Chapter13: The Two Most Powerful Warriors are Patience and Time

"I want you to focus on your breathing," Ruaru said. "Breathe in, breathe out."

Zelda did has the old priest told her, as she had for the last several hours. She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose, and exhaled through her mouth and let herself feel the magic that surrounded her. It swirled about like a rippling wave through a pool, with her at its center. All the old items of power ebbed toward her. Desperately wanted to know her, wanted her to use them for their great purpose.

"Can you feel them?"

"Yes."

"Hold out your hands."

Zelda did as he said, and something heavy went in her hands. She could tell what it was just from touching it though. The ornately carved wood and strings of the harp. But even if she could not feel it, she thought she would have known it was the harp just form its presence.

The harp had an aura of joy and friendliness. It reminded her of a puppy exploring everything around it finding something to make it love whatever was near. Of all the items of power that the priests kept hidden within their temple, the harp was the one she felt was unambiguously good.

The arrows made of pure golden light were the other she thought had the most noble intention to them. But they were harsher, golden magic fashioned into a weapon to be used against evil, and they had little time for the joys of music or wonder.

"Many users of magic find it easier when they focus their power through some item," Ruaru said as he stepped away from Zelda and the harp. "For example, a wand or staff. Those that get their hands on an item of great magical power can find it easier still. Now, let's try the light spells again. Think of what you'll need to do to make the spell work. And force your will through the item."

"But I've already mastered the light spell."

"You've learned it. I would not say you've mastered it."

"But I have. I've even done it in my room. Can't we do something more interesting?"

"The light spell, princess," Ruaru's voice was firm and Zelda knew there would be no point arguing with him further.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Zelda felt her lip curl into a smile. If he thought all she could do was a light spell then he was much mistaken. Over the last few weeks she'd stolen away to the temple at every chance she could get. The priests always welcomed her, and let her read their books of spells, and she knew exactly what spell she wanted to use to prove herself. A powerful spell, one that demonstrated her genius and skill so apparent that Ruaru would have no choice but to teach her more interesting things than the light spell.

She plucked at the strings of the harp, and the magic within it sang as loud and beautiful as the strings. Magic was energy, at it's truest most basic form. She just needed to control the energy around her. As she strummed the harp the magic spread about her arms.

"Good," Ruaru said. "Concentrate."

Breathe in. Breathe out. Think about how the energy had laid dormant within the harp for so long. Focus on all the ways the magic could have been used. All the paths of destiny that the harp could take. Where it was, where it is, where it could be. The time spell required someone intelligent enough to make sense of the course of time, someone who could imagine all the paths that destiny could send someone down.

So of course, Zelda was perfect for it.

She strummed the harp again, the string reverberated beneath her finger tips. Then they stopped. All of it seemed to stop. She peaked open her eyes and looked to the harpstrings. They moved slow and left a trail of light behind them. Then they hung unmoving in the air, not as if they had never been plucked but halfway through their frantic rippling swing.

Ruaru stood frozen, his eyes mid-furrow as he watched her. In fact, nothing in the room moved, even the call of the magic from all the items of power around them had their beckons drag out as if the silent notes they used to call to her were as affected by the spell as everything else.

Then the string of the harp started moving again, but in the opposite direction and not nearly as fast. The sound the harp made was not the single pretty note Zelda had played, but discordant and drawn out and strangely deep. But the string was still moving far too slow.

She had wanted the spell to go back to the time just before she strummed the harp. So Ruaru would hear her play it twice at the same time. And perhaps it'd get there eventually, but now everything seemed to be going backward except her, and all of it so slow.

How many times did a harpstring swing with each note struck? It moved faster than the eye could see, it had to be hundreds. And yet this one chord had still not gone through a return swing once.

She counted out the seconds until the string reached the zenith of its wave and rotated back toward the other side. About sixty-seven seconds, if time was moving as it should, for one wave of the string. A moment of fast calculation in her head was all she needed to know that she'd be stuck here for hours.

She looked around her, there had to be something she could do to make the spell go faster. Perhaps she had enough time to reach one of the books and see what she did wrong?

