The Legend of Zelda: Shadowsong
Book One - Forest

Chapter Eight: Spiders

The inner sanctum, Link had come to realize, was something far greater than some sacred room where a sage came to pray. The great shaft at the center of the temple, rising from the depths below and howling with wind like some gargantuan organ pipe, must have been created for some greater purpose. It wasn't the first time Link had pondered on the nature of the sages' ancient duty, the secret knowledge long lost to the passing of time. Hundreds of years ago, in the time from which legends came, the sages had been powerful.

He was wandering a labyrinth. Time after time, Link would work his way through half a dozen rooms, only to find himself at a locked door or a dead end. The temple's twisting corridors were like a maze, leading him in circles. Thin veils of abandoned spiderweb hung like canopies across much of the ceiling and caught on his clothes and hair. The lavish carvings covering every available wall of the temple were overgrown with vines, but unlike in the outer chambers, these were thorny and spotted with rot. Though torches or faint shafts of sunlight illuminated most of the temple, there were far too many doorways leading into impenetrable darkness, and everywhere there were monsters.

Boko Baba had sprouted in many of the cracks in the stone paving that made up the floor of the temple. Link killed the small ones as best he could by stomping on them, and left the big ones to their own devices, edging around them and being careful to stay out of their limited reach. They rattled and snapped at him hungrily. The keese roosting in the first room seemed almost tame after repeatedly stumbling across the nests of far more savage creatures: fanged rope-snakes, voracious rats with beady red eyes, and skull-patterned skulltula spiders which leapt at him from their hiding places in the dark corners of the ceiling, some as big as his head. Weaponless, Link could do nothing but run. He wore the sagecloak; he had never before been attacked by an animal. He had no idea how to fight back.

He knew only that he had to keep traveling upward. Reach the ledge above Minuet and... And decide the rest when he got there. He had delved too far into the temple now, and he wasn't sure if he could find his way back. In this at least, the architecture seemed to take pity on him. The maze, or whatever it was, seemed to spiral around the giant shaft, its gently sloping hallways leading him gradually but steadily higher. Eventually one of the doors he tried would have to lead him back out onto one of the stone ledges overlooking the abyss.

The spiderwebs were growing thicker. Ghostly and white, they lay draped across every inch of the walls and ceiling like a funeral shroud, unfazed by the burning torches whose light they shrouded with their eerie pall. Link looked around as he walked; the change had been so gradual that at first he hadn't noticed. He was in a long hallway, for once devoid of any doorways or branching corridors save for one small wooden door at the far end. A place this thick with spiderwebs should have been teeming with skulltula, but for the last few minutes he hadn't come across another living thing.

Hesitantly, Link made his way to the door at the end of the hallway and pushed it carefully open. Sticky threads clung to his hand and he wiped them off on his cloak, by now more gray than green.

The room beyond was white. As a weak shaft of light from the doorway spilled into the room and turned total darkness to dusky gloom, the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room began to glow pale and ashen; light reflected from what Link suddenly recognized as spiderwebs, acres and acres of them, enough to cover a large room so completely that not a hint of the original architecture could be seen beneath them. Draped in veils of what looked like clinging lace and rising from the center of the room was a single unlit torch, and below that sat a small, nondescript wooden chest, the kind in which a poor man might put his keepsakes. Beyond that, the room appeared to be empty.

Link was struck once again by that unnerving sense of being watched, a feeling he had nearly forgotten during his exploration of the temple. Those silent eyes were observing him, almost as if they were waiting to see how he would react. Something about the voiceless watcher seemed to implore that this little wooden chest was vitally, earth-shatteringly important, that this was some great goal to have reached and that he was one of the chosen few that had reached it.

His curiosity spiked, the boy stepped forward.

Link had to brush away a film of spider-silk to find the latch holding the chest closed, and the wood was smooth and cool beneath his hands. There was no keyhole - the chest was unlocked. Open it, the unseen eyes implored, and slowly he did so.

