"The two oldest gods of this world are not gods at all. They are entities that precede life itself, that precede time, who bow to the wishes of no spirit nor man, who intertwine and disentangle and suppress and uplift one another, wrestling eternally to stand at the heights of all the world's misery. They are the Emptiness, and the Darkness."
Obaru of the Haunted Waste
Impa did not know what had happened.
She had been swept away by a cold wind, bare toes lifted from the floor, all sense of direction ripped from her. She spun through the air, flailing, at the whim of a force more capricious than gravity. She tried and failed to pluck a counterattack or a spell to steady herself, but her fingers froze on her strings, her instinct tucked her lyre tight against her body. Her feet searched for the floor in vain, and though she tried to squint through the howling wind, she could see nothing. She tried to cry out for Link, and couldn't. She tried to listen for the clash of metal or for his voice calling back to her, but she only heard the muffled blow of icy wind in her ears.
She didn't know how long she twirled and flailed, suspended by that gale, unable to find her sense of gravity, unable to cry out. It could not have been long, but when the freezing heat of the spell relented, when she was able to wrestle herself from its grasp, everything had changed. As soon as her feet finally found the floor beneath her again, as soon as the feeling returned to her extremities, the stench of rova magic had been replaced with something much stranger.
Either Impa had gone blind, or every last sliver of light had been sucked from the room. She could smell the smoky scent of a fire nearby, but there were no flames, no candles, no torches. The tinkling of the chandeliers faded into silence, echoing off distant walls and pillars. She could see nothing, but she could sense a presence, an inexplicable oppressive weight pushing its way into the room. It seemed to grow around her, crawling from the stone arches, dripping down the stairs, filling the grand hall like a thick, viscous liquid.
Her heart fluttered into her throat. The air left her lungs, replaced by a dread too powerful and too unnatural to fight. A paralyzing surety slithered up her legs and into her stomach, forcing her to clench her lyre closer to her. She could not name the presence that had come forth in this room, but she knew it was something more monstrous than even Barudi, and much, much older.
Suddenly, violently, light returned to her vision. Two giant, glowing orbs hovered across the hall from her, oblong and sickly yellow. Each was punctured at its center by a tiny black circle, narrow in space but infinite in depth. She did not dare to look directly at them—instinct told her as much—but she realized she was seeing a pair of enormous eyes, and that they were seeing her.
She could not speak. She could do nothing. The gaze petrified her, draining her of her will, her breath, her very essence. For half a second, she knew that she was forever lost, that she was dead, that she would never escape.
Then a figure appeared, rising between her and the eyes. It was tall, mercifully familiar, with broad shoulders and a spiked crown of whitish hair. When it turned its head, eyeing her through a pair of glowing tattoos, she felt her life slowly return to her.
"Not this one," Palo growled. His voice was dark, strained, tinged with an otherworldly rasp.
Impa's lungs filled, she called his name. She stepped forward, laying her fingers on her strings, shaking the last motes of ice from her hair. She knew she had to do something, she had to play, but she did not know where to start at this strange moment, standing next to her oldest friend and an unspeakable entity of death.
Her fingers clenched on the strings, silent, as the eyes moved. The room spun with them, both nauseating and reorienting her, shrinking and dilating the room until they had fixed on their next target. In the harsh yellow glare, she saw the outline of Link, sword at his side, as paralyzed and mute as she had been moments earlier. She could sense him struggle against the gaze, she could see his fist clench around his sword, bereft of its golden light.
Then the pair of eyes eventually, mercifully turned its attention from him, lingering instead over Nabru. Something snapped in the air, the pillars stretched and bent, and the malevolent, invisible pressure slithered toward the Gerudo, thickening the air and drawing a gasp from her.
The rova, at least, seemed to have some idea of what was happening, since she immediately began to struggle with Nabru's body. She flailed, she raised her axe, she turned on her heel and attempted to flee—but her legs seemed to take her nowhere, the darkness around her was solid, impenetrable.
"Impa."
Palo's voice filled the room, sending a painful shiver down her spine.
"Play."
She did. She played because she did not know what else to do. She lay her fingers across the harp and let them do their work, unthinking, unguided. Her rational mind had released its hold on her the moment she found herself in the same room with that unspeakable essence—so it was not with any knowledge or strategy or purpose that she allowed her hands to dance across the freezing strings. There was no comprehensible sequence, no cadences or motifs, but somehow, a song emerged, a dirge of such rage and sorrow it could arrest even the most stony of souls.
"Good," Palo smiled, and stepped toward Nabru. "Hold her there."
Nabru screamed. She threw down her axe and lifted her hands to her ears, legs shaking. Impa's heart ached to see her like this, petrified and helpless, dangling between the foul magics of a rova and a spirit much more terrible. But Impa played on, mindlessly, she held the rova's spirit in place, she froze Nabru's body, she opened the way for the flood of evil, dark magic.
