One
It had taken more time than she'd thought necessary for them to understand what, specifically she was trying to get them to understand. For places that were concerned with spreading skills and proclaiming intelligence, both the Collegia and the Academia of Hyrule could be quite short-sighted and downright idiotic at times.
Really, Raiha had wanted this nonsense done with before she became too encumbered by her pregnant belly to do her work, but that was annoyingly not the case. She was less than a month shy of her projected due date for the twins when the first of the thirty candidates finally began to trickle into the palace of Hyrule.
Fifteen men and women from the Academia, and then fifteen from the Collegia arrived over the course of a week. While the two schools proclaimed no dislike of one another, the students seemed to not take the same view, and either openly snubbed one another, or made snide remarks.
Granted, it wasn't everyone, but the reports she was getting from the observing guards—And Link and Ganon—were not giving her a good impression of the maturity level of these scholars. At least, not all of them. Some seemed to be conducting themselves in an acceptable manner.
Today was going to be their big test, however. They were all to gather in the library, and wait for her. They weren't to wander into the stacks, or look at the papers on the large desk that would be in the area they were gathering in. They were to drop their letters of introduction into the basket, and then either sit or stand, and wait for her.
Raiha smiled a little to herself; they wouldn't know that she would already be there, invisible, and watching from the desk itself. This was her chance to personally observe them, and make her own choices. She wasn't actually interested in the letters, no. She had done that mostly just to make sure she wouldn't get swamped with candidates that weren't up to her standards.
In truth, she doubted many of them would be up to her standards. The library was one thing; it held current and recent past history. These books were old, some of them well in excess of five hundred years, but they weren't ancient history. Those books were in the archives, and she would be damned if she was going to let any of them wander through there without being heavily vetted first. By her. But that would take more than her first impressions, that would take interviews, and those were going to take time.
She sighed a little, leaning back against the desk, and absently rubbed at her stomach as one of the twins kicked vigorously. She could hardly wait to have them out of her body and into the world where she wouldn't have to be the only person caring for them.
Raiha checked the time, then scooted back a little on the desk as the library doors opened, well out of the way of the basket where the letters were meant to go. The first few didn't so much walk as rush in; clearly trying to be The First to prove their school was better. It didn't surprise her that they were a handful of men in their mid-thirties.
The less enthusiastic filtered in behind them, ranging in age from one man in his mid-sixties, to a girl who couldn't be more than sixteen, who was staring around herself in awe and delight. Raiha felt a faint smile curve her own mouth as memory tugged at her; she must have looked similar to that when first seeing the royal library.
There were only a handful of women, and this was not entirely pleasing to Raiha; men were difficult to work with at the best of times, and that included the two male mates she had. Those four scholars who had each tried to be first for their place of study all held an air of superiority that was irksome at best. They hadn't even produced the letters she'd requested, and had specifically told the guard escort to mention.
The teenage girl was the first to remember, and though she seemed nervous, she quickly approached the desk and put her letter in the available basket. Her curiosity led her to peer at the papers, but after a moment she ducked her head guiltily and moved back to instead peer at the nearest shelves that weren't technically off-limits. Raiha smiled a little, mentally applauding the girls' tactics. A few others came forward in her wake; a woman who was in her forties at the youngest, two young men who seemed to be in their twenties, both looking rather shy and diffident, followed by another woman who was possibly around thirty.
And then Raiha saw one who made her freeze, barely breathing.
He was about as tall as Zelda was, maybe an inch or two taller, built very much like a dancer. He moved like one too, lithe and graceful, and a little sensual as well. His hair was a dark blonde, styled with long bangs over one side of his face; his one visible eye was crimson, and at a glance she assumed him to be somewhere in his mid-twenties.
Sheik.
