top to the bottom (or the other way around). Little groves of trees or bushes dotted the landscape here and there.

    Three people were at the moment perched on top of one of the said bluffs.

    "Inconceivable!" Philodim gasped, watching the figure running, cape streaming behind her, from the top of the bluff overlooking the next leg of the path. "I'll take the Princess. Finish him! Finish him! Your way!"

    "Anoh, Philodim-sama... what way's my way?"

    The boy rolled his eyes and said, in the tone of a patient sufferer that will often be adopted by those speaking to the young man who will become one of the most famous wielders of the Golun Nova, "Wait *there* with a big rock. The moment his *head* comes in view, HIT IT WITH THE ROCK!"

    He grabbed the shellshocked Lala by the hand and half-dragged her off, leaving Amelia to think.

    "My way isn't very sportsmanlike."
 

    "Golun Nova?" Sylphiel asked.

    Amelia shrugged.

    "That's what Hellmaster called the Sword of Light," Zelgadis recalled.

    "Oh, THAT tone of voice," Lina said. "We're all familiar with *that* tone of voice."
 

    The woman in red was passing underneath that same bluff when a shrill voice split the air.

    "For love, justice, and Daddy, the magical girl Sparkle Ami! FLYING ROCK OF FAIR PLAY!"
 

    Equally regrettably, her four listeners cracked up again.

    "Sparkle... Ami?" Lina choked.

    "There's more about that later," Amelia said. "Mother always said she'd tell me about it after I turned fourteen, but, as you know... "
 

    She jumped as a rock shot down, smote the ground yards and yards from her position, bounced, and rolled away. Then she looked up, half-drawing the sword that hung at her belt.

    "That was on purpose," the younger girl said from above, holding another rock. "I didn't have to miss."

    "I believe you," the woman in cobalt said. "So what happens now?"

    "We face each other as Ceiphied intended," the girl said perkily. "No tricks. No weapons."

    "You mean," the woman in crimson said, "you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword and we'll try and kill each other like civilized women?"

    "Exactly!"

    "Very well. I accept." She unbuckled her sword belt, letting it and the sword fall to the ground.

    The girl leapt down from the bluff, fell flat on her face, and passed out.
 

    "Why did I *know* that was going to happen?" Zelgadis asked.

    "Because we've been traveling with Amelia for nearly a year now, and she always does that," Gourry told him helpfully.

    "It was a *rhetorical question*."

    "What's a retourniquet question?"

    "A question you don't want anyone to answer," Lina said.

    "Why'd he ask it, then?"
 

    "Sheesh," the hooded woman said, picking up her sword belt and refastening it around her waist. "I do *not* envy you the headache you'll have when you come to. Two of you in such short notice... wonder if you're related."
 

    "Yes, they're sisters."

    "GOURRY!" Lina elbowed him again.
 

    The cloaked woman ran on.

    Far behind her, a number of mounted people 'stood' by at the edge of the Dragon Slave crater while Rezo dismounted and held his hands out, the better to sense the traces of what had happened.

    "There was," he said slowly, "a mighty duel. The loser went off that way -- " he pointed -- "and the victor followed some others *that* way." He mounted and started on the latter course.

    "What about the loser?" Count Shtaindorf asked.

    "The loser is nothing. Only the Princess matters."
 

    "Isn't Gracia a princess, too?"

    "Gourry," Lina rolled her eyes, "how's Rezo going to know that?"
 

    "You think this could be a trap, then?"

    "I always think everything could be a trap; which is why I'm still alive."
 

    "New chapter yet?" Lina asked. "That would be a great place to end one."

    "No."
 

    Elsewhere, the cloaked woman rounded yet another clump of bushes and stopped suddenly. Before her, at a small table pleasantly located beneath a tree and set for two, Lala and Philodim sat together on the far side.

    The boy held an extremely sharp-looking dagger to the blindfolded woman's neck.

    "So," he said pleasantly. "It is down to you; and it is down to me."

    The hooded woman's eyes flickered once, before she walked closer to the table.

    "By all means, if you wish her dead," the small boy said, "come closer."

    The woman in red spread her hands and slowed down. "Let's talk about this."

    "There's nothing to talk about. You're trying to kidnap what I've rightfully stolen. And *you're killing her*." He pushed the point of the dagger to Lala's carotid artery. She tilted her head up and away, desperately trying to escape the prick.
 

    Amelia paused. "I'm not quite sure about the dialogue in the next bit," she apologized, "but I'll do the best I can."

    "That's quite all right," Sylphiel accepted.
 

    "Can't we work something out?"

    "I doubt it, oni -- oneechan. You're obviously planning to hold the Princess for ransom, and my plans depend on killing her."

    "Then we are at an impasse."

    "It appears so. I couldn't beat you in a physical battle, and you're no match for my brains."

    "You're so smart, then?"

    "*Smart*? Let me put it this way; have you ever heard of Shazard Lugandi? Big Mom? Rei Magnus? Mind Healer Yui?"

    "Ye - es... "

    "Morons."
 

    "HEY!" Gourry protested.

    "I don't expect we're supposed to pay attention to what the villain says," Sylphiel offered, nonplussed.

    "Oh -- that's right!" Amelia said. "Her full name is Yui Gabriev, isn't it?"

    "Of course!"

    "Well, Mother didn't mean that Mind Healer Yui was stupid, she meant to say that my uncle Philodim was a *jerk*!  Which he was. Mother said that one of the important things to know in life was that her younger brother Philodim Brezirao Ragnarokkthrasir was a jerk, and another was to never say so where he could find out about it, unless you were her, because it would be more of a bother to slap her down than he'd want to take."

    "What were some of the other important things?" Sylphiel asked.

    "Um... a lot of stuff about her relations. A couple of things about Daddy's. Insulting a girl's figure is punishable by death."

    Lina nodded very firmly.

    "Never wave irresistible temptation in front of a bakegitsune, youko, or other kind of fox spirit, because the thought of resisting won't even speculate about the possibility of crossing their mind. Always double-check and triple-check your work. Don't argue with your waiter until the bill has arrived. You should never judge a book by its cover. Destructive potential is Inversely proportional to the height of the person responsible."

    Zelgadis chuckled. Everyone else looked blank.

    "A man may smile and smile and be a villain. Do the best you can with what you've got. Always-always-always make a backup. Don't expect a cat to follow orders. Take a knife to a fist fight. Take a sword to a knife fight. Take a juu to a sword fight. Stay out of a juu fight."