Unconsciously, her hand shifted into a chorus. Her fingers acted on their own accord, sliding up and down the length of the harp, aiming every pointed note straight at Nabru. It was a song she had never played before, and one she knew she would never play again—here, in the throes of death, her despair flew raw and painful from her fingers, laid bare by the ancient god. The dirge tore through herself as much as it did Barudi, draining her, forcing a sob from her chest, catching a howl in her throat.
"Stop!" the Gerudo screamed. "Stop! You don't know what you've done!"
Her next notes were for Nabru—an apology, a curse, full of regret and violence.
"Keep going!" Palo growled, voice shaking, arms outstretched. He lowered his head and began to form words in a language Impa did not understand—nor could ever hope to. With each syllable, spoken to the beat of Impa's song, Nabru jolted, contorting her body, screaming in pain.
"Stop!" she screamed again.
Impa didn't. She couldn't—the song was spilling from her now, uncontrollable, like weeping. With her high notes she painted a portrait of the gentle snow in Kakariko, turning to ash before her eyes as the fires engulfed her home. In her arpeggios was the flow of her mother's yellow dress, hiked up and tied to her knees as she bent to replant her garden, the tempo was the swift patter of Talm's bare feet, eager with the energy of childhood, the bass was Talporom's healing voice, lost to the fires of Death Mountain. Her glissando was for Palo, spiraling downward into this dark place and dragging her with him. Her penultimate passage, dissonant and pained, thrust Nabru toward the terrible, merciless eyes.
The Gerudo stumbled backward, and a long, thin light slipped from her armor. Impa could make out the shape of Barudi in that light, grasping at the air, wriggling from Nabru's body like a caught fish. She could recognize the witch's jewels, her hair, the torturous force of her presence that had left an indelible mark on Impa's dreams. What she did not recognize was the look on her face, an unmitigated, pale horror.
It was delicious, seeing a rova so afraid. Her fingers almost dared to play a tune of triumph.
"You fools!" Nabru's mouth did not move—the woman herself fell forward, limp, silent, but the spirit kept struggling, kept screaming. "That god is—"
Impa played her final notes, a cold, hateful wind rising from her hands and wrapping around the rova's throat. It lifted Barudi from Nabru's shoulders, clawing at her, squeezing her, cutting her as if her flesh were real. The witch struggled, hands lifting to pull at the wind around her neck. Her legs kicked, her mouth spat spells her choked voice could no longer cast.
And the god's eyes closed in on her.
The gaze widened. The pupils dilated, broadened, deepened, swallowing the glowing yellow remainder of the eyes until they were nothing but two ringed edges of light. Then they slowly stretched down, the orbs fusing like gargantuan droplet of dark water. A massive, implacable sphere of black formed from them, ringed with a sickly glow, like some fell moon passing perfectly over the sun. It was almost a third eye—deeper, darker and more fearsome than the others. It descended on Barudi, drawing one last hoarse scream from her open mouth, and swallowed her whole.
Then all was quiet. The witch's desperate gasps evaporated with the last notes of Impa's song. The wind stilled, and torchlight returned to the room, garish and painful after those few moments of absolute darkness.
Impa felt control of her body return to her, but only briefly. She looked around—Nabru had fallen to the ground, golden armor shining almost blindingly in the light of the chandeliers. Palo fell shortly after, taking a single step before collapsing onto his side, eyes closed, tattoos dripping a deathly black aura. Then went Link, triforce fleeing from his sword and taking his consciousness with it.
Impa took a deep breath. She tried to call the names of her companions, she tried to go to them and shake them back upright, but it was only a few seconds before the exhaustion took her too. Her hands could no longer hold her instrument, her feet could no longer bear her weight. She sank to her knees, then to her side—it was all she could do to catch herself before the world began to fade, before the warm promise of sleep crept up on her.
The last thing she saw was a small pile of sand, right where Barudi's spirit had been swallowed by the deathly eye, blowing away in the last whispers of the harp's dismal gale.
Ganondorf woke to find blood on his hands. A sliver of moon poured through the flap to his tent, illuminating the stains on his palms, his wrists, between his fingers. A few red-brown spots smeared the sheets beside him, where his wife usually lay.
He sat up. He surveyed what little of the tent he could, following the moonlight from Wormtooth snug in its sheath, to the quill and ink still left on his small table. A chill ran through him, and he rolled off the mattress to light a candle. When the flame flickered to life, his breath left him.
Barudi must have cast something on him in his sleep. His hands were soaked in sticky, half-dried blood, painless and seemingly intact, except for two thin punctures at the base of his thumbs. He did not remember her piercing his skin, he did not remember her asking for his blood, he remembered nothing of the night before except taking his meal and crawling into bed beside her.
He followed the trail of blood, creeping from the stains on their mattress, past the table, and to a small semicircle of candles, burnt to their bases. The faint smell of smoke still lingered in the air, and as he brought his own flame closer, he discovered a small body lying at the center of the shrine. The fox's ears were perfectly still, its eyes closed, its fur matted with red.
"No," Ganondorf whispered.
He fell to one knee, reaching with a shaking hand to turn the animal over. With a jump of his heart, he saw its throat had been cut, splayed open and sawed down to the spine. Beyond the semicircle of candles lay a small stone chalice, filled to the brim with blood, the marks of Barudi's lips still touching its edge.