But movement caught her eye before she could bring her plan into motion. Ruaru's hand twitched. And when she looked at him, she saw his expression was not going back in time like everything else, his furrowed brow deepened. And his eyes flashed with anger.

"Wwwwhhhhaaaattt," his voice started out long and drawn out, "aaarrre yoou doing!" His hand seemed to break through some invisible barrier and waved over Zelda.

The spell dispersed, and Zelda sat with a harp in her lap, the last note she played hanging in the air as if nothing had happened.

"Answer for yourself!" Ruaru shouted. "What are you doing?"

"I was casting a spell!" Zelda stood up, almost dropping the harp from her lap. "I was doing what you are supposed to be teaching me. And it was going to work."

"Simple spells," Ruaru said. "Light magic, sound magic, maybe we'll work our way to illusions. Things that we can control. Not manipulating time!"

"Why not? I can do it! I almost had it!" Zelda found herself standing. One look told her that Ruaru was not convinced. "Why do you think I have to keep just working on this?" She held out her hand.

Light radiated out from the oil lamp on the desk, or some of the magic items within the room. It was its own form of magic. An energy that came from things that were bright, and bounced over every surface. Picking up colors as they went. When she extended her magic she could feel them.

With a simple gesture, she ordered the waves of light to obey her. They followed her will without hesitation, changing the direction toward the air between her and Ruaru. The color in the air leeched away as the light condensed itself into a golden sphere. Bright and crackling with energy it bobbed before Ruaru's eyes.

"I can control it. See?"

Ruaru's frown only deepened. He waved his hands in front of the ball of light. Then his frown somehow found a way to get even more pronounced as he waved his hand again. Only then did the light disperse. When he spoke his words were guarded and slow. As if he was trying hard not to shout at her. "Princess, this is power not control. You must learn it, not just of magic but of yourself."

"What does that even mean? I'm not hear to learn how to control myself. I need to learn how to cast spells."

He sighed and scratched at his chin. "You have more magic within you than I have ever seen. It took me a year to learn what you have done in a week. My greatest student perhaps could cast the basics of a light spell in five months and you were able to do that in a day. But if you jump from one thing to the next you will not master the spell. Here," he waved at the objects around them. "You drew on the light around you to make your own."

"That's the most efficient way."

"But it will not always be an option. Draw on the light of this one harp first. Then we'll move to non-magical light from a lamp. And once you've mastered that we'll try to see if you can create light from noth-"

"I don't have time for all of this!" How does no one understand? "Ganondorf is out there now with whatever plot he currently has. I think- no I know- he just started a war with the moblins and I don't yet know why. Do you think I can stop him with a light spell?"

"If that is your worry we will try something else. Perhaps wards? Something to help you protect yourself."

"No. Show me something that will guarantee my victory. Show me time magic." She waved about her. "This is the Temple of Time isn't it?"

Ruaru shook his head. "Zelda, time magic does not guarantee victory. This is a magic even the Three Gddesses rarely used. Hylia and her champion may have only used it once to rid the world of demons." He sighed and sat down and gestured for her to do the same. "Why do you think this was called the Temple of Time in ages past?"

She sat, forcing herself to calm and remember that Ruaru was a wise and gifted teacher. Much more knowledgeable than any of her tutors. She couldn't just act like a princess to him and order him to give in to her. It was the most annoying thing in the world, but she needed to behave the good student and not let her annoyance get the better of her again. "Most temples follow a simple naming pattern. Either named after the gods or goddesses they worship, or some divine patron that may not be the god itself but some intermediary or honored past member of the temple's order."

"That is so, but do you think any of that makes sense for a temple of time?"

"No. Time isn't a god, not even in the oldest text I've looked through. And time can't be a patron either."

"So, we are not named like a normal temple. So why do you think we were named the Temple of Time?"

Zelda sighed, with Ruaru's trepidation it seemed obvious. "You protect it, the flow of time. But a group of priests wouldn't just decide to do that by themselves. So, this was a charge given to you by someone, then. The Three Goddesses?"

"Very good," Ruaru smiled. "Hylia actually, after the Three Goddesses left. Back when the land was new and the demons had just been locked away. Every attempt to shape time to your will can cause irreversible damage. Some have even theorized every attempt to do so has actually split the world apart."