    "What's a juu?" Sylphiel asked.

    "You point it and it throws sling bullets at you harder than a crossbow shoots bolts and that Ohta person likes them, Oneechan said Mother said. Never get in a martial arts war with some person called Ranma; a knife, attrition, or technowar with the Rabbit General Bun-Bun; a sword war with the hitokiri Battousai -- whomever he or she is; a juu war with either Saeba-Sakebara Ryouichi or someone with the alias JigenDaisuke; or a magic war with some legendary Miprossian heroine the Akage Hime."

    "Who's that?" Zelgadis asked.

    "Oh, she was the greatest sorceress ever," Gourry said cheerfully.

    Lina snorted.

    "The Chibas, the Spenglers, and the Gabrievs throw easily englamoured sons, but that doesn't mean they'll *stay* englamoured. Never threaten the life of Yukimura Keiko -- I don't know who that is either. Always be true to yourself and the rest will follow of its own accord. Never wear a shirt the general color of your blood when exploring somewhere new and possibly dangerous. There are certain things Daddy doesn't really need to know, because they'll just upset him. Don't trust Shazard Lugandi's inventions."

    "Hear, hear," Lina said.

    "Look under things, on top of things, and behind things. Pick up anything not obviously claimed that isn't nailed down; if it can be pried up, it isn't nailed down. Wear clean underwear, brush after meals, and remember that nothing, *nothing*, is as it seems. Life's too short to waste worrying about the inevitable -- oh, wait, that was Riff."

    "Who's Riff?" Gourry asked.

    "Oh, someone I met once when I was under a couple of spells back when I was really little. Standardsoft is really slow. Take responsibility for your own actions. It's never the Lovely Angels' fault; but stay well out of their way anyway. No man is an island, but Maryam's son from Smallville as spilt rosehip tea on Nanya-the-baxter's white festingday dress is going to try his best to be."

    Zelgadis choked.

    "Back up thoroughly and often. Never give up on your dreams. Always stand up for what's right. Never mess with the mommy. Call no one happy until the last day of their life has come and gone unclouded; only the dead feel no pain. Be careful with alcohol. The larger the group of people, the stupider it is. Never get between Mother and her morning Turkish coffee. And some others which will show up in the story *if I can ever get back to it* ... "

    "But you were the one -- " Gourry began.

    Amelia slid down and kicked him under the table.
 

    "You've heard of Shazard Lugandi? Big Mom? Rei Magnus? Mind Healer Yui?"

    "Ye - es... "

    "Morons."

    "I see." The woman in cobalt thought for a moment. "Shall I challenge you to a battle of wits, then?"

    "For the Princess?"

    Nod.

    "To the death?"

    Nod.

    "I accept." The boy resheathed his dagger. Lala breathed a sigh of relief.

    The woman in red walked up to them, removed a tube from one of her many pouches, and pulled out its stopper, offering it to the small figure in violet. "Inhale this, but do not touch."

    The boy leaned over and sniffed. "I smell nothing."

    "What you do not smell is called iocaine powder. It is odorless, tasteless, magic-null, dissolves instantly in water, and is among the more deadly poisons known to mankind." She took the two goblets from the table and then turned around, shielding them with her body as she busied herself with them. After a moment, she turned and set them back on the table; one in front of her, one before her diminutive opponent. "Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when we both drink and find out who is right... and who is dead."

    "Well, now," the boy said, rubbing his hands, eyes bright. "Only a great fool would choose what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you." He paused. "But you must have known I was not a great fool -- you would have counted on it -- so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me! Hmmm... "
 

    "Wait a moment, Amelia," Lina interrupted. "Haven't you got that backwards?"

    "Uh-uh. That's the way Mother said it. I remember because it was so weird."

    "But it doesn't make sense," Zelgadis agreed with the sorceress. "It would make sense if it were the other way around."

    "It does, so, make sense," Gourry contradicted.

    "How so?" Lina demanded.

    "See, if he were stupid, she'd put it in his cup. But he isn't, so it would be in the other cup. But she might know all that -- it's called ahead-step thinking, and Dad told me all about it. Ahead-step thinking is thinking that if you hit the waiter THEN he might not bring you food, or if the leader of some people says something rude and you toss a spell at him THEN all his people will be mad at you, which is a problem if you want something from them.

    "So he's using ahead-step thinking to think that she's using ahead-step thinking, and that's the part where I always get all confused, because I never was very good at ahead-step thinking, even though Dad and Mom are really good at it. But it's all right and I get along fine and don't worry, even though I can't do it right, especially since Lina never uses ahead-step thinking, either!" He smiled radiantly.

    "Very true," Zelgadis said. "If she did, we might never have had the wonderful experience of running for the hills with the entire population of a recently Dragon Slaved village hot on our heels."

    "Gee, that would be too bad."

    Lina hastily changed her intentions from Doing Something Annoying And Probably Painful To Zelgadis to Thonking Her Head Into The Table At Yet Another Example Of Total Gourry Cluelessness, in which latter she was joined by Amelia.

    "So," the flame-haired sorceress said, wiping a bit of spilt gravy off her forehead with one of the few remaining clean spots of her napkin, "that was clear as mud. I don't suppose you can tell us where the poison is while you're about it?"

    "Uh... the poison's in the potion in the chalice in the palace?"

    This time she just dropped her head into the heel of her hand.

    "What palace?" Amelia said, blinking.

    "It *still* doesn't make sense," Zelgadis groused.

    "Ah, excuse me," Sylphiel said diffidently, "but I think you left a little out at the beginning. I think it's supposed to go like this... "
 

    "But it's so simple! All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of m -- woman who would put the poison in her own goblet or her enemy's? Now, a clever person would put the poison in her own goblet, knowing that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool -- you would have counted on it -- so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me!"

    "You've made your decision, then?" the woman in maroon asked.

    "Not remotely!"
 

    "That's it!" Amelia yelped. "That's exactly the way Mother said it! How in the world did you know?"

    "Well... my grandfather used to tell me a story that sounded sort of like this, about a princess bride... and that's what the nasty little man said in his story."

    "Wow, that's amazing. I wonder if your grandfather knew Mother or something. Anyway, that reminded me how the rest went, so... "
 

    "Not remotely!" He smiled happily. "Because iocaine, you know, is sold out of the free ports, and everyone knows that the free ports are entirely populated with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as I am not trusted by you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you!"
 

    "Actually," Lina contradicted, "swindlers are used to people trusting them. It makes it so much easier to swindle them."