"Oh gods."
He knew better than to pity the fox. He knew it did not have a life of its own, and it could not be deprived of it. It was a rova's familiar, a reservoir for her own blood. That it was lying here, unmoving and mutilated, meant one thing.
His wife had done something unconscionably reckless. He did not know exactly what, and he did not know how, but he knew how desperate she had to have been to perform such a ritual. Even separated from his ancestral homeland, even growing up among Hylians as he had, deep in his gut he knew that to cast a spell in rova's blood was to invite disaster.
He reached down and gently pulled the little animal into his arms. It was cold, not quite rigid—it could not have died long ago. He had just missed her. He had missed her rising from bed, borrowing his blood, draining her own. He had slept through the ritual—even his participation in it—he had slept through whatever magical comings-and-goings she and her fox exchanged.
"Where are you, my love?" he moaned. He held the animal close to his chest, breathing into its fur. "What have you done? I told you not to try anything, Barudi."
A great shame descended on him. He held the little animal tightly, stroking its cold ears, and whispered an apology. He should have reined her in, he should have made her discuss her plans, he should have reassured her more. He was a neglectful, utter fool.
He could not say where she had gone, though he had his guesses, and he could certainly not say if she had succeeded in her spell or not. He prayed to all the gods, to Molgera, to the triumvirate, that she had—that she was safe, that the blood of her fox alone was enough to appease the Nameless One.
He glanced again at her little shrine, at the melted wax, the incense, the goblet of shining blood sitting unfinished on the ground.
Something came over him. An implacable, unspeakable urge—he put down the fox and reached over to grasp the chalice. He raised it to his lips, breathing in the metallic, sweet-smelling scent. It filled his nose, his mouth, his mind, conveying a message, a blessing.
The cold blood burnt his tongue, traveling in searing waves down his throat. With each drop his vision was filled with her—he saw her slight smile, he felt her hands pressing against his cheek, her sharp nails sliding down his back. Her lips met his, and he felt her words in his mouth, he felt a fraction of her knowledge pass to him—he saw the fox's teeth sink into soft flesh, he saw its blood spill, he saw her spirit rise, breath of the moonlight blowing her body to nothing but a small collection of sand grains, dancing on the wind. He saw the sand fall into a black abyss, he saw her slip away from the world, leaving him only this love, this blood, this message.
He drank every drop. When the chalice was empty, he slid his finger around the inside, scooping every smear of red he could manage and rubbing it onto his tongue. The heat radiated from his mouth, his jaw, his throat, all the way to his stomach. His heart pumped with the gift of her power, her devotion. The love, the longing, the grief, crawled down his arms, all the way to his triforce, igniting it with an icy flame.
He was whole—unified with his wife, though not in a way he had ever expected, or had ever hoped.
He called for his guard. Immediately a young man poked his head through the tent flap, eyes widening when he saw his King, cross-legged on the floor of his tent, half-dressed, covered in blood, cradling a dead animal in one hand and a silver chalice in the other. But he knew better than to ask any questions.
"Light the pyre," Ganondorf said. His voice was raw with anger, with grief. "Gather all soldiers and priests to the center of the bivouac to raise a candle." He almost could not say it. He almost could not bring himself to believe that the woman who had been beside him since the desert, whose essence still lingered inside him, was gone. "Your Queen is dead."
"Sire..." The man hesitated. His eyes darted from the dead fox to the melted candles, then back to his King. "I… are you…"
"Do not make me repeat myself." Ganondorf closed is eyes, biting the inside of his lip. "Bring me three blue-eyed soldiers to dedicate to the Nameless One in her honor. They must be young, and they must be sisters. "
The man's face darkened. "Sire, I don't know—"
"Do it."
"Yes, my King." The man bowed his head and disappeared without another word.
Ganondorf knew there would be no body. The most of Barudi anyone would find would be a dead familiar, perhaps a fell wind or a ghostly whisper, perhaps a pool of melted ice or a small circle of scorched earth. The rest of her was irrevocably gone, lost to the mouth of the Mother Worm, swallowed into darkness.
Grief tore through him as he thought of the lives he would have to take, of the screams that would rise from her pyre, drifting up into the ears of a nameless goddess, of the children she would never bring into this world, of the people she would never rule.
He lay the animal back down and clenched his fists. Openly, loudly, and for the first time since his grandmother's funeral, Ganondorf wept.
By the time Palo came to, he and his companions had been removed from the great hall and placed in the palace infirmary. He hadn't noticed the trip—no one had. They awoke next to one another in the same beds that held the branded servants not a week before, exhausted, confused, but alive.
Impa rose first, glancing to the deadseer next to her. "Palo, you're…" she started, hoarse. "Are you all right? We're… what happened…"
"I don't know," Palo lied softly. He stretched and sat up, feeling almost normal—tired, a bit sore, but not like a man who had looked into the abyss of the death-god's eyes. The others, he could not say for sure. Impa seemed bewildered and worn thin, but otherwise unharmed. Nabru had had her cheek sewn shut by some medic during the night, and reached up to dab at the stitches, looking somewhat hungover. Link had no injury on him but a few scratches and bruises.
