In groups of two, the Gerudo scouts planted stakes in the ground as their ancestors once did, with a bright bit of fabric tied at the end so it could be seen in the gnawing sandstorm. This time, however, they had the benefit of a compass to find the lost temple. Scraps of parchment had given clues to its location, and they followed the instructions as well as they were able. They had no idea if they were on the right track or not, but there was no other way to tell.
Ganondorf barked orders, even his voice swallowed up by the screaming wind. Zelda pulled her borrowed veil tighter around her face, only able to make herself heard to Link (and vice versa) by screaming in his ear.
"There may be a haunted shelter around here somewhere," Ganondorf shouted, motioning for his warriors to come in closer. "But it may have been swallowed up by the wind and sand…"
"Or exposed by it!" Link pointed to a blurry shape just off to their left. They moved closer, and could see the remains of a small stone building in front of them, a half-rotted wooden door partially shielded from the wind. Link popped in the door without any hesitation.
"Idiot, what does he think he's doing?!" Ganondorf demanded. "He doesn't know what's in there!" He, Zelda, and the four other Gerudo ducked in through the doorway. They nearly tumbled down a set of rusted iron stairs, and stepped to the ground in time to see Link place the finishing blow on a Poe.
"Careful, boy, you don't know what's in a place like this," Ganondorf admonished him.
"There was just one ghost. I took care of it." He sheathed his sword and glanced around. "I don't think this is the temple…it's just one room."
"Of course not. This is just a storage silo…to hide food or treasure, I assume. Nothing here now."
Zelda pulled her pack off her shoulder. "Might as well have a bite to eat, then. We don't know when we'll have another chance."
They ate their dried meat and bread in silence, Link still looking around. "You know what's strange? The torches were lit even before I came in here. Do you think someone else was here…besides the ghosts?"
Ganondorf shook his head. "The people living here before us were very skilled with magic. Even something as an ever-burning flame would have been easy for them. These torches have likely been burning for eternity…or at least as long as this structure as stood, possibly nearly as long."
After a few moments of rest, they were back in the sandstorm. The scouts did not seem particularly bothered by the poor conditions, as if it were all in the day's work for them. Zelda had heard, in rumors here and there, that the Gerudo had been a particularly hardy and powerful people; but she had never been allowed to research anything to back it up.
One of the scouts ran back to her leader, speaking rapidly. He nodded and turned to the two children. "She says she has found a stone bottom, making it hard to place the flags. But it could also mean that the ruin is nearby."
As they moved further, the sandstorm began to die down. Zelda frowned in puzzlement; it did not seem to move like a normal storm, and there were no large outcroppings of rock or any other barrier to block it. Up ahead, as the air cleared, she could see what looked like a pile of rocks.
As they got closer, they could see that the rock had been carved by long-dead artists. A woman's body rose up out of the sand, everything below her waist buried in the dunes. A column of stone stood behind her, and one hand had broken off. Large boulders, once pieces of the original sculpture, lay haphazardly about, as if a giant had scattered them in a fit of pique.
Link and Zelda stared with wide eyes, and the women chattered in excited voices; but Ganondorf scowled. "The entrance is probably fifteen or twenty feet below the sand. How are we supposed to enter now?"
Zelda carefully picked her way between the boulders. "I remember reading something about a second entrance near one of the hands; not really a way to get in when it was built, but a sort of guidepost door for guards." Link followed her, then branched off to the left, wiping the back of his neck as the midday sun began to beat down on all of them. Ganondorf spoke quickly to his warriors and they all fanned out.
After maybe an hour in the sweltering heat, one of the women shouted and gestured to something just behind her. The rest of the group climbed up the stones and Link sighed in relief as cool air wafted through his hair from some subterranean chamber.
"I think I can squeeze in there," Ganondorf muttered, frowning at the small entrance. Then he spoke to the women, who nodded and began picking their way back over the boulders.
"Aren't they going to help us?" Link asked.
Ganondorf shook his head. "We don't know what's in there, and I don't want my warriors hurt without reason. Besides," he added, gesturing to the odd mark on his hand, "I think this is something we should keep between the three of us."
--
It was pitch black in there, as one would expect in a cave with no outlet. They had brought a slow-burning lantern, with a weak but persistent flame. It was more than enough to light their way in that forsaken place.