    "How do you know so much about swindlers, Lina-san?" Amelia asked.

    "My aunt's relation-of-some-sort-or-another visited when I was little and told me all about them -- of the people living in the free ports across the Ihrine, half of them are smugglers and most of the rest are swindlers. And if they swindle money out of other people, that makes them fair game for *him* to swindle."

    Amelia and Sylphiel blinked.

    "I suppose," Sylphiel murmured in Gourry's general direction (he, fortunately for the patience of the company, didn't hear her), "it makes more sense than Ohsto-Ralia, wherever that is."
 

    "Truly," the cloaked woman murmured admiringly, "you have a dizzying intellect."

    "Wait till I get going!" Philodim paused. "Where was I?"

    "The free ports."

    "Oh, yes. The free ports! And you must have suspected I would know of the powder's origins, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me."

    "You're just stalling now," the woman in crimson told him.

    "You'd like to think that, wouldn't you!" the boy spat. "You've beaten my heroine, so you must be insanely lucky or a hero yourself. You could have put the poison in your own goblet, trusting to your heroine's luck to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you've also beaten my sorceress, and to do that you must have studied, and in your studies you would have learned that humans are mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me!"

    "You're trying to trick me. It won't work."

    "It HAS worked, oneechan! You've given everything away! I know where the poison is!"

    "Then make your choice." The masked woman's voice was colder than the winter gales that sweep north of Sairaag.

    "I do, and I choose -- what in the world can that be?" He pointed.

    The masked woman spun and stared in the indicated direction. Philodim quickly switched the goblets.

    "I see nothing," the woman in cobalt said, twisting herself back around.

    "Probably just my eyes playing tricks on me," the boy shrugged, eyes bright. A giggle escaped his lips.

    "What's so funny?" the woman asked.

    "I'll tell you later, oneechan. Now, let's drink. Me from my glass, and you from yours."

    The hooded woman twitched her scarf down, revealing a pointed chin and a narrow gash of a mouth that, while well enough formed, made no pretense to surpassing beauty.

    They drank.

    She pulled the scarf back up over her nose. "You have guessed wrong."

    Philodim exploded into high-pitched giggles. "You only think I guessed wrong -- that's what's so funny! I switched cups when your back was turned! You fell into one of the classic blunders! The most famous, of course, is 'Never get involved in a land war in the Alliance of Coastal Cities!' But only slightly well known is this: 'Never go up against a Maha'asura when *death* is on the line!' Kukukukukukuku! Kukuk -- "

    He abruptly fell over dead.
 

    "What?!" Zelgadis said.

    "I can't help it," Amelia protested, "that's what he *did*."

    "Then," Gourry, who had been looking blanker and blanker during the whole I-can-clearly-not-choose-this-or-that-wine discussion, said, "he drank the wine with the poison in it after all?"

    "He drank poisoned wine, yes," Sylphiel said.

    "But how did the lady with the mask know he'd switched them?"

    "Oh, come *on*." Lina rolled her eyes. "'What in the world can that be?' Like it wasn't *obvious*?"

    "So what was it?"

    Lina bonked her head against the table. (Fortunatelyfor her hair, it was the place on which she'd dropped her napkin.)

    "It was a red herring," Sylphiel said firmly.

    "Oh, yes. Those turn invisible really quickly. My great-uncle Colly nearly caught one once that was as long as my leg, but it snapped the line and vanished before anyone else on the boat could see it."

    Lina bonked her head again.

    "But I thought a herring was a dinky little fish," Amelia said, holding her thumb and forefinger apart to demonstrate.

    "That's a *normal* herring," Gourry told her. "*Red* herrings come in all shapes and sizes and can do all sorts of things. We told my mother's sister all about them when she came to visit, back when I was three or so, and she said they sounded almost as powerful as the dread illess goodtimes."

    "The what?" Sylphiel said.

    "The dread illness goodtimes. Only golems and automata and thinking gadgets can get it, and it's a very powerful illness. It destroys their brains and breaks all your dishes and fries any pet mice they may have and throws a dead horse's head in your bed -- "

    "As opposed to a live horse's head?" Lina murmured.

    " -- and causes plague and havoc and war and makes noise outside your neighbors' windows at the third watch of the night and sings all your favorite songs very loudly and summons Pauly Shore whoever that is into your automata and makes messes all over the kitchen and has unlawful carnal relations with your grandmother and it doesn't even matter if your grandmother's dead because the terrible powers of goodtimes are so strong that it'll bring her back on purpose to do perverted things to her and -- Zelgadis, why are you laughing?"

    "Oh... oh... oh... " Zelgadis whooped, doubling over. "Oh... my... " He clutched his stomach, apparently not trusting it to stay in one piece.

    Lina stared at him, at Gourry, and then burst into a fit of giggling herself. (It seemed less painful than bonking her head against the table again.)

    "And this all happened when you were three?" Sylphiel asked. "How can you remember it so well, Gourry-sama?"

    The other two girls gave him equally inquisitive looks.

    "Because Dad was home then, and he laughed even harder than Zelgadis did just now, and I never did understand exactly why. I think it has to do with where he came from."

    "Where did he come from?" Lina asked.

    Gourry looked clueless. Especially clueless, that is. "I'm not quite sure. He fell out of nowhere through Mom's roof and smashed one of the kitchen chairs to kindling when he landed. He was all hurt and bonkers and stuff, so Mom healed him, and then she kept him."

    "How romantic!" Amelia enthused.

    The other two girls gave her weird looks.

    Zelgadis managed to pull himself up, sort of.
 

    In one swift moment, the cloaked woman jerked Lala to her feet and ripped the blindfold from her head. The blonde stared down at her rescuer wonderingly.

    "So all the time, it was your own cup that was poisoned."

    "They were both poisoned," the hooded woman said brusquely. "I've spent the last few years building up a resistance to iocaine powder."
 

    "Sneaky," Lina said admiringly.

    "Mitradatis he died old," Zelgadis quoted, attempting not to snort in the middle.
 

    "Someone has defeated themself," Rezo declared, straightening up from the Amelia-shaped crater at the foot of the bluff. "There will be great suffering in Yamainu if she dies."
 

    "If Amelia dies?" Gourry blinked.

    "He means Lala, Gourry-sama."

    The mention of tall-blind-and-purple had apparently finally pulled Zelgadis out of his uncharacteristic laughing fit. His eyes narrowed.

    "Oh, I forgot to say that the cloaked woman caught Lala by the hand and they started running off," Amelia quickly said.
 