At the bottom of the chest, resting on a carpet of dusty green velvet, was a bow. Link had never seen a bow before, but he recognized it immediately. While weapons such as this were seldom seen in peaceful little Ordon village, the traders who sometimes passed through on their way to other places brought with them colorfully illuminated books full of pictures of bravery and battles. He'd never bought one of those books, but as a child he'd always taken the opportunity to leaf through them before the trader noticed and took the book away.

He picked it up. It was longer than he had always thought bows to be, beautifully curved and made from a light, springy wood that might have been yew. The taut, waxed string felt almost alive when he ran his fingers across it, and it hummed with subtle magic against his skin. Link knew he should be wondering what a bow was doing hidden deep within the forest temple, but all he could focus on was the strange sense of rightness he felt when he held it in his hands, as if it had been made especially for him.

There was a quiver to go along with it, wrapped in red leather and decorated with what looked like gold leaf. It already held ten long wooden arrows tipped with iron and fletched with feathers, and there was plenty of room for more. Link slung the quiver over his shoulder and it too felt right; made to rest perfectly against his back.

Of course, the thought dawned on him. It's a magic bow, isn't it? It's been enchanted somehow to conform perfectly to whoever uses it. No doubt that was why the weapon had been hidden in the temple. It was probably a powerful weapon that had been entrusted to the protection of some ancient sage from generations ago. It would probably be a bad idea to take it with him...

But Link's mind drifted back to the monsters littering the temple hallways, monsters against which he had no way of defending himself. They were getting larger and more fierce the further he ventured into the temple, and Link knew that if he didn't find a way out soon he would be forced to abandon his search or be torn apart by the creatures blocking his path. He needed a weapon, and the temple had provided him with one. He could always turn the bow over to Sage Fado once he and Minuet had escaped.

Quiver on his shoulder and bow in hand, Link turned to leave the room.

The door slammed shut before he could reach it, plunging the world into darkness. His pointed ears twitched madly at the infinitesimal click of the locking mechanism. He was trapped.

Somewhere in the shadows there was a faint sound, like the shuffle of thousands of overgrown insectoid legs scuttling across a carpet of spiderweb.

The emerged from their hiding places among the web; large, albino spiders as large as his head, their milky pink eyes glowing in the absolute blackness. Link could see nothing more of them than that, their eyes, weaving this way and that blinking out and back again as they scurried around, like a sky in which every star was constantly moving. They were blind, but Link knew enough about spiders to know that every time he moved he sent vibrations through the veils of web that covered the room from floor to ceiling. That was how they would find him. He stood as still as he could, hardly daring to breathe as they swarmed around him, some bumping into his legs and crawling across his feet. He had no idea what to do.

Kill them, the unseen presence urged him. Use the bow.

Use the bow? He had never wielded a bow, he had no idea how. Still, Link nocked an arrow to the bow in his hands, finding that the weapon's faint magic seemed to guide him, gently teaching his muscles how to move. He drew back the string and tried to aim at one of the wandering points of light, but the creatures were moving too erratically and in this darkness he had lost all sense of depth. Trusting luck, he let the arrow fly.

Against all odds it struck. The spider screamed, an agonizingly high-pitched sound like nails scraping across a blackboard, and the other spiders began to scurry faster and more frantically, still unable to find him as long as he didn't move his feet and disturb their webs. He fired another arrow, faster this time, and killed another.

It wasn't until the sixth kill that Link realized the flaw in his plan. There were hundreds of these spiders, and he only had ten arrows. Four, now.

Light the torch, came the invisible instructor's next thought. They will flee from the light.

Link remembered how the torches had burst to life in the first room when he'd stepped on the metal switch in the middle of the floor. If this room had an unlit torch, then surely it would have a switch as well, hidden somewhere under all that clinging spiderweb. Carefully, ever so slowly, Link took a small step backwards.

The scuttling stopped. The dim pink points of light all around him froze in place for a moment, and then every single one of them turned to look in his direction.

This time he didn't need the mysterious spirit's advice. He ran.

