Update (2/13/05): Wow, QuickEdit didn't seem to like my italics. Or my spaces. Or my commas. I think I managed to catch all the errors this time. If you've already read this chapter...no, there's no new content, the errors just bugged me.

First of all, thanks to all my kind reviewers. Reviews always make me feel warm and fuzzy!

This was a hard chapter to write (you all care, I know). There's a lot of background info in this one, but I think it's worth it. Well, I don't have anything else to say...if you want, tell me what you think of the story so far with a review!

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In fear and dread, Zelda took one more step. That's the last, the very last I can bear. One more step, and I'll see the field...and if I look out on that field, I am lost. That much she knew yet her feet moved without her consent, nimbly picking through the ruin that littered the castle roof, leading her onward to doom. One more step, and one more step after that, and then she knew herself for lost.

The moon had risen and the besiegers' nightfires burned, as they did every night. It hurt her heart to look at them; they were only another reminder of how helpless she was in her castle, and Zelda hated helplessness. Seeking distraction, she turned her gaze on Pollard's men moving below. Berent had been teaching her to count the number of men in a host, but their lessons had never taken place when their foes shifted like flames. Not for the first time, she wondered if this was the night they'd storm the castle, to plunder and rape and claim a kingdom. If they knew how weak we were, how lost our cause, they'd not delay in doing so...

It took her more than a few moments to realize what they were really doing, and even then shock delayed her reaction. Then the fury took her, thickening her blood as her heart raced. They feast! They feast! They dare not! But it was true. The strains of a bawdy song reached her like some cruel whisper, and the shrill laugh of a camp follower as well...she even thought she could smell roasted lamb over the stench of corruption that had surrounded Hyrule Castle for a year. They feast outside the castle walls, while within them men would kill for a radish. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry.

Then a sword plunged into her guts, and twisted. She doubled over with a gasp, one hand clutching her stomach and the other gripping a nearby rampart for support. Her legs shook as the pain coursed through her, savaging and tearing, but it faded as quickly as a summer squall.

Trembling, she stood and straightened, waiting for her breathing to slow and her heart to stop its furious rampage. She could taste blood in her mouth where she'd bitten down on her tongue; it had a strange taste to it. A bad spell. Not as awful as the agony that had kept her abed for most of the day, but still pretty bad. She knew she should never have eaten that capon, but necessity had outweighed good sense. They'd found the thing long-dead on the roof, rotten and stinking, but the cook crisped it and sprinkled the last salt in the castle on it to hide the foul taste. Zelda wanted to retch even now, but she wouldn't let herself. She needed to eat, and grow strong, and be a queen.

Pleasure feathered through her then, chasing away the last remaining threads of pain. Link would say I'm already a queen, though. I saw it in his eyes, and heard it in his voice.

Her smile faded quickly, replaced by an expression of extreme unhappiness. In her delusion she had thought the arrival of Link to be a miracle, the panacea the Crown had awaited for nigh on a year. She had pretended not to notice his trembling toothpick legs, the skin pulled taut over his bones, the way she could see the shape of his skull beneath his face. What a child she had acted...at least, until their courtesies had been exchanged. It had been Link who acted the boy then. Once she had pulled him to his feet and given him a moderately comfortable tower room to sleep in, he had begged leave of her presence. And she had given it to him - fool that she was, she let him go again.

She should never have let him go the first time. Foolish as she'd been while a girl, fleeing to him in the forest dressed as a common tavern wench, at least she had recognized the importance of their friendship. He'd been in a balm in the dark days after her father announced her betrothal to Berent Pollard, a cousin who could have been her grandfather. Her world had been crumbling around her, while Link - who'd suffered so much only to have his glories erased when they were sent back in time - loomed as eternal as the Temple of Time itself. In him she found comfort and peace. She'd depended on his presence to calm her during her wedding ceremony and when he gave her his generic congratulations later, kneeling and kissing her fingers, she'd wished the moment would never end.