"What does that mean?"

"It means some of this temples greatest scholars believe we live in the timeline of chaos. Centuries ago, Hylia and her champion used the Triforce to expunge the demons and all their ilk. But one survived, stole the Triforce for himself and went back to before they cast the demons out and wished to bring his master power."

"But, the demons were defeated. You just said that. Everyone knows this story."

"And they were, again. But, we live in that time when the demon stole the Triforce to resurrect his master. And so the taint of demons still lives with us. Remaining in the foul creatures that roam at the outskirts of civilization, the moblins and octorok and the like."

"The Gerudo?"

"No," Ruaru said sharply, as if disappointed that Zelda would suggest such a thing. "They are people like any other. A people who have lived a harsher life than any deserve. But that's a different lesson. I wish you to think, if we live in the world where the demon king was resurrected, what happened to the time where he was locked away forever?"

Zelda paused. She had never really thought about something like that. "Are you telling me, there is another Hyrule somewhere? Another Hyrule with no moblins or monsters of any kind?"

"Possibly. The story is centuries old, and there is no way to travel to such a place. But, it shows you how fragile this world is. Paradise was ripped away from us through time magic. So, Princess, I will not be teaching you anything related to that. Not for a long time."

"Zelda," Impa's voice came from outside the room. "If we are going to do our own work, we will need to start now."

"But, think of what I could do with that. I could stop the Gerudo before they even began the war."

The old man shook his head, "Then you have missed the lesson. That'll be all for today Princess. Think upon what I have told you. There is no shame in practicing the fundamentals of a craft. Especially one as dangerous as magic."

He took the harp from Zelda's lap and placed it on it's podium, bowing his head, his lips moved in a prayer too quiet to hear. Once finished he opened the door and led Zelda out to Impa, who stood outside the room, her arms folded.

"How was she?"

"Her talent is immeasurable. But she must learn patience."

"I'm right here," Zelda said. "I hate it when you two talk as though I can't hear you."

"Her other tutors have mentioned the same thing. I suppose I'll try to make that what I'll be teaching her."

"Good luck, I feel you have a far more difficult task than I."

"Still listening!" Zelda walked past Impa toward the stairs and the Door of Time. She did her best to ignore that pull, that growing sense of magic that beckoned to her from the other side of the Door. She could still hear Ruaru and Impa talking as she reached the stairs. Just like adults, one moment they're running out of time the next they just have to gab with each other.

She sat on the stone stairs and looked at the Door. The precipice of Time and the Sacred Realm. What could I do if I opened it? Thoughts of the Three Goddesses granting her their power, of manipulating the very flow of time. She could wipe out Ganondorf's plans before they had even begun. She could fix every problem with Hyrule, turn it into that lost paradise. Every problem that came up she could go back hundreds of years and fix it.

Ruaru's warnings echoed in her ears, but with the blessing of the Goddesses, wouldn't it all work out?

As she gazed upon the stonework she heard them again. The three voices all singing in their beautiful harmony. Muffled behind the Door, incomprehensible, but they were still there. Yearning for her, specifically her. Their 'precious gift.' Why couldn't she learn the rudimentary details of that kind of magic yet? Wouldn't it be better if she mastered as much of it as she could now?

But, what if I'm not meant to have the Triforce? She was Chosen, whatever that meant. Ruaru was very clear on that. But Chosen for what? There were stories of great queens and knights of Hyrule that battled away monstrous beasts and creatures of pure evil. Was that what she was chosen to do?

Perhaps Ganondorf was that evil now, and she was the weapon of the Goddesses to beat him? But the singing didn't give her answers, just called to her. Wanted her. The promise of the wisdom to right all the wrongs in the world. And she craved that knowledge.

"Zelda," Impa said, and the singing silenced. She was standing over Zelda, frowning. "Where was your head? I called your name several times."

"Oh," she looked back to the Door, but the singing was gone. "Just thinking, I guess." She stood up and walked with Impa up the stairs. "So what will you be teaching me today? How to lie, how to move about unseen?"

"Patience."

Zelda sighed. "What does that even mean? Patience. You said you'd teach me how to be like you."

"I am," Impa said. And no matter how Zelda asked her to elaborate she would just tell her to wait.

