Chapter Two: The Groom
"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 pointed out. "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 discover something 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... "