For those objecting to romantic scenes, you'd best not be reading this story in the first place. I've kept that to a minimum, however. I'm not saying Rayman and Ly have to have a romantic relationship, but in this particular story I'm afraid they do. The rather weird background to this story is explained in the notes to the first chapter.

Oh, and a small PG language alert.
Rayman & Ly © UbiSoft Entertainment

.,.,.,.,.


As Rayman entered the huge throne room, he was stopped at the door by a highly official-looking personage, who, tall and massively rotund though he was, was nearly obliterated under a truly architectural uniform of grey, silver and blue satin, velvet, fur, and metallic trim. "The Princess receives a guest of unknown provenance," intoned the personage for the edification of the room at large.

"Rayman," said Rayman, equably. "Call me that."

"Sir?"

"No, just Rayman."

The architectural personage gave him a very unprofessional look and waved him on to the next checkpoint.

He worked his way through a gamut of underlings until he was finally close enough to the other end of the room to get a peek, between the crowd of interposing bodies, at Ly herself, seated on a high golden throne of the most classic type. The worth of that throne must have been more than that of the entire village lying outside the palace walls. She sat motionless, a tastefully petite jewelled crown upon her head, her body enveloped by a magnificent dark purple ermine-trimmed satin cape that swept down as far as the throne room floor. She even held a silver sceptre in one hand. Her long mane of midnight-blue hair was draped around her collar just as carefully as the cape itself was draped around the throne. Her green, almond-shaped eyes looked regally off into some indefinable distance; he couldn't catch her gaze. However, once or twice he saw those eyes surreptiously flick in his direction.

Rayman finally simply put his hands between the last two sentinels who were blocking his path and shoved them apart like the halves of a sliding double door. He came a few steps closer to the throne. He ignored the servant who had been training him over lunch, and who was now frenziedly semaphoring directions at him, jumping up and down and gesticulating from behind the phalanx of guards and servants that was lined up on both sides of the room in a sort of elegant pincer with its apex at the throne. Rayman looked around at the opulent chamber, the resplendent retainers, all the ceremonious paraphernalia, and nodded to Ly, as if to acknowledge how very well produced a show it all was. He smiled a little, without much warmth.

"The longer hair suits you, Ly," he said.

She showed no direct sign of hearing him. But her serenely composed, statuelike face did blanch a little.

An indignant servant took hold of him at that point. In a decorous hiss he snarled into Rayman's ear, "You do not address the Princess in that fashion! You haven't even been introduced yet! You haven't even bowed!"

"Introduced?" Rayman said. "Actually, we know each other quite well already."

"It's protocol! Get down on one knee and —" The servant choked off abruptly, noticing for the first time that this unspeakably inconvenient stranger didn't even have the decency to have brought any knees with him.

"It's okay, I'll handle it," Rayman staged-whispered to him, quite loud enough for the whole room to hear. "Nice hat you have there, let me borrow it for a moment, will you?" He stretched up to lift the ornate feathered hat off the man's startled head.

He held it over his chest for a moment, smiling up at Ly. Then with surprising grace he swept the hat around him in a low, formal bow, which he held long and stiffly enough to please the strictest teacher of etiquette.

He then hopped up straight again, plunked the hat back on the man's head, folded his hands across his chest, leaned back a little and grinned up at the Princess. She didn't manage to avoid his eye that time. And as the servant made another subdued, infuriated attempt to enforce more protocol on him without disrupting the dignity of the room, he didn't budge. His eyes held her gaze.

At last Ly looked directly at Rayman. She stood up. (A horrified gasp skittered through the room.) The long satin cape swirled around her. Resignedly, she lifted the crown off her head and hung it on one arm of her chair, shrugged off the enormous cape, and leaned the sceptre against the throne like a folded umbrella. She was dressed in a shining white outfit a little like the old striped bodysuit she had used to wear. She stood looking down at Rayman from the top step of the high throne, with an expression reminiscent of a grade-school teacher confronting the class clown.

"You win," she said to him. "Come with me."

He smiled.

.,.,.,.,.

It had taken some finagling and even some sharp commands, but in the end the Princess had managed to extricate them both from the net of faithful servitors to the extent that they were permitted to go into a small chamber, or more of a closet, adjoining the throne room. Though there was hardly enough space for the elaborately carved table and chairs it contained, it was luxuriously painted and decorated and well lit with several wall candelabra. It also didn't have any other doors, or any window, except for a small skylight far overhead in the peaked conical ceiling.