    Some distance away, the cloaked woman half-dropped Lala onto a nearby boulder. "Catch your breath."

    "If you'll release me, whatever you ask for ransom, you'll get it," Lala told her. "I promise you!"

    The woman in cobalt laughed. "And what is that worth? The promise of a landed woman... very funny, Denka."

    Lala sucked in a great gulp of air. "I was giving you a chance. There is no greater seeker than Akahoushi Rezo, prince of Ookami. He can track a piece off the top of the Staff of the Gods through half of recorded history; he can track you."

    "You believe your 'dearest love' will save you?"

    "He's not my dearest love," the blonde denied, "and yes, he will save me. That I know."

    "You admit you do not love your fiance?" The other woman's tone was reflective.

    "He knows I do not love him."

    "Are not capable of love, is what you mean." Biting, now.

    "I have loved -- have cared about someone -- more deeply than a killer like yourself could ever dream."

    The woman in crimson slapped her.

    Lala gasped.

    "That was a warning, Denka. Next time, it won't be anything so gentle. Where I come from, there are penalties when someone lies to a woman."
 

    "And rightly so," Lina mumbled.
 

    Rezo raised his hands from the corpse under the tree -- which had, in death, taken on all the years its owner had never permitted it to wear in life, and was now a shrivelled, withered thing guaranteed to turn the stomach of all but the most hardened.

    "Iocaine," he said. "I'd bet my life on it. And there are the Princess's footprints. She is alive -- or was an hour ago. If she is otherwise when I find her, I shall be very Put Out."
 

    "Don't sound so much like him," Lina joked. "You're scaring me."

    "It's all right," Gourry said, patting her on the back. "It's just a story. We're all right here."

    Mistress Heel-of-the-hand, please let me introduce you to Mistress Forehead.
 

    Farther north and several ridges over, along the edge of a deep ravine, Lala and the red-clad woman were still running. The masked woman stopped abruptly, nearly dropping the blonde flat on her face -- or, more likely, her attributes. "Rest, Denka."

    "Now I know who you are!" Lala declared in ringing tones. "Your cruelty reveals everything: you're the Dread Pirate Emeraldas, admit it!"

    "With pride." Emeraldas bowed mockingly. "What may I do for you?"

    "You can die slowly, cut into a thousand pieces."

    "So harsh, Denka? What have I done?"

    Lala had thought that her heart could grow no colder than it had when she finally emerged from her room five years ago. Now she knew that she had been wrong.

    "You killed the person most important to me."

    "It's possible," Emeraldas shrugged. "I've killed many people. What was this important person of yours like? Another prince? Ugly... rich... passionless?"

    "No," Lala snapped. "A farmhand. Poor. Poor and full of fire. Fairly self-centered -- "
 

    Zelgadis, Sylphiel, and Gourry nodded.
 

    " -- and short-tempered -- "
 

    They nodded again.
 

    " -- and seldom thinking ahead -- "
 

    They nodded again.
 

    " -- and often greedy -- "
 

    They nodded again.
 

    " -- and so confident as to be practically arrogant -- "
 

    They nodded again.
 

    " -- slight of stature and of figure -- "
 

    They nodded again. (Lina tried to shoot glares of death in four directions at once and ended up aiming at a spot over Sylphiel's left ear.)
 

    " -- stubborn -- "
 

    They nodded again.
 

    " -- sort of perverse -- "
 

    They nodded again.
 

    " -- tricking people with her charm -- "
 

    They nodded again.
 

    " -- looking down on anyone weaker -- "
 

    They nodded again. (Smoke began to rise from a spot on the inn's common room's wall directly behind and slightly above Sylphiel's left ear.)
 

    "Quite the paragon," Emeraldas commented irritably.

    "Oh, yes," Lala said, mind distant. "I needed her. More than anything. She had great carnelian eyes that kindled their own fire -- "
 

    "Now *that*," Lina said, "is a flattering description."

    "No it isn't," Gourry contradicted. "It's true."

    Zelgadis and Sylphiel blinked.

    Lina, uncertain whether to clobber Gourry for the implied insult or smile at him for the veiled compliment, settled for giving him a dirty look.
 

    " -- and hair the color of the cliffsides of Hellofaplacetoloseacow Canyon."
 

    Sylphiel swallowed something that was trying to be a hysterical giggle. Lina shot both her and Amelia more dirty looks.
 

    "Very poetic," Emeraldas said dryly.

    This time Lala couldn't miss the tone. She glared at the shorter woman. "On the high seas, your ship attacked. The Dread Pirate Emeraldas never takes prisoners."

    The woman in crimson shrugged. "I can't afford to make exceptions. I mean, once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft, people begin to disobey you and it's nothing but work, work, work all the time."

    "You mock my pain!"

    "Life *is* pain, Denka!" Emeraldas shot back. "Anyone who says otherwise is selling something." She walked over to the lip of the nearby ravine and looked across it. "I think I remember this farmhand of yours. About five years ago, right?"

    Lala nodded; then, realizing the shorter woman couldn't see it, made a noise of agreement.

    "Does it bother you to hear?"

    "Nothing you can say would upset me."

    "She died well," Emeraldas said. "That should please you. No sobbing, no pleas for mercy -- she just said: look. 'Look, I need to live.'

    "It was the 'look' that caught my memory," she continued. "I asked why, and she said 'Ishin-denshin.' And then she spoke of a woman of surpassing loveliness; not the brightest wick of the bunch, perhaps, but loyal with the simple uncomplicated loyalty of an innocent, whose heart was the deepest and truest ever encountered." Her voice turned venemous. "I can only assume she meant you. You should bless me for destroying her before she found out what you really are."

    "What do you mean?" Lala demanded.

    "Faithfulness, madam, she spokeof, your enduring faithfulness!" The blue-clad woman paced back and forth along the ravine's lip in short, jerky bursts. "You who only awaited her return to take off on a career of adventuring! When you found out she was dead, did you affiance yourself to your 'prince' that same hour, or did you wait an entire week out of respect for the dead?"

    "You mocked me once. Never do it again," Lala spat. "*I died that day*."

    Emeraldas turned sharply, noting a line of horses -- Rezo's party, had she but known it -- along the crest of a ridge some ripples away.

    "You can die too for all I care," Lala hissed, and shoved the other woman, overbalancing her and sending her over the edge.

    And as the smaller woman tumbled pell-mell down the steep slope of the ravine, her words drifted up: "Lala... you... idiot... "

    "Sonna, Lina," the blonde whispered, "what have I *done*?"

