Chapter Thirteen:
Hoof beats rang out from Hyrule Field as four horses galloped quickly towards the approaching gate of Hyrule Town, leaving a trail of dust behind them and a deep fear of things that had gone horribly wrong. Their riders, Impa and Zelda on one horse with three guards on the other three horses, had driven the creatures from the Hylia faster then they had gotten to the lake; the return trip home had a tint of urgency about it that couldn't be ignored. There was panic on the guard's faces, something that they could not hide as well as the other two riders did, and the tears that Zelda had shed were dried up and replaced with a deep rooted fear that she could feel within her soul. What exactly happened was only a mystery to the commoners that saw the horses approaching at a fast pace before anyone in the Market saw the creatures and they wouldn't know unless the king made it so.
It was a trip back to the castle was one that she did not wish to make nor did she feel like she should have done it in the first place, Impa wishing she had the foresight to have seen what had transpired that morning before it had happened. It was difficult enough to have gone through the incident at the Hylia but it was even worse having to leave the lake-side without one person in their group, the one she knew would leave at some point in time. Had she known this would have happened today she would have prepared herself for it rather then going blindly into a situation such as this, yet she knew it would've happened sooner rather then later. There was a dreaded feeling inside of Impa that told her, in the voice of reasoning that she had ignored that very morning, that something was wrong somewhere and now that wrong had appeared out of nowhere. She should have listened to that voice like she had always done before but had chosen to ignore it instead on this day. Now she regretted that decision, but what was done was done and there was little she could do about it at the moment.
Zelda had gone as fast as she could have to get to the guards when they had been at the Hylia and when they had come to the lakeside to see what the fuss was about, they found Impa standing up with an indescribable look on her face and no queen. Both herself and the child explained what Kaya had done and what Impa's actions had been, despite Zelda freezing up and sobbing uncontrollably for several moments from the loss of her mother. One of the guards had offered to go into the lake himself to see if their story was true although he poorly tried to hide the smirk that came upon his face; the other two looked as panicked as Zelda felt and had no intentions of returning to the castle without the queen in tow. Impa had stared at them rather blandly and had wanted to hit some sense into all three of them; they would have to return to the castle eventually and a search needed to be done of the Hylia and all places that it let out into. Or as she had claimed; there was no need to tell anyone of the secret in which Impa now held.
Which was now where they were almost to as the horses galloped as fast as they could over the draw bridge and into the gateway that lead into the township just beyond it. Impa and Zelda's horse was the first thing the commoners saw before they jumped rather quickly out of the way of the galloping creature; the three guards came not too far behind them and without even any regards as to who was in their way, they followed the princess-heir and the Sheikah. A loud muttering followed the four creatures when they did not see Kaya's horse with the others; had it only been the princess-heir that had gone out of the township earlier that morning or had they really seen the queen go with them? If so, why were they rushing back to the castle so? Or had something happened to the queen? At the moment Impa didn't care what the common folk thought, just that any ruse that she could give to the king would be believed and the common folk would eventually learn about what happened there, or so the Royal Family wanted them to hear.
The guards that were at the entrance to the pathway of the castle took four steps back from their post despite being more then out of the way of the horses, their heads turning as the creatures moved one-by-one onto the dirt path and towards the castle gate. The road to the castle seemed longer then it did mere hours ago, the riders slowing their rides down only because of the iron gate that stood in front of them; it was closed and a single guard was standing in the middle of the road right in front of the gate itself to keep commoners out and royalty inside. When he saw four out of the five riders that had set out that morning arrive, one of his eyebrows rose up in wonderment and a frown showed his displeasure at seeing one less rider then there had been earlier. As his eyes moved over Impa, Zelda, and then the guards as they came to a halt at the gate, his mouth moved wordlessly at each of their names as though it would produce the queen at any moment if he said all of their names at once.
"Open the gate," Impa demanded rather icily once the horses had slowed down to a stop in front of the gate. If the soldier hadn't heard the frantic hoof beats coming around the corner of the path, he could surely now hear the whine of importance in her voice and the fear in the other guards faces. Like the loud, fast hoofs hitting the ground when the horses rode onto the path, the guard ignored Impa's tone and stared at her with a dull, bored look, his eyes looking her up and down as he tried to maintain that indifferent expression.
"Where's the queen?" He asked without blinking at the shaking guards behind Impa and Zelda's horse. He really didn't care to know what the answer was, he hardly cared that his own comrades were looking even more murderous then Impa was, all he wanted was to know what was going on before the rumors around the rest of the guards got back to him. The more truth he knew the more he could keep an ear out for whatever came after, just so the king would know more of the truth then actual rumor.
