Chapter 13:

Link

Wow, did that really just happen? Had he seriously just met princess 'Sally' and had shared a good laugh as if they were old friends?

At first he hadn't been sure whether she was angry or not, so observing her (rather blatantly he admitted in retrospect) had devolved into a nerve wracking guessing game. Had that been a tiny nervous shuffle? Was that a twitch of a smile?

Finally, after what had felt like a century, she had reached him. And by the goddesses, she is beautiful. She had already been a stunner all wrapped up in maid's clothing but now, with her golden hair flowing freely around her angelic face… Link had been so captivated that he hadn't noticed a slightly… predatory smile creep onto his features. He just hoped that she couldn't magically hear his heartbeat, which had apparently tried for a new speed record.

But he wouldn't have been himself if he hadn't tried to squeeze every possible bit of playful teasing into his first 'your majesty'.

And from there it had just worked again. She had immediately put her foot in her mouth by saying his name, which he knew she wouldn't have done if she a) hadn't been nervous and b) was still angry.

While a little awkward at first they had just communicated again, like back in Ord. It had been a fantastic feeling.

And then there had been that little intermezzo from Ric and the real Sally. Link had already accepted his future life in prison when his idiotic big friend had pulled that line about being Lord such and such. But in the end it had lead to the princess and him giggling like little children. And watching this girl having a genuine laugh was glorious. It had just blown him away; he still couldn't quite feel his legs.

Link shook his muddled head. He felt like a lovestruck idiot, which, he slowly had to admit, he probably was.

With immense painful effort he wrenched his attention back to the two contestants fighting for the princess' pleasure.

One was Halvor the Emetic, the other Link didn't know. He could see that the foul noble had the upper hand from the start. He was still very good, but his movements seemed much more traceable and manageable than they had eight weeks ago.

The fight was over relatively quickly with a 3 to 1 for Halvor, who seemed unhappy that he had been hit at all.

Sir Alistair wanted to show the princess another bout, but she declined. The two noble girls excused themselves. Link couldn't hear what they said, but not a minute later they were already on their way out of the compound. He had hoped for another glance from her, a tiny smile, perhaps, but nothing had come.

The dreadfully uncomfortable thought imposed on Link's mind that perhaps she did not feel anything close to what he did. Perhaps to her, he was really just a pleasurable distraction. She was royalty, anyway. What could she possibly want with a yokel like him?

Link shook his head to try and forcefully eject that nasty line of thinking. No, there had been something. He was certain.

A he looked after her long, gently wafting golden hair, another even more shocking thought occurred. If he didn't win this tournament that would have been the last time he had seen her up close, the last time he could have talked to her. His stomach seemed to make a painful knot. "Easy, then! You just have to win!" the optimist in him supplied. True enough, but could he?

The more and more he pondered, the more the memory of her giggle fit filled him with fiery determination!

He could and he would!

For this smile, he realized, he could go through hell with a grin on his face.

"So, please explain this to me! You meet the princess of Hyrule and you start to flirt? Not even I would be this foolish!" Ricco exclaimed, somewhere between admiration and disbelief.

"And how did she know your name and, and… just what?!"

It was the first time he had ever seen his big friend so flustered. Link enjoyed the sight greatly. "What do you mean? As I said, I was the last on the list!" Link lied overtly.

"Horseshit! I want answers, loverboy, and quickly!" Ricco spluttered.

Thank god they were in the privacy of their room, or this conversation might lead to bloodcurdling problems.

"You better tell me what you were thinking with that ridiculously stupid name you uttered in front of them! Hamwell Cockelstrong, what the hell?" Link had to giggle like a child at the sheer juvenile absurdity.

"I thought you had lost your mind, flirting like that. I wanted to divert attention away from you, so you wouldn't be clamped in irons. Did you notice the look this Sir Alistair shot you?" Ricco fibbed.

"Now it's my turn for 'horseshit'. He was already gone when you said it. You were being sweet with the princess' friend, in your own deranged way. You are no better than me!" Link laughed.