But end it did; Link had gone across the water without so much as a by-your-leave, and she'd been left with Berent. He had to be carried into their bridal chamber, his teeth were all gone, and the king feared her lord cousin would prove too weak to take her maidenhood. That was one fear her father had not had for long; her lord husband did his duty, though he could no more give her pleasure than he could walk under his own power. Berent is nothing if not dutiful. She might have loved him for that, but he looked on her as a brood mare who had no place in his life outside their bedchamber...at least, until the siege fell.

Link had been such a central figure in the early years of her life that it was hard not to think of him - often - during the first ten years of her marriage. She'd send runners after him across the water, that she might know what he was doing and what he looked like; no, she'd send him a letter via messenger bird, begging him to return to Hyrule so that she might look on him with her own eyes. She'd written thousands of drafts of that letter, it seemed, all burned unsent until she crafted one to her liking. Finally gathering her courage, she sent her letter off to him...

...and that was when the siege fell.

Zelda knew Lord Emery Pollard only faintly. She'd danced with him at her wedding feast and while he shared the cold courtesy of his brother, his features were so commonplace that she could not bring his face to mind. When he came to Hyrule Castle to pledge his fealty to the Crown he'd scarce looked at her, saving all his cold, unsettling stares for the king. Yet somehow he found it in him to call her barren, and later, to call his banners. And Berent let it happen, gods save him.

When the king stripped his brother of all lands and incomes, the king's council advised that he should enforce his decree with fire and sword - but Berent refused. Zelda had begged him to do the same, on this very roof she'd begged him - but Berent refused her too. And by that time Lord Emery had called his banners, and was marching on Hyrule Castle with all the strength of the south, and then it was too late.

Though she was confined to her apartments when the armies met before Hyrule Castle's gates, she stood at her arrow slit of a window and looked out at the carnage. Watching that battle was one of the hardest things Zelda had ever done, but she made herself do it all the same. Once, she might have been fighting beside the men below; once, she might have died brave in battle...but her body had grown thick and slow over the years, and now the noblest thing she could do was watch.

It would not stop, the fighting. She watched it every morning and every evening; she witnessed the slaughter and cruelty and courage till her eyes stung with tears. And when the hosts laid down their swords for the night she visited her royal husband, and begged him to withdraw into Hyrule Castle and let Pollard lay siege. They had food for a year or more, she told him; the castle walls could withstand a thousand catapults, she told him. Yet he refused her at every turn. It was the news that Zelda was with child that finally made Berent heed her words, and withdraw behind Hyrule Castle's walls.

Her pregnancy was not a happy one, though she lit candles to appease Farore and prayed to the goddess every evening. She gained hardly any weight while the castle starved all around her, and constantly feared she'd miscarry. When the babe began to move and shift inside of her she found no joy in it; she kept wondering if each kick would be its last. Yet her husband's desire for her was inflamed, and for a while she regretted not leaving through a postern gate with the rest of the women and children before it came to battle...

...and then one of the maids she'd chosen to stay with her throughout the siege fell victim to a strange illness. Smallpox, the doctor called it, but Zelda didn't care what this killer was called; she had an iron sense of justice, and all she knew was that the girl didn't deserve to die, not after she'd survived eight months of a siege. Desperate, she tended to the maid herself: feeding her a queen's portion of choice meat from the kitchens, cooling her brow with tepid water, and telling her of the paradise that awaited her as she shuddered, dying.

She didn't remember the rest but the doctor told her that she came down with the smallpox herself, so she supposed it must be true. For a while the castle held its breath, fearing the last descendant of a royal line three thousand years old would be felled by a pox, but the gods were good and she was spared. The doctor said the potions he gave her induced early birth, but he knew she'd only die if she tried delivery. She'd given her consent to have him use a secret eastern technique to draw the babe from her womb, brushing aside Berent's warnings, but that wasn't all to the good. The doctor fed her magic powder dissolved in wine and, wielding a long knife, drew the babe from her stomach; stillborn it was, blue and bloody and speckled with the pox that had killed it.

That had been two moon's turns ago. Three at most. And still she remembered waking up afterward to her husband looking down at her. His face...

I'm a monster, she thought as she stared out at the besiegers. My babe is dead, and I cannot cry.