"It's an urgent matter that can not wait," the Sheikah responded. The question the guard had asked would remain unanswered unless the three guards behind her would burst out that the queen wasn't with them but had drowned at the lake, or so Zelda and Impa claimed. Despite that they didn't believe her, none of the three were crazy enough to question an angered Sheikah and they, too, wanted to go to the king with their own opinions on what had actually happened down at the lake. The less time they spent at the gate, the more time they could do a search for Kaya and drag her back to wherever she had run off from.
"I can not..." the gate guard started before he was rather rudely interrupted, but not from Impa.
"Open the bloody gate now or face the wraith of the king yourself! That is if there's anything left of you once the Sheikah gets finished with you!" One of the guards behind the princess-heir and Sheikah snapped, cutting the gate guard off before he could say another word. The gate guard shuffled his weight from one foot to the other before turning around and walking to the gate itself; had he not been threatened to be reported to the king for refusing passage to the castle by another guard, he would have ignored the request further more. Pausing at the iron bars - even with the threat of being reported to his king, he still had half of a mind to refuse entry - he glanced wearily over his shoulder with the frown still on his lips and started to push the gate open rather slowly. It took him a full minute to get the gate two inches open which, by that time, the guards behind the white horse were getting more impatient then Impa was.
"What's taking you so long to open the gate?" Impa asked quietly but it would have been better if she had shouted instead of whispered, her eyes strangely calm for all the rage she felt bubbling up. The gate guard had paused so long that the guards behind Impa and Zelda dismounted their horses and started to make their way to the gate itself; if one guard could not - or would not - open the gate, then three others would. That's exactly what they did, pushing the gate guard out of the way and pulling the gate open more then enough to accommodate two horses side-by-side so that they could get through.
One of the guards dashed through the gate ahead of Impa and Zelda, the other two quickly moved to their horses as Impa and Zelda rode through the gate and towards the castle itself in a rush to get there quickly. The horse had several minutes in order to recover from galloping from the Hylia so fast and in a short amount of time and now was being forced to go a bit further now that the castle was in sight. Impa mentally told the creature that there would be an extra bucket of oats for it when she had finally faced the last bit of the king's wraith for losing Kaya so easily and allowing her to "drown" in the lake, if he believed she had drowned at all. Although she knew that he really wouldn't care, Impa wouldn't go unpunished nor would it be fully ignored; if it was, she would get off lightly regardless of what the king actually thought of her. Hurting a Sheikah would do more harm then good, yet whatever punishment she got she knew she deserved.
The castle loomed in front of them and it seemed as though it was taking longer to get to the gates then ever before; with the tragic news that she had to bring to the king and the rest of Hyrule, she dreaded to even be in the presence of the castle itself. It wasn't the feeling of fear of the castle itself that made her feel uneasy, it was the people inside that made her want to turn the horse with her and Zelda and run to beyond the borders of Hyrule. Which was what she should of done when she had the chance to at the Hylia, grab Zelda and attempt to scale the walls that surrounded the lake on all sides and go into the countries outside of the land's boarder. Maybe then she wouldn't be so afraid of the king's reaction when he found out that Kaya had slipped his grasp for the last time, yet it had to be done. This was not the way she had wanted it to be done, her own stupidity made the clock turn that much faster towards the destiny Hyrule was meant to go through once again, but what was done was done. She couldn't change what had happened.
Zelda coughed in her sobs, her young mind still trying to make sense of everything that had happened in that morning, Impa putting a hand on the princess-heir's head to soothe her even more as the horses slowed down as they came upon the already down draw bridge to the castle. Even the two guards behind them appeared to be surprised at it being down before they had taken the last climb to the castle exterior; the guard that had gone through before Impa's horse had only gone through far enough to tell the other guards stationed around the inner pathway what had happened at the Hylia. They had done what the three guards had done at the lake and appeared to be panicked stricken but could not hide the smirk on their faces, falsely believing that they would be bringing back the queen in chains rather then not finding her at all. If they knew what was good for them they would start a search for Kaya as quickly as they could but not make an effort of it.