"I wonder why there are no magic torches in here," Link said, his voice echoing eerily off the empty halls. "Surely people would come here frequently, if this was a place of worship."
Zelda fingered the outline of the Spirit Medallion in her pack. "The magic sustaining this place is based on a different source. The storage chamber we found was meant to be hidden. This place seems to be suffering, after being forgotten. Can't you feel it?"
Ganondorf nodded. He sensed a strange, aching melancholy in the air, similar to what he had felt mixed in with puzzlement when he had seen the Triforce mark hacked out of the stone walls of Hyrule Castle. It was as if the place had a huge festering wound, and waited anxiously for them to close it.
They passed under a doorway half-buried in the sand, and even though there was no movement of air in that space, they could sense they had come into a much larger room. Link held up the lantern, but its light did not reach to the opposite walls. He squinted in the darkness beyond, then stepped toward a shape barely on the edge of his vision.
Before them was a carved figure, buried up to its neck in sand. It resembled the broken woman from the Temple's entrance. Link walked further and the light rested on another doorway, this time choked with sand up to the top. The sand spilled out onto the ground where they now stood. Something told Link that the sand had been leaking in here for a very long time.
"What should we do?" Link asked. "I don't see any other doors, and even if there are some here, we'd have to dig through the sand to get to them."
"Wait a moment. Could you bring the light back over here?" Zelda bent over a pile of rotted wood and rusty chains in the middle of the room, half-buried in the sand. Link stepped toward her and shone the lantern over it. "It looks as old as everything else, but the chains aren't that long, so it must have been hanging from the ceiling before this place fell to ruin." She raised her head and pointed upward. "Look, there's a hole in the ceiling. I can just barely make it out."
Ganondorf scowled. "Even with all this sand, we're still not close enough to just jump up there. And I doubt anyone brought a ladder."
Link dug in his pack, taking out a thin rope and rusty grappling-hook. "If there's something I can catch onto up there, this might work."
Ganondorf looked at the thin rope with doubt but said nothing. After a few tries, Link managed to latch the hook around something above them. He tugged a few times, then scurried up. Zelda managed to follow, after a boost from Ganondorf. The tall man tugged on the rope a few times, then started up; but halfway up, the rope snapped. Ganondorf landed on his back with a few choice curses.
"Sorry, boy," he grumbled, showing the snapped end to Link. "It looks like I can't follow."
"If you toss me the rope, I can tie it together and it will be enough to hold the two of us, if we need to use it further," Link told him. "But will you be all right here by yourself?"
The man made a short bark of laughter and tossed the rope back up into the ceiling hole. "I'll be fine, boy. You see if there's anywhere to place that sigil, and I'll look around and make sure that we didn't miss anything." He spread his hand open, and a purplish ball of flame appeared there. "I didn't really come here to play in the sand, but you know what they say…the best treasures are always those best hidden."
"Okay. We'll be back!" Zelda called, and the lantern light disappeared as they walked swiftly away.
Ganondorf looked back at the huge room and set his jaw, trying to figure out the best way to remove the sand, or at least push it aside. He could summon a whirlwind, but he wasn't sure he could do so without sandblasting himself in the face. He also didn't want to do anything that could damage the ancient statue.
"Look, Sister, a visitor has come."
He jerked out of his reverie, raising the hand with the flame and staring around. "Who's there?" he demanded.
"Ah yes, one of us, and yet not," came another voice, similar but different.
"Ha ha!" A cackle rent the air, like that of an old woman. "A descendant of the spoiled child, it seems."
"Yes, the one who abandoned us!"
Ganondorf jumped at the malice in the voice. "Who are you? A lost spirit? I mean you no harm. I come on an errand of the Goddesses."
More laughter echoed throughout the room, ricocheting off the walls. "An errand of the Goddesses, he says! Still asserting his claim to the power of the gods!"
"We should have whipped him more as a child."
"Yes! Prince or not! He was already spoiled before his mother left him to us."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ganondorf bellowed in the chamber, over the malicious laughter. "But I speak no lies when I say I come with a holy errand. Perhaps when that is done, you will be at peace, spirits."
More laughter. A blue flame and a red flame suddenly appeared on either side of him, and as he watched the lights creep closer to them, two forms took shape beneath them. Both elderly women, short and stout, wearing the clothing of the ancient Gerudoes and sitting astride broomsticks, of all things.