The lesson she was trying to teach with her obstinance was obvious, but still it was annoying. When they reached the castle grounds, several of the guards gave her respectful nods as she passed. Impa led her to the courtyard within the palace. And once within the courtyard she brought Zelda to the very center where a stone bench sat on a small stone platform.

It was a place that Zelda passed a hundred thousand times. She had never given it much thought. From the bench they could look over every section of the courtyard from the gardens to the guards at the entrance to the castle.

"Sit," Impa said then looked about them, giving harsh looks to everyone who drew too close to them. It was only when she was absolutely certain that no one was near enough to hear them did she finally talk to Zelda. Her voice was low as if the information she was giving her was the most important in the world. "You are to remain in the courtyard until I come and get you. Try and find as many things about this courtyard and the people within it, until I get you for supper." Then she turned and walked away.

"What?" Zelda stood up and tried to follow her. "This is the lesson? Just stay here? How is this teaching me anything?"

Impa turned back around, and folded her arms before her. "You're a clever girl. I'm certain you can figure it out."

"You're punishing me, aren't you? What did I do?"

Impa took a deep calming breath. "Princess, this is your next lesson. If you dislike it, then I will find some other tutor for you."

Zelda groaned, but she went back to the bench and sat down. Impa gave her a small smile as she left, some sign that this wasn't supposed to be cruel. But it just made Zelda angrier. This wasn't about teaching her patience this was torture. That was all she could think about for the first hour she sat on her bench. Then her legs started to feel numb and she needed to walk around.

She went to two of the palace guards and tried to get them to talk to her. They did, it was their duty to obey royalty after all, but they didn't tell her anything interesting or important. One of them was a young guard she'd never met, who still had his teenage pimples about him named Straia. He had some delusions about wanting to become a knight. But in all her life she'd only seen two common born guards ever actually get knighted. One had saved her father during a battle, and the other had lost and a hand and foot during the moblin attack from the weeks before. Apparently he had fought like ten men with his leg crushed, and did not falter until he lost his hand as well. Her father knighted the man himself and said that it was far too little to honor the man's sacrifice.

That some guard that didn't look all too impressive would be another didn't seem likely. But she found herself wrapped up in the young man's passion. As unlikely as his goal was, she couldn't help but want him to succeed.

Once she got everything she felt she could from the guards she made some conversation with the various servants and nobles that wandered through the courtyards. When the Margravine Rin came through she seemed distracted and distant. The older woman did not want to talk but was muttering something about her daughter.

A moment letter Selli the kitchenhand wandered through the courtyard, she had been crying by the look of her. She found a small out of the way spot in the gardens and sat down, making herself purposefully difficult to see. Zelda thought for a moment that she should go speak with her and see what's wrong. But the idea of using her as a tool to pass Impa's lesson made her feel uneasy.

She did wonder about her though, when she returned to her bench. There was no one else to speak to, the guards had not changed and no new travelers came through the courtyard. So instead her eyes roamed over the plants and stone, through the vines that crawled up the walls. This is so boring! What did this even have to do with learning how to be like a Shiekah?

Did learning that there's a new guard matter? There were several that were hired new to refill their ranks after the assault of the moblins. It didn't seem that any one in particular was in any way important enough to make a lesson of. Or was it that Selli was sad about something? How would Impa even know that to make a lesson of it? She was thinking things in circles. This wasn't learning how to be stealthy, or how to lie well. This was nothing.

"Euuugh," Zelda laid across the bench and stared at the sky. There was nothing to do, and nothing to learn. She could have spent her time learning magic with Ruaru. Then at least something would get done. Or she could return to her books and the library. Judging by the sun it would still be another few hours before supper and Impa returned, she could sneak off read something and return and Impa would be none the wiser.

But Impa was smart, she probably told the guards to inform her should Zelda leave the courtyard. If she wanted to learn anything more from her governess she'd need to stay put.

There was the sound of movement, and Borra, one of the palace guards entered the courtyard and started looking around. His eyes met Zelda, and he gave a respectful nod. But he wasn't looking for her, he wasn't on duty at all judging by his lack of armor.

"She's over there," Zelda said and pointed toward the gardens.