Impa felt a feeling of despair wash over her as she dismounted her horse, nearly dropped Zelda when she pulled the child from the stead, and started to walk quickly towards the castle doors. That feeling didn't come from the fear of what would happen to her or Zelda but something else entirely, like a dark cloud hung over the castle and she knew it wasn't from what had happened today. The guards stationed at the main entrance of the doorway had it already open for the Sheikah and the princess-heir, hardly feigning their surprise when the queen wasn't with them as she knew they had just been told the news. One of them tried to ask her where Kaya was but got as far opening his mouth before Impa's right fist contacted with his face, mostly between his nose and mouth.
"I want no more questions to be asked of myself or the princess then have already been nor do I want to explain myself again." Lowering her arm to the side, she picked Zelda up so that the child wouldn't have to walk far to get to her father. She would use the girl as a shield between herself and the king if she had to, if the king didn't want to wait for another heir to be born or find another woman to sire said heir. If anything it helped keep her from harm, if it were for the good of the only heir. "Where's the king?"
"He's in his study," the other guard managed to squeak out as the one Impa had punched had fallen to his knees in pain and was clutching his now broken and bloody nose. The fear of facing a Sheikah's wraith was only fueled by the look in her eyes as she swiftly turned away from him and walked away. She knew where the king's study was and it was one of the few places in which guards did not intentionally guard with the king's orders, she would be able to get into there without much trouble. There she would have to explain what had happened in the most level of voices and hope for the best out of this dire situation.
The guards she would worry about later as she stalked into the castle without even so much as a look over her shoulder. Even with the events of today and the loss of her mother, Zelda still kept her eyes on the guards and stuck her tongue out at them; it summed up almost the exact feelings Impa had about the guards herself but it was a much deeper hatred that she had managed to keep hidden and manifested that anger into something else. She couldn't smile at this moment, not let her own guard down until she had proof that things were falling into place as they should be. How and when she'd know it would happen she couldn't tell; the trick was to keep the mystery of the Sheikah by telling all but bending the truth by keeping back what was most important. She couldn't afford - no, Hyrule couldn't afford - to lose anything.
For the future's sake, she hoped that the decisions made today didn't end in disaster.
XXXX
The light from the surrounding candles and single torch did little to help him read the latest rolled up parchment he had received from a country he couldn't exactly remember and wasn't too keen on reading the entire seven-foot scroll. The king had been in his study for an hour and a half already, the solace he chosen in being alone instead of being around the guards and clumsy servants not lighting his mood the least. In fact he only scowled at the same two sentences he had stared at for the last ten minutes when he threw down the parchment in disgust, leaning back in his chair and frowning at the doorway to the study. No one had come nor gone through that doorway since he had stalked inside, instructing no one to enter unless the entire kingdom was going down in flames or the castle was crumbling down around him. Even then he most likely wouldn't go out into the open and just let everything all where they lay.
For some reason or another he silently begged for someone to come through that doorway - anyone really - to bother him so that he could release the tension that was making his shoulders and the back of his neck hurt. It was unfortunate that he had gotten rid of one of the only useful servants in the castle that could ease the tension off of his shoulders and the only other person that would have been able to help him was Kaya; she was not inside the castle at the moment either so he couldn't take his frustration out on her. The damnable woman was off at the lakeside, obviously more then relieved to be out of the castle and away from him then he was to have her and his child out of his way. At least he didn't have to look at her and wonder if she was planning to stab him in the back when he wasn't looking; what she did at the Hylia didn't bother him so much that she was out of his reach. Had he bothered to keep a mistress hidden within the maids - his father and his father's father before him had, so why hadn't he? - he wouldn't have been so bothered about where his wife was at or what she was doing - his mother and his mother's mother had kept their own consorts once a heir or two were born, so at least he and Kaya had one other thing in common besides Zelda.
Which only deepened his already sour mood once he began to dwell upon it again, that he couldn't keep a close eye on his wife and heir. Three guards hadn't been enough to control two women and a child at any end, not when there were so many escape routes and ways to get out through the Hylia alone. If the guards did what they had been instructed to - and would be reinforced by Impa once they were clear of the Market, if he didn't put it past her to use some of her Sheikan magic to prove her point - then it would be hours before they realized anything was amiss and were missing a queen if not a princess as well. Checking up upon the three would only be done every two and a half hours and on behalf of the child-princess, secretly of course as the king had promised that the guards wouldn't bother them while they were still at the lakeside. That was what he had told the guards protecting the three, that he only had them check upon Zelda in case anything happened to her; in truth it was to make sure that Kaya didn't escape out of the country.
