Zelda is thirteen in the year Lady Elapidan accidentally poisons the son of the Holodrun envoy. For three weeks he lays deathly ill, unable to keep even the most innocuous food in his stomach more than an hour. The entire court is on the verge of blood feud, and the northern trade accord is withdrawn before it even reaches the Council of Peers when the Holodrun accuse the royal physician of quackery.
The Zora delegation graciously offers their own physicians, with more than a few snide comments about the delicacy of human biology. The Holodrun accuse them of deliberately exacerbating the boy's condition for political advantage. Her father says nothing. The Zora tear up the nascent peace treaty, and leave Castletown the next day.
Blades are drawn in the hall of judgment when it is discovered the intended target was the heir to Ordun - a rival suitor for a profitable marriage contract with the third daughter of Earl Hebron.
The entire court wants to know why Zelda hasn't worked a miracle yet to heal the boy. Vah Rauru testifies that her prayers for intercession have brought a miracle, because the boy is still alive to be sick.
Zelda cannot even flee to the garden, and nevermind her sheikah training. She must be seen at court or the royal shrines at all hours, or Holodrun will do far worse than tear up the proposed trade contract. Hyrule is already fighting two of her neighbors and herself besides.
If the Goron had sent literally anyone less phlegmatic than Brother Budro to the summit this year, if the Labrynian ambassadors weren't annoyingly sanguine about everything, if the Necludan delegates wavered in their piety, if, if, if.
Zelda is alone in the temple when the shadows move. She thinks at first Impa is testing her, but she hears hobnail boots behind the altar, and Impa never wears boots. She does not scream - whoever it is has evaded the royal guard already, and calling more will avail nothing.
Zelda rises from her prayers, smoothing her skirts - and slipping needleblades between her fingers.
A man in a strange gray mask and a Terminan-style layered gray cloak steps down from the shadows of the altar statues, striding over the sanctified offering stone as if it has no more significance to him than common dirt. He drops to the crimson carpet in front of her with - not grace, but an easy kind of confidence - hardly even bending his knees to absorb the impact, though it's a five foot descent.
Zelda does not give ground. "Who are you? How did you get past the guards?"
"Hn. That was child's play," says the man, pulling the carved wooden mask away. Under the cloak he wears brown riding boots and Hylian breeches, but a long Terminan-style embroidered waistcoat in deepest blue and onion-gold. A wide scar stretches down the right side of his face, and he wears his golden hair in a messy, short queue that leaves his sidelocks and fringe loose.
"Who are you? Why are you here?"
The man looks down at her in silence, his blue eyes cold and hard. "You require a miracle to restore the peace, do you not?"
Zelda frowns at him. Hyrule has not experienced true peace since before she was born, but she will not say this to a mysterious stranger.
"Hn," says the man, and from the shadows under his cloak he draws out a milky glass bottle with silver wire securing the cork. "Do not waste this. Go directly to the bedside of the envoy's son, and help him open it."
Zelda hesitates. It looks like common glass, mostly, but it's too bright for the dim temple. As if it holds light inside it. "How do I know there isn't some poison or miasma or curse inside this bottle?"
"You don't," says the man, with a sour-apple smile. He offers her the bottle.
"Were - you sent by the spirits? You seem familiar somehow, but no one at court has scars like that," says Zelda softly, noticing now the faint shiny patches from old burns on his hands, and the thin cord of scar tissue peeking above the folds of his snowy white neckcloth.
"If it brings you comfort to believe that, by all means, believe. Time is cruel and short," says the man. "Take this to him, before it is too late."
Zelda accepts the bottle, though she can hear Impa scold her inside her head for trusting this stranger.
"Hn," says the man, hiding his face under the gray mask again.
Zelda frowns at the white bottle in her hands, and when she looks up again, he is gone. She feels like she sees the shadows moving, but she couldn't swear to it. She tells herself he must be good and true, to come and go so easily on sanctified ground. No evil magic could ever persist in this place. The priests all say so, and the sacred texts, and even Impa says that Darkness always gives way to Light.
Zelda hides the bottle in her skirt pocket, and returns to the castle. No one dares oppose her wish to visit the Holodrun state rooms, but Impa does try to persuade her out of entering the sick room. No one has anything to say after she reminds them that the Sacred Maiden is protected by the power of the golden goddesses.
Zelda prays at the boy's side until everyone is too bored to watch her. She tucks the glass bottle under his hand and twists the silver wire open. Nothing happens.
Zelda lays his other hand on the cork, gently prying the bottle open around his clammy fingers.
The world explodes in a burst of pink light. Zelda imagines she hears tiny bells and distant laughter, and wonders what will happen to Hyrule if she is dead.
The light fades, and everyone is talking at once. Including the Holodrun boy, who is scrambling from his sickbed wearing nothing but a nightshirt and raving about nymphs and spirits.
