time for everyone's favorite person...
zelda...
yay...
okay warning this chapter is hella cliche. Like been done over a million times. I'm sorry but I just got kind of lazy with it, cut me some slack?
All right so I've decided I'm just gonna update every Wednesday. That might even give me time to finish up some chapters for the second book and actually post it as I go, but we shall see (cuz that would be breaking my policy uh-oh).
Lemme know what you think! I love hearing your thoughts :)
xoxo
Chapter Forty-Nine
Conqueror's Greatest Failure
Zelda sat on her throne, gloved fingers gripping the seat and back straight. On her right stood a member of the Royal Council, an advisor. She didn't trust any of them, really, and never took their advice to heart, but having an advisor (and a council in general) was a tradition of the royal family that she felt no need to change. On her left, as it had been for the past six or seven months, stood Karis. Dressed so prettily, his hair brushed back from his violet eyes and feminine face, the aroma of roses drifting from his skin. He was standing with a light smile on his face, hands clasped behind his back, staring straight ahead. Just as Zelda was. The throne room was lined with Iron Warriors and the nobles and aristocrats of the court, clothed in their frilly dresses and petticoats and their hair swirling up and down and around. They left a path in the center, from the doors leading to the throne.
"Next, a thief from the slums of South Castilia enters Your Highness's court."
"Let him enter," she called. Two of her people opened the doors to the throne room, and an Iron Warrior walked in. He dragged behind him a woman, perhaps in her forties, her hands and legs chained and her clothing in tatters.
It was the time of day that Zelda enjoyed most. The prisoners captured from the morning and the night before were brought before her to be sentenced. She loved this part of the day because there was nothing that made her feel more powerful. For she held within her hands the lives and fates of every citizen in Castilia, and this was the time to exercise this power. Her fingertips tingled with the mere anticipation.
"What is your crime?" she called.
"This woman was caught stealing from a butcher's shop," the Iron Warrior replied. "She tried to take a full pound of meat."
"Please, Your Highness," the woman shrieked. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks, and her voice was so high and shrill and desperate that Zelda could see Karis cringe in her peripheral vision. "I have a family to feed—four children. If you throw me in jail, they'll be all alone, and—"
"Silence. You have no more say in this," Queen Zelda hissed. Her voice alone was enough to silence the woman. Make her cower.
Exactly what I want to see.
"You have committed your crime, and now must take responsibility. Into the dungeon. For three years."
As the woman began screaming, kicking and flailing as she was led away, Karis turned to face Zelda.
"Your Highness," he murmured. She glanced at him, and saw compassion in his eyes. The sight made her sick. Why he had taken it upon himself to be such a philanthropist, she had no idea. His parents certainly were not like that. "Three years for a pound of meat? Don't you think that's a bit...well...much?"
"My dear Karis," she smiled, "if we do not punish the people for what they have done, what is to stop them in the future?"
"This is not the answer, Queen Zelda."
"Do not question me, Karis. The only reason you are standing beside me is because I think your blood is pure enough to run through my child's veins. But I can change my mind at any moment." She said the words with hate, with anger, but with a smile on her face and an iciness in her voice. She saw Karis clench his teeth for a moment, and then turn away in a fit of coughing. Then she faced the Iron Warrior. "Take her away and send in the next criminal."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Her screams echoed through the room, even after she had been dragged down to the dungeon. But as the next person was being led inside, Zelda saw the Triforce on her right hand beginning to glow. In anticipation, she grabbed her wrist, clenched her teeth.
No. This time, you won't scream.
The pain spread through her arm, set her hand and soul on fire. In raw, physical anguish and unadulterated fury. This pain, the glowing, it could only mean one thing.
He's found another piece.
"Your Highness, are you all right?" her advisor asked. She shooed him away, and as the pain subsided, returned to her position. As angry as she was, she concealed it. If only for the time being. Her thoughts drifted to Link, to Sheik, to everything she was trying to achieve.
You're running out of time, Sheik. Do not disappoint me.
"What is your crime?"
That evening, Zelda put on her black nightdress, let her hair flow as it was, took off all her jewelry, and walked through the halls of her castle. It was dark and silent but for the patter of her slippered footsteps and, she imagined, the moans of the prisoners in the dungeons below. But she walked as if everybody in Hyrule were watching. Glanced around her, kept her chin held high, looked down upon each and every imaginary face. She had been walking this way since the age of five. Even alone, it was a habit. To hold herself as a queen. For there was never a moment that she wasn't a queen.
She smiled at that thought.
Queen Zelda had a very specific destination in mind. She walked through the halls, and passed a few Iron Warriors on guard, but said not a word to them as they halted in their spots and bowed their heads. She made her way up spiral staircases, higher and higher and higher, until she was at the highest room in the highest tower of Hyrule Castle. She let her slender fingers run along the stones of this tower as she walked up the staircases, and listened very hard to the echoes of her own breathing. The lanterns on the wall gave the narrow stairwell a beautiful, comforting orange glow that others might have believed eerie, haunting, even. But she had grown accustomed. She walked, and touched each flame with the tip of her right finger. Felt nothing.
