-Chapter 2-
It was late at night, and Link lie awake in his room thinking over the past few weeks. The training hadn't gotten any easier, but it had gotten easier to sneak past the guards. But that might have been because of Sheik's random ideas of ways to distract the guards.
Link distinctively remembered this one time, when Sheik had ended up with a cut on his arm, and just looked at Link and smiled.
"This should be easy, wait out here for a second" he had said, heading inside. It wasn't long before he heard a scream from inside
"OH MY GOSH HE'S BLEEDING!!!" someone had screamed, and Link snuck inside. There was literally no one there, and he found all the guards crowded around Sheik, who kept trying to shove them off with his persistent saying of "I'm fine" over and over again.
Link had run to the training grounds quickly, and waited for Sheik to appear.
He came not much later, a grin on his face as he bandaged up his wound.
"Life is unpredictable" Link remembered him saying "and a true warrior learns to manipulate life's unpredictableness to their own advantage"
And just as he rolled over to try and get some sleep there was a knock on his window. Link sat up and looked out the window to see who had been knocking, and found Sheik. He opened the window.
"Come on, night training" Sheik said, hopping out of the way so Link could clamber out of the window. On the way to the Castle Sheik explained.
"You should watch out, things here tend to look a lot different at night then they do during the day. And sneaking around at night requires much more stealth, for the amount of guards is almost triple its usual standard. And that's why I won't be doing anything to distract them, but will be with you every step of the way." The talk took longer than Link had expected, and he found himself nearly out of Castle Town by the time Sheik had finished, which Link was glad of, because Castle Town was eerily quiet at night.
The guards outside they slipped past with ease, but it was inside that Link found it harder to keep up with Sheik. He tended to slip through the shadows with unnatural grace, and had soon left Link behind. Link wondered how he did it, and remembered something he had heard about the Sheikah; they were known as the Shadow Folk. Of course. Slightly annoyed at this Link tried harder to get through the Castle, but it became harder to do as he went along.
"Alright Link, use your instinct." He muttered to himself, and started almost blindly through the Castle. It seemed easier, and he was cautious of the extra guards. He was almost to the door that led to the training grounds when he was caught by a strong arm and lifted off his feet.
"Well then," hissed a voice in his ear "do we have a little intruder in our midst?"
Link scowled and said nothing, waiting to be thrown out, but it didn't come.
"Don't think I'm going to throw you out, like any of the other guards around here, oh no. I know better. People like you will just end up sneaking back in."
The person started walking, and none of the guards took them any notice. Link wondered where this person could be taking him, and hoped it wasn't some prison cell.
It turned out to be a room filled with random furniture, and Link soon found himself thrust into a chair.
"Who are you?" the person asked.
"Why should I tell you?" Link replied.
"Why shouldn't you?" the person asked
Link did not reply, and refused to say more despite the person's persistent questioning.
The door of the room burst open suddenly, and Sheik ran in and fell instantly to a knee.
"Master Hiru" he gasped
And this shocked Link, for he had never heard Sheik call anyone "Master" before, let alone do an equivalent of a bow. To him, Sheik had always been a strong, confident person, never bent or broken and played by his own rules, yet here he was on his knees like some boy begging for forgiveness. And Link wasn't actually sure if that's what he was doing or not.
The person turned around and looked at Sheik, and the tone about him changed. "Sheik, what are you doing here?"
"I am sorry. I brought him here to help him improve his poor stealth abilities." Sheik said, leaving Link fuming slightly. But Link knew that Sheik was just saying that to get him out of this mess. Or that's what he hoped.
"Why?" the person asked.
Sheik cast a tentative glance at Link and then looked back to the one he had called Master Hiru. "Can I explain outside?" he asked. Master Hiru seemed confused, but allowed it and the two walked out, leaving Link as confused as ever. He wondered what the heck was going on, and his answer came a painstaking 5 minutes later.
"Sorry about that" Sheik said, coming inside "I had to lie to Master Hiru what about exactly we were doing here, and I didn't trust you not to blurt out an ounce of truth or make my lies more absurd than they needed to be." It pained him to say it, because he was lying to Link way more than he had lied to Master Hiru. In fact, he had told the complete truth to Master Hiru, but Link couldn't know that truth. Not yet.
