Chapter Eight

"Where are you taking me? Brutes! Let me go!"

Marle gave Derron her best angry-princess-with-the-power-to-get-you-executed glare, but he ignored her. Irritated even more by this, Marle wrenched at the ropes that held her hands tied behind her back with all her strength but they were expertly tied and she accomplished nothing. She gave an inward sigh and tried to count her blessings. At least they had let her out of that awful sack. It stank of stale sweat and the overpowering scent of fear, and she wondered how many people had been in it.

Marle glanced around her as they walked. An unfamiliar man walked in the lead, Derron and the other man from the inn flanking Marle in an unknowing mockery of the way she had sometimes been escorted around Truce. There seemed to be no other prisoners. Especially with her hands tied, Marle didn't have a way to defend herself - her bow had been left behind at the inn - and she didn't have anything on her that they could steal; all she had was the clothes on her back, which were dirty and needed to be washed anyway. Marle was a smart girl (smarter than her actions may have sometimes led one to believe) and suspected that they were planning to do something like sell her into slavery. She also knew that Crono and the others had a better chance of finding her if she stayed with Derron and the others. Not only might her captors kill her if she tried to run, but she didn't know where she was going and may very well die in the wilderness. She really didn't want to die. Not for a long time yet, anyway.

She stumbled and almost fell over. Derron jerked her back up to her feet and muttered, "Walk properly," adding a name on the end that she really didn't think was appropriate. She almost snapped back at him but decided not to. Her awakening had been rude - finding yourself in a sack is not a way she would have recommended to anyone to start their day - and she was still tired. She had fallen asleep the instant she had laid down on the bed, which was unusual as she usually spent over half an hour trying to get to sleep even when she was exhausted. Considering the fact that she had been lying next to Crono, she hadn't thought she would have drifted off to sleep that easily at all. It was that fact that made her suspect that she had been drugged.

She expected that Crono and the others were trying to find her. Well, she really hoped they were, anyway. They would probably have been drugged too - she recalled Magus' reluctance to eat the food that had been provided last night - so Derron and the other men definitely had a head start on them. Completely unfamiliar with the geography of the place and having spent most of the journey so far asleep in a sack, Marle didn't know how far that head start was.

The fact that she couldn't defend herself was really getting to her, but what could she do with her hands tied? Scream and bite someone? She had never had to learn any kind of physical defence, although she had enjoyed teaching herself how to use her crossbow. She had sneaked out to watch the army at archery practice and had applied what she had seen to the crossbow that a travelling weapons-maker named Melchior had sold her, finding it surprisingly easy. She wished she had that crossbow now. Even a big rock would do, she thought, eyeing the cold, wet snow distrustfully and deciding that she never wanted to walk through snow ever again.

"Where are we going?" she asked Derron hopefully. None of the three men had volunteered any kind of information, nor had they responded to her questions.

"Not your business to know," Derron muttered.

"I think it is my business, considering you're taking me there."

"Synalair," called the man in the lead, turning back to them. "The name of the place won't do any good nor ill to someone so obviously... out of town."

Marle took this to mean that he knew that she wasn't originally from this universe. She wondered how he knew.

"See the forest ahead?" continued the man. "The ground there will not be covered by snow. We will camp there for the night."

Marle was relieved at the thought of walking on proper dirt, not treacherous snow, but it seemed to take hours and hours to reach the forest. The man who was obviously in the lead sent Derron to find some wood for a fire and gestured for Marle to sit on a nearby log. She did, gratefully, and he sat down himself on a strangely dry rock, peeling something that looked like a carrot with a sharp knife but watching her thoughtfully. For the most part she ignored him, studying the forest curiously. It was dark and cold, but less colder than the exposed snow-covered environment outside and far drier.

Presently he spoke. "Tell me, what do you know of the Eight Mages?"

"Tarkyn!" protested the other man almost as soon as the word 'mages' had left his mouth.

"If she doesn't know about them already, Kent, then her knowing about them can do no harm," Tarkyn reasoned, keeping his almost startlingly green eyes on Marle. "So?"

"Um... nothing," Marle admitted with a shrug. "I haven't heard about any mages at all. Could you untie my hands, please? I am not armed so I can't try to kill you, and I won't run away. I promise. I don't know where I'm going, I'd get completely lost and probably die in the wilderness."