Her breath caught in her throat, but after a long, paralyzed moment, reality reasserted itself; it could be Sheik, yes, but more likely the young man simply had some Sheikah heritage in his family tree. From what she could glimpse, the covered eye seemed to be heavily scarred, which explained some of why he was moving cautiously; limited depth perception in an unknown place was a tricky thing to navigate. Besides, even if it was Sheik, it couldn't be the one she missed. His place had been at the other Zelda's side, with no connection to this particular time.
He hesitated near the desk, and despite herself, she couldn't keep from staring as he pulled out the letter and reached for the basket. He spoke, and it startled her enough that she almost missed his very quiet words.
"I remember."
Two words. Two simple, innocent words. Raiha almost lost the invisibility spell right there with just how pole-axed she was. The young man didn't seem inclined to wait for an answer, however, and dropped his letter—no, two letters—into the basket before going to join the sixteen-year-old girl. They started up a low conversation that Raiha could tell was brimming with scholarly enthusiasm.
As the shock wore off, she smiled in a pained manner. Here she was, getting her hopes up again; she really ought to know better by now. This would need to be carefully looked into first. Starting with that second letter, which she silently slipped from the basket and tucked into her vest; she would look at it later, after this mess was concluded.
It wasn't a thin letter by any means; it seemed to stretch the envelope it was in, and she couldn't help but wonder at its contents. What would it tell her; the thing she most wanted, or nothing more than what she already suspected? Either way, she didn't dare start it here.
With a mental sigh, she pulled her attention back towards the remaining candidates. A handful more seemed to remember their letters were supposed to go into the basket, and as she allowed the time to pass, she saw the four 'eager' males alternating between glaring at each other, scowling at the door, and speculatively eyeing the stacks they were supposed to refrain from entering.
She was almost tempted to let them try and sneak in; she'd put the spell in place for a reason, after all. Nothing that would harm the library, but they would learn the penalties for breaking the rules rather quickly.
As she debated, one of them decided that her word—her explicit instructions—wasn't something he had to obey, and stepped over the invisible line. He was promptly bounced back by a wave of force that made him stagger. His muttered oath, and the quiet snickers of the two men that must have belonged to the opposing school grabbed the attention of several others, who turned to watch curiously.
He scowled, and tried again. The next hit was not as gentle. At the third attempt, he ended up bowled over on the floor, dazed, and there was some open, if soft, laughter. He flushed angrily, shoving away the helping hands of his friend, and got back to his feet on his own.
Raiha shook her head a little, dropped her invisibility, and got off the desk as he tried for round four.
"The more effort you put into breaking the rules, the harder the spell is going to hit you," she said calmly, making the entire group startle. "Push hard enough, and it'll even knock you out. When I give a specific instruction, I expect it to be obeyed, you understand."
The young men—they were certainly young in comparison, really—stared at her in befuddlement, even as the rest of the people shifted around so that she could get through with minimal fuss. She silently appreciated the care; her pregnant stomach did make for unwieldy feelings as the best of times.
"What's the big idea?!" the one finally demanded, glaring at her suspiciously.
"The 'big idea' is seeing how well you follow instructions," Raiha replied mildly. "As funny as it would be to let you get the concussion you plainly deserve, Zelda made me promise to interfere before that part. She said it would set a bad precedent if I allowed possible helpers to hurt themselves by their own foolishness."
She sighed a little, hands on her hips, and was faintly pleased to hear a burst of snickering at her back. A sens of humor—or at least getting hers—was important for a good working relationship.
"In ay case, you, and you three as well," and she pointed at them, "are not impressing me. And as I am the one you need to impress to be allowed to work here, not just visit, that's not a good thing."
"Y-you're Lady Raiha?" one of the other candidates stammered a little. At a guess, she thought it was the sixteen-year-old. It sounded like a younger voice, at least.
Raiha turned, facing the whole group, and nodded, relaxing her stance into something less antagonistic. They may have been bored, but they had listened instead of ignoring the explicit instructions the guards had given them.
