Meeting
Rosa awoke to Cecil´s hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her into consciousness. The room was full of light now, very bright despite the curtains drawn over the windows, and she guessed it was about noon.
She was still tired. That was one thing she truly envied about her husband and his made-up "discipline" of the Paladin; his training had instilled in him an almost unnatural level of stamina. The long ride last yesterday, the long ride back, the monsters, the dark hours outside the city gates, and all the enervating stress that went with it, had only required about five hours of sleep for Cecil to recover. To recover completely, it seemed; as a healer she knew how to diagnose many conditions simply by looking at the patient, and neither Cecil´s face nor his body betrayed the least sign of fatigue.
And the worst part about it was that she could not complain to him; he'd suggest that she revitalize herself with her magic, and ridding one of physical weariness was one thing that magic simply could not do. The use of magic caused one to become worn out; Cecil had had a friend, (Rosa had never actually met the great sage Tellah, but Cecil and the others who had fought at his side talked of him often, and fondly,) who had so overexerted himself, casting a spell beyond his strength, that it claimed not only his stamina but his very life essence, extinguishing his life beyond the capacity of magic to restore. That was an extreme case, but the basic principle was the same. Magic takes a certain vitality out of a person; it does not grant or restore it.
"Time to leave already?"
Cecil smiled at her. "It's just past noon, and the mayor has finally emerged from the castle. We should go see him now, before some other urgent business distracts him."
"How do you know that? Didn't you just wake up?"
"About an hour ago. But you looked like you needed your rest, so I left you here in peace." Four hours of sleep then! Rosa would be awestruck if she didn't find this so annoying. And she'd been so dead-tired that she hadn´t noticed him arise, leave, or return!
Rosa rubbed her eyes and stood up. "Well, let's go find him then."
Cecil looked at her concernedly. "You still look like you need your rest. You want to stay here while I speak with the Mayor?"
"Thanks, I'll be fine."
"You sure?"
Rosa put on her shoes and started for the door, to remove all doubt. "I'll be fine, Cecil." They left and headed for the Mayor's house. "This looks to be another situation shaping up like the war against Zemus, and back then I survived without very much sleep. Except in airships, of course."
Cecil laughed. "I always admired how you did that, you know. Airships always make me queasy, and I can never get any rest on one."
Rosa was astonished. Now it was Cecil, admiring the way she was able to sleep! "You get air-sick? You? A former captain in the Red Wings?"
Cecil grinned wryly. "Yes, and I know plenty of sailors who can't swim, too. I'd never flown before when I sought out the glamorous Red Wings posting, and by the time I got it, it was too late to change."
"You know, I never knew that."
"Good. I think you're the first person to ever know." They arrived at the mayor's house chuckling over this. Cecil pulled the bell-rope, and the servant they had spoken with the day before answered, looking out at them through his door-within-the-door.
"Ah, g'day to you milord, milady. Still lookin' for the mayor are ye?"
"We are. Is he at home?" replied Rosa.
"Aye, who should I tell him is calling?"
Rosa was about to present them, but Cecil touched her hand just hard enough to make it a clear signal for silence. He thought for a second, then said "I am Sir Cecil the Paladin, captain of the Red Wings airship force."
"Very well, milord. I'll announce you at once."
When the man had left, Rosa asked, "And who am I then?"
"Sir Cecil's exceptional wife, the greatest White Mage in the land, who unfortunately does not possess any impressive-sounding titles except Queen of a land nobody's ever heard of."
Rosa tried not to laugh. She hated the way he could disarm her with humor when she truly wanted to be angry at him! "Why all the stealth and deception, anyway? You haven't been in the Red Wings for years."
"They don't know that. It was the first thing I could think of. We're here to get answers, not to have questions asked of us. Until we can figure out where we are, who brought us, and why, the less we do to invite questioning, the better. So if the Mayor's in a time of crisis, and buying weapons by the warehouse-full, I pass myself off as an important, powerful, mysterious military commander. There is likely nobody who would attract his interest, and get us in to see him quickly, more than such a man."
The small inset door opened and the servant appeared again. "The mayor says he hasn't heard of the Red Wings, but a Paladin of the Light is welcome here in these dark times." The viewing door closed, and the large door to the mayor's house swung open. The servant led them to the Mayor's study and stayed outside as they entered.