    And she threw herself over the ravine's brink.
 

    "Lala, you *idiot*!" Lina said. "You don't just go and throw yourself down a cliff with no idea how you're going to get back up! I don't think even *Gourry* would do something like that!"

    "Uh... " Gourry said.

    "But, Lina-san," Amelia said, "didn't we do just that when... "

    "That," Lina said with sublime indifference to details, "was *different*."
 

    "Aah... itai.... yow... ooh..." the cloaked woman gasped, rolling over and over downhill. Her hood came off, letting a flood of burnished copper hair out where it could snag in the few bushes that clung to the slope and generally get in the way.

    "Ooh... ow... yow... itaiiiii.... " Lala, being taller, was finding all sorts of more numerous interesting things to bonk into on the way down. Her left hair-bun was in the process of falling apart.

    "Gyah... yowf... ooh... " One of the bushes snatched off Lina's half-mask; the terrain had already clawed the white scarf down past her chin. She rolled a little more and came to a stop on the ravine's grassy floor.

    "Ooh... kyaa... mmph... ahh... " Lala's hair was completely down by now, and in a tumble of golden hair and pink taffeta she rolled four yards past Lina and ended up flat on her back.

    Lina crawled over to her. "Are you all right?"

    "You're alive," Lala whispered. "You're ALIVE! If you want, I think I could fly." She caught Lina into a fierce, crushing hug, reassuring herself that the redhead was really there.

    "I told you I'd always come for you," Lina said, leaning on one elbow. "Why didn't you wait?"

    "Well... You were dead."

    Lina shook her head. "Death cannot stop Ishin-denshin; never and always touching and touched.... the most it can ever do is delay it for a while."

    "I will never doubt again."

    "There will never be a need," Lina promised, taking her in an embrace that was no less sincere for its gentleness.

    Lala felt the smaller woman'shead on her shoulder and thought :This is a good thing. Go away, World -- :
 

    "Hold it, hold it, hold it!" Zelgadis, Lina, and, oddly enough, Sylphiel, were all protesting.

    "Enough reunion, already!" Lina's cheeks were flushed. "We get the picture."

    "It seems sort of private... " Sylphiel said hesitantly.

    But Zelgadis was the most vocal. "They're *hugging* again. And talking about their *feelings*. Hurry up and get back to the Rezo stuff."

    Amelia shrugged. "You're obsessed. I'll humor you."
 

    After a moment of looking for all the world like some bizarre bloodhound *sniffing* out his prey, Rezo smiled. "She must have seen us and panicked, which accounts for her error. Now that they cannot fly, unless I am wrong -- and I am never wrong -- they are headed dead into the Fire Swamp."
 

    "Why couldn't they fly?" Zelgadis wondered.

    "It's scary," Gourry told him.

    "That's not a reason," Lina groused. "If I can drag you along, that other Lina could drag Lala."
 

    "Okay," Lina said some time later. "This will be much too much of a pain to climb out of, so I'll just levitate us out and then -- " A very peculiar look crossed her face.  "It can't already be... dammit, Oneesama said stress could bring it on early, and if what I've been going through for the past week isn't stress, I don't know what *is*."
 

    "Battling Shabranigdu?" Zelgadis said.

    "Nearly getting killed by an insane copy of Rezo?" Sylphiel said.

    "That mess with the annoying brat and the big black thing and the crystal stair?" Gourry said.

    "Actually, that *did*," Lina grumbled. "The day after, a whole week early and with especially awful cramps... " She blushed a flaming red. "We are NOT having this conversation."

    Equally blushing, Zelgadis and Gourry nodded firmly. (Amelia had been blushing for some time, ever since she recalled that half of her audience was male.)

    "Why don't you skip to the Fire Swamp," Sylphiel suggested, apparently the only unfazed one of the five. "That seems interesting."
 

    "They're almost on us!" Lala gasped, pointing at horsemen on the very brink, as it seemed, of their ravine, several hundred yards behind them. She wasn't quite sure how she had gone from abductee to fugitive, but in this sort of situation she had long since decided that the best thing to do was not even to try to think about wherefores, but to trust Lina and leave all the thinking to her.
 

    "That works great," Gourry agreed.

    Sylphiel and Zelgadis gave him weird looks.
 

    "Don't worry," Lina said, half-pulling Lala towards the thick trees filling the ravine shortly before them. "Before they can get down here, we'll be safe in the Fire Swamp."

    Lala blinked. "Is that some meaning of 'safe' everyone knows but me?"

    "Oh, never *mind* safe," Lina growled. "Come on. I didn't cross half the world to lose you now."

    "We'll never survive," Lala predicted.

    "Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."
 

    "That sounds like Lina, all right," Zelgadis said.

    "Yes, but I don't think that this Lina is that much like our Lina."

    "Whyever not, Sylphiel?" Lina asked.

    "I... just don't."
 

    The trees of the Fire Swamp grew thickly enough to make it much darker inside. Creeper vines hung in festoons and garlands overhead; earth clung to tree roots and spread, so that mucky patches were few and far between. It was unseasonably, uncomfortably warm, and there was a noticeable, heavy, *alive* smell.

    A thousand years and more ago, the Ookami Channel (or Channel of Yamainu, whatever) had been a deep river valley. Then the sea had risen or the land had fallen or both, drowning the valley up to its terrible cliffs (which had fallen in on the western -- Yamainu -- side in the aftershocks of that same cataclysm and crumbled to a manageable slope since) and flooding the volcanic terrain of the river's headwaters, creating the Fire Swamp to be an eternal bone of contention between the two nations. (Ookami insisted it belonged to Yamainu, and Yamainu was equally convinced that it was Ookami's headache.) It sort of messily blurred into the channel, except for where one long spur of land from the Ookami side stuck out into the sea, wooded with larches and possessed of several nice caves that were a smuggler's paradise.
 

    "What's with all the description?" Lina demanded.

    "It's to help you visualize the place they're going through," Amelia said.

    "It's nasty, damp, dark, and hot. What more do you need to say?"
 

    Lina had drawn her sword and was whacking low-hanging vines and stray branches out of her friend's way. "Come to think of it, it's not that bad."

    Lala gave her an incredulous look.

    "Well, I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely."

    There was an odd popping sound from the piece of ground right before Lala.

    As the blonde stepped forward, a gout of fire spurted up right next to her, setting her gown alight. She yelped and jumped aside, frantically beating at the pink cloth.