"Of course I'm not! Who do you take me for? And when I and that magnificent girl were done quipping, you and the princess had a giggle fit. You were looking at each other like old friends! How in Din's hellfire did you… no. No, really? In Ord?" Realization dawned on the big guy's disbelieving face. "You met her in Ord? When and how!" he pointed at Link dramatically, as if playing inquisition.

Link wasn't completely comfortable with divulging that little secret, but he guessed the cat was out of the bag now, anyway. "Remember that maid I was with? That was her. I suspected, but wasn't sure until the day they left." Link explained briefly.

Ricco had to sit down, he was so flustered. "By the goddess. A princess that sneaks away in false clothes and meets a boy. It's like a cheap fairytale." He shook his head. "Brother, from what I've seen today… I have no idea how you'd do it, I am not nearly smart enough. But do not let this chance go to waste. And I don't mean for something cheap like riches or titles. Brother, do not let this pass you by, or I'll swear I'm going to smash you to a bloody pulp, because your life would be worthless anyway."

Ricco whispered as if stunned.

Link knew his friend had a point, but had no idea how he would pursue this endeavour. There was just so much separating them.

In the end Link smiled slyly. "You just say that because you want to see that friend of hers again, admit it."

Ricco's face erupted in a wild grin. "Without a doubt!"

So far, Link had been slacking about getting to know his fellow contestants. He had seen the Zora and one of the Rito of his group have a brief bout. Link had been surprised to see Zora at all in this competition. Their natural habitat did not lend itself well for slashing weapons like swords. They were natural spear users, as thrusting was almost as easy in water as it was in air.

But this young Zora had apparently dedicated his life to the sword… Link wondered what his peers thought of that…

Unsurprisingly though, the lad employed mostly thrusts and stabs in his fighting style. And he was dangerously accurate with them. The Rito had his hands full trying to deflect his opponent's sword tip, which seemed to come from three directions at once…

The Rito on the other hand used a very lithe, acrobatic way of fighting. He dodged and weaved around in creative manoeuvres. Whether it was his tactic to tire his opponent, it wasn't quite working. The Zora was too tenacious and accurate and broke through the feathered one's defence.

A few of the faces, mostly noble ones, seemed to lack determination. They were lounging around in groups, jesting or jeering at other fighters, not training themselves. Some of them seemed downright bored, as if their presence here was just expected of them and they had no real interest in all of this. Link felt himself reminded of his initial behaviour. Looking at those boys he felt a pang of shame at how much of a buffoon he must have looked…

More than once a group of young noble bastards tried to put him down because of his low birth or his village origin. Link just grinned stupidly at them. The less they thought of him, the better the surprise would be when he thoroughly trounced them. In the junior group were 6 girls: one Rito, 2 Hylian and 3 Gerudo. Link only watched the Gerudo from the distance. They seemed to take this waaaay too seriously and he thought they might actually try to break his bones, just to eliminate him altogether. They only sparred with each other and no one had the guts to challenge them. From what Link could see they preferred heavy slashes, which they employed with a lot of twirling and jumping. It seemed to him that their style would be better suited to curved single-edged blades. Nevertheless, they were impressively fast.

He was actually challenged by one of the Hylian girls, a black haired, strong young woman by the name of Ranya. Link had accepted, naturally. She was fast and agile, but a tad predictable. Once her initial attack had been deflected she subconsciously fell into the same routine. Link recognized the problem. It was the very same dilemma that had taken him weeks of constant punishment to finally exterminate. He had beaten her, but had allowed her to hit him once so she wouldn't be disheartened. He had made the mistake of trying to explain her mistake to her, in a friendly way or course. She had only huffed and stomped away.

The one who interested him most out of all his rivals was Gors of house Gorridan. Sir Russel had warned him about the skill of that particular young noble. He was taller and broader than Link and had an air of tense purposefulness about him. The boy seemed to keep to himself, mostly, similarly to himself. Link didn't quite know what to think of him and that's probably what he wanted. He had observed how one of the other nobles had tried to engage Gors in a conversation, but he had declined, politely, but firmly.

Even greater was his surprise when the young noble suddenly approached him while he was watching two of the others fight.

"What do you think?" the lad asked with a surprisingly high voice, nodding towards the two.