"Sir Cecil the Paladin, captain of the Red Wings," said a tall man sitting behind a desk strewn with paperwork. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties, and looked as if he had been a warrior in his younger days, though his muscular body was now running somewhat to fat. Too much time behind a desk, thought Rosa. He looked as if he hadn't slept for days, and wore a sour expression on his face, which he was trying somewhat unsuccessfully to hide. "And you, milday?"
"I am Rosa the White." She suppressed a smile at the expression on Cecil's face when she invented her own title. "My husband and I have come on urgent business, and we need to speak with the king, concerning the monsters."
"Come? From where? I have not heard of your Red Wings, not among the forces of any nation, nor am I aware of any mercenary group by that name."
Rosa could not think of how to answer, and was grateful when Cecil took over. "We come from the far-distant Kingdom of Baron, bearing important tidings from the King to your king."
"And where is Baron located?" asked the mayor suspiciously, with a trace of anger in his voice. "On which continent? The King will see nobody in this time of crisis but the Light Warriors."
"The Light... Warriors?" asked Rosa. First the arms merchant had referred to them last night, and now this man. But she had no idea who they were.
"Oh, you're from very far indeed if you've not heard of the Light Warriors! The champions who saved the world from darkness in the war three years ago! Now who are you, and what business do you have here? Tell me or I will have you thrown out!"
Rosa could hardly blame the man for his harsh attitude; he was obviously under a lot of stress, and had been for quite some time, and now they provided a convenient target to take some of it out on. Cecil, on the other hand, had his arms straight down at his sides, his hands clenched into fists so tight that they were beginning to turn white. Rosa knew that he did that for only one reason: to keep them from drawing his sword.
"Look," he growled at the mayor, "I don't know who you all are either, or why you've never heard of anything that's important, but we're the ones that saved the world from evil in the war three years ago! Me, Rosa, and three companions who you'll probably tell me you haven't heard of either, and many others who fought at our side! Now we're here to see the King, and--"
He was cut off by the mayor's derisive laughter. "Oh, why do the crazy ones always come here? Not twenty minutes ago I had a pair of ladies in my office trying to tell me that they were Light Warriors that nobody had ever heard of! Now, get out of my office, and my house, or I will call the guards!"
Rosa saw Cecil's face begin to harden. This was not good at all. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, sir," she said, and took Cecil's hand, filling herself with a calming spell and transmitting it to him, hoping he would relax. "It seems that the mayor cannot help us, Cecil. We will have to take our message elsewhere." When even this did not provoke any interest from the mayor, she turned and left, with Cecil half a step behind her.
As soon as they were out of the house and the door was shut, she confronted him. "What were you doing in there? You were about to draw your sword!"
"I was not!"
"Cecil, you were angry enough to kill him. I've never seen you like this before, even before you became a Paladin! Never!"
"Yes you have." There was ice in his voice, and she knew he was thinking of the darkest moment of their quest, when Kain had stolen the last of the magical Crystals, betraying them and almost handing the world over into the hands of Zemus.
"Yes, but that man isn't Kain. He's not a childhood friend, he didn't betray you. Why are you so angry?"
"It's..." all the anger and tension seemed to drain out of him as he was forced to be honest with himself. "It's not just him, just like it wasn't only Kain. It's him, it's us being here, it's our kingdom being without us, it's... everything all at once. I feel like an airship caught in the middle of a thunderstorm: Chaos all around and I don't know really where I am, what's going on, or how to get out of it."
"I understand. I felt just as... as helpless as you do now, back when Golbez was holding me prisoner."
"Yeah, that's exactly how I feel. Like something has me chained to a wall and I can't get free."
"Don't worry, Cecil. There's plenty of things we can do here."
"Like what?"
"Like trying to get to Mysidia, for one. Or some other place, somewhere where there could be someone who might tell us about why we're here. Somebody brought us here; we weren't just discovered by the roadside and our warrior's gear that we had stashed away in the castle just happened to be lying there next to us for the guy who brought us here to find. But there's nothing to indicate that we're being held prisoners in any way. I wonder if we weren't brought here, not for evil, but for good."
"You think these people are having too much trouble with monsters, and so they searched through time to find someone who could help them with it, and then broke into their castle, abducted them in their sleep, and dropped them in the middle of nowhere without ever telling them what it was they were supposed to do? I'm not sure, Rosa. It sounds a little bit far-fetched."
"Not when you consider that it happened twice."
Cecil blinked. "Twice? With who else?"
"With the two ladies who were in the Mayor's house before us. The same two, perhaps, who I heard about at the chocobo stables. There's a pattern forming, Cecil. I'm sure of it."
