Chapter Two

A Clash of Kings

Raneem's eyes were locked on him. The still desert air was beginning to give way to the winds of night, and the stink of his sweat was carrying over to her. She wrinkled her nose and turned back to her glaives. She hadn't had time to grab any other belongings after escaping the crumbling fortress and the Hylian foot soldiers, so she was without her whetstone. Now she was idle, her mind racing and her fingers fidgeting. Tears burned her eyes but she refused to let them fall. She bit down upon her lip until the sharp tang of blood filled her mouth. She found her gaze frequently returning to her king as he paced back and forth a few feet away, his face screwed up. "What are you doing?"

He halted his gait and turned to frown at her. "You don't feel it? Times are changing, but everything is happening for a reason." He paused, licked his lips, and continued. "Some call it fate and some call it destiny. I call it prophecy." His eyes were narrowed, glaring at the ground. "We were doomed from the start," he muttered, turning his head away and spitting into the darkening sands. Night was well and truly upon the Gerudo Desert and it was swiftly getting colder.

Raneem put down her glaives, turning her body to face the king. "Where are we supposed to go?" Her voice cracked at the end. She swallowed hard against the growing lump in her throat. Without her whetstone, Raneem had been left alone to her thoughts. The sounds her sisters had made as they died terrible deaths were resonating in her skull. Angrily, she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand.

"We're going south, to Hyrule," he answered.

"Why are we going to Hyrule?" Raneem began to rise to her feet, her grief swiftly morphing into fury. "What is there for us in Hyrule? Our home is here–"

"Our home was here. They destroyed it," Ganondorf growled. "Are you a fool? What have we got left in Gerudo Desert beside dead sisters and lost culture?"

Raneem took a shaky step closer to the king, her anger unfurling like a dragon's tail. "How can you leave them?" she shrieked, "They were your people!"

"I can see you're angry," he said dully. He wasn't at all threatened by her approach, then… but how could he be? He was a king, seven foot tall and proud. She was seventeen, a girl servant to her king.

"I am angry," she snarled.

Ganondorf seemed to expect that answer. "Be more than angry, be furious. Get revenge, free your sisters' souls through Hylian blood. But make it the right blood. What are you called?"

"My name is Raneem," she muttered. Her eyes narrowed into slits. What is he talking about?

"Raneem," Ganondorf tested the name on his tongue. "Get revenge, Raneem. Use the fury you're feeling and channel it to the heart of Hyrule. Either condemn or crown your hatred. Come with me and kill the King of Hyrule."

Raneem slithered her way through the almost empty streets of Castle Town, using her peripheral vision to watch as the moon sank lower and lower behind the mountains. She was careful to check the corners before she continued her risky trek to the giant castle where the heart of Hyrule was sleeping soundly.

Raneem knew the plan; Ganondorf had explained it to her as they crossed the mountainous border between Gerudo Desert and Hyrule. And although she knew the plan, she couldn't help but feel like she was in it alone. He wasn't here, he had decided it would be best if the pair split and entered the castle at different times, meeting up inside later. She understood his plan for she had scouted many times during raids with her sisters. Thinking of them made her mind weak. She knew she had to focus on the mission at hand, though it was hard to push aside her grief and concentrate. Kill the king and get revenge, she told herself over and over, as if that would stop the tears welling in her eyes and blurring her vision.

The night's breeze was warmer here in Hyrule and especially so in Castle Town. The Hylians had erected stone walls around their home, as if the mountainous borders built by the Goddesses weren't enough protection. The sound of footsteps crept across the empty streets and through the dark alleys. Raneem placed herself securely behind the large fountain in the town square, her keen ears listening for the walker. They were wearing heels or very high platforms. Not a solider, then, Raneem thought.

She pressed her back firmly against the cold stone fountain, waiting for the sounds of the water to wash away the woman's retreat. Raneem caught the sight of the Hylian's heavy cloak hem as she left the town square and entered a southern alley.

Raneem felt out of place in the middle of the town square. The wind was starting to pick up. She pushed off the cold stone and moved through the passageway between the fountain and the Castle Gates, noiseless and unseen.

The moon was full and bright, guiding Raneem as she stole toward the looming castle. She saw it as a blessing from Din, such a cloudless night. Upon reaching the entrance to the huge castle, Raneem couldn't help but note the silence. Judging by the sky she could tell that it was deep into the night, an hour or two shy of dawn. Guards would be posted outside the castle entrance, no more than two at this hour. They would be bored and they would be drinking wine through an old skin. And they would definitely be conversing. But… silence. Only the wind spoke, and its language was foreign to the desert girl.

As Raneem got closer to the entrance, she realized why the guards had been so shy. Their blood pooled at their heels, their matching wounds glistening scarlet on their matching pale necks. It had been a good job, Raneem would admit. Clean across the throat with no signs of trauma. So Ganondorf found a way inside, then…

Once through the Castle Gates, Raneem was presented with a rather pleasant garden. At the centre of it all was a huge statue depicting the Triforce, albeit rather dully, as the statue was made from cold marble. In the courtyards of the Fortress, a similar statue had stood. It had been crafted by the finest smiths Gerudo Desert had to offer, and it shone like Din's Fire when the sunlight danced upon its back. Our statue was made of gold, the Hylians' of marble. Their eyes are flat like the marble they use to depict the Triforce, and Gerudo eyes are gold like the Triforce itself! I will avenge my sisters. They should have died in battle, not murdered in their home. Once again, Raneem had to blink back tears. Her fists clenched.