They all stared at one another for a moment, then turned to the audience that appeared in the doorway.
Aelina, Bo, Talm, Zee and Sheim lingered at the entrance to the infirmary, each with a more worried look than the last. Excepting, of course, the Sheikah elder, whose smooth expression, so benign at its surface, terrified Palo. His eyes did not leave the deadseer's—there was a little wrinkle in his nose, a slight downturn of his mouth that conveyed nothing short of absolute rage.
Talm, ever the one to cut to the chase, spoke first. "What the fuck did you do?"
The answer, of course, was a unanimous, "I don't know."
"My lady, I do not think it appropriate to use such language in front of our queen," Bo said, mildly.
"I don't care and neither does she," Talm snapped. "Just tell me what happened. One minute I'm dead asleep and the next someone's dragging me out of bed and telling me there's been a skirmish in the great hall." She wheeled forward passionately. "And when I get there, I nearly faint from the stench of magic. And it's not our magic."
Impa glanced at Palo, a strange look in her eyes. Her mouth opened, slowly, then closed again.
Fortunately, Nabru spoke for all of them. "I've no idea," she offered, mouth stuffed with cotton. "I remember going to sleep, and then I woke up here." She frowned at her own slurring tongue, and reached up to pat her cheek. The injury seemed more confusing than painful to her. "I fought someone, I suppose. I must've."
Aelina trotted to sit at her bedside. "You don't remember anything?"
"No… do you?"
The Ordishwoman frowned. "I'm sorry. I slept through it all." She bit her lip, almost tearful. "I should've woken up and stopped you, I'm sorry, I'm so s-s-s-stupid—"
Nabru pulled Aelina into her arms and held her until she calmed. "Stopped me from what, love?"
"We found you in the great hall," Talm said. "Dressed in someone else's armor. You were all asleep. And Viscen was dead."
Nabru went pale. "Viscen? Who in the hell would—"
"You, apparently," Talm said. "Your axe had his blood on it."
"I would never—"
"I know," Talm sighed. "That's why I can't figure this out."
Palo prayed to the darkest spirit he knew that she wouldn't.
"Talm," Impa started. Her voice was hoarse, but heavy with authority. "It was Barudi. I saw her. I sensed her." Her sister wheeled around, giving her an incredulous look. "She found her way into Nabru. She stole her body somehow."
"She what?" Nabru clenched her jaw so tightly a drop of blood slid from between her stitches and dripped down her cheek. Aelina quickly wiped it away. "That fucking vile snake, spawn of the damned—"
"My lady." Bo attempted to place his gargantuan hands over the little queen's ears, but she wriggled away, fleeing to Link's bedside.
"You're sure it was Barudi?" Talm asked.
"I… don't know," Impa answered. "But I saw her…" Impa leaned forward, rubbing her eyes, as if the pressure could bring the images back. "I remember. I saw her screaming, and struggling… against something…"
"It was Barudi," Link said. "I saw her, too. Nabru… when she turned on us, she spoke with her voice. She cast rova magic—ice, and fire. And when we defeated her, she crawled out of the armor, and…" Link, too, couldn't articulate what happened after that. Instead, he turned to her motives. "She must've been after Zee."
"Or you," Impa said.
"No. She could've tried to kill me, that much I remember. But she didn't. She had me in her grasp and then let me go."
"But how did she get in?" Talm asked.
"Oh, gods," Nabru said, suddenly. "Din's great tits—Aelina, do you remember, in the garden yesterday? The thing that bit me…"
"The cat?"
"I don't think it was a cat," Nabru said darkly.
Link and Impa glanced at one another. "Her fox?" Impa offered.
"It was her damnable little familiar. That little bastard—"
"Okay," Talm snapped. "Start from the beginning, all of you. Tell me everything that happened, from the time you went to bed—hell, from before you went to bed."
Spirits bless them, they tried. Nabru offered nothing but an animal bite and a strange dream of Molgera. Aelina had been asleep, and Link and Impa had arrived confused to the scene, only to have what they witnessed confuse them even more. They tried to talk of things they couldn't understand, of eyes, a terrible, unearthly gaze, of a voice they could not recognize, of a moon blotting out the sun. It was almost amusing, to hear their explanations, to see their own memory of the event leak from their heads as they tried to tell it.
It was for the best. What Palo brought into that room was not fit to be spoken. As Link and Impa blubbered, as Sheim stared his eagle-eyed stare, Palo sat in silence—complete silence, since even Agahnim had fled the scene when his dark master arrived and hadn't bothered to return. Coward.
"All I remember," Impa concluded, biting her lips and thinking deeply. "Is playing the harp. I played a song I'd never played before. And it was a song I can't ever play again, I know that. I must've split Barudi from Nabru, and I held her there… yes, I held her as Palo… well, Palo didn't do anything, not that I saw, he… we all just watched. It was… I can't remember it clearly." Impa turned to the deadseer, and he saw a look of gentle regret in her eyes. She must've known, at some instinctive level, the severity of what Palo had done, even if the details escaped her. She always did seem to know things that others didn't. "The important thing is that we won. Somehow, some way, with Link's triforce and my music and Palo's magic, we managed to kill her."