"I am. No doubt you've heard interesting things about me," her smile was sharp, but wry. "Most of it is true, but if you want specifics, you'll have to ask another time. Right now, I want the candidates who remembered to put their letters into the basket to go over and stand by the desk. As for the rest of you, I'll nullify the spells, and you can explore the library until I'm done with the smaller group."
"How will you get everyone back, m'lady? It's a large library."
She glanced slightly in the direction of the Sheik look-alike, nodding acknowledgment of the question, even as another sharp smile crossed her face.
"Oh, I have my ways. Now. There's a baker's dozen of letters in that basket, so the thirteen of you that listened, I want you around the desk. The rest of you, shoo."
"I'm not going to be told to 'shoo' by some desert female!"
Raiha turned back to the belligerent scholar. And sighed. He could have picked a more creative insult. She was still far too pleased by the recent rediscovery of her people to find something so paltry to be irritating. And her quiet delight held nothing on Ganon's mixture of relief and renewed grief; he didn't dare reveal himself to them, after all. Tales of the Demon King were history to their people, not myth or legend.
But that was a consideration for another time, and she dragged her thoughts back to the moment with a mild shake of her head.
"Look, you rushed in here, didn't put your letter in the basket, and decided that my instructions didn't have to be followed. Now you're arguing with me. Keep it up, and I'll ban you from my library."
"You can't do that!" he protested.
She smiled. It was not a nice smile.
"Wanna bet?"
The words were so mild they were an obvious threat. The scholar, while clearly full of his own self-importance, was not entirely stupid, and after a moment he backed down. Raiha nodded a little, and made a slight gesture, releasing the woven spell with the faintest of pops that made a couple of them jump.
"Go on. There's plenty to look at and if you're extremely careful with the stuff in the back, you might be allowed to touch some things. Ask one of the librarians first; they're the ones in the blue robes with the white belts."
Slowly, the group dispersed, the four that had been so antagonistic towards one another setting out in different directions under her sharp eye. Satisfied for the moment, she turned back to the thirteen people who had waited by the desk.
They were a fairly mixed group; more women than men, which was pleasing, including the teenage girl, and the older women. The Sheik look-alike was there too, and she thought about the letter tucked into the front of her vest; the corner of it was poking her rather tender breasts, reminding her of its existence and how she both wanted, and feared, to read it.
"All right. As you know, my name is Raiha, the royal sage. Just Raiha is fine; despite Zelda's gifts of title, I've never really been into the formal side of things. If you must, you can use Lady Raiha."
She offered them a smile that was less sharp and more welcoming.
"Now, I asked you lot to stay because you heeded my instructions. What that means for you is a short side trip to the Archives. Touch nothing; even near the entrance there are some fragile items."
The excited squeak from the teenager made her chuckle a little; no one was allowed into the archives without Royal Permission at the least. More recently, Royal Permission and Royal Sage permission, because Raiha was quite serious about the fragile state of things. While she had laid a blanket preservation spell over the entire room—a spell that had taken two days and the help of her children, which had so far lasted for five years—it wasn't meant to be a permanent solution. Some things were so old as to be irrelevant, while other items had enough power that they needed to be moved with care to a much more protective area. It was a large job, and she needed help if it was ever going to be anywhere near completed.
"Is this another test, m'lady?"
Raiha's grin was quick and sharp.
"Everything is a test, child," she said dryly, leading the way out of the library. "But this one isn't so hard. I want to see how you all handle sorting old things. Things that may crumble if you're too rough, or bite if you don't hold them just so."
Thirteen men and women followed her out the door and down the halls. Raiha was no tour guide, but then, these people were scholars. They probably knew more about the palace than the average layman. If they pleased her enough that she kept them, they'd be making this trip on a regular basis.
"You're not... worried about leaving the rest behind?" the teenage girl asked after they had crossed two hallways.
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because I only disabled one spell."
Raiha chuckled a little darkly, and the girl squeaked.