    Lina calmly knelt and helped smother the flames with more of the gown's skirt. "Well, now, that was a bit of an adventure. Singed a bit, were you?"

    Lala dumbly shook her head. "You?"

    The redhead shook her head in turn, offering Lala a hand up and continuing on their way.

    There was another popping sound. With an "oof," Lina swung her larger and heavier friend out of the wayas another flamespout shot off and then died. "Well, one thing I *will* say: the Fire Swamp certainly does keep you on your toes."

    "Next time," Lala told her, "*I'm* doing that. I'm going to be your protector, after all."

    Lina blinked. "I don't need a protector. If anything, you do."

    "Uh-uh. I let you out of my sight, and you went off and died, even if you didn't. So I'm going to protect you, no matter what anyone thinks, even you, or what did I spend all that time training for?"
 

    "That's right," Gourry said firmly.
 

    "You can protect *me* if it makes you feel better," the blonde offered.

    Lina, recognizing an orihalcon wall when she ran into one, shrugged. "This will all soon be just a happy memory." She whacked through a curtain of vines blocking their way. "Once we get through this, Emeraldas' ship, the *Queen Emeraldas II*, is banked in a cove at the far end. And I, as you know, am Emeraldas."

    "But how is that possible," Lala marveled, "when she's been marauding for twenty years, and you only left me five years ago?"

    "I myself," the redhead grinned -- and her grin was one of stunning charm -- "am often surprised at life's little quirks."
 

    "That's flattering, too," Lina approved.

    "Well, *that* part could be taken as applying to you," Sylphiel said, "but in general you really shouldn't think Amelia-san's mother was talking about you."

    "Shush!"
 

    "You see, the part about saying 'look' was true. It intrigued her, I think, as did my descriptions of your... um... personality. Finally she seemed to decide something; she said 'All right, Lina. I've never had a maid; you can try if you like. Most likely I'll kill you in the morning.'

    "For three years she said that. 'Good night, Lina; good work; sleep well; I'll most likely kill you in the morning.'"

    "It must have been terrible," Lala sympathized.

    "Actually, it wasn't bad at all. You should have been there. It was a fine time for me; I was learning to fence, fight, cast high-level spells -- including the Dragon Slave -- anything anyone would teach me. Fresh air, good exercise; especially after I pointed out to her when she was feeling bored that it made *much* more sense to hunt down other pirates. It'd be more of a challenge, and that's where the money is anyway, particularly if you raid their strongholds... "
 

    "I suppose that's better than preying on innocent people," Sylphiel said, "but it isn't very nice to rob other people, is it?"

    Lina rolled her eyes. "Bad guys don't *have* rights."

    "*Everyone* has rights."

    "Even Hellmaster?"

    "Interesting as this discussion of comparative morality is," Zelgadis said, "can you have it some other time? I want to hear the story."
 

    "Emeraldas and I eventually became sort of friends," she continued, "and her first mate was very friendly. That is to say, sometimes he taught me all sorts of important things, sometimes he was a general pain in the ass, and sometimes he flirted with me; I think he did it just to be annoying."

    Lala gritted her teeth.

    Lina looked at her. "Whatever -- oh." She paused for a moment. "Look, he was my *second*-best friend, or maybe my *third*-best friend or something, but it was nothing like having you around. I, um, missed you." Her cheeks were flaming. "Anyway, it was about a year ago that It happened."

    "What?" Lala asked. "Go on."

    "Well, Emeraldas had grown so rich that she wanted to retire. She called me into her cabin and told me that she had a secret to tell me. 'I am not,' she said, 'the real Dread Pirate Emeraldas. My name is Alexa-Lasthenia Maetel Lum. I inherited this ship from the previous Dread Pirate Emeraldas, just as you will inherit it from me.

    " 'The woman before me was not the real Dread Pirate Emeraldas either -- her name was Luna the Lesser of the Clan Inverse, and I'd originally meant to drop you off with her before I realized how interesting you were.' " Lina winced.
 

    Lina winced.
 

    " 'The real Dread Pirate Emeraldas has been retired for fifteen years and living like a queen in Sailoon, and she borrowed the name from the legendary Space Pirate Emeraldas anyway. Now I shall leave you the name, the ship, and the reputation, and go settle down on a deserted island, hunt down door-to-door salesmen, and try to talk your sister into moving in with me.' "
 

    "And *what*?" Zelgadis said.

    "Yes, the door-to-door salesmen part sounded weird to me too," Amelia said. "Mother said all you needed to do to keep THEM away was to put up a slime-dripping fence with glowing-eyed skulls on very sharp stakes, but that the Huntress always *did* like to play with her food, and that the real problem was telemarketers. The Rabbit General Bun-Bun devotes a fair portion of his time to attempts to exterminate *them*."

    "That's *not* what I meant," Zelgadis muttered.

    "Amelia," Lina said, ignoring the chimera, "she isn't meant to be *Las*, is she?"

    "Who's Las?" the princess asked.

    "A friend of Oneesama's. She was tall, and, um, built," Lina's hands descried an hourglass shape -- "tanned, with silvery hair she kept tinting different colors -- it was silvery-pink one week, silvery-cyan the next, silvery-gilt the week after that -- she drank a lot, wore skimpy clothing, smoked these little thin cigars, flirted with *everyone* -- including my uncle and my aunt and me and even *Oneesama* -- I think she did it to keep in practice -- and was really really good at black magic. She taught me the Dragon Slave because black magic wasn't really Oneesama's specialty, and I got the impression that she was older than Oneesama and that neither my aunt nor my uncle really approved of her."

    "With that description, are you surprised?" Zelgadis asked.

    Lina rolled her eyes. "Well, they never actually *said* it. I *know* my mother wasn't too fond of her, because Oneesama told me so, but that my mother respected Oneesama's judgment and trusted her to look after herself while she, my mother, was off working."

    "Was you mother off working a lot?" Sylphiel asked.

    Lina shrugged. "She worked in another city and visited us; it used to be every month, and then it was every two months, and it was twice a year by the time I left."

    "Alexa-Lasthenia... Las... " Amelia said. "Your sister's friend *might* have been my Aunt Alexa-Lasthenia Maetel Lum; I never met her, but Mother said she smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and spread like an eiderdown, and it *is* a long name."

    Lina's, Sylphiel's, and Zelgadis' faces froze into polite masks.

    "What does 'spread like an eiderdown' mean?" Gourry asked.

    Lina blushed brick red.

    "I don't know," Amelia said. "I was hoping you did.Do you know, Zelgadis-san?"