She found Hyrule Castle with its front door wide open. Ganondorf's work, no doubt. Raneem was still very wary around the man. He appeared to be genuinely interested in avenging his people, and, clearly, he was prepared to murder the King of Hyrule in the Gerudo name. Yet, when Raneem thought about it, the death of his people was ultimately his own fault. The wars between the Hylians and the Gerudo were undoubtedly etched in fate's weave, and perhaps Ganondorf had something to do with that...

The inside of Hyrule Castle was ornate and richly decorated with marble and stone. Raneem turned her head away in disgust and continued up the trailing steps. The King of Hyrule surely slept upstairs in the largest quarters available. She made her way upwards, her mind racing with thoughts of her sisters, her enemies, and her king.

While both the pious and the commoners believed it was destined that Hylians and Gerudo were to fight, Raneem saw it slightly differently. Perhaps Din had desired to birth a strong people who would fight in her honour, but perhaps fate's reach exceeded there, and the rest of the ongoing conflict between the races was a manmade cause.

Ganondorf was always authorizing raiding missions on Hyrule, and he never strayed far from antagonizing the Royal Family with political coldness and a threat always upon his lips. The Hylian Army's actions had been directed by the King of Hyrule, but perhaps it was only because he was fed up with the trouble Ganondorf was constantly causing, and he simply wanted a viable solution… even if that meant genocide. Raneem clenched her jaw. Whether the reasoning behind her sisters' deaths had subsequently made Ganondorf guilty, it didn't matter when he wasn't the one who ordered the attack. The King of Hyrule was to blame, and he was about to pay for his crimes.

Raneem focused on the task at hand, pushing aside her persistent thoughts. She crossed the corridor, following a crimson path. The thick carpet was too stark a colour for the white walls. Hylian décor, Raneem thought with a frown. Finally, she reached a large oaken door at the end of the hall. She hurried along, once again noting the open door and dead guards. He's inside, she thought, my king with their king.

She slipped through the door, closing it silently behind her. She saw Ganondorf immediately, standing by the great bed. Edging closer, prompted by Ganondorf's motioning hand, Raneem saw the King of Hyrule. He was sleeping, his thick white beard a tangle. "He's fat," she whispered into the darkness. His huge belly rose and fell as he snored.

Ganondorf grunted his agreement. "No true king should ever be unable to defend himself." His golden eyes seemed to be glowing…and so did his skin. Raneem took one step back, eyebrows raised.

Ganondorf raised his hands as a purple fog seeped through his fingertips, the smoky mass falling over the sleeping king. Raneem watched as the fat man breathed the smoke in, his snores never once faltering. It took only a minute or two, and then Ganondorf's magic began to take effect.

The fat man's belly rose and fell, rose and fell, but then he coughed. His eyes opened, wide and blue and terrified. He coughed, though hardly a sound came out. He tried to cough again but this time it was just a wheeze. Through his thick beard and fat neck, Raneem could see the muscles in his throat tightening. It was as if a ghost were choking the air out of his lungs, when in reality it was Ganondorf's purple magic doing the damage on the inside.

As the king's face turned blue and his eyes rolled back in his head, Ganondorf smiled. Raneem felt the air stir beside her as Ganondorf unsheathed a dagger from his hip. There was a flash of silver, and then crimson. The King of Hyrule was already dead when the steel bit his throat, but his pretty blood splattered across his pretty bed all the same. Raneem took a step back and wiped her cheek. It came back red and sticky. "Why did you do that? He was already dead."

"Yes," Ganondorf agreed in a soft murmur, his eyes on the dead king. "But when the Hylians find him in the morning, there'll be no mistaking it was murder. If we had just left him there with no wound, the guards would have assumed the fat beast died in his sleep."

He grabbed her wrist and drew her closer to the bed so she could see the dagger embedded in the dead man's neck. The handle was sandstone, the hilt dominated by a bright garnet. On the flat side of the blade, Gerudo calligraphy had been finely smithed across the length of the weapon. King Ganondorf, it read. Surely some Hylian scholar could translate the message to Princess Zelda on the morrow.

Ganondorf took one last look at the King of Hyrule and then strode back to the door. Raneem followed, her memory drinking in the death of her enemy. It had been invigorating to watch him not only die, but suffer, too. Raneem had seen Ganondorf's magic at work before, when he would publicly execute Hylians captured past the border and in the desert. The leader of the Gerudo often liked to boast that he could control his magic with more precision than any swordsman, for all he had to do was think a command and the magic would obey. He said he could make his victims suffer slowly, or make their death so fast their soul would die with them, unable to transcend to the afterlife. "The ultimate punishment," he would call it.

"You made him wish he was dead before he even knew he was dying, didn't you?" Raneem asked in the darkness of the south corridor. She didn't know where Ganondorf was leading her. All she knew was that the King of Hyrule was dead and an ominous message had been sent to his people.

"I gave him the end he deserved," Ganondorf answered. He paused, checked a corridor and then deemed it safe, striding down it as if he knew exactly where he was going.

Raneem trailed behind. "Did it feel like justice?"

Ganondorf's big hand rested on the door in front of them. He turned to her before pushing it open. "The Hylians will know their genocidal plan failed. We are Gerudo and we do not forget. We will destroy all that they know and love." His eyes shone in the dark room as he closed the door behind them. "It felt like justice, yes. But it was my own justice. I avenged my sisters by killing the King of Hyrule. You have yet to avenge your sisters yourself."

Raneem stopped walking, pulling her arm free from his grasp. "I will avenge them," she growled.

Ganondorf strode down the corridor, toward the grand staircase that led to the entry of the castle. Raneem followed behind, keeping her distance.

Once at the door, Ganondorf looked down at her face. "That," he murmured, "remains to be seen."