Link tore across the room, weaving though curtains of web that clung to his face and hair, arms spread wide out in from of him to keep from barreling into the walls. He had no plan other than to run wildly through the room, hoping to step on the switch. Skittering in droves behind him, the spiders followed, almost as fast as he was, even in their blindness. One broke ahead of the others and launched itself with a hiss at his back, venomous fangs bared and glinting in the glow from its eyes. Link whipped around and shot it out of the air. Three arrows left.

He rapidly changed direction and the spiders followed suit. Two more jumped at him, and these too did he skewer with arrows. His magic bow seemed incapable of missing. One arrow left.

His foot hit the hidden switch with a crash of metal, and Link tripped and was sent sprawling onto his stomach as the torch blazed up and filled the room with light. The spiders scattered, all but one, which in its confusion had run up the far wall and gotten tangled in its own web. Without even thinking, Link shot his last arrow at it.

The wooden arrow passed straight through the torch and struck the spider, already ablaze. The pale arachnid screamed as the flames consumed it and spread rapidly across the dry cobwebs, seeking out more of the venomous creatures and killing them where they hid. In seconds, the entire room was alight and filled with the dying screams of spiders, and Link found himself pressed against a wall as the inferno surrounded him.

There was a slight grating of metal from the locked door beside him. It had unlatched itself, and Link hurriedly pushed it open and rushed outside, slamming it shut behind him. He dropped the bow, sat down in the middle of the corridor outside, and drew his knees up to his chest, hyperventilating. His heart hammered in his chest out of exhilaration and fear.

He'd just broken every taboo a sage's apprentice was beholden to. He'd killed, not just a hungry plant this time, but animals, living, breathing things that could feel pain, and he'd not only brought fire into the temple, he'd set it ablaze.

Link waited there on the floor for a long time, making sure that the fire didn't spread beyond that single room and wondering what good he'd be if it did. But though the flames eventually died out without spreading any further, through the smoldering wooden door he could still hear the muffled screams of the spiders.

* * *

At long last, Link reached a door that led back out into the vertical shaft at the center of the temple. Winds whipped past his face as he opened it, smelling of mildew and rot. The bridge here was unbroken, but it swayed wildly in the wind, fixed to the ledge he stood on by four ancient, decaying ropes wrapped around wooden posts, and nothing more.

Link got down onto his stomach and crawled to the edge of the ledge to peer down into the abyss.

"MINUET!"

"LINK!" She was on the ledge directly below him, about a hundred yards down. The girl craned her neck to stare up at him, her eyes wide. "Link, how am I going to get up there?"

Link sat back and looked around, and the ropes supporting the bridge caught his eye. The bridge was built in such a way that all it really needed to support itself was the lower two ropes; the upper two were merely something to hold onto when crossing. If he crossed the bridge and severed one of the ropes at the far end, he could leave the other end tied to its post and lower it down to Minuet. It was more than long enough. "Hold on!" he called out to her again. "I'll be right back!"

He shoved the bow rather haphazardly into the now empty quiver on his back in order to leave his hands free, wrapped one arm around a rope, and edged out onto the bridge. It shuddered and creaked, but it supported his weight. Crossing the abyss was much easier this time around. Even a swaying, wind-buffeted rope bridge was preferable to the narrow ridge he'd used the first time. He moved slowly, testing his weight before he stepped and always keeping one arm firmly wrapped around the rope in case he slipped or the wooden slats beneath him broke, but the bridge held and he reached the other side without incident.

Link left the rope he had been holding and instead went to work on breaking the one opposite. He had expected the damp, decaying fibers to be fairly easy to snap, but they held despite all his tugging, and so he instead untied it from its post and let it fall away. Minuet gave a little jump of surprise as it swung across the gap and the end of it smacked heavily against the ledge she was standing on. She wrapped a hand around it nervously.

"Am I going to have to climb?" she shouted up to him over the sound of the wind.

The boy was already making his way back across the now much more precarious bridge. "I'm afraid so. Don't worry, I'll climb down in a second and help you."