"So you don't trust me?" Link asked. The pain in his voice was almost unbearable, and Sheik learned early how much it hurt to lie to a friend.
"Of course I do!! I just didn't trust your ability to lie, because Master Hiru is really good at detecting them, and if you were to mention an ounce of truth that wasn't needed he would be able to see right through the lie I had created" It wasn't complete truth, yet it wasn't total lie either. Master Hiru could detect lies easily, and that's why Sheik didn't dare tell any to him.
"Oh" Link said, relief in his voice. Sheik was glad of this, but it didn't make the lying any easier.
"So this master Hiru guy is another Sheikah?" Link asked. Sheik nodded. "That makes sense." Link said "I think"
Sheik had to laugh at Link's cluelessness, and was reminded of how they had gotten here in the first place.
"You were caught." Sheik said.
"Well, yeah…" Link said "but I was caught by a Sheikah, not just some guard."
Sheik considered this for a moment. "Not the point" he said "if you had really been careful not even Master Hiru would have noticed you. You went by instinct didn't you!?"
"Maybe…" Link said
"Not that I have a problem with instincts, but it's a bad stealth tactic. A true warrior must always be alert, especially when sneaking around!!"
"Sorry…" Link muttered.
"It's alright" Sheik said, rubbing his head "you can head on home, we'll try again another night."
Link nodded, and headed off. Sheik played the past few minutes over in his mind. He felt guilty about lying to Link, but Link still seemed to trust him. He wasn't sure if that was what pained him so much though.
"It's a surprise seeing you here this late" said a voice from behind him. Sheik turned around, finding Zelda. She was in her nightgown, and her hair was down.
"Stealth training" Sheik said
"Ah. I see" Zelda said
"You find anything in your research?" Sheik asked. Zelda shook her head
"I've gone through just about every book in that library, and have found nothing."
"That's… depressing…" Sheik said.
"How's training going?" Zelda asked
"Not bad. Link's great with a sword, but his stealth needs a lot of work. But I guess if it didn't I wouldn't be here at the moment." He laughed.
Zelda smiled. "Well," she said "we should go get some sleep. It's late."
"Yeah" Sheik said "Bye Princess!" and he walked off
Zelda watched Sheik's retreating figure and wandered the silent Castle. The guards only guarded the main hall and the Queen's room. They were occasionally stationed outside of Zelda's room, but it wasn't often.
The young princess walked into the library, once again sighing at the large bookshelves that held nothing that was useful. She had looked through every history book, every book on weapons, and every book on anything that had to do with Link's ancestors. But even with a library so large there was nothing mentioned but the Master Sword. Well, besides the Light Arrows. And at the moment that was all they had.
Zelda ran her hands along the books, hoping that maybe one would just bite her if it had any good info in it. None did. She pulled a random one off the shelf and was surprised when an opening appeared in the stone wall nearby.
"A secret passage" she whispered. She knew the Castle had them, but had never found one before.
She made quick note of what book she had pulled out before running through the passageway. She found her way to another library, and this one was TINY. There might have been a hundred books at the most it was so small.
But she knew that if it had been hidden, it had to be worth it. She looked at every title and skimmed briefly the contents of each book.
She slowly pulled out a book that had a faded symbol of the Triforce on it with faded and nearly impossible to read words under it. She opened its yellow pages slowly. The first few pages were blank, and that was because they had a small key shoved between them. She pulled it out and set the book down on a nearby desk. She didn't have to wonder long what the key was to, because there was a drawer on the desk that was locked shut. She put the key in the lock and turned it.
The drawer popped open. Inside was a stack of journals, most of them faded with age. Zelda flipped through a few of them idly and then gasped when she realized what these were. They were the journals of past princesses of Hyrule. Some of them were so old that Zelda feared if she touched them they might crumble.
And looking at them more closely, she laughed as she noticed a lot of similarities between them. At least half of them had the story of a hero named Link, and almost all of them were written by someone named Zelda.
She didn't find her mother's journal in there, but wasn't surprised. Her mother probably kept it somewhere special. Figuring that if she started reading any now that they she would end up there all night, she closed the drawer, returned the key, and left the little library.
And the princess of Hyrule went to bed that night eagerly.