Borra gave her another nod before he headed after Selli. Zelda watched him walk past her, after all there was nothing else to look at. She wondered if he was why Selli was so sad. It didn't seem likely, the man adored her. But perhaps that was why she was crying. Older people get funny about that sort of thing. As Borra passed a section of wall, Zelda's eyes stopped following him and instead fixed on the wall. A rectangular lane jutted out of the wall. It was wide, made of the same stone as the wall and reached all the way to the top of the castle.

"That doesn't," she said, her eyes squinted at the wall. She knew the hallway on the other side of the wall. It was straight and smooth, no indents, or side rooms, or anything. She stood up from her bench and walked to the stone lane. The bushes around the rectangular segment were annoying to wade through, but she managed to pull her dress away from the snags. She held her arms wide and couldn't quite touch the edges of the stone lane.

Wide enough for an adult to squeeze into. Her eyes went wide when she realized what she was looking at. This was one of the passages through the castle. Was this what Impa had wanted her to figure out?

She backed away from the wall and near stumbled over a bush. When she righted herself she started searching for some sign, some clue of an entrance. The designers of the castle were no fools, they wouldn't make it obvious. But they were still building with stone and mortar. There was no entrance around the lane itself, which meant it went underground.

If it went underground then it must be supported or the pressure of dirt and thousands of people walking over it would collapse the tunnel. So she needed to figure out which direction the stone supports went.

She knelt on the ground and plunged her fingers into the dirt beside the wall. The back of her fingers scraped against the stones, but the ground was loose enough for her to work. The clumps of soil came loose in her hand, she pulled at it, until she could see the edges of the stonework beneath the dirt. Her hands were filthy but she barely noticed.

Just beneath the surface, the stone shifted directions away from the wall and toward the center of the courtyard. Zelda ran back that direction, looking about for where the entrance had to be. It couldn't just be a normal patch of grass. Opening it would mean disturbing the dirt, and that would give up where the entrance was. It had to be something like stone, or brick, or wood. And wood would need to be replaced over time. So stone or brick made the most sense.

She reached her bench and looked around. There was not much in the way of brick, certainly nothing that was big enough to allow a grown man to squeeze into a hole beneath it. That left stone. And the entire courtyard was surrounded by stone walls. She walked around the courtyard, staring at the stones.

"Princess?" one of the guards said. "Do you need-"

"I'm fine!" She said without looking to see which of them was talking. They and the few others who were returning to the courtyard probably thought her strange, but it didn't matter. She was close to something, she felt it. Only, she circled the entire wall and found nothing. No strange sections of wall jutting out just large enough for a person to get through. No walls that would be too thick on the other side. Nothing.

So it wasn't the wall then. It had to be somewhere within the courtyard itself. She went where she had dug up a part of the tunnel and followed that direction. Straight through the center of the courtyard.

Oh, that was just mean, Impa. She walked to the bench that sat in the very middle, the one where Impa had told her to sit. It stood atop several stones that Zelda had thought just something to make certain the ground was level. But now she knew it must be for some different purpose.

She got on her knees and brushed around the stones beneath the bench. Just like the hidden door she found in the temple, some of the stones formed a perfect square that would be needed to swing open or closed without breaking. She brushed her fingers around that inner square. Most of it was too thin to get her fingers in, until she brushed something that looked like solid mortar only for it to be pressed in to her touch.

Her fingers forced themselves into this small hole and dug around until she heard a faint click.

The stones scraped against each other as they opened. Zelda looked up to see if anyone heard. The guards were both looking at her, but that seemed to be it. And they were too far away to stop her now. When she looked back down the stone square had swung down revealing flattened metal rings built into the wall to climb down.

Without a second's hesitation she swung her legs into the hole and descended. The rings were a bit too far apart for a comfortable climb down, clearly meant for someone bigger than her. When she reached the bottom her feet touched rough dirt, though the walls around her looked like stone. At least for as far as she could see with the light coming from the hole she had just climbed down.

"Princess!" came a voice from above her. "Princess where are you going?"

But she ignored the guards, she needed to pick a path. One way led toward the main castle, the other would lead to some hidden exit away. If the guards had their say, this exit would be closed up as soon as she got out. She needed to find out where the entrance in the castle was.