    Now it was Zelgadis' turn to blush.

    "Never mind," Sylphiel rescued him.

    "It's rude," Lina explained.

    Amelia thought about it for a minute, and then blushed herself.

    Gourry still looked blank.
 

    Lala lifted her friend over a large fallen tree.

    "Thank you," Lina told her. "She explained that the name was important for inspiring the necessary fear. After all, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Lina."
 

    "I would," Gourry said.

    "Most definitely," Sylphiel seconded.

    "Count me in," Zelgadis agreed.

    "Me too," Amelia conceded.

    Lina tried her Four-Way Death Glare again, with about as much success as she'd had the last time.
 

    "So," Lina continued, "we put in to shore and took on an entirely new crew, and she stayed aboard for a while as first mate, all the time calling me 'Emeraldas.' Once the crew believed, she left the ship and took off to go invite my -- eep -- sister to come live on her island with her, and I have been Emeraldas ever since. Except now that we're finally back together -- I came as soon as I *could* from the other side of the world, only to find out that you were about to marry that Rezo and settle down. Talk about nasty shocks -- anyway, now that I have you, I shall retire and hand the name over to someone else. Is everything clear to you?"

    "Uh... I lost track about where Emeraldas said she wasn't Emeraldas. Could you repeat it?"

    "Lala, you *idiot*!"
 

    "*Could* you?" Gourry looked hopeful.

    "Gourry, you *idiot*!" Lina elbowed him.
 

    Lina sighed theatrically. "Look, 'Dread Pirate Emeraldas' isn't a name, it's a *title*. It means 'the captain of the *Queen Emeraldas II*.' I'm the captain *now*, so now I'm the Dread Pirate Emeraldas. There were other captains before me, so *they* were the Dread Pirate Emeraldas *then*. See?"
 

    "Oh, I see," Gourry said. "Those Emerald pirate ladies sure were lucky, having a ship whose name sounds so much like their title and all."

    Lina smote her head into the heel of her hand again.
 

    "Oh, I see," Lala said. "Those -- kyaa!"

    She had stepped onto a flat-looking patch of white sand, and it had proved to support her weight as well as so much butterscotch custard.
 

    "Mmm... butterscotch..." Lina drooled.

    "I prefer caramel," Gourry said.
 

    Lina stared at the gently rippling sand where Lala had been for a horrified half-second before cutting one end of an overhanging vine free, wrapping it around her left arm, and diving into the sand pit.

    Snow Sand, although often mistaken for the more common Lightning Sand, is different in that it is completely dry. Therefore, its victims don't even have the natural buoyancy of water to work with.

    For long minutes, all that any observer would have been able to see was the vine going down into the sand, quivering now and then.

    And then the two women emerged from the Snow Sand with a ghastly *dry* smacking sound, beaching themselves on the solid ground and squirming up on their bellies, sand-covered, sobbing and gasping for breath, away from that horrible deathtrap.

    "We'll never make it," Lala choked out.

    "We already have," Lina contradicted, vigorously brushing the sand from herself before turning to do the same for her blonde friend. "There are three legendary perils of the Fire Swamp, right?

    "First, the flame spurts. No problem. They make a convenient popping noise right before they go off, so they're easily avoided.

    "Second," she stood up, tugging Lala to her feet, "the Snow Sand. You managed to discover what that looked like, so we can avoid *it* from now on, too!"

    Lala looked at her for a moment, then thought visibly, holding three fingers up and moving her lips silently as she folded all but one down.

    "That's only two perils, Lina. What about the MOUSs?"

    "Marmots Of Unusual Size? I don't believe they exist."

    A slavering marmot as big as I am hurled itself on Lina from the underbrush.
 

    "How big were you then?" Zelgadis asked.

    "No, no. Mother said it was as big as *she* was, and I'm about the size now that she used to be, so that's how big the marmot was."

    "*Marmot*?" Lina repeated, incredulous.

    "It was some sort of family running joke," Amelia said. "I think Aunt Katharinvictamaris came up with it, and then Uncle Randy took it up... even now, all you need to do is say 'marmot' in the right tone to make Uncle Christopher and Aunt Opabinia burst out laughting."

    "Did we ever meet your Aunt Opabinia?" Gourry wondered, scratching his head.

    "I don't think so," Amelia said dubiously. "When Daddy was pretending to be dead, she was teaching the summer and autumn seasons at Maldeen."

    "Does she have hair about the color of yours that keeps falling out of its bun?" Sylphiel asked. "And bounce about and wave her arms when she gets excited?"

    "Yes, that sounds like Aunt Opabinia."

    "She taught the class I took on... ahem... 'Necessary Illusions, the Nature of Belief, and the Reality-Mutation Process.' "

    "The nature of belief and reality mutation?" Zelgadis asked. "What do they have to do with one another?"

    "What *are* they?" Gourry asked.

    "Um... " Lina began.

    "If you believe people are worse than they are you won't be disappointed very much," Amelia said, "but then you might not notice the pleasant surprises when you come across them. And if you believe they're better than they are hard enough they start believing it too and Things Happen then."

    "That's an admirable summary, Amelia," Sylphiel said, blinking.

    "Oh, you have to know these things when you're a Sailoon princess."

    "I imagine you do," Lina muttered to a still-confused Gourry.

    "So when did this ever work?" Zelgadis asked. "And what if it doesn't?"

    "Um... " Amelia said. "Well... "

    "My sister said," Lina remarked, studying the overhead beams, "that the stories and the ideals were all true, but that reality failed them a lot, so you had to learn to deal with it and go on."

    "I'd like to meet this sister of yours someday," Sylphiel said.

    Lina shook her head frantically. "Nope. Uh-uh. Not really. Just... don't. Okay?"

    Gourry had been visibly thinking for some time now. "Is it maybe like the way Mom knew Dad was worth something for so long that he finally started believing that she might be right because it was less bother than arguing with her?"

    "Th -- " Lina choked. "That's EXACTLY right, Gourry!"

    He beamed.

    Zelgadis and Amelia stared at Gourry, stunned, before the latter continued her story.
 

    The force of the MOUS's leap knocked Lina flat on her back and the wind out of her, as screams of agony were wrung from her throat. Lala scrabbled about on theground, looking for a rock, a stick, anything.

    Lina finally managed to pry its jaws free. With a swift kick to the belly, she shoved it off her. The MOUS rolled back onto its feet, noticed that it was pointing in a Lala-wardly direction, and charged the blonde.