"The negotiating room," Ly said shortly, as she closed the door behind them. "My uncle, the Regent's, favourite spot for meeting with his, um, friends. They don't let me use it normally."

"What sort of negotiations did you have in mind?" Rayman grinned at her.

She turned to face him directly. There was still no trace of a smile in her eyes.

"Don't joke with me," she said. "I'm not in the mood. And don't talk too loudly. I'm sure there are twenty of them all pressed up against that door."

Instantly there was a subdued thud, followed by frantic scuffling and some faintly heard savage hissing on the other side of the door. Both Rayman and Ly glanced in that direction; then, looking back at each other, their eyes met. Rayman's were quietly amused. For the first time, Ly permitted herself the ghost of a smile.

For a few moments they stood several paces apart and contemplated each other.

"Well," Rayman said, collectedly, "At least they can't see us. You can touch me now."

"You've got some nerve, Rayman, you little bugger."

"Oh, don't flatter me." He smiled again, that soft, faintly mischievous, brilliant smile of his that transformed him from a weird little disconnected puppet into a being who made those still propping themselves up on limbs look hopelessly unimaginative.

"How could you just show up here like that? With no warning, nothing? You would have had a much better reception if I'd known you were coming."

Rayman tilted his head, eyeing her. "You think so? I have a feeling the Princess would have been out on an official tour someplace by the time I arrived."

"Rayman! How can you think—"

He took a step closer to her. She flinched slightly. Wryly, he smiled. "That's how, Ly."

"Rayman. That's not fair. I —"

He came another step closer and reached out a hand to touch her arm. She flinched again; but she let the hand take her by the wrist. For another moment they held still, his hand on her forearm, staring as blankly as two statues into each other's stone-like eyes.

Then she gave a moan, dropped to her knees, and flung her arms around him, clutching him to her so hard he let out a wheeze like an accordion. And he smiled, putting his big hands on either side of her head.

He pulled her head towards him. For a moment she resisted. Then they kissed. Gently, he laid his cheek against her face. Quietly she began to cry.

They didn't stir for a while.

Ly said, still a little tearfully, "I—I never thought I'd see you again."

He pulled back from their embrace enough to look at her. "I did my best to go along with that, Ly. I've been behaving myself for three years. You have to admit I've been good. But now I've come to take you home."

Abruptly she pushed him away and stood up. She brushed herself off. "Home?"

He grinned at her with a touch of irony. "I could stay here with you. But I think you'd be much happier coming back with me."

"You want me to go back to your planet? To live in the woods?"

"You know very well there's a village not far from my house."

The imperious glare she aimed at him dissolved before it got even halfway. Her head lowered, her body slumped, she couldn't meet his eyes.

"Rayman — I can't. I can't go."

"Of course you can, Ly. You're miserable here. You've been miserable ever since you left me. And I've been miserable without you."

"Forgive me if I can't imagine you being miserable, Rayman."

He grinned. "I don't have to act that way. But it's been too long, I can't stand it any more. Ask anybody, they'll tell you I've been moping."

Looking at his bright, amused eyes, she smiled a little at the wildly uncharacteristic idea of him moping. But after all, there was a hint of something else, something not so light, under his smile.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry if I've made you unhappy. I feel so bad about that, I wish it had never happened. But it's not possible for me to leave here."

He reached for her hand, she withdrew. He said, "This place is bad for you, Ly."

"I have — duties, obligations, responsibilities."

"You know ... I could say you have a little responsibility to me, too."

She made an exasperated gesture. "I'm a princess, Rayman, for heaven's sake! I can't do just anything I want! How can you be so naive?"

"Naive? How about you being brainwashed? You're nothing but a slave! A slave to that crown, that throne, those pompous rituals, all these servants! At least I can say that I'm free! And you'd be free too, on my planet. You'd belong to yourself, not be part of the furnishings of some castle."

"I'm not a slave, the people need me here!"

"Really? What do you do for them? Show them your pretty costume and wave your sceptre around a few times a year? What's your real function, what do you actually do?"

She lowered her head and sighed. "Well, dear, for one thing... for the good of the country, to strengthen our kingdom's alliance with the Principate of Kish, two months from now I'm going to be married to Prince Ralafalo."

Rayman looked at her steadily. He didn't say anything.

When she couldn't stand the silence anymore, she said, "You ... you see why I can't come with you?"

He gave her a wry smile. "No, in fact it looks like I got here just in time."

"Rayman!"