"Who are you, Grandmothers?" he asked, trying to placate them with a bit of respect.
One cocked her head at him. "He really doesn't know us, Koume."
The other snorted through her long nose. "Of course he doesn't. He's not the same one, Kotake."
"Hmpf. He possesses the same spirit, I can smell it. Yes, his and that of that cursed child!"
Koume raised her head and sniffed the air. Her face twisted in rage. "The blood of the Hero! He is here! Now we can finally return the curse he granted to us all those years ago!"
Ganondorf edged back toward the hole where the children had disappeared. "I don't know what your problem is, but I'm not going to let you harm my companions."
"Your companions?" The red-haired one stared at him in disbelief. He could see now that it was not hair, but burning flame, whereas the other had hair of ice.
"This is most unusual." The ice-headed one considered for a few moments. Then she grinned at Ganondorf. "Silly fool. Once you were going to be King of the World…now you're merely the lackey of the Hylians."
"I don't know what you're talking about. Be silent, or leave!" Ganondorf roared.
"The mark, the mark!" the red one cried. "See, he still possesses Power!"
"We must have it!" the blue one hissed, licking her lips. "If we do, we can return from this half-life and live once again!"
Ganondorf flexed his hand and the small flame turned to a ball of snapping, sparkling electricity. "You'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead, hand, old crone."
Both grinned with sharp white teeth. "Dear boy, we're more than glad to oblige."
--
"Link, I see light over here!" Link whirled round and hurried toward the sound of Zelda's voice. He could indeed see a faint light in front of them, a small spot just above the ground. As they came closer, they could see that the light came from a small hole in the ceiling, and it illuminated a raised platform, which was covered with rocky debris.
"I wonder if it was an altar of some kind," Zelda mused, examining the room.
"Look at this!" Link held up his lantern near the wall and to their surprise, the light reflected off a bronze piece of art, a sleepy-eyed sun. There were five others , all spaced evenly throughout the room. "Isn't that weird? Everything else in here looks like it started rusting ages ago, but these seem brand-new."
Zelda glanced back at their tracks in the dust. "They can't be…we're the first living things to enter this place for ages." She turned to Link, who started pushing some of the larger stones off the altar. "What are you doing?"
He rolled away a rock the size of his head. "Maybe if we clear off some of this junk, we can get a clue as to what used to be here. Maybe this is where we're supposed to put the Spirit Medallion."
After he cleared the altar, a man-sized tablet with odd, curvy runes carved into it, Zelda placed the Spirit Medallion on top of it. Nothing happened. "Maybe we have to do something else," she suggested. "Perhaps it has something to do with those suns."
"D'you suppose there's a hidden switch or something?" Link bent down over the side of the altar, and as he did, his lantern light bounced off something metallic in the pile of debris. He set the lantern down and wiped at the item with his shirt sleeve. As the dust and grime came off, he could see something etched in metal that looked just as new as the suns.
"Isn't that the Gerudo symbol?" Zelda asked, as Link attempted to slap excess dirt off his sleeve.
He gripped the edge of the metal and a large shield emerged, its silver face trimmed with red. "Sure does. Is this what's supposed to be on the altar?" he placed it face up on the altar, but again nothing happened.
"Hmm…" Zelda grasped the edge of the shield and tipped it upward. The light from the ceiling reflected on one of the suns. To their great surprise, its sleepy eyes opened and the circling flames spun slowly around the middle, as if by clockwork. They jumped in fright as a small door in the wall opened beneath it.
They waited on edge, Link's sword drawn. Nothing happened.
Zelda frowned. "It doesn't look like an exit, or even a secret room. What do you suppose is in there?"
Link picked up the lantern and kneeled at the entrance. "Only one way to find out."
"See anything?" Zelda asked as he wiggled through the opening.
"Nope, I don't see…oh, wait, I see bones."
"Bones?"
"Yeah, bones. And skulls with sharp canine teeth. I think this was a trap at some time." He backed out of the opening and whacked more dirt off his clothing. "No threat to us now."
Zelda turned back to the altar. "I think this is some kind of test; choose the wrong sun and a trap opens. Which means…"
Link stood, grinning. "Which means, like Ganondorf suggested, if we pick the right one we should find something good. Hopefully the traps are all useless by now, but there's no way to tell, so let's be careful."