"W... will anyone get hurt?"
"If they're smart and desist when the spell thumps them, they'll be fine," she replied. "If they insist on being trouble, my librarians have spelled crystals they can use to contact me, or imprison the foolish if they don't want to bother me."
"...wooooow... you're... You're really good at magic, huh?"
Hearing the wistfulness, Raiha gave the girl a small smile.
"I've had many many years to get this good," she said lightly. "If any of you show signs of burgeoning magical talent, I'll arrange to train you."
The girls squeaked again, and this time Raiha's soft laugh was gentler.
"Rai!"
She stopped, glancing down the hallway as Link scampered up to her, smiling warmly at him. He smiled cheerfully back, though he refrained from the hug he plainly wanted to give; as informal as she was, she was still not very comfortable with casual contact. Knowing this, he always sought permission first, even silently. His restraint made her smile faintly, and she gave his cheek a kiss. He beamed, and she heard a few quite murmurs from the group, which she chose to ignore for the moment.
"Yes?"
"Zelda said to remind you that you're supposed to meet with the doctor and the healer after lunch if I saw you," he said, standing up a little straighter. "And also that you're not supposed to be too mean to your candidates."
Raiha snickered as the small group behind her whispered amongst themselves.
"I'm being reasonable," she replied. "No one's been knocked out yet. Don't you have a passel of trainees to work with?"
"Gan's got them for the moment."
"Ahhh, so really, Ganon was being fussy and you offered to come check on me if he worked with your newbies for a few minutes, in an effort to avoid him possibly blowing something up again."
Link blushed, and looked a little embarrassed. Raiha's amused expression was a little bit sharp, but she decided to take no insult. There really wasn't much point anyways.
"It gets him out of more paperwork too," he admitted sheepishly.
She snorted, and gave his shoulder a light smack.
"Well, I have been reminded, and I am perfectly fine, so shoo."
"Don't forget to come to lunch," he said, gingerly poking her in the shoulder.
"I am not that bad. Besides, the twins wouldn't let me forget to eat."
That got a delighted smile as he glanced down at her belly, then back up at her.
"Go on now, back to work, featherhead," she said gently, giving his shoulder a light push. "I'll see you later."
"Okay!"
And off he trotted, plainly pleased from the way he was moving. Raiha rolled her eyes in fond amusement, and took the turn that would take her and her entourage to the archives. He really was a protective dork, and that was part of what she loved about him. At least he didn't hover. Ganon hovered. She had kicked him a couple of times for it; being pregnant didn't mean she was incapable.
"That was Sir Link, the Queen's Champion," she heard one of the older women murmur. "The one who saved the realm when that strangeness happened ten years ago!"
"I though he was in a relationship with her majesty?" was the uncertain response, this one from an older male.
"Maybe they're just really good friends," came a third voice, another one of the women.
"Or perhaps it's no one's business but theirs," came a fourth voice. Sheik's voice.
There was a series of embarrassed coughs as Raiha glanced over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow in question. None of the ones who had been gossiping would meet her eye. Sheik though, caught the glance and offered a faint nod, and even fainter smile.
Raiha gave herself a slight mental shake as she faced forward again. It was hard to not think of the look-alike as her former beloved. The resemblance was uncanny at best, and his words, those two quiet, simple words, still echoed in her head. As if taunting her, the letter poked her lightly through her shirt again.
Mildly irritated at herself—when did she become so easily fixated on a little thing?—she walked a bit faster down the hall. Fortunately, the group kept up.
The door that led to the archives was fairly nondescript; plain and ordinary, and prone to causing people's eyes to skim right past it as nothing worth inspecting. The last had been Raiha's doing, a small, subtle spell of misdirection. It held a seemingly ordinary lock, and no sign proclaimed the importance of the room.