Link considered for a few seconds, watching the bladework of the lowborn farm boy and his highborn opponent.

"Both improvable." He finally said. He pointed at the villager. "He is determined but his technique is wooden. The other one's had much more training but he just doesn't care."

He had kept his assessment deliberately vague so he wouldn't give away too much of what he saw.

Gors nodded earnestly. "Agreed."

They watched in silence for a minute.

"Done." He said without warning. Link had seen it too. The noble fighter's footwork had been lax and his rival had finally noticed. He fainted a high jab, then went low and swept his forward leg. The destabilized lad could only watch in surprise as the far lower-class boy finished the job with two quick hits.

Link gave his peer an approving grin and a raised fist as a sign of respect. The lad's concentrated face broke into a pleased but sheepish grin, while his beaten opponent fumed and muttered something incoherent about "should be forbidden".

Gors nodded silently, then said "See you at the finals." in that odd, high voice of his.

Link had no doubt that he would.

. . . . . . .

Zelda

Zelda felt as if she had just awoken from a trance.

Had all that really just happened? Had a woman of the Shiekah, one of the most notorious groups of assassins, just warned her of a threatening apocalypse and sworn fealty to her?

She looked out of her window as if expecting the woman to magically jump back up. Threat, It, peril, darkness, light… all those words rampaged through her head, making her dizzy. She sat down on her bed and took a deep, calming breath.

If all this had happened a few weeks ago, before all that madness, she would now sound the alarm and be forever happy that the madwoman that had somehow entered her chambers had been crazy enough not to kill her.

The problem was, too much of what the Shiekah had insinuated made too much sense. Zelda had picked up on an implied following that had systematically erased all records of a period of history. That was an explanation for why so little was known from before two millennia ago, albeit a farfetched one. The old woman had spoken of darkness and a Threat. Zelda had experienced both on the north road. She had called her 'the light that leads through the darkness'. Well that was comforting, she thought sarcastically. But had she not defeated said darkness with a light that defied explanation? A power that, as far as she could tell, nobody had ever heard of?

And just as she had almost lost hope of ever finding something informative about any of these occurrences, Impa had shown up. She had not divulged a huge amount of information, but it had been clear that she knew something, which was more than Zelda could say about herself.

She questioned why she believed the woman. You can find equally far-fetched stories if you listened to mad old doomsayers on street corners. But Zelda had always been able to accurately tell truth from lie. Lately though it was even more: She often… felt lies. Something within made her skin crawl in warning when falsehoods were spoken to her. Zelda suspected it was a talent akin to the visions she experienced but thankfully it was less intrusive.

She had not felt any deceit during the Shiekah's visit. But did she trust her own senses?

For now she would have to, she decided. It was too risky to disregard a warning that, despite its utter lunacy, made so much sense.

But what should she do? Just sit and wait patiently for some enormous cataclysm to happen? How would that help? And when the catastrophe had come, what was her mission? The woman had guaranteed her that she wouldn't be alone but right now she felt quite forsaken.

All these thoughts whipped through her mind, making her feel hopeless. She should have asked more questions, pressed the Shiekah for more answers but she had been so frightened that she hadn't been able to think straight… and she hated herself for it. Scared and helpless like a little child, she thought. And you will be 'the light that leads through the darkness'?

Zelda massaged her throbbing temples. She wasn't being fair to herself. Her determination had apparently impressed the old woman. She couldn't just wallow in self pity now. If the Shiekah hadn't provided information, she would have to redouble her efforts to find them herself. It was also doubtful that this had been their last meeting. Next time, when she more presentable and her only weapon at hand wasn't her hairbrush, she would insist on being told all the woman knew.

Goddess, what a mess!

…what had she said? 'She did not want her happiness to be disturbed'? Good job so far, Zelda thought dryly. Her tense face grew a tiny smile however. Perhaps, with doom looming in the distance, she could forgive herself for being a little less… regal. Perhaps she would find an excuse to keep Link in the city a bit longer after he'd won. Her smile grew a little wider and she blushed a deep crimson.

She didn't even have a shadow of a doubt that he'd win…