He spread out his hands as if restating the obvious. "Ly, for goodness sake, you don't want to marry that guy."

"How dare you say that?"

He laughed shortly. "All right, tell me you do want to marry him."

She glowered, but she didn't answer.

"You see? Now come on, we need to get ready to leave. I've already had more of this place than is good for my sanity."

She flung up her hands. "Rayman! I'm not going! I'm not going with you!"

He looked at her again without speaking. A quiver ran through her.

"Damn it, Rayman! Stop looking at me like that! Can't you understand? I cannot leave here. I can't go with you. It's just impossible. Stop looking at me like that!"

"Ly," he said, softly, "that word 'impossible', it shouldn't be flung around too casually. What's stopping you?"

She wrung her hands. "You don't really think they'd let me just walk away from the kingdom, do you?"

"I think, if you really wanted it to happen, you and I, we'd find a way to make it happen. So whatever is stopping you — is you."

Tears came to her eyes. He looked at her sombrely. "Ly," he said. "Ly, if I could really believe you were doing something worthwhile to benefit your people, I'd keep my mouth shut and leave you alone. But that's not what it looks like. Listen, Ly, the guys in this castle have been working on you all your life. They've packed you full of all this blather about your responsibilities and your obligations to the peasantry and how vital it is to be a figurehead. They got to you when you were so young, Ly. But you're not a wax dummy to be propped up on a throne. Or to be handed over as a bribe to some robber baron in the next kingdom on the left. Don't go along with all that stuff, because it isn't doing anybody any real good, and it certainly isn't making you happy. Don't help them enslave you."

"Oh, Rayman... I don't know how to explain to you how ... how hopelessly naive you are."

"Ly," he said, very low. "Do you remember ... do you remember the time you spent on my world? Do you remember what happened between us? Do you remember what you did, how you felt, what you said to me, do you remember who you were then?"

The tears in her eyes spilled over. "Oh, god," she whispered. "I'll never forget that."

"Who did you like better? That Ly, or this one you are now?"

She crushed her hands over her face. "You — oh, I knew I should never let you talk to me alone. Oh, Rayman, I hate you."

He reached out a hand again, lightly touched her arm. "Do you remember what you thought of me?"

She looked directly at him then, a depth of sadness in her green eyes. "Yes, I remember. And I know you haven't changed, you're still the same person I couldn't help loving then. And I ... I still love you now. As much ... now that I see you again, I think I love you even more."

He looked at her sombrely.

She lowered her gaze. "I love you, Rayman. Everything you say is true. As always. But I'm not going with you."

He took a little breath. The soft light in his eyes dimmed, his head sank down, his body seemed to shrink an inch or so.

"Well, then," he said, quietly, "well, then. All right." His eyes were half shut, his voice strained. "All right. Ly, I—" And he stopped. He looked at her, there was a moment of something like faint anger, and tears came to his eyes. "I can't say it. It's a lie. I was going to say I released you, Ly, from our — from our bond. But I can't. You haven't let go of me."

Frozen, unable to say anything or even move, she looked at him.

He gazed back at her with desolate eyes. Then he turned away. "Anyhow ... I suppose that's how it will be."

And he left without any fuss.

.,.,.,.,.

Later that evening, he was wandering aimlessly in the cobbled streets of the quiet village, waiting for a horse-drawn coach out of the village that would take him to a bus that would convey him to the city and the spaceport. He couldn't endure the confinement of the tavern where he'd been sent in the meantime.

In the street, scuffing disconsolately down a narrow alley, he abruptly found himself attacked — the last thing he would have expected here. Before he quite grasped what was happening, several men of Ly's species surged out from dark doorways, seized his hands together behind him and thrust a knife through them both, disabling his defense. He cried out in pain and shock, half paralyzed by the electric-like jolt to the critical energy structure of his frame, whose strongest links ran between the centre of his body and his two hands.

They tied him securely, wrapping his trunk and extremities in a strong weblike material, bludgeoning him heavily. Then, holding him writhing down, they told him a few things. That he was to get out of the kingdom. That he was to leave the planet. That he was to go home and stay there. And that this was a message from the Princess.

Then they left him in the dark street, so tightly bound he could hardly breathe. Some time passed before he was able even to think to free himself. And it was after a long and arduous struggle that he managed to wriggle himself loose and sit up at last, bruised, dizzy and nauseated, cradling together his crippled hands.

He had been about to do just that — leave, go home, abandon it all. But now everything was changed.