She pulled a brass key out of her pocket and murmured a few quiet words in a long-forgotten tongue as she turned it in the lock. Key, password, and her own magical signature were inserted into the spells she had imbedded in the wood and metal, and it turned smoothly as though it was ordinary. She pushed open the door and stepped in, then to the side.
There was an air to the Archives that didn't exist in the library, save for back at the oldest of the useful shelves. Ancient history murmured in the room, that was kept dimmed to help prevent further aging of weathered papers. The small group filed in after her, having gone mute in awe at the sight of the biggest magical artifact in the room; the stained glass windows that depicted the story of the Triforce, and cast multicolored soft light onto the floor from no discernible source.
Well, it depicted most of the story, at least. Getting a truly accurate tale, even from her own memories, wasn't the easiest task in the world, even with magic. And she wasn't inclined towards casting big spells at the moment; whether it was possible or not to cause a miscarriage via over-use of magic, she didn't want to find out. Finishing it was just going to have to wait.
When the applicants dragged their attention away, she heard a few sounds of dismay, and chuckled a little. Despite the air of history, the actual layout of the first room was a hodgepodge mess of old bookshelves stuffed to overflowing, boxes topped by other boxes, books stacked haphazardly, and a neatened corner that Raiha had been working on for the past four years. Said corner also held a half-open door leading to the next room, which looked much worse.
"It looks like my uncle's barn," the teenager opined after a long minute.
Now Raiha laughed.
"Yes, I am aware of how messy it is. Unfortunately, this is only the first of many rooms; while librarians and the royal family were aware that things needed to be remembered, there's only so much room in the library, and it's better for recent, more relevant history to be found there. Unfortunately, it was the library that got the bulk of the better treatment, while the archives... were less well tended."
"So you advertised to both the Collegia and the Academia for scholarly help?"
"Got it in one," she replied, nodding at the forty-ish woman with a dry smile. "There's plenty of old books and papers in here that the non-magically trained person can handle, and some of this is so old as to be myth at this point, so there's little reason to keep it around."
"W... what would you like us to do?"
One of the young men that was not Sheik. She smiled faintly.
"For the next fifteen minutes, you may wander around. Do not touch anything if you can avoid it. Some of these items are precariously stacked, and there are layers upon layers of dust. I'd like for you to get a feel for the work you'll be doing I you accept this offer. The Archives are not a place to play, so if you'd rather work in the library, sorting things for the Archives, please let me know."
There were looks exchanged, and then slowly, with great caution, the scholars began picking their individual paths through the mess. Raiha moved over to her cleared area, and the small, comfortable couch; she needed to sit again. Her ankles were starting to ache.
Pregnancy, she decided for what had to be the thousandth time, was very annoying. Plausibly worth it in the end, but very annoying. She stretched carefully as she sat, and debated pulling the letter out, but doubted she could read and absorb it as fast as her imposed time limit. No, it would still have to wait.
She couldn't quite decide if that made her happy or not.
It took about ten minutes before she heard something creak ominously, followed by several yelps as what sounded like loose paper whooshed and rustled down, raising a cloud of dust that sent everyone in the room to coughing. Raiha shook her head in wry amusement, and called up a light breeze to carefully clear the air.
Seven of her thirteen scholars looked rather embarrassed, not to mention dusty, and the reams of paper scattered all over the floor was testament to what had just happened.
"And that would be why I said don't touch anything," she chuckled a little. "Is anyone hurt?"
Seven sheepish head shakes were her answer, and she could hear spates of sneezing and coughing coming from the scholars who had not been caught in the mess. Again she shook her head wryly.
"We may as well leave. It'll take a bit for the dust to settle. And you lot will probably need a quick shower before the midday meal to get the dust off."
They followed her without fuss out of the room, waiting as she locked it again. She returned the key to her pocket to their eyes, but really it slipped into a subset of reality. She had learned paranoia for a very good reason, after all, and the number of genuine magical artifacts stored—and undocumented—in the Archives were enough to make her especially cautious. The last thing she needed was someone getting their hands on something they couldn't control.