"I'll think about it," Tarkyn responded, slicing the carrot-thing into a pot of water resting on the ground near him and reaching for another of the long orange vegetables from a small hessian sack. Marle eyed the sack distrustfully, having decided that she really didn't like sacks. "The Mages - you will need to know this if you don't want to get killed for your ignorance - the Mages are a group of, well, you could call them magicians. Are you familiar with the idea of magic?"

Marle nodded hesitantly but decided that it was wiser to keep her own magic a secret for now.

"Good. I'm not qualified to explain the concept of magic to you. Each of the Mages has an area on which their power is strongest, their element, if you like. I'm quite sure that you understand elemental magic," he said blandly, a smile playing on his lips. "The eight elements are Sun, Water, Fire, Forest, Vision, Moon, Shadow and Existence. Kent, go and help Derron bring the wood. He's probably managed to get lost again."

Grumbling, Kent got to his feet and walked deeper into the forest. Tarkyn watched him go expressionlessly, then turned back to Marle, a strand of his dirty blonde hair falling in front of his vivid green eyes. He flicked it away irritably.

"I have no intention of selling you in Synalair," he assured her bluntly. "I have a feeling that there is a lot you can still do, and you won't be able to do any of it in slavery to some strange person. As a matter of fact, I have never sold anyone, and I don't mean to. Back to the Mages - they are a far more important topic of conversation. The Mages are scattered throughout this universe and tend to be a little... off the planet. They are all immortal and will remain a certain physical age for the rest of existence. This age is defined by however old they are when their body decides to stop aging. It's all very strange... anyway, the Mages don't just drift around looking impressive and being powerful, they have a purpose, and this purpose is to protect this universe at all costs. Currently there is a threat to it, hurtling through space. A very spikey, pointy and fiery thing that will affect our world as it has yours."

"Lavos!" Marle exclaimed. "Lavos is coming to your universe too?"

"If not for the powers of the Mages, he would have hit this universe at the same time that he destroys yours. That is to say, he's coming in a couple of years. They can keep him off for a few years later, but no more. It is their hope to construct a force-field around this universe, so he'll just bounce off and go somewhere else."

"Then he'll hit some other defenceless world!"

"Not so. The Mages can ensure that he hits in a certain place that will send him straight to an empty planet, devoid of life. There, he can destroy to his black heart's content. This is where you and your friends come in handy."

"How do you know so much about us?"

"I was told," said Tarkyn carefully. "Four of the Mages reside in the Castle of Sorcery, Altrisiac, but the other four are somewhere in the universe and have not heard the call. Through the course of your journey here, you and your friends must find the other three Mages, including the Eighth. They'd really appreciate it if you could find the Eighth Mage, by the way, because they can't."

"How do you know all this? Wait, you said there are eight Mages, four of them in the Castle, and we have to find the other three." Marle's eyes were narrow with suspicion. "You're a Mage, aren't you?"

"I assure you, I am not!"

"It would explain how you know everything, and how you know so much about the Mages. And why those two brutes do everything you say. Which one are you?" She leaned forward to study him. "Forest," she decided. "You're the Forest Mage." It would explain the incredible, almost unnaturally vivid green of his eyes.

"I am not a Mage!" said Tarkyn with firm desperation.

"I think you are," she responded, leaning back.

"Think what you want," he muttered uncomfortably and would not speak to her for the remainder of that evening.

They arrived in Synalair in the morning two days later. Tarkyn dismissed Derron and Kent, both of whom wandered off, presumably back to their village. Tarkyn dragged Marle around Synalair for a while, stopping in a clothes shop to buy her a thick woollen coat and saying it was compensation for the time she had spent in the sack. The second time he stopped her, it was to point something out to her.

"The Black Citadel," he said. "They say a dark sorcerer of immense power dwells there."

"I don't see it," she said blankly, looking around for it.

He rested a hand on her shoulder and pointed. "Oh, there it is!" she exclaimed. "I see it now. It doesn't look like a very nice place," she said, looking up at him.

"I have heard that it's not," Tarkyn shrugged and lifted his hand from her shoulder.

"Oh, that's probably where Kelke lives!" Marle looked back to where she thought the Citadel had been but couldn't see it.

"Come, Marle. We will wait in the Synalair Inn for your friends to find us," Tarkyn said in a tone of voice that implied that his instruction was not to be argued with. "They will be here soon. They will come."