He knew. She knew he knew. He was looking at her differently. She refused to admit to herself that it made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. A year had passed since she had agreed to consider the Gerudo leader as a possible future husband, and now he was back at court and from the way he watched her, listened carefully to her every word and kept half his attention on her whenever she was near him, he was considering her as a wife. He was wondering how easy it would be to wrest control from her. She was wondering the same thing about him. She had tried several times to eavesdrop on his conversations with the lords of the court, but the only mention of herself had been that she looked a lot like her mother, and was therefore likely to grow up beautiful; he hadn't even provoked the comment. Mostly he spoke about the castle, the grounds, the food and his horses. In fact, he could speak well about any topic his companions raised, but whenever politics or the military were mentioned he would deftly steer the talk in a different direction. He knew she was trying to measure him. She very much doubted he still considered her just a child. By now he had learned of her quick mind, her advanced education, her sharp political awareness and her maturity. She in turn had learned very little of him. The spy they had sent to the Gerudo had sent one report, that little seemed different among the tribes on the outskirts of the desert, and not been heard from since. The desert had swallowed many people. It did not have to mean treachery.
Officially he was there to swear fealty to the King, as the rulers of all the kingdom's provinces did once every year, but his presence had changed. Rather than the richly embroidered desert robes of his last visit he now wore armour, complete with a sword. Oh, many of the lords wore weapons, ornate and beautiful and ultimately less than half the use of a weapon of simple honest steel, but the transition was there. On his last visit he had carried only a polished wooden staff of office. Now he appeared as a man of the military.
His dark eyes swung to her, but she had been watching him in a mirror. Still appearing to be focussed on the other end of the room she saw him watch her over the shoulder of the lady who had been speaking without pause for the last several minutes. Nonchalantly she sipped her glass of watered-down wine and timed him; it was nearly a minute before he looked away. The whole time he had been watching her face. She'd done her best to look distracted, gazing out of the window with what most people would interpret as the boredom of a child at an adults' gathering, not the cunning of a watcher who missed nothing. She didn't like these events much; in a few hours all the high nobles of the land would come one by one to kneel before the king and renew their vows of loyalty and obedience. The Gerudo would be among them. For now, though, they just milled about drinking wine and talking politics. Nobody spoke to her at times like this; they deemed her too young for their usual conversation, even those who had seen the way she was being raised. Occasionally she would be approached by a well-mannered and richly dressed boy not too much older than her, who would then stumblingly flatter her until she politely and kindly thanked them and found an excuse to leave. She was intimately familiar with the five hundred year reign of her family, and knew that it was rare indeed for a princess to marry an ally's son. The allegiances tended to come after the weddings. Most of them had given up, or at least decided to approach her father rather than her.
She jerked when a hand rested on her shoulder, but did not spill her drink. Her father smiled down on her. "Pink," he said thoughtfully. She glanced down at her dress. She preferred blues and greens, darker colours, but on this occasion her dressmaker had attempted to make her look as feminine as was possible for a girl not quite eleven. 'Feminine' was one of the few attributes asked of her that she had never been able to fully embrace, but she could at least imitate it convincingly. "Very pretty." She nodded. It felt more like thanks than a compliment. "But you look tired," he added. She nodded to that too. She'd put powder on her face in an attempt to hide the dark rings forming under her eyes, but it could only do so much in the face of weeks of turbulent sleep.
"I didn't sleep well. I had a bad dream," she said truthfully. She did not add that it was the same dream as she had the night before that, and before that and before that. She did not say what she thought it could mean. The women of her family had sometimes been blessed with the gift of vague foresight, but she was much younger than any of them had been when the gift would first appear.
"Perhaps you could get some sleep before the vows."
"That would be…" she was about to say inappropriate, but then this was the rare occasion where she did not sit at her father's side. Their vows were to the reigning king alone. And the noise was becoming oppressive and the dress was truly very hot. She glanced again around the many mirrors of the room until she located the Gerudo. He was watching her again, but this time with a slightly wary expression. She suspected he was a little worried about how well her father was training her, and how much they shared. "That would be welcome," she said eventually. He nodded, and let her go without announcement.