Zelda has performed another miracle.
Still dazzled from the light, she manages to stuff the empty bottle in her skirt pocket, and pretends to faint. She is grateful that Impa is strong enough to carry her back to her tower, because she is more dizzy and tired than she's ever been. She doesn't even mind the awful green potion to soothe her headache.
Zelda does try to sleep, and she is glad of the solitude. But she is restless and worried, and it has been nearly a month since she's seen anything but her rooms and the temple and the Holodrun suite.
At twilight, Sheik climbs out of the Princess' bedroom window.
The spring evening is calm and the wind is refreshingly brisk. It feels good to be out of court dress, to be climbing and running again. To be free of the close confines of the castle, the rigidly formal gardens, the stifling manners and smothering politics.
Sheik crouches in the shadows of a chimney in the artisan's quarter of Castletown. The nice side. Where luthiers and jewelers and fine woodworkers and sculptors of marble live. He likes this neighborhood - it always smells of incense and flowers and clean wood.
The smoke from this house has a strange edge to it, like there are hot spices in the fire. Sheik cannot decide if he likes it or not, but it fills him with warmth to linger near it, even though it makes his nose itch.
A dark voice rises with the woodsmoke, and a faint lilt of girlish teasing.
Sheik feels a hint of the dizziness return, and a tightness in his chest. He decides to rest a little longer than he meant to, and see if it passes. If it doesn't, he will have to return to the castle far sooner than he wants - and likely on foot.
He listens to the faint voices, and wonders why an artisan's family is awake so late. He creeps to the edge of the roof, surprised to see several of the windows alight. He climbs down an iron drainpipe, drawn by those voices.
Mostly the dark one.
Sheik has never heard a voice like that before, deep and warm and dark and rumbling like distant thunder. He feels a strange heaviness, listening to it, but somehow he yearns to hear more.
"And so the three kings came to the castle of Begran, and there feasted and made merry with the treasures they took from the six kings of Serlion," says the dark voice behind the half-open window and the orange-and-gold homespun curtains.
"Ugh, that's a boring one. It's all politics and names and how many horses everyone has," whines a girlish voice.
"Yeah, skip to the part where they lay siege to Zelda's castle," says another.
"It will be important for later stories to remember which lords rebelled after the Champion went abroad," says the man with the dark voice.
"Why do we have to remember? It's all in the book either way," says a third girlish voice. "Anyways the Vision of the Hundred Knights is boring. Skip to the feats of Ban and Bor and Camben and Clarian and the ten thousand ghosts."
"I am not reading you five chapters of battle tonight Ishi. You will fall asleep in the middle and you will be cross all day at school tomorrow," says the man.
"Yeah, battle is boring. And long. Read us the one about the damsel instead," says a younger girl.
"There are many damsels," rumbles the man in a tone of long-suffering.
"The one with the sword," says Ishi.
"Which one though," muses one of the older girls. "Most of the sword-damsels are sad stories with stupid knights and stupider princesses."
"Stupider isn't a real word," says the other older girl. "Read a romantic one. Like the one with the sword of virtue on her belt."
"That is not a romantic story at all," says the man. "You are confusing it with the story of Lady Eleanor."
"Am not! She was kind to the poor knight from the north, and saw his good heart even though he was hideous," says the other girl.
"That isn't how the story-" begins the man.
"And tell us again how she warned him about the wicked curse and tried ever so hard to save him," swoons the other.
"Oh oh! Issit the one with the brother losing his head? That one's exciting," cries an even younger voice.
The man sighs, turning pages. "You are all of you forgetting the actual curse of Balin, who did not draw the sword by might or by virtue, but witchcraft. And not only did it cause his death, but led him first to slay the Lady of the Fens, his brother, his best friend, and the Knight of the East Isles among others."
"And then the lady came on the horse and saw her dear knight laying dead as a doormouse-" says Ishi.
"Doornail," corrects one of the older girls. "She leapt from her horse without the slightest fear of Balin, and cried-"
"Two bodies thou hast slain, and one heart," recite four girlish voices.
The man sighs harder.
"And two hearts in one body," continue the girls. "And two souls thou hast lost!"
"And then she took his sword and fell on it," cries the young one. "But how did she fall on his sword? I mean if she tripped, her toe would be bloody, but how could she fall on the pointy bit?"
"Ooh! Maybe it was sticking out of his back and she fell on it when she flung herself on his body in grief unending," swoons another girl.
"I should like to know how you expect me to read you any story at all in these conditions," rumbles the man.
"Oh don't be fussy. You read the best stories," says one of the older girls.
"Given that apparently none of you have paid attention to the actual stories I actually read, that point is very much in doubt," says the man.
"Pfft. We always listen, it's just sometimes the stories in the books are stupid, and need fixing. You taught us that," says the other older girl.