"There was no body," Talm said. "The most we found was a pile of sand and some smoke."
"Rova don't leave corpses," Nabru spat. "They leave curses."
The room fell silent for a moment, as if everyone paused to check themselves for remnants of rova magic. Taking advantage of the sudden pause, Sheim stepped forward, arms crossed. "Palo," he said. "Can you stand."
It was less of a question and more of a command. Palo steeled himself and slipped from his bed. Impa watched him with worried eyes, and nearly reached out to him when the elder spoke again.
"Come with me."
They left the infirmary and walked in silence, down the dark hall, around the corner, to an unused room. Sheim closed the door and stood before it for a long moment, staring at the deadseer.
"Isn't this interesting?" he growled. "An unexplained event that leaves the scent of death-magic in the air. Nabru and Aelina remember nothing. Link and Impa only babble about some beast they're not even sure they saw. And the only other witness to this event is currently in the process of burial." He paused. "What the hell did you do?"
Palo could only shrug. There were so many things he could say, and he dared say none of them. But the elder stared at him expectantly, blocking his only route of escape.
"I killed a rova," he answered, finally.
"You think you killed a rova," the elder corrected.
"I'm pretty sure she's dead." Immediately Palo bit his tongue, cursing himself. He knew what the next query would be.
"How can you be certain?"
Palo could not walk Sheim through the calculations in his head, the offerings of souls and the reciprocal favors, he could not tell the elder that he had the assurances of a god so old and so terrifying that to speak its name out of turn was to invite calamity. He could not tell his elder that he knew where the rova had been taken, he knew how deep down into the pit of death she had fallen.
"Just a feeling," he said.
Sheim stared at him a moment. He had listened to Link and Impa's fumbling narratives about otherworldly presences and evil eyes with a straight face. He knew better than to dismiss them as hallucinations, and he knew Impa would never lie to him about what she saw.
Palo could feel the elder's gaze boring into him, picking through every dishonest wrinkle in his frown, every false word he had ever uttered. Sheim knew him too well. He had been there for his first mission, he had watched him grow up, receive his tattoos, he could see through him perfectly.
For half a moment, Palo found that he wanted to confess. He almost did. He almost told the elder everything, but the old one, the ancient unspeakable god, held his tongue for him. He had already gambled too much, he couldn't lose it all now.
"Palo," Sheim said. His voice was calm, his gaze steady. "Do you think I cannot see what you've done? It's written on your face."
The deadseer tried his best to smile. "Hah. You'd think after all these years of training I would've learned to mask my expressions."
"No, Palo. Do you know what's happened to your tattoos?"
Instinctively, he raised a hand to his cheek. He felt nothing different, just flat skin, moist with nervous sweat. "No," he answered.
"They're black as night."
Palo did not know what to make of that revelation. He did not know what this meant, what the change in his markings signified, if his standing with the old one had improved or plummeted, if what he still owed the god was going to be extracted—
As he frantically plunged into his own thoughts, he did not see the elder move, he didn't see the knife being drawn. All he felt was the painful, dull thump of a fist in his stomach, knocking the air from him, and the firm grasp of a hand about his wrist—then he was against the wall, the elder at his back, blade at his throat.
He gasped for breath, arm twisted behind him, Sheim's weight pushing him against the stone, but he didn't dare struggle. He couldn't draw his own knife, he couldn't push away from the wall, he could only flinch as the cold metal touched his skin.
"It is such a shame," Sheim breathed, "to see you go down this path. You were our last deadseer. Our only deadseer."
"Sheim, don't," Palo whispered. Fear stirred in his stomach, the dark, cold breath of the ancient god tickled his neck right beside Sheim's. He did not want to waste his life, all he had gained—he couldn't afford to, not now. He couldn't dig himself deeper into this hole just to fight off his own elder. "Please."
The knife pressed harder, but it didn't draw itself across his throat. "There is a reason Merel wanted you to keep your name," Sheim said, solemnly. Palo could hear the strain in his voice, the entities of necessity and mercy fighting inside him. "There is a reason she promised to remember you. She did not want to lose you to something worse than death. She loved you."
Palo's heart turned in his chest. He lifted his hand, gently, and placed it on the elder's wrist. The knife did not move, Sheim's grip did not relent. "I know."
"I am so sorry," Sheim said. "It pains me to do this."
"So don't," Palo croaked. "Not yet."
The tip of the knife nicked Palo's neck, in the soft spot beneath his jaw, and a warm line of blood fled down to his collar. He flinched, but did not give up.
"Please, Elder. Wait until we've killed the King." He felt the pressure of the blade retreat, just a little. "Wait until we've won. Then you can kill me as many times as you want."
The knife disappeared, and a hand gripped Palo's shoulder, spinning him around and slamming his back against the wall. "I don't want to kill you," Sheim said. Slowly, reluctantly the elder released his grip on Palo. "You seem to misunderstand that."