Cecil shrugged. "Well, if so, where should we go about looking for these ladies?"
Rosa started walking. "The first thing that comes to mind is to find another way to gain entrance to the castle and speak with the King."
The Mayor's house was close to the castle, in fact, and as they arrived Rosa gave Cecil an I-told-you-so glance. There at the front gate were two women, both dressed as soldiers, carrying on what seemed to be the end of a very long argument with a group of four guards. The older one, a tall, middle-aged woman with long blond hair down to her shoulders, seemed to be arguing more with her companion than with the guards. Not that Rosa could blame her; the other woman (girl, actually; she couldn't have been anywhere near twenty years old yet,) was speaking in very loud and aggressive tones to the guards, demanding to see the King.
One of the guards had seemingly had enough. "I'm sorry, but I must ask you to leave. The King will speak to none except the Light Warriors, and that is final." He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, as if to underscore the finality of the moment.
"Oh yeah?" asked the teen-aged girl, pulling out some strange rod-like weapon and advancing toward him menacingly. Rosa stepped forward a few steps, wondering if they should intervene, and noticed that it looked like a paintbrush, of all things!
The girl's older companion seemed to take this strange weapon quite seriously. She stepped toward and put out her hand to grab the teenaged girl. With a note of alarm in her voice, she yelled "No, Relm! Don't!"
But the girl-Relm was her name?-had already begun to move her brush in a strange pattern. Rosa wondered if this was some sort of rune or magical invocation, but as something began to take shape before her eyes she realized it was stranger than that. The girl was channeling magic through the brush and creating (painting?) a mirror-image of the guard, standing between herself and the real guard. It was finished in seconds, and the image suddenly took life, drawing its sword and engaging the guard.
The guard, frightened, drew his own blade and parried, but the image kept coming. The guard tried to fight it off, deflecting or batting aside strike after strike, but the magical duplicate disarmed him after a few exchanges. As it raised its sword for a stroke that would have severely wounded the guard, if not killed him, it suddenly vanished, its magical essence exhausted.
Rosa expected the guard and his three comrades to draw steel and immediately rush the two women warriors, but to her surprise they all fell to one knee before the girl. The guard who the girl Relm had attacked stammered at her, "I... I beg your for... forgiveness, O Mage Knight. I w... will s... send for the King at once!" The other three guards seemed equally awestruck, whispering "Mage Knight" to one another in wonder as their comrade dashed into the castle.
Relm looked at her companion with a puzzled expression. "What's going on, Celes?"
The one called Celes was trying her hardest to not berate the girl on the spot. Rosa could not help but admire her self-control. She understood that what Relm had done was over the line, but they were in a somewhat delicate situation and she apparently had the good sense to not show any division between them. "It would seem that they hold the Mage Knights in high regard in this kingdom, Relm. You could have simply told them..."
The guard re-emerged from the palace's gate, and behind him was obviously the king, a tall man, somewhat heavyset, wearing very regal-looking robes and a golden crown studded with jewels. He stroked his gray beard and walked up to the woman named Celes. He looked into her eyes, then said "So it is true. The Mage Knights are once again among us."
"HEY!" Relm broke in. "She's not a Mage Knight, I am!"
"You?" The king glanced at his guards, and they nodded in confirmation. "My apologies, milady Mage Knight. If I may ask, to what do I owe the honor of your visit here, after so many centuries of absence?"
Relm glanced about nervously. "To... well... it is not a... a matter to be discussed in public." She motioned with her head towards the castle gates.
"Ah, yes. Come in, milady Mage Knight, and milady..." He glanced at the older of the two women.
"Chere. I am Celes Chere, a warrior and the guardian of the young Mage Knight Relm Arrowny."
Rosa felt Cecil step away from her side. She looked up and saw him walking very quickly, almost running, towards the castle. Puzzled, walked after him. When they got close enough to draw the King's attention, Cecil called out to him. "Your majesty, a word?"
The king looked at Cecil questioningly. "And you are?"
"Lord Cecil Harvey, Paladin of the Light and King of Baron, a distant land. I come bearing news that I fear may be in some way related to the return of the Mage Knights."
The king frowned at this added complication. "Very well, come with us. We will all speak of these matters together, if there is nobody else who wishes for a moment of my time?"
Rosa caught up with Cecil, admiring the quickness of his thought. She had not thought of doing that! She walked with him into the castle, following the king of Galaar and the two strange women, Relm and Celes.
It was time to get some answers.