Chapter Twenty-One

Zelda was awakened by a banging at the door. She quickly got up and put her robe on but before she got to the door a bunch of guards came bursting in.

"What is the meaning of this?!" She demanded.

"Forgive us, Princess," one of the guards said. "but it's for your protection."

"My protection? What is going on?!"

"Two murders, Highness."

"What? Who?"

"One was a maid...the other...it...we aren't sure. The body was severely butchered, beyond recognition. Whoever it was had long red hair though."

One name came to mind: Malon.

"Oh, please no...! Let me through!!"

The guards stood in front of the door, not letting her through. "Sorry, your Highness. We're under orders from the King."

Zelda growled slumped to the floor, nearly to tears.

Isuke grabbed another vine and pulled himself up. He was grateful for two things right now: The gloves he wore and all the fighting and swimming that worked his arms out. Right now they were the only things keeping him up, since he couldn't really use his feet to climb up the vines that were getting him over the gate that blocked the path up to the castle.

"Great, as if we Gerudo don't have a bad enough rep, I am now breaking into Hyrule Castle," Rittowa grumbled.

"Oh, shut-up," Isuke spat. "Malon, Miroku, and Zara are in there, and if the murderer is still there, we have to get them out."

Rittowa grabbed another rock from the cliff face and used it to help pull her up. "What about Zelda?"

"She's the Princess, idiot. She probably has about twenty guards making a double circle around her."

"I'm doubtful," Sheik said, who was already at the top. "that would stop him from killing her, if it is a Sheikah in there, that is."

"That is" –Isuke grunted while pulling his full body-weight up- "exactly why we need to get in there."

When Isuke and Rittowa had made it to the top, they all began crawling across the grassy summit. Isuke eyed the strange stone up there that had the sign of the Sheikah on it, but didn't bother asking about it. They came to where the gate made a kind of bridge from the short cliff they were on to the other side of the garden that the castle stared upon.

Running everywhere were Hylian guards, setting up more defense. Rittowa looked down and noticed that there were five more guards stationed at both the front and back of the gate. She sighed. Man, what a good time she was having at the tavern, and they made her come here. So what if one of them died? It wasn't her concern. She only joined this little group to avenge her sisters, and didn't feel particularly close to any of them. After all, they were Hylians. Nothing but useless Hylians. Hylians who had turned the great Gerudo race into nothing but a tribe of thieves back in the Great War.

She grumbled something but Isuke was too busy scoping out a way to get down to notice. There was anopening in the top of the 'bridge' that led down to a small room for the guards to rest in or something. Isuke peeked down. No one. He looked over the edge.

Darn.

There was a guard standing right in front of the door. Sheik tapped Isuke's shoulder, motioning for him to watch. The Sheikah dove from the other end of the cliff and spun around, landing on his hands the springing off of them, finishing with a perfect land on his feet behind some trees.

Oh, right. And he expects me to do that?

Rittowa came up from behind and mimicked what Sheik did, landing next to him then quickly hiding behind a different tree. Isuke rolled his eyes. He'd find his own way down.

The Zora thought for about half a minute before he finally got an idea. He made the fins on both his arms and legs grow and big as he could get them then charged some magic into all of them. He hoped this would work. He had heard of other Sheikah doing this before, long, long ago, but never tried it himself.

Isuke stepped back, made his fins point the same way as his arms, and then rushed to the edge. He jumped off and opened his arms as if they were wings and the magic surging through his fins started glowing a little more as if they were picking something up in the air. It worked. Isuke was gliding through the air.

"That idiot..." Sheik grumbled.

"What? The guy is flying!" Rittowa exclaimed.

"Okay, yeah, but do you really think he's gonna be able to control his flight? By the looks of it he's never done it before."

He was right. Isuke, without meaning to, did a barrel roll, twisted slightly before leaning to the right...then to the left...and then the right again. A beat of sweat rolled down Rittowa's cheek as she watched Isuke start flailing crazily with his arms, as if he was trying to flap his fins now.

A few guards finally noticed. "Look up there!"

"What is that!?"

Isuke banked right again, but this time kept going until he was out of Rittowa's sight.

"It crashed!" Yelled one of the guards. "Go see what it is!"

"C'mon, we need to get to him before they do," Sheik annoyingly said.

With a burst of speed he headed up the steep incline that the castle stood on.

Isuke moaned in pain from the landing. His chest was all scratched up, his arm was bleeding a little from clipping a rather sharp branch, and his head hurt from bashing it into a tree trunk upon landing. Well, it could have been worse; he could have crashed into the ground instead of the nettle bush.

Isuke scratched his naked torso furiously as he hurried down the walkway and into a room at the end. Safe! It was storage room. And it was bloody cold in there too. Isuke had heard of places like this before. They were called 'Cold Rooms'. Food and other things such as milk were kept in there to keep it from spoiling. It stayed cold because the castle spellcasters used an ice spell on it every day.

The Zora sat down behind a crate. Well, now what? The guards would come in there sometime, looking for the 'thing' that had crash landed not far from there. He'd just have to wait until they left then find some way to get into the castle. Voices could be heard outside the door, mostly the head guy, barking orders at his underlings.

"Now go check the cold room over there!"

Crap.