The deadseer released a held breath, still tense, still shaking a little. "Thank you, Elder."
"Don't thank me," Sheim hissed. "This is none of my doing. You are adamant about destroying yourself, and I have only agreed to let you do it for a while longer. You will pay the price for this magic, sooner or later. I will only ensure that you die before the cost becomes too great." The elder sheathed is knife and sighed. He stilled for a moment, and Palo was unsure if he had regretted his mercy already, if he was about to turn on him again and finish the gruesome task.
Palo did not expect the elder to shake his head and laugh. "Droll, isn't it," he said, mirthlessly. "Only after our tribe has fallen completely apart do I have responsibility for it." He folded his hands and retreated, though Palo knew better than to take this as an opportunity to escape. "First Temok, when I needed him most. Then my daughter, and a grandchild I never met. My elder, who will never be able to show me how to read the fires. My entire nation. Gone. The only tribe left to me right now is a son-in-law I barely know, Talporom's daughters, and you—a banished heretic, anathema to your own god-spirits." Sheim looked over his shoulder. "And I will have to kill you soon enough."
Palo swallowed a lump he didn't know gathered in his throat.
"You're shaking," the elder said, smiling a little. "A deadseer afraid of death, I never thought I'd see that."
"The stakes are higher now." Palo grit his teeth. "And I'm not done with the things I need to do."
"Very well, then. To the best of my ability, I will keep you alive until you are done. But be assured, deadseer, that when this is over I will fulfill my duty to my spirits. If you flee, I will track you down; if you fight, I will defeat you. Your death will be swift and just."
Sheim stepped aside, showing the door. Cautiously, Palo crept past, a shiver running up his spine. He had no doubt Sheim meant every word.
When he lay his hand on the knob, his elder spoke again. "It truly is a pity, Palo. There will never be another deadseer like you."
He almost smiled. He almost turned around and begged his elder for forgiveness, he almost repented. But he only opened the door and let himself out.
"No, there won't be," he muttered.
The dawn crawled in from the east, red as blood. The wall by the palace gate offered a clear view of the hills south of the Capital, and the King's camp lay still on the horizon, flags flapping in the gentle wind. There were no clarion calls, no dust kicked up by horses or footmen, no signs of a march. But there was something going on, a gathering of soldiers, a stir of excitement. A column of smoke, perhaps a mourning pyre, rose from the center of the bivouac, curling up into the clouds.
"He must be giving her a funeral," Impa said, lowering her little telescope.
Link shifted beside her. "And so he's giving us one more day." The relief in his voice was subtle, but certain. She reached out and took his hand, squeezing his cold fingers in hers. "We have time to rest, Nabru has some time to heal. We have some time to make sure Zelda is ready for this."
"Are you ready for this?" Impa asked.
"I'll have to be. I can't get any more ready than I am now."
She turned back to the fields, watching the smoke rise. Distantly, she thought she heard the slow wail of a dirge. "I cannot for the life of me understand how one could ever love a rova."
Link stayed silent for a moment. "Ganond's mothers were rova. They raised him since he was an infant, and stayed with him all through the Conquest War. They delivered his children, they were tutors to the princesses. They may have killed his wife when she turned against him. If anything, they're loyal."
Impa glanced at him. "Did you learn this from Garona's books?"
"I did. They died trying to find Nadiba and bring her back to the castle. She… well…"
"She what?"
"I think she killed them. I don't know how, and I don't know with what kind of magic. Maybe Nadiba was a rova herself."
"Wouldn't that be rich?" Impa laughed. "To have that kind of power, only to get lost and die in a forest."
"I suppose..." He lowered his eyes, heavy with worry or sadness.
"What's wrong, Link?"
"I... I'm just wondering, about what it truly must take to kill a rova."
Impa's heart sank. Deep in her mind, a pair of terrible eyes stirred, but she could not name them, she couldn't bring them quite enough to the forefront of her thoughts to speak of them. It wasn't simply fear—of course she was afraid, but it was her instinct, her deepest gut, that told her she should distance herself as far from that entity as she could. She could not even bring herself to seek out Palo and ask what had happened, to investigate the change in his tattoos.
"You're worried about Palo," she said to Link. "I am, too. So is Talm, and she seems to know more about what he's been doing than any of us."
"What… Impa, what even happened? I know I was there, but I can't remember clearly. I can't… there was something there, in that room with us. What was that?"
"I don't know, Link. I truly don't." She shivered, turning her eyes back to the fields. "Something dark. Maybe something Palo… picked up in Ordona. There's no way to know, unless he tells us. Or unless Sheim is able to consult with the spirits of Kakariko and ask for their insight."
"So we'll never know."
Impa closed her eyes, heart wringing. "Probably not."
Link shook his head. "The King is right. We're all just children, playing with dangerous things we don't understand."
"And you think he understands them?" she nearly snapped. "Do you really think he understands rova magic, or the golden power of the gods, or the Eternal River or any of that shit?"
"More than us, at least." Link clenched a fist on the battlements. "He must have some knowledge we don't."