It took three more tries to get the right one. On the first, nothing happened at all. The second one made them yelp as burning light shot out of the eyes; they heaved up the shield instinctively to protect themselves, and to their relief and surprise the light bounced off the shield and destroyed the sun.
On the third try, they heard a worn chime, sounding like a cacophony of cracked bells falling to the floor. Which, of course, it probably was. Underneath the sun a large passage opened, and Link let out an exclamation of triumph.
Just as they were about to enter, they heard an angry yell and a sound suspiciously close to an explosion.
"Looks like Ganondorf found something. Come on, let's make sure he's all right!" Link exclaimed, hefting the huge shield over his shoulder, and the two of them ran back through the abandoned halls.
--
"AAAaaaAAAuuugh!" A wreath of burning flame smacked Ganondorf right in the face, and he yelled out of frustration as much as out of pain. He had tried every magic spell he could think of on them, and his sword had merely passed through them as if they were phantoms. For their part, the twin witches merely laughed.
"You never were very good at casting native Gerudo magic," Kotake sneered, batting his energy ball away as if it were a fly.
"Only a matter of time until you stooped to using Hylian magic!" Koume snapped.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ganondorf growled, gasping. "My parents came from Reylisia. There's no way we could have met before."
Kotake turned to her sister. "Do you think it's possible that he could remember none of it?"
Koume shook her head. "He's Din's favorite toy. Why would she find another?"
"Explain yourselves!" Ganondorf ordered. "Are you confusing me with my ancestor? Or are you just insane?"
The red-haired one casually tossed a ball of flame up and down in her hand. "Maybe if she is tired of him, we can get something from her for disposing of him."
Before anyone could speak further, running footsteps echoed in the chamber and Link and Zelda fell out of the ceiling hole onto the sand. The twin witches' expressions switched from surprise to fury when they spotted the shield. Both let out a wail.
"Curse you!" they cried in unison. "That is ours, taken back from the foul demon-child that killed us! Blasted Hylians, neither that nor the power stolen by the Traitor Sage should ever leave this place!"
Both hurled their magic at Link, who held up the mirror just in time. Their spells ricocheted off the mirrored surface and hit them both full in the face. They backed up and swirled around the three travelers. "We won't fall for that again," Koume snarled.
"Blasted boy!" Kotake shrieked. "You won't have the same luck as your ancestor!"
"Wait, wait!" On an impulse, Zelda pulled the Spirit Medallion out of her pack. "Is this what was stolen?"
Both women dropped their angry expressions and stared. "Are you…returning that?" Kotake asked, her voice tinged with suspicion. "You, the soul of the damned Princess?"
Zelda laid it down on the sand. "Consider it a peace offering."
Ganondorf gingerly fingered an angry red burn on the side of his face. "I told you I was on a mission from the Goddesses," he muttered sullenly.
Koume picked up the sigil, Kotake leaning over her shoulder. Link set down the shield. "You can have this back too. I only took it because I figured nobody ever came in here anymore."
They frowned at him, but then both made a slight bow. "With this medallion, we can restore the Spirit Temple to its former glory," Kotake said. "If you truly are on a mission from the Goddesses, you can keep the shield. You may need it."
"Do you not know the story of the traitor who took it?" Koume asked.
Both children shook their heads. "All history of Hyrule has been purged by my uncle," Zelda informed them.
They looked surprised, then burst into laughter. "It's just as well," Kotake said with a hint of sarcasm. "That traitor was a hero in the legends of your people. Her name was Nabooru, and she went against the Gerudo King of the time to help the Hylians."
"Your ancestor," Koume said to Ganondorf. He merely nodded, as if to show he had already figured this out.
Kotake eyed them craftily. "I don't know why the Goddesses have you working together, but be warned…over the course of your journey, you may find out why you were on opposite sides to begin with. And then your fragile alliance may fail."
"Duly noted," Ganondorf muttered.
"Can you really restore the Temple with that?" Link asked. "How long will it take."
Koume made a cackling laugh. "It's already done."
As soon as she finished her sentence, the three travelers found themselves outside the Temple; fully restored and looking stable enough to last for another thousand years.