She waited for him to slide nimbly down the rope and join her. "It's sturdy. Here, wrap part of it around your yourself like this..." Link demonstrated, winding a loop of rope around Minuet's waist. "...So you can catch yourself if you fall. I'll climb up after you reach the top, and help you cross the bridge. I don't think we can get much further through the temple unless we cross to the other side."

She nodded, looking terrified but determined.

They had to leave the lantern pole behind, but as Link had a bow now, it hardly mattered. He watched from below as Minuet inched her way up the rope. Her sagecloak flapped wildly around her in the strong breeze, but she never stopped or looked down. When at last she had pulled herself over the lip of the ledge above, Link followed.

He held onto her as they crossed the bridge, one arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders, guiding her. Minuet's eyes were shut tightly, and she refused to open them until her feet were planted safely on the far ledge. The girl wasn't afraid of heights so much as rickety bridges that could snap without warning and send her falling down into the endless darkness.

Once they'd again entered the dim, overgrown corridors that wound in circles around the turbulent shaft, Link filled Minuet in on the monsters that infested the temple, and how he'd gotten his bow. She in turn told him about her conversation with the Kokiri spirits, and how they had warned her of Irikokhet the Shadow, the dark curse that had corrupted the sacred ruins.

"And they mentioned someone called Queen Gohma," she finished, pulling a bit of spiderweb out of her hair. "They said she was a creature who was supposed to be guarding the curse and keeping it from escaping, but it somehow possessed her and caused her to start ruining the temple. Link, this weird feeling I've been having, this... presence... I think it might be the curse! And I've never really noticed it before because it's just now taken over Queen Gohma and started running wild!"

"I'm not sure if that's the case," Link murmured thoughtfully. "Whatever it was you sensed, it helped me out back in that room full of spiders. I think it's on our side."

"So it can't be the curse, then." They were walking slowly through the twisting hallways now, and Link kept pausing to check the little clay jars that lined the walls at random intervals, having discovered earlier that a few of them contained arrows. "It's just so frightening, Link. It's hard to believe it can be a good thing."

"Maybe it can't help that it's frightening," Link answered. "Maybe it doesn't know how not to be."

"But what is it, if it isn't the curse?"

"I don't know. What do you suppose Queen Gohma looks like? I haven't seen anything but common animals since I entered the inner sanctum, so I don't think I've come across her yet."

"The way they talked about her, she sounded big." Minuet shuddered. "Oh, the spirits looked so scared and worried. I hope we can find a way to help her."

"We'll have to," Link reminded her. "If the spirits sealed the door because Queen Gohma's gone mad, then we'll have to help her before we can leave again."

"Link!" Minuet said suddenly, coming to an abrupt halt, and Link looked around to see that the hallway they had been walking down had come to an end. Much like the hall leading to the spider room, this corridor was more like a tunnel of spiderweb, and the door at the end of it was massive and circular, made entirely out of stone and carved with the images of hundreds and hundreds of stylized spiders. Link felt Minuet grip his arm tightly. "Link, I can feel it! The taint on the temple is coming from in there! It... it's so dark I can't even see, Link..."

He put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll guide you."

"She's in there. Gohma."

He nodded, having assumed as much. "Are you frightened?"

"More than I've ever been in my life. But I want to go in there. I want to help her, even if she's possessed by that horrible black taint. I can't imagine what it would be like to have something like that inside of me." She gave him a hesitant look. "Are... are you frightened?"

For a brief moment, the back of Link's left hand felt strangely warm. "More than I've ever been in my life," he echoed, thinking of the images of the brave, sword-wielding hero that had decorated the outside of the temple. "But I'm going to go in anyway."

"You're humming again," she whispered.

Side by side they stepped up to the door, and as if by magic it rolled smoothly away, inviting them inside.

___________

Thoughts:

First of all, massive apologies for how long it took me to write this. My other big fanfiction project, Finding the Cure, has really been getting into stride lately and I wanted to focus on that for a while. Shadowsong will probably update rather sporadically until Finding the Cure is finished, so don't expect quick updates.

With that said, in the next chapter we will meet (in large, boss battle font) Possessed Arachnid: Queen Gohma. But I'm sure you all saw that coming.