He didn't put it past Kaya that she would use this opportunity to escape or at least plan on mapping out the lake by memory for later use. Although she hadn't been to the lake in quite a number of years - for some reason or another she hadn't shared with him, maybe it had to do with the closeness of the Gerudo Valley - Kaya still knew the basic layout of the land surrounding the Hylia, if the natural order of things and the Zora hadn't drastically changed anything to the landscape since then. The picnic would give her the time she needed to refresh her memory and to find a way to escape, if she didn't do so today or while they had left the castle-town behind. That had been the factor that he had used to keep Kaya from leaving the confines of the castle and to keep Zelda inside without having to justify himself properly. If the damn Sheikah hadn't cornered him like that then queen and princess wouldn't have ever left if he had anything to do with it and his mind wouldn't be in the state it was in now.
The king closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Maybe having the three out of the castle was a good thing, considering there wasn't a need to have them watched all the time and the guards could do other duties then to babysit two grown women and a child. He normally didn't need to worry about Kaya so much as the queen often was out of his way except on occasion when the two were sitting on the thrones together or was at the table to have a meal in silence; even the meals were peaceful enough despite the growing dislike between the two. Impa, on the other hand, was one he had to worry about the most; Sheikah were good at hiding things and keeping things secret and for their strength not only through their magic but their muscles as well. There were many under the employ of the Royal Family but few actually worked this close to the direct line to the throne like she did. What she told the queen and the princess-heir concerned him to no great end and if he wasn't worried about the retribution of kicking Impa out into the Market, he would have done it a long time ago.
The sound of the door slamming open caught him off guard, the king snapping his eyes open and putting his hands onto the desk in front of him to steady himself so he wouldn't fall off the chair in surprise. He had expected a guard to have busted in like that with news that Ganondorf or a handfuls of Gerudo were still in the Market yet the last person he expect to see was a wide-eyed Sheikah with a paled face and a hurried look about her. Or that was what Impa looked like as she came up to the desk with a look of worry on her face with Zelda in her arms, obviously in worse condition then Impa was and didn't bother to hide it. The girl had her head laying on her caretaker's shoulder, her eyes and face puffy most likely from crying, and she was clinging to her like it was a life or death matter. The child-heir's own emotions played out rather naturally but Impa's appeared to be rather feigned, like she had just forced the worry and deep frown on her face right before she had burst through the door. He normally couldn't tell feigned or realistic emotions on Sheikahs, none the slightest, but this was just not normal behavior even for Impa.
"What's the meaning of this?" He demanded, first glaring at the Sheikah then stealing a rather heated look at his daughter. "Why are you back from the Hylia so soon?"
"It's Kaya, she...she was swimming in the lake before going under. I...believe she drowned," Impa started slowly, putting Zelda onto the ground so that she could stand on her own two feet. The child clung to the Sheikah's leg instead, all but looking at her father in fear of something that he couldn't put his finger on, like he was going to slap her across the face. "When I went to go after her I couldn't get to her fast enough and couldn't see her body through the darkened water. I think she had a cramp after swimming and didn't have enough time to get to shallow water. We came back here as soon as possible but..."
"What!?" The king screeched out, standing up rather quickly and leaning forwards to glare at the two in front of him even more. He knew something like his would happen and the absence of Kaya was odd, even if Impa and Zelda had been the only ones to enter the study while the queen had gone off somewhere else in the castle. He hoped that this was just a ruse, a lie to see how he would react to Kaya actually leaving and she was really standing outside his study, listening in, yet taking a swift look at Zelda told him otherwise. "What makes you think that she just drowned? She most likely escaped to the Domain or elsewhere. I seriously doubt someone like her would just drown from a cramp."
"She did drown, sire. If you don't believe me have the lake searched and the Zora questioned, all rivers lead back to the Zora." Impa's frown only grew deeper, putting a hand on top of Zelda's head to calm her down slightly. The king's own frown deepened as well, his mind spinning of possible ways that Kaya could get out of Hyrule not only through the Hylia but also the Domain as well. He didn't put it past the Zora to have more then two ways to the lakeside and not only that, there was at least one way to get into the Valley from the lake. He knew that Impa didn't think he was stupid in believing that Kaya drowned in the first place and his facial expression showed it more then any words shouted at her could. He also didn't put it past the Zora to be able to hide her in the spots in the Domain that they considered sacred, if they did at all. Even though they served the Royal Family the Zora would stand their ground on keeping anyone out they didn't want in their sacred spaces or other places they did not want certain outsiders to go into.
"Where's the guards that were with you?" He demanded coarsely. "Did you even tell them that she was missing?"