Impa was waiting for her in the corridor, but had probably been listening. Impa seemed always to be near Zelda at these occasions, but only visible if the princess looked for her. If Zelda did not look specifically and attentively, she never saw the Sheikah warrior. "Princess. To bed for a little while?"
"No. Outside." Zelda led the way. It was an unnecessarily long and winding path to the castle's inner gardens; the place had been built to be a maze for anyone wishing to go further than the throne room. The result was that the pretty flower beds and pools visible from any window were rarely intruded upon by anybody who had not spent their life exploring Hyrule Castle. Presumably there were also gardeners, but they must have worked outside of Zelda's hours. The distant sound of metal clinking as soldiers patrolled far away blended with the tame running streams to create something peaceful. She sat on a stone bench and patted the space beside her for Impa. It was just a polite habit; Impa was the princess's protector, and considered herself constantly on duty. She rarely sat in her charge's presence.
It was shaded here; Zelda sat back and loosened the collar of her dress, then shook her skirt to get cool air to her legs. Petticoats. She hated them, and the older she got the more there seemed to be. She often wondered why adult dresses were so restrictive. Perhaps it was to discourage the wearers from doing anything more physically demanding than being helped side-saddle onto a horse; 'physically demanding' seemed to be strongly linked to 'unseemly' for ladies grown.
"Perhaps you could nap here," Impa suggested. Zelda shook her head, which loosened the turban-like headdress. She pulled it off.
"It's waiting for me, Impa. Whenever I close my eyes it's there. It doesn't matter when or where I sleep."
"And you haven't told your father."
"That I dreamed of a dark cloud and assumed it to be a particular man? No. As for the second part of the dream… it's nonsense. I know it means something, but I can't tell him until I've worked it all out."
"The boy with the fairy?"
"Yes. The boy from Kokori. But the Kokori can't leave the forest, so how can he come? He must be a symbol. A cloud that means a man, and a boy who means a…" She signed, rubbing her eyes. "I don't know. I'd not have given it a second thought if it would only stop bothering me. And it grows sharper every time. I feel like it's leading me to something. But I'm so tired, I wonder if my mind is playing tricks and it really means nothing at all."
"The Sheikah say no dream means nothing, princess. There's a lot to be gained from looking closely at the images your mind presents to you." Zelda looked up at Impa, a woman of indeterminable age and unmistakable strength. In her obvious capability as a warrior it was easy to forget she had also received the full spiritual education of the Sheikah. On the front of her breastplate was the tribe's symbol, the Eye of Truth, leaking a single tear. She'd often wondered what it wept for. She suspected it was because it had found what it was looking for, a way of staring into the soul, and had realised something unpleasant about the soul in question. She shook her head again. She was tired; that was why her mind was doing this. She realised that the shadows on the flower beds had moved; she wondered how long she had been sat staring at the Eye.
"Shall we return?" Impa offered. Zelda stood, straightening her clothes but as she did so the wind seized her headdress from the bench and blew it high over the wall. Zelda mentally cursed the fine silk. "I'll-" Impa began, but Zelda was already on her way. Sleepiness had swept away more than a little of control, and she did not relish the idea of going back in anything less than the condition than she left in. She marched past a surprised guard, under a vine-woven archway and into what she realised was the garden directly outside the throne room. Nobody was near the window; she realised the ceremony had begun. She picked up her turban and set it back on her head, but just as she turned to hurry back something caught her eye. Dark skin, dark armour, fiery red hair. She edged closer to the window as he came forward and sank calmly to one knee. Leaning carefully and trying to keep out of sight, she watched him speak the oath slowly and sincerely. It did not seem right; he did not act like a man who willingly knelt to anyone.
There was a noise behind her. She assumed it to be Impa, and so jumped and almost cried out when a child's voice said her name, and then nearly fainted when she turned and saw the boy as though he had walked straight out of the dreams that had been haunting her, even down to the fairy hovering over his right shoulder.