Isuke crawled into the corner as best he could, and tried to pull some crates in front of him, but just as a guard walked in.

"There's something over there!"

"Come out now!"

Isuke sighed. Nothing more he could do now. He disconnected one of his fins and tossed it to the side. While the guards were distracted he pounced at them from behind the box, smashing a fist across one of the guards' face, held his arm up in time for his fin to fly around and reattach itself to him, and then spin-kicked another guard out the door and into the moat. Outside, he saw at least another six out there. He could take them down easily enough, but didn't want to kill them.

His eyes glanced everywhere, until they found something that looked like a halfway closed shutter that was letting water out, turning it into a tiny waterfall. Isuke leapt to the edge, turning the shutter into nothing but splinters with a swift kick, and crawled in, just barely escaping the spears that were being thrown at him.

Zelda once again demanded to know what was going on.

"They've had a few servants look at the body," a guard responded. "One is of a maid that worked in the kitchen called Ren. The other...No one can actually identify the body."

"Except for red hair...." Zelda mumbled to herself.

A little while later, Zelda heard more commotion and told a guard to find out what was going on. He came back and told her that a Zora had been caught sneaking through the courtyard.

"Does he have a name?"

"He says it's Isuke."

"Isuke?! Take me to the cell now!"

The guard hesitated, but then did what she said.

They got down to the dungeon, where a Zora was chained to the wall.

"Zelda! Thank the Gods you're here," Isuke exclaimed.

Zelda sighed. "Release him. He's a friend of mine, he didn't kill anyone here. Why were you sneaking into the castle though?"

Isuke rubbed his wrists after he was released and walked up to the Princess. "The guards wouldn't let us in and we wanted to make sure everyone was okay."

"I see..."

"Who was it that got killed?"

"A...servant girl and someone who's body can't be identified."

"Why?"

"....She was..."

"Her body was torn up. Even her face...everywhere. Whoever did it somehow snuck into the King's room and used his dagger to kill the woman."

Isuke grimaced at the news.

"She has red hair. That's about all we know."

Red hair...?

Zelda looked down. "T...they can't find Malon either. She's not here, Isuke."

Isuke gave the guard a stern look. "I want to see the body."

They showed him to the room where the body was laid and Isuke slowly walked in, with Zelda watching from the door, not even wanting to see the body. She watched as Isuke grabbed the sheet that covered the body and lift it. He quickly recoiled, dropping the sheet and standing back up. He just stood there, staring at the sheet.

Zelda called to him, "Isuke..."

The Zora looked up at her with a confused look on his face, a face one might have after waking from a dream. He grimly walked out and faced her.

"I...can't tell. The face...it's horribly disfigured..."

Isuke looked at Zelda. "Come on, let's go."

A few hours later, after Sheik and Rittowa had broken into the castle, the group was gathered in the dining hall.

"Well now what?" Zara asked.

"Malon's red hair, Malon's room, and now Malon is gone. I hate to say it, but all evidence points to it being Malon," Sheik said.

No one said anything for awhile. They just stood there, thinking.

"We're going to have to find the Sheikah. And put an end to this once and for all," Isuke said, breaking the silence.

"What about Link?" Rittowa said.

"We don't have time to sit around and wait for him. I don't know what he's doing, but he's disappeared for some reason and I'm not gonna waste time looking for him."

"Well, O Fearless Leader," said Rittowa mockingly. "What do you think we should do?"

"Prepare for battle," Isuke answered. "And then find where the rest of the Sheikah are hiding. And crush them."

"Indeed," Sheik said. "And how do you plan on beating them? Even if the Gorons, Zoras, and Hylians fought together...and if by some miracle the Gerudo also decided to join, how would you defeat them? There are way more Sheikah than you know, but their power is not in their numbers. Sheikah are assassins, yes, but only the low class ones are used just for that. The ones I speak of are the type that you and Rittowa fought. And most of the ones we have been running into. Higher class Sheikah, like myself and those we fought after Link flattened that village, take up the better percentage of their numbers. I don't need to go into how strong they were...and there are still stronger. Do you really think we'd have a chance?"

"What do you suggest then?!" Isuke bellowed. "That we just sit around and wait for them to come down and kill us all?!!"

"......Prepare your army, Zora," Sheik said. "Zara, you will go into the mountains and tell the Gorons. Rittowa, I will accompany you to Gerudo valley."

"Since when am I going back there?" asked Rittowa.

"We will need all the help we can get. And we have to find some way to convince them to fight a long side the Hylians."

"Heh, they won't pity you if that's what you're after."

"What do you suggest then?"

"Buy us."

"What?"

"We Gerudo will work for Hyrule, if given enough money."

"I will ask my father about it," Zelda said.

"Good. Now, you can all get some sleep and we'll get to work tomorrow."

Isuke shook his head. "I won't be able to get to sleep now. I'll head back to Zora's Domain at once."

With that, he left the room.

"I doubt I'll be able to sleep after all that's happened too..." Zara said. "I'll leave for Death Mountain. I'll need a horse though."

"Come with me," Zelda said, and they both walked out.

Rittowa yawned. "Well, I'm tired. We'll set off in the morning, k? I'm goin' to see if I can a place to sleep around here."

She left, leaving Sheik alone in the giant hall.

Link...All I can do is pray that your return is swift...where ever you are.