    Lala finally found and cought up a fallen tree branch just in time to ward the MOUS off with it. She feinted at it with the branching end (and broke a few of the smaller twigs) a time or two before reversing it and clipping the overgrown rodent a good blow on its tender nose.
 

    "Bet that hurt," Gourry said.
 

    It squealed in pain, turned, darted away (aided by another blow to the hindquarters), ran almost directly into the struggling-to-sit Lina, and bit her viciously in her left side.

    The redhead's scream nearly tore her throat open.

    Lala ran to her beleagured companion and smote the MOUS twice, both times cracking and staving in ribs, both times missing the wildly thrashing backbone. Lina, unable once again to reach her sword (still standing upright in the ground next to the Snow Sand, where she had tossed it), could only try once again to tear the huge incisors loose from where they savaged her.

    And then there was a poppingsound to Lina's right.

    The petite woman's eyes widened, and she twisted, rolling the marmot to her right just as fire spurted up, roasting it, scorching her. It let go, wailing, and Lala stepped back, grabbed Lina's sword, and thrust straight and true into its heart, sobbing mutely.

    The MOUS shuddered and died.
 

    Gourry let out a breath he undoubtedly hadn't realized he was holding.

    Lina thumped him on the back in a friendly way. "Gourry, you idiot, remember to *breathe*."
 

    Some time, one healing spell -- which used up most of Lina's reserves and did little more than stop the bleeding and ward off hydrophobia -- two wrong turns, and a great deal of walking later, they had emerged from the Fire Swamp and were walking through an aspen wood carpeted with autumn leaves.

    "It's not too far now," Lina told Lala for the third time in the last ten minutes.

    And then a troop of horsemen rode out in front of them, Rezo in the lead. Around and behind them, black-garbed men stepped from behind trees, crossbows cocked.

    "Surrender!" Rezo said, voice ringing.

    "You wish to surrender to me?" Lina shrugged. "Very well. I accept."

    "There are fifty of us," Rezo said reasonably. "You are one small woman."

    "You're right; you *are* rather overmatched, aren't you?"

    "Don't act the fool."

    "Who's acting foolish? We know the Fire Swamp. We can live there quite comfortably for some time. Do you feel like following us?"

    "Surrender!"

    "Will not happen."

    "For the last time, surrender!"

    "Death first!" Lina snarled, hand going to her sword hilt.

    "Do you promise not to hurt her?" Lala's voice cut through the tension like a knife.

    Both Rezo and Lina stared at her. "What?"

    "I said," Lala stepped forward, deliberately not looking at the redhead, "if we surrender, do you promise not to hurt her?"

    "May I live a thousand years, and never do good deeds again." Rezo's cat-eared smile was back in full force. "Just tell me where she belongs, and I'll take care of everything."

    "She is a sailor on the ship *Queen Emeraldas II*. See that she is returned to her ship."

    Lina smote her head against the heel of her hand.
 

    Lina smote her head against the heel of her hand.

    "What is it?" Gourry asked.

    Lina rolled her eyes. "You DON'T tell royal guards 'This is my best friend the bloodthirsty pirate!' "

    "She didn't say 'bloodthirsty pirate.' " Gourry looked confused.

    "The only people *on* the *Queen Emeraldas II* are bloodthirsty pirates," Lina sighed. "Since she's a sailor on that ship, she must be a bloodthirsty pirate."

    "Oh. Okay. I see. But, Lina?"

    "Yes?"

    "How did the royal guards know?"
 

    "Wakarimashita," Rezo said. He held his hand out to Lala.

    She took it and was hoisted up to ride pillion behind him.
 

    "Very smooth," Zelgadis said grudgingly. "Sound as if you're guaranteeing something without actually making any promises at all."

    "But he promised not to hurt Lina!" Gourry said indignantly. Then his face took on the muddled look that meant he was attempting to work his way through a thought. "Didn't he?"

    "Nope!" Amelia smiled brightly.
 

    Lina stared up at Lala, her face showing her feelings all too clearly.

    "I lost you once," the taller woman said half-apologetically, "and it almost destroyed me. I could not bear it if it happened again, not when I could save you."

    Rezo clicked his tongue and slapped the reins against the horse's neck. "Fifth level!" he called to Shtaindorf, before trotting off with half the mounted guard.

    Lala waved to her redheaded friend until she and the rest were lost among the trees.
 

    "Fifth level?" Lina said.

    "Of the Zoo, right?" Sylphiel said.

    "Yes, Sylphiel-san."
 

    When they had left, Count Shtaindorf rode out a little ways in front of the remainder of the mounted guard. "Come. We must take you to your ship."

    Lina shook her head mock-chidingly. "Tsk, tsk. We are users of power. Lies do not become us."

    "Very true," Shtaindorf said, raising his right hand. "*Sleeping*."
 

    "He *lied*!" Gourry said indignantly.

    "No, actually he didn't," Zelgadis said.

    "But -- "

    "He didn't lie," Sylphiel said, soft voice angry. "He *tricked* Lala."

    "What a creep," Gourry agreed. "This Rezo really sounds like a bad guy."

    Lina, Amelia, and Zelgadis stared at him. "OF COURSE HE IS!"
 

    The last thing Lina noticed was that the Count had six fingers on his right hand, and she really couldn't recall coming across that particular oddity before...
 

    "The Shtaindorf I met didn't have six fingers," Lina said.

    "Neither did my great-uncle. Mother said it was artistic license because of what the story needed."

    "Because of the needs of the story," Sylphiel corrected.

Notes: Amelia's mother's "Things to Keep in Mind" are liberally quoted and paraphrased from Harukami's "All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Watching Slayers," Michael Sampson, The Rocky Horror Show, Shakespeare, a Disney special, Roland J. Cole, Kristian Overstreet's "Redneck" *Undocumented Features* story arc, Sigel Phoenix's list of classic mistakes, Marcus Aurelius' *Meditations*, Dave Marinaccio's *All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek,"  guides to Sierra's *King's Quest* computer games, Pete Abrams' *Sluggy Freelance*, *Pretty Samy OVA #2: Revenge of the Imperial Electronic Brain*, *Dirty Pair*, John Donne, the cover of Holly Lisle's*Minerva Wakes* first-printing paperback edition, Sophocles' *Oidipos Tyrannos*, and *Men In Black*, among others.

I am responsible for bedizening Amelia with an amazing assortment of aunts and for inflicting Shtaindorf on the Sailoon Royal Family Tree. As far as I know, the creators have no such idea in their heads.