At the top of the staircase was a grand wooden door, evidently from times earlier than her own. She put her hands on the iron doorknob and it felt cold. She pushed the door open and walked inside. The door fell closed behind her, and she was alone in this room. A room in which she had spent so many hours as a little girl, looking for a role model and a teacher and a family. None of those things mattered to her anymore, and as much as Zelda despised turning toward the past, something about this room had continued to draw her in. Even in its emptiness, empty for 15 years now, she visited it some nights.
It was the room where Zelda's grandmother, Arielda, spent the last seven years of her life. Bedridden, having her granddaughter read to her and listen to her stories. Where Queen Arielda the Conqueror, vanquisher of all Four Lands, said things that nobody but Zelda had heard. Where she gave her dying breath and touched Zelda's hair and made her feel, for the only time in her life, that she was somehow loved.
Zelda walked over to the bed where her grandmother had died and sat down. There was a book on the table beside it. It was her grandmother's favorite book (Zelda had inherited her love of reading from Arielda). She had read it so many times, over and over again, until the very minute she died. Zelda grabbed the book and flipped through its pages, which smelled of her old, frowning grandmother. Zelda had never once seen her smile—except for the moment of her last breath.
She wasn't sure why she came here so often. She was not sad, was not nostalgic, could not find within herself a remorse or a regret or a wish that her grandmother were still alive. And yet, this room called to her. The book beside the bed asked for her, and the bed itself—still stained with the staleness of a dying queen—tried to remind her of what it had once held. Zelda always wore black when she came into her grandmother's old room. And she never allowed anybody else inside. Along with her room, the only forbidden area of the castle to the Iron Warriors.
My grandmother loved very much to talk and tell stories. And it seemed like, as a young girl thirsty for knowledge and love, I was the only one willing to listen. She told me everything about her life, from when she was my age to her very old age. Grandmother was not very old, actually. She died when she was only fifty-seven. But a mysterious power had done something terrible to her body, even at so young. When she turned fifty, the world almost believed that she had turned ninety, for her skin folded in terribly ugly wrinkles all over her skin, her eyes were watery and nearly blind, her hair was a faded gray and she could not get out of bed. There were rumors that the war had done this to her, that the stress of it all made her age so much more quickly. My mother used to tell me that my grandmother was suffering because she made other people suffer.
"Do you see your grandmother, Zelda, my darling?" she would say with a stern tone. "If you are bad to people, if you hurt people and kill them like Grandmother did, then you will look like that, too."
Mother hated Grandmother for everything that she had done. But I never believed her. I thought that she was blinded by her hate and couldn't see the wonderful things that Grandmother had done. As a young girl, I believed with all my tiny heart that she had done the right thing for the people of Hyrule. Brought together four lands and four people into one.
How blind I was.
That is not to say that my mother was right. No, I still hate my mother as I've never hated anybody, and I believe in my grandmother. I believe in everything that she did. But she did not bring four people together for the sake of togetherness.
She brought four people together to have power over all four. To exercise her power and, like my mother said, to make them suffer. I take after her in many ways. One is that lust for power. When I was younger, I believed wisdom to be the strongest virtue; but now that I have mastered it, I realize that the strongest virtue is power.
When my grandmother fell into her stupendous oldness, I would come up to this room and sit at her bedside while she told me her stories. First, she told me about her childhood. Very much like mine. My mother never liked to read, not like my grandmother and I did. It has been a long time since I read for pleasure, but even after the war, Grandmother read. She was the one who told me about my secret area in the garden, where I used to take my books. I kept going there even after she died.
Grandmother told me stories about the war, too. She told me about the faraway deserts, mountains, and oceans she saw. About the people she met—the people she met and conquered. She never said anything about her reasons. She only told me the history. That wherever she and her army went, chaos and fire and bloodshed followed. That she could strike fear into the hearts of all. As young and naïve as I was, as tailored to the world of little princesses, I was entranced. It all seemed so very romantic to me. And my grandmother, my very own blood, had travelled and conquered all of Hyrule. I asked her why once, and she simply said, "Because I did." Not an answer I have ever come to understand.
When I was seven years old, my grandmother died. It was in her sleep, and I was the only person in the room. She told me that she knew she was dying, and she wanted to be alone with me. There were tears streaming down my face and I was sobbing harder than I had ever sobbed before and would ever sob again. Even harder than when Link left. As is my tradition, I do not like to think back on it. The past is so useless. But the image of my grandmother on her deathbed, her last words floating in and out of my ears, remain. She grabbed my hand and brought me close and stroked my cheeks as she always had.
"You want to know why I started the war, child?" she asked.
I told her not to talk.
"I started the war because I wanted power," she said. "Do you want to know a secret, Zelda?"
Through my weeps, I nodded. She pulled me closer and whispered into my ear, "I regret everything I have ever done in my life. Except for you. Power is no virtue...power is a vice."
And then she fell asleep. And she never woke up.
I understood nothing, except that my grandmother was dead and I was heartbroken.
Of course, when I inherited the Triforce of Wisdom and grew older, I came to understand. But by that time, it didn't matter. By that time, I had already decided what I wanted. And even the words of a dying, remorseful woman meant nothing to me. My grandmother failed in two ways: convincing me that what she did was wrong, and trusting in my inherent goodness.
Her words still mean nothing to me. Vice or virtue, power is still power.
And it shall still be mine.
I suppose, contrary to her own belief, Grandmother's greatest failure was me.
pssssstttt
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