How could she cry, though? In ten years she had miscarried thrice and delivered two stillbirths. The first time she had wept, and for a time the doctor feared she would not recover, and yet...with each failed attempt to get an heir she seemed to feel less and less, her heart hardening to stone, to steel. Sometimes prayers are answered, a voice from the past whispered to her when she arose from her suffering, but she always doubted that voice was hers. She could never be so cruel, so clinical, yet those words controlled her emotions all the same.

In happier days, resigned to her fate, she had dreamed of the children she might bear her husband. A sweet laughing girl or a boy like Link, fierce and loyal. She'd name them Alys for her mother, Berent for her royal husband. He liked that, I think. That had not been for some time, of course; long before she found tragedy in childbed and before Berent's brother declared her barren in his rush to war. She'd let go of such childish fancies long ago.

Such folly. The bitter thought drew her out of the past and back to the roof. She scrubbed at her face with the heels of her hands, furious at herself for letting those memories overwhelm her. I am become a crone, she reflected, who spends her days thinking of the shadows of what could have been, and what might be. What right have I to expect salvation when I cannot seize it on my own? Once I might have done just that, if the gods willed it or no...

Realizing where her thoughts were taking her she turned sharply, her skirts swirling. She'd dressed dark: a brown wool dress and black cloak, that she might not be seen. No ornament; she would appear to be nothing more than a serving girl even if she was seen. Berent had forbidden her the roof, fearing her death, but the arrival of Link had awoken an urge to look out on the host that she'd not felt since that battle for Hyrule Castle had been fought. And today's battle has already been fought, it would seem. As she made her way back to the ladder, she took note of the ashes and carnage and grief all around her. A waste. A most tragic waste.

Only a token force of guards were on the roof tonight, so Zelda slipped down the ladder unseen. How miserable those soldiers must have been on that roof, with no company but their thoughts...not that it was much better down below. The last horses were being slaughtered, the cats were disappearing, and the dogs were almost gone. In a moon's turn, the castle would be down to rats and shoe leather - but it was what came after that which frightened her the most.

It need not come to that. Emery Pollard would have to yield sooner or later. His host feasted bravely enough tonight, but they'd been at this siege for nearly a year. Surely he'd offer terms of peace soon...and when he did, she'd kill him for the traitor he was. Her desire to see him die for tearing her country apart was what kept her going during this siege, was what kept her walking even when she felt the familiar painful throb in her belly.

Her thoughts of treason brought her mind to her husband. She'd learned early on in her marriage that Berent could be as hard and queerly cold as his younger brother. When the doctor explained his eastern technique to the king before her last stillbirth, Berent had threatened to open the young man's belly and sew it back up to see how well it served him if any harm should come to Zelda, and for longer than this siege he'd been known to hang servants for the smallest trifle. He'd developed a rather broad definition of treason as well. When he found out a few weeks ago that some garrison men had been trying to escape via a tunnel, he had them thrown over the castle walls. "Let's see how my traitor brother treats with fellow turncloaks," he'd said when he gave the order for their execution.

She was of a mind to visit him now - only to remember that he'd been in seclusion for the past week, and mustn't be disturbed. Is he eating well? Zelda told herself that on the morrow she'd ask one of his maids. She couldn't afford him dying, not now with nearly all the horses gone. It would not do to have the garrison eat their own king.

The annoying pangs that had chased her through the corridors had grown to an agony. Zelda threw herself through her doors and collapsed into the nearest chair, groping for a wineskin. The wine was infused with magic powder that made it sour to her taste, but it calmed the fingers of pain that ran up and down her body before they could grow to the spell that attacked her earlier.

Her maid found her dozing in that chair and announced that the doctor was without and craved audience. "I should like to see him now," Zelda said, hoping her sudden fear didn't steal its way into her voice.

The doctor was a young man, emaciated from besiegement like all the rest - and none too clean, judging from the bloodstains on his robes. Berent had sent for him after her second miscarriage; across the water, he had been renown for his skill in treating women's complaints. He had helped her along to another miscarriage and two stillbirths in as many years, yet Zelda had always treated him kindly enough. She could never remember his name.