The light from the hole did not reach far, barely enough for her to get to the point where the tunnel ended into another wallmounted ladder of rings. This one led straight into the rectangular lane she had seen from outside. She took hold of the rungs and climbed to the narrow passage where the stones enclosed around her. Behind her armor clanked as one of the guards must have climbed down to fetch her.

"Zelda! Princess!" the guard shouted.

But she ignored him, and climbed as high as she dared, until there was only blackness about her. She had to feel around for each ring before she pulled herself up. This was a bad idea, she told herself. But she searched for the next run on the mounted ladder just the same.

A sound came from above her. Soft, as if it had carried a long way through the tunnel. Music, from a lute if she had to guess. Her hand found the next rung and she pulled herself up. One more step than another. The music was coming from high overhead.

It was so familiar. The usually somewhat sharp staccato notes of the lute drew out the melody long and slow. Never over-complicating the player with access notes or unnecessary flourishes, just a beautiful lullaby of a song.

She shut her eyes, not that she could see anything anyway. Memories of the song filled her mind. The thick arms of Chief Darunia surrounded her, she was cuddled up in the crook of the Goron's arm like a babe while the song played. A deep voice sang over her, while the Goron chief hummed as best he could.

Then another came to her. Her father hummed the song while he tucked her into her bed. They had spent the entire day out in the fields for some business of his. But he had made certain that she had a business day of fun so when they returned to the castle she had been too exhausted to do anything but curl up in her bed.

And last she remembered a woman's voice, distant and almost forgotten, singing the song along with the lute.

It was her song, her lullaby. And she had not heard it in years. But, who was playing it? She needed to see. She called upon all the light around her, trying to cast the spell. But there was nothing she could use. She reached out to the faint light at the bottom of the ladder, but that was far too weak to reach her or make the ball of energy she needed.

"No," she muttered. She needed that light. Her hand waved over her head but she couldn't feel the next rung. I can do this. Breathe in. Breathe out. There was magic within her. Ruaru had said that a dozen times or more. If she could find a way to use it.

But before she could figure a way to harness the magic within her the music stopped. She was too late. No, perhaps if she rushed she could find out who was playing the song! Her focus on the magic disappeared. She reached up as high as her hands could go, groping through the dark, but she couldn't find anything. The song was done, and she was alone in the dark.

She stayed there, hanging on the rungs of the ladder for some time. Just hoping that the lute would start playing again, but it never did.

"Princess Zelda?" came a voice from below her.

"I'm up here," Zelda called down.

"I found her!" the guard shouted. "Here, I'm going to come up and-"

"No!" Zelda said. "I'm coming down, you'll just get in my way if you try to climb up." She lowered herself down the passage until she reached the tunnel.

"Oh thank the Goddesses you're safe," the guard knelt before her and grabbed at her shoulders. His hands roamed around her arms to see if she was hurt.

"I'm fine," Zelda said, and pulled her arms away. "Let's go, Straia."

When they reached the surface, several people stood around the hole. Including Impa with her arms folded over her chest. She was frowning, but it looked more like one of her normal frowns rather than one of actual disapproval.

"There she is," said one servant.

"Why would you ever go down there? Look how filthy you got?" Said a guard.

But Zelda ignored them and went to Impa.

"What did you learn?" Impa said.

"I figured out how to find the secret passages into the castle!" Zelda smiled.

But Impa shook her head. What did that mean? That's what she discovered. "What else?"

"Um, this is Straia, he's a new guard."

"Pleasure to meet you, Lady Impa," the guard bowed before her.

"Charmed," Impa said without looking away from Zelda. "What else?"

"I-" what more could she say? That Selli was sad abut something? That a few hours after midday the courtyard empties for a little while? That someone in the castle plays the lute? None of that seemed to be what Impa wished to hear.

Then she remembered what Impa said the lesson was supposed to be and she knew what Impa was trying to tell her."I learned that when I rush I miss things. That something important can be right before my eyes or under my feet and I'd never know it if I don't take time, even when I think I already know everything about it."

Impa nodded. "Good. Now, let's get you cleaned up for supper."