"Even if he does, just look at what he's done with it." Impa took both his hands in hers. "He's destroyed half the country, he's killed so many people. He murdered our family, our village. He has no right to that magic, even if he knows how it works better than we do."
"Impa…" Link started, eyes downcast. "If you had his kind of power…"
"I'd try to get rid of it," she answered, truthfully. "Some things we're better off without, and some things we shouldn't even try to understand. We live only as long as a scale molts from Molgera's back, as Nabru says. And there are so many other scales we can't see. Perhaps it's for the best."
The look on his face both broke her heart and comforted her. His eyes were wet, as if he was on the verge of crying, but his mouth was upturned in a sad, confused smile.
"There's only one thing I know for sure," Impa said. She leaned in to kiss him, laying her mouth gently over his. She drew him close, hoping that some of her warmth could spread to him.
"And what's that?" he whispered, still beneath her lips.
She pulled away. "It's that we both need breakfast." She led him across the battlement, under the pink sky, through the thin tendrils of smoke rising from the chimneys of the city. "Also, I love you."
Palo went to bed just as the sun rose. He planned to sleep until noon at least, to hell with whatever battles raged on or fires burned outside his window. He ducked through the doorway to his room and locked the door behind him. He shook out his hair—there were still a few patches of marble dust and glass shards the medics had missed—and began to unbutton his bloodied shirt.
"That was unlike anything I've ever seen."
The voice surprised Palo, but it was not wholly unexpected. A ghost stepped out of the wall, flickering, giddy, wearing a toothy white smile on his white face.
"So there you are," Palo muttered. He would never admit to missing Agahnim, but he did find his absence occasionally unnerving.
"Amazing," the specter continued. "I have only read about necromancy like that. And you pulled it off without even a second thought—and to a witch of the deep desert, a servant of the Nameless One! I simply cannot believe you made the numbers work."
Palo removed his trousers and closed the curtains against the rising light.
"Such power," Agahnim muttered. "And in exchange for only the life of one man. I had intended for you to use his blood to escape, I never would've thought… gods above, the life of a single soldier!"
"May the poor bastard rest in peace," Palo muttered. He touched the little cut under his chin, just to make sure it was no longer bleeding, and washed his face. "And he wasn't just a soldier, Agahnim. He was a good man who has done terrible things."
"A valuable death," Agahnim agreed. "Not hard to find, but it pleases the ancient tastebuds well enough."
"I didn't send Viscen into the mouth of—" Palo had to stop himself before he accidentally said the name aloud. "I wouldn't do that to him."
"So how…"
"I promised something else."
"The soul of a rova! Of course!" Agahnim flitted across the room as Palo crawled into bed. "An entertaining prospect, isn't it? I don't know how many rova have fallen down the throat of our master, but I imagine it was quite a treat." He laughed. "She must've tasted so strange."
Palo pulled the covers over him, blocking out the cold chill of the ghost. But Agahnim would not let him alone—his excitement was palpable. His voice trembled, his ghostly hands prodded and stroked Palo's shoulders, arms, face, trying to coax him back upright.
"I cannot figure out how you did it," Agahnim said. "She slipped so easily into the darkness."
"She did, didn't she?" Palo yawned. He closed his eyes, but instead of featureless black, his eyelids showed him a clear picture of Agahnim's eager face. "I didn't think a fight between two gods would be so quick." He turned over and thought for a moment. "The Old One, and the Nameless One. Both are old and nameless."
"Many gods are," Agahnim replied.
"Are they the same god?"
"All gods are the same god."
Palo rolled his eyes behind his tattoos.
"They are all faces of the same thing. The worm eating her tail, the magic of blood, the cycle of death and reincarnation—"
"Oh, shut up," Palo groaned. "I knew I shouldn't have asked. You're a wellspring of useless platitudes but a desert when it comes to real information."
The necromancer feigned offense, babbling for a few moments about this or that religion, about this or that necromancer or priest from the southern forests of Ordona, but even the constant noise could not keep Palo from laying back and breathing a sigh. Even with the prattling ghost, even with the knowledge that soon enough he would have to face Sheim for his transgressions, he could not stop himself from folding his hands under his cheek and drifting off.
I had been years since he slept soundly, but within minutes he fell into a deep, perfect dream.
The battlement north of the city gates began the chorus. The first bell rang a few hours after sunrise, prompting the southern battlement to reply. The noise spread from there to the nearest church of Hylia, then to a temple dedicated to Nayru, and soon after every bell in the city rang out in warning. It did not take long for the racket to reach the castle, pouring in through the windows, spreading down the halls in the form of shouting servants, clinking guards, panicked messengers and eager volunteers for the cause, waking up their comrades and summoning them into the yards and barracks.
Link awoke to overpowering memories of Obra Garud. He could almost smell the desert in the air, he could almost feel the fear that overtook him as a younger man, naive and unprepared. But as he grabbed his sword from the bedside, an encouraging ring traveled up the blade and to the hilt, reassuring him that this battle would not end like that one.