He bent the knee before her. "Your Grace," he said in his thickly accented tones, "I've only just finished determining the source of your bodily complaints, though you told me of them a fortnight ago. I bring you sad news..."

"Is it the smallpox? Will it come again?" He had told her it might, and that was what she feared most. She ought to have died of it along with her babe, everyone said so, and she would have if not for the man kneeling before her. Spending another moon's turn abed and delirious might very well be the death of her.

"No," said the doctor, rising, "it won't." But some dark knowledge lurked in his eyes and Zelda needed to know what it was, even if the knowing should kill her.

"What is it, then? Tell me true, or I'll have your tongue out."

The doctor stared at her for a long time before he spoke. "The infection spreads. I've treated it with boiling wine and as many leeches as I dare, Your Grace, but the flesh mortifies all the same. Your water is clouded with pus, and you look more feverish by the day." He paced the room, his robes flapping, as if afraid to face her. "Begging your royal pardon, it is a wonder you are still alive..."

Zelda stared at him and did not speak, wondering what reaction was expected of her. Tears, heated denials, pleas for a different diagnosis? She just felt an inutterable weariness. I must have known, she thought, I must have always known. From the moment I allowed him to cut the babe free that I might not die in childbed, I knew the risk and the danger. Would that I had not left so much undone...

"I have thought about how best to stop the spread," the doctor was saying. "I might pare the infected flesh off, if it please you, but I fear the area is too delicate for such an operation. There are herbs and potions that might serve...yet the castle's stock of suitable ingredients is quite exhausted. Perhaps if you were to bend the knee to Emery Pollard, surrender your claim to the throne, the gods would grant you a second chance at life..."

Her nostrils flared, all her apathy and fatigue forgotten. "Never." She turned around to face the wall so she wouldn't have to look at him anymore. "Leave me now. I want to be alone. To think."

Once he was gone she began undressing herself, the task taking longer thank it should have; all ten of her fingers seemed broken, snapped by the news the doctor had brought her. Off came the cloak, gown, undergarments, all thrown indiscriminately amongst the rushes. Her body bared, she examined herself in her looking glass and cringed at what she saw. The pox scars were not so bad on her stomach as they were on her face and feet, so it wasn't hard to see the fat wound there where the doctor had wielded his knife to save her. Ulcerous it was, the area around it an angry red and tender to the touch. A smell seemed to come from it, an awful smell riper than the dirt and sweat that clung to her like constant companions. Death, she thought, and suddenly she was overwhelmed with despair and fear.

It was too much, one more burden of many placed on her that day. She dressed herself quickly for bed and then took a brush to her hair, tenderly smoothing the last vestiges of her fading beauty. The pox and pregnancy had already stolen the most of the comeliness she'd once had; she wondered when the infection would rob the rest from her. It was a disquieting thought.

Exhausted, she climbed into bed and willed her dreams to take her. They were so vivid, the fever dreams...and in them she was wanted, needed.

Her dreams were turbulent and wild. In one she was standing in a cage that was at once gold and orange and red. Fire, she thought, I'm in a fire, and not dead. It was true. The heat of it was scalding, more than she could bear, but it did her no harm. Then something wet and thick dropped on her bare shoulder, and she looked up.

Link was above her, hanging from the ceiling by his wrists. He moaned and writhed as the tall flames licked at the soles of his feet, but that did him no good; he was cooked anyway. And as he screamed and begged and died pieces of him liquefied, dripping down on Zelda, beading on her chest and shoulders, running down her back - touching all of her except her ugly pockmarked face. She wanted to catch the droplets, wanted to weep, but she couldn't, not with Berent watching.

He called her now. Zelda! he cried, his voice a whip, and Zelda looked at him. He was beyond the flames, young and strong and upright, standing beside his brother Emery. The yellow warhorn of House Pollard blazed on their red surcoats. Were ever two brothers so alike and so different, all at once? They opened their arms to her, beckoning, and she took the first step towards them. Link's cries reached her once more and she stopped, quaking in sudden fear. Death awaited her outside the flames...

I am queen. In fear and dread, Zelda took one more step. I am queen, and mustn't be afraid. One more step. One more step. And then another.