"You hear about the blacksmith's boy? Folks at the market been saying he's some sort of dumb mute...can't even string two words together."
"Nah, you ever seen under that scarf of his? Scar as thick as my finger, right across...some sunnabitch cut that boy's voice out. My money's one of them Mogma scum, they say he used to live up by the mountain."
"Goddesses above...that's barbaric."
In the merchant's quarter of Castle Town, just past the large gates leading to the lower residential quarters, there existed a small, secluded blacksmith's shop. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Einion, were regarded as two of Hyrule's greatest blacksmiths, often being called on for work for the Nohansen royal family. Rupees came in regularly, and by and large they were considered respectable and well off by the community, if a little too keen on solitude.
That was, of course, except for the boy.
Word traveled fast when the young boy was brought wounded and bleeding through the gates, carried on the horse of an even more severely injured cadet. The wounded rider's snow-white initiate's cloak was spotted with blood. Barreling towards the Castle, the man hadn't stopped for anything, and was quickly followed by a full formation of proper Knights, red cloaks billowing in the wind as they followed on their own horses.
Hours passed. The knights came down then, the white cloaked man notably missing from the ensemble, the small boy unconscious in their arms as they rode up to the door of the then newly married Einions, knocking loudly enough to alert the whole street.
After some talking, the boy had been carried in to the house, and was soon seen sitting behind the counter, cleaning and doing odd chores. Sometimes another boy would go to the house, but none of the neighbors wanted to pry...not after Mr. Einion had chewed the man across the street out for trying, anyway.
Eventually the other boy, seemingly a knight, stopped coming by, and now, almost fifteen years since his arrival, the boy still lived with the Einions. Still silent as the day he arrived, he worked the counter and the forge with his adoptive parents, and those who had sampled his work say he's obviously picked up their talent.
But the words still remained. The rumors. Hanging like a specter over him, a mystery nobody seems inclined to answer that hangs on the entire neighborhood's lips. br /
"Just who is that Link boy?"