"Those of you who need baths may go take them, and the rest of your can return to the library until the midday hour and explore," she said lightly. "If you feel the need to tell me what you want to do, I'll return to the library this afternoon, at around three bells."
It was a gentle dismissal, but still a dismissal, and the scholars all pattered away, most talking in low, excited voices, even the dust-covered ones. Her Sheik look-alike seemed especially embarrassed by all the dust, and she suspected it was him that had accidentally misjudged distance and bumped a pile. She watched them go with a mildly amused headshake, then turned to re-enter the Archive and see just how bad it was.
It wasn't really, though the dust would need more time to settle. She sighed a little; that was decidedly the most inconvenient thing about being pregnant; there was so much she was being told to not do, and cleaning up these rooms was certainly one of them. Dust and mold were certainly things she occasionally thought about, but not to the degree that the healers had told her to not.
If it wasn't for the magic, she probably wouldn't have even been allowed to set foot in the archives until after the twins were born. Which would have driven her a bit mad, yes. She whistled up her gentle wind again, and had it stir the papers carefully into some semblance of order so that people could walk and not worry about setting on the yellowed pages, before leaving and locking the door once more behind her.
Now, of course, she was the one who needed a bath. And relaxing in a warm tub before lunch sounded like the perfect way to relax before allowing her lovers to fuss over her and then going to see the doctor and the healer, just to make sure the babies were all right. Even though she was fairly certain—healing was a gift of hers after all—it didn't hurt to get another opinion of things.
Even if is was tedious.
She shucked her dust-covered clothing the minute she had her door closed behind her, and flipped the errant, worrying letter onto her desk where she would see it after her appointments. Whether she would have the time to read it before returning to collect the wayward scholars, that was still up in the air, but she didn't want to bring it out to her family just yet. Not until she knew whether she was chasing fairy dreams, or something more.
Stepping into her bathing chamber, she pulled the cord that would start the shower of sun-warmed water so that she could get the dirt and dust off, before settling into a low pool of spell-warmed water that was the perfect temperature for her. She tipped her had back against the padded headrest and sighed faintly, running a hand absently over her stomach as one of the twins shifted. She would not, could not, allow this to get to her. Whatever would happen would happen; whether it was good or bad would depend upon the people involved, and the information she still did not have.
If nothing else, it was likely to shake up the balance, more than a little, and thinking of that made her smile faintly in dry amusement. She wasn't sure how she had become the semi-primary partner of all of them, and yet here she was, in the center of what could have been a notoriously difficult square, but was, instead, a triangle.
Well, it would become a square if she wasn't careful. And Ganondorf would be the most vocal about it, the most irritable. Link would worry the most, and calm, serene Zelda would stand back to wait and see, like she almost always did. Raiha's lips curved in a dry smile as she considered the reactions of her lovers; if it wasn't happening to her, it would almost have been amusing.
Ganon's concern would likely stem wholly from his knowledge of her, and their shared history; lifetimes spent fighting one another thanks to that shade that had possessed him had left his memories a muddle, but he knew her well enough at this point to realize how this hope and uncertainty would cause no small amount of stress. And since they all knew the origins of her long life, and her immortality now, there would be wary concern directed towards the look-alike as well.
She sighed a little, and carefully, reluctantly, climbed out of the bath so that she could get dressed again. Fussing wouldn't fix this; she had to read that letter, and damned if she wasn't going to do it now. She sent a polite note winging through the halls to Zelda, and another to the kitchens so that she could eat in her rooms, then sat at her desk, picked up the thick envelope, and broke the wax seal holding it closed.
The pages didn't quite spill out, but the envelope didn't hold together very well after the seal was broken, and it made her smile a littler dryly. Sheik, her Sheik, had often been very laconic... but maybe this letter would she some light on the numerous questions that were bouncing around in her mind.