He agreed. There would be no chance for surrender, no chance to retreat. There would be no escape for him, no room to wait for another opportunity, as there had been in Obra Garud. He would succeed or die. It was that simple, and its simplicity comforted him.
He dressed himself slowly, carefully. He combed out his hair, he washed his face in the basin. He made the bed, still warm from his and Impa's bodies. He sought out some bread and fruit and sat down to eat, making sure his butter was evenly spread. He made sure to visit the bathroom. He took deep breaths and repressed the overeager, painful power threatening to burst out of his hand at any moment.
An hour later, fully dressed, calm and ready, he made his way through the panicking crowds, up the stairs to the wall, and to the palace gates. Impa was already armored, waiting for him, and Talm wheeled from battlement to battlement, giving orders and carefully watching the outer walls.
"Make sure the cannons are secure," she was barking at the nearest soldier. "Aim only at his artillery—if his men try to scale the walls, keep the crossbowmen in a position to pick them off. And—oh, Link! About goddamn time. You're getting worse than Palo."
"Where is Palo?" Impa asked.
"He'll show up eventually," Talm said. "He always does. Well, now that you're here—" she leaned over her chair, almost over the side of the battlement, to call down into the yard. "Boy! Your man is here! Come get him armored!"
A pageboy in the crowd below glanced up, panicked, and ran, to presumably fetch Link's armor.
"Okay, Impa," Talm continued, "if and when they break through the portcullis, you're going to be commanding the third unit. The King's men will bottleneck at the main boulevard—they've got nowhere else to go. You'll have a captain and a messenger." She turned to Link. "And you'll stay here until the man of the hour shows his face. Then we'll send you down. We can't have you murdered by some footsoldier before you can fling your triforce at him."
"Don't worry about me," Link assured her. He was calm, he was strong, he was well-rested and he had removed the King's most valuable magical asset the day before. He could survive the onslaught of pawns, and he could survive the King. "Send me down to help the men. I'll be fine."
"No risks," Talm said. "You never know what the bastard will have up his sleeve. He caught us off-guard with his rova, and we won't let that happen again. Oh, where's Nabru? She should be—"
"She's with the Galinedh." Aelina approached them, dressed in what was the closest thing that counted as battle gear for her—a slightly thicker dress, a sturdy cap. She had tied a string around the ears of her spectacles so not to lose them, and for once she was wearing real shoes. Link had faith her regalia would protect her, if only because any self-respecting soldier wouldn't raise a sword against such an underdressed creature.
"Ah, good," Impa said.
"Telma and Bo are on the outer wall," she offered. "And the rest of the f-f-footmen are waiting at the g-gate. Everyone's in p-p-p." She took a deep breath. "Everyone's in position."
"Where's Zee?" Talm asked.
"Her handmaidens are still donning her armor," Impa said.
It sickened Link to think of little Zee plated in gold and bronze and leather, it sickened him to think of the blades they were designed to repel, but he knew she may need it. He would do his utmost to make sure no one got anywhere near her, but just in case, the more layers she had on, the better. The King would no doubt come for Link first, to get him out of the way, but he would not spare Zee if it came to that.
Link hoped the damned stuff fit her. It had been made for Garona when she was a child, and then passed to Elgra—it seemed Ganond was outfitting his children for war since the moment they could walk. If Link had any chance of besting a family like that, he had to imitate them.
"We're just as bad as he was," he sighed.
"What was that, sire?" It was the pageboy, with armor in hand.
"Nothing," Link said. He watched the boy lay out his breastplate, unfold his shining mail, and shake out his green cape, embroidered with gold—the hallmark of the Verdant Knight. It was made by the most skilled seamstresses in the city, from the highest quality materials, and it was nothing compared to Irma's work.
"So, when Zee arrives, we'll use her triforce to secure the palace gates," Talm said. "She's been mastering her protective spells, and she thinks she can hold it. At least for long enough that Link can find the King and kill him before he gets anywhere near the palace."
"I don't like the idea of her being so close to the action," Impa said.
Talm wheeled back and forth, her equivalent of pacing. "Well, you want us to waste her power? You want us to keep her hidden and lose one of our only advantages?"
"Of course not," Impa sighed. "I just..."
Talm reached out and squeezed her sister's hand. "Don't worry. We'll be here with her. She'll have you, and she'll have Link. And she's not so weak herself, you know."
Impa smiled. "I know."
"You'll be able to protect her," Talm said. "She couldn't ask for a better caretaker. She's lucky to have both of you. And me, of course. And Palo, and Telma and Kasheik and Sheim—I've never met a girl with so many good parents."
Link almost smiled. He almost let himself relax, he almost let his affection for the little queen take his mind off the battle at hand.
But the battle at hand would not allow it. His pageboy wasn't even through organizing his armor when a golden light flashed to life outside the city walls, descending from the sky and crashing into the gates. The cannons responded in kind, and the city shook with the sounds of screams and rumbling booms. Blue smoke rose from the outer wall, suffocating the light, enveloping the rising sun in a cold, sinister shadow.
"All right," Talm muttered. "Places, everyone. The curtain's about to rise."