"Yes, Zelda went to them and got them. I don't know where they are right now, perhaps they are about to mount a search for her." Her voice was now starting to sound urgent, which it should have done at the very beginning instead of sounding as though the two of them were talking about daily chores at the castle. "They didn't appear like they wanted to go into the lake to see if they could find her and we came back as fast as we could so a search could be done."
"You didn't go directly to the ones that could quite easily look at the bottom of the lake?" The king stared rather coldly at her, letting that idea sink in before she realized that she could have gone straight to the Domain to see if anything had floated down to the Zora. In fact Impa had considered this possibility in order to stall for time but if she had she would have had to explain herself to the Zora King and the true day's events to him, that was something she could not do with the time constraints that she had. The guards wouldn't have allowed her to take Zelda with her and she wouldn't dare put the safety of the princess-heir in their hands like that; having either Zelda with her, the guards, or even both of them would have ruined the story she had set up in lieu of what actually happened.
"That hadn't been a thought at the time and the guards wouldn't have listened if we took a detour to the Domain. They wanted to get back to you for orders." Impa narrowed her eyes and pushed her lips together. She was starting to become annoyed at him and it was starting to show on her face the more she stood in front of him, instead of the urgency that she just had a second ago. The king didn't bother with actually taking in the changing expression that was on her face, instead sitting back down onto his chair and folding his hands onto his lap. He had a feeling that she hadn't told him a complete lie about that as the guards took direct orders from him unless otherwise directed and wouldn't bother going to any place other then back to the castle to see what he would do about the situation.
This would also have given Kaya any extra time to escape further away from Hyrule and he had said he'd give her two hours to get as far away from the country as she could before he sent guards after her. Mentally he calculated that he'd send his own guards searching for her in two hours starting right when he sat back down and this was not accounting for the time it took to actually search for her at the Hylia by Impa, to get the guards and see what they would do about it, come back to the castle, and to get the king informed. That gave her an estimated eight to ten hour head start ahead of any castle guards that the king sent, plenty of time for her to have gotten lost, confused, tired, and in a position she was easily found and dragged back to the castle. The two hours he had was more then enough to make sure that the Zora searched the entire water system in their control and report back with their findings.
"We don't have a lot of time! We need to recover her body before it's found by someone that doesn't know better!" The urgency in Impa's voice returned and the king found it amusing that she still believed the man in front of her believed her although he assumed Zelda hadn't taken part of this plot judging by the crying and the lost look on her face. Her father wasn't as cold hearted as he believed himself and wouldn't actually have the child go through seeing her mother dragged to the dungeons where she would only lose the woman again. No, he would allow Impa's lie to fester in her mind and not say anything; that much he would do for her at this time.
"I'll send the guards out to the Domain and get the Zora's involved. You," he pointed directly at the Sheikah, "I want you to keep out of the way and take care of the kid. If what you say is true then I don't want to put her through any worse then she already did."
Impa's impatient expression didn't change on her face although her eyes spoke louder then the 'thank you' she muttered before bowing and taking the girl's hand to leave. Those crimson eyes told him that she was grateful at least that he wouldn't put his daughter through any more trauma for the time being and would at least go along with the story she had given him. Somehow he knew she wasn't believed judging by the tone of voice she carried, the Sheikah and girl exiting the study as the king stood up and sighed. For some reason or another that he couldn't explain now or even years later, he felt a slight emptiness that hadn't been there before Impa had burst in or the reason why he spoke a bit more kindly towards the two in the weeks that would eventually follow. There had been an expectation that Kaya would have tried to escape at some point but he didn't expect it to be so soon like this, not when Zelda was so young and their marriage just the same. He found that he didn't truly care if Kaya was there or not, just as long as his heir wasn't affected long-term.
He stood there for five minutes just staring at the open door before walking around the desk and headed towards the hallway. He would have to get a small group of guards together to go to the Domain and hopefully the Zora would be able to check for any signs that Kaya was there or at least her body or some form of proof that she had died. If not then that would give him a good reason to send out more guards around the borders of Hyrule and beyond it if need be; Kaya wasn't stupid enough to stay within sight of the castle, even if she were to stay as close as Kakariko or as far away as the Fortress. Even then she wouldn't stay in Hyrule for long, most likely to get supplies and find a way to get out of the land before she was found out; there were a half dozen ways to get out just from Kakariko alone that he knew of.
Still, there was an itch at the back of his mind as he turned right and went down the corridor, an itch that something was still wrong with this whole situation that he didn't like. It was an itch that he would never see Queen Kaya again.