The Hall of Relics was one of the best-hidden rooms in the castle, only accessible from a passage behind a tapestry in the king's own bedchamber. Its crown piece was the blue ocarina set with gold, which Princess Zelda held in her hands as she thought.
His name was Link.
He was not a Kokori, she knew simply because he had left the forest and was still alive, and yet the fairy who accompanied him was both real and loyal. She had never before heard of a fairy serving a human. It had told her that the Great Deku Tree was dead. Link had repeated the Tree's last words to her, a tale of a man from the desert and a dark cloud that would spread over all of Hyrule. It sounded far too much like her dream.
She had not told her father. She had not gone to the ceremony. She had sat until sunset talking to the boy, and her heart was turbulent. The Gerudo had sworn his oaths and agreed to stay for a few weeks more, ostensibly to better get to know the kingdom of which he was a part, but in truth he was waiting for her. So was her father. She suspected they both knew she was nearly ready to make her decision. It was the most exhausting decision she had ever made, but the Goddesses had sent her enough signs. If Hyrule made an enemy of the Gerudo this dark cloud would spread, infecting the land like a disease. To stop that, she would marry him.
Unless…
Link had been carrying the Spiritual Stone of the Forest. It was more than a relic; like the instrument she held in her hand, it was imbibed with powers of its own. It was one third of the power needed to enter the sacred realm, home of the powers, weapons and creatures of ancient legend. She knew where all three had been kept; the knowledge was a royal right, and so with marriage it would pass on to the Gerudo too. But Link, who was sweet and eager and determined and so very brave, had suggested to her a way of safeguarding the kingdom, a way of protecting against the future foreseen by both her and the tree. By gathering the other two stones, those of Fire and Water, he could take away the Gerudo's access to the realm and place that power in the hands of the princess alone. That way if she found after marriage that she could not control him, she should be old and strong enough to open the gate and take the power of the realm, giving her a good chance of bringing him in line. Or, if he decided to take that power for his own, he would find the stones missing from their original hiding places and the doors of the Sacred Realm closed to him. It was the perfect safeguard, she thought to herself. It meant the deception of her father, but also the protection of the kingdom. It meant that she could marry him with absolute confidence that whilst he would never invade a kingdom he already technically owned, he would not be able to oppose his wife and queen either, and even if he did call upon his armies she would be able to equip her own.
It was a failsafe upon a failsafe upon a failsafe, she told herself. He made her uneasy, yes, but there was still a chance – a large one, since there were far more good men than evil ones in the world – that once he had her promise he would settle into his role and become a good king. But she had seen Link's eyes as they talked. He was a lot like her, she thought: young but wise. It was a mystery. She had become the way she was through years of careful upbringing and education. With Link it seemed simply built into his soul. Having lived in a forest all his twelve years he was able to listen to her dreams and the words of the dying Great Deku Tree and see what they could mean. He was amazingly determined, clever and resourceful; he had promised to retrieve the stones for her, and she had no doubt he would be able to, but she would not be able to wash from his memory the death of his home's leader, or her dream. She rather doubted she could wash it from her own without a lot more time and effort than she was willing to risk.
The ocarina was heavy in her hands, and still too large for her, but it comforted her all the same. It was a symbol of her duties and her power, and reassured her that she had the right to make the choice she made. The Deku Tree was dead, possibly from a Gerudo curse. That meant that the Gerudo might be a true enemy of Hyrule, or that he might simply be the convenient one to blame. By not telling her father of her and Link's plans she protected him from criticism if she was found out and her fears disproved. In her decision she aimed the future of the kingdom towards a peaceful future, whilst at the same time guarding against the threats of the alternative.
It was right, she assured herself. Impa had nodded with that strange look in her eyes that made Zelda feel like a champion in the presence of the trainer who would never stop questioning her, nor doubt her skills. Carefully she stood, placed the ocarina back on its pedestal and turned back to the darkened passageway that would lead her back to the world of other people. She went to find her father and tell him she had decided to marry the Gerudo Lord Ganon.
