Tanagar Canyon, Evening of the Third Day after Hero's Day
The sun had fully set by the time Link and Zelda made their way out of the temple and back to ground level. The collection of tents they'd seen earlier between the temple and the stable where they had left Poe and Butter were lit with lamps and campfires, casting a warm glow that painted the various encampments as a united community sheltering against the dark.
Zelda glanced at the Hero. He was observing the tents with a slight frown.
"Link?" she asked. "Is something the matter?"
"I'm sorry for the dour expression, Princess," he said softly. "I'm... concerned by the golden banners affixed to two of the tents. Are you familiar with such banners? This is hopefully sheer paranoia on my part, but the uniform color, with no symbol or emblem breaking it, reminds me of the Children of Hylia I met in Faron."
Zelda's eyes widened and she scanned the tents. Shes spotted the two banners Link was referring to immediately and she scowled.
"The solid gold banner is indeed the symbol of the Children of Hylia," she said through gritted teeth. "As unpleasant as they are, we have no indication that the bulk of them engage in any actual crime. I cannot prevent them from being here. Din blasted bastards that they are..."
Link's eyes widened at the curse. He agreed with the sentiment, but hearing it from the Princess' lips was a shock. She had warned him about her temper... perhaps this was simply a sign that she trusted him enough to speak freely.
"It would probably be best to avoid them, Princess," he said. "Criminals or not, they do not approve of Sea Folks and I can't imagine a confrontation would be in any way useful."
Her upper lip curled. "I agree," she hissed. "We will recover our horses and ride for a while. I was already debating between privacy and company, these banners made up my mind for me. We will not camp anywhere near here."
Link tilted his head. "Should we not look for Master Cellan first, in case he is still here and not returned home already?"
Zelda blinked. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I didn't read the dates or the last entry out loud. No, we don't need to look for him here. The last entry was dated from nearly two months ago and specified he was going back home."
Link nodded and they oriented their steps away from the offending pair of tents, towards the other edge of the encampment.
The campers they walked by bowed to the Princess and some shared wishes for her continued well-being. She smiled, returned the wishes and greeted them as they had every right to expect from their princess. Some bowed to Link as well, while others didn't seem to realize who he was.
They found their horses in seemingly good spirits at the stable. The stable hand gave them the details on what Butter and Poe were given to eat and confirmed there had been no issues. The Princess paid for their stay and they were soon on their way.
Link took his magic lamp from his pouch a few minutes later, when the light of the receding fires became too dim to see properly. It lit up when he willed it, an illusionary fire burning within the confines of the magical device.
"Might I offer a light, Princess?" he asked, extending the arm holding the lamp towards her.
She startled slightly, having been lost in thoughts. She then shook her head. "No, thank you. I have my own."
She opened a saddle bag and produced a Sheikah lantern. A tap activated the device, casting a bright white glow around them, far better than the artificial firelight Link's own lamp could produce. He put his own lamp away while Zelda hooked hers on the outside of the same saddlebag it had come from. The glow clearly illuminated a solid twenty steps all around them, making any other lamp or torch completely unnecessary.
They rode for a few more minutes. Link was starting to wonder whether he needed to point out that riding deeper into the canyon was pointless since there were no passes leading back out of it that way when the Princess stopped her horse with a soft "Poe, Peace."
He stopped Butter and turned towards her.
"We could camp down here," she said, "but I'm not sure it's our best option. I'm weary of all the campers back there, not just the ones who displayed the banner of the Children of Hylia."
Link tilted his head. "In that case, Princess, shall we decide on an instant travel destination and move on?"
Zelda raised her eyebrows at him. "Are you not going to ask why I feel this way?" she asked.
Link resisted the urge to shrug: he didn't want to give the impression he didn't care about the Princess' opinions, especially since he most definitely did. "I don't feel like it's my place to question your judgement, Princess Zelda, especially when I have no reason to. Satisfying my curiosity in this case would feel disrespectful."
Zelda held back a sigh and smiled instead. "I assure you, I would welcome any question on your part, and I really do wish for you to talk without restraint. If you do ask something I don't wish to answer, or that I somehow find offensive, I will let you know and bear you no ill will over it. I consider us equals and partners."
Link felt heat rush to his face. She had said that before, and he was making her repeat herself. "My apologies," he said. He took a deep breath. "I am curious as to what is causing your discomfort with all the camping researchers, but please don't think that I am asking for a justification on your part."
Zelda chuckled. "I trust your character more than that," she said. "In truth, this is only intuition on my part and I'm glad for a chance to talk about it out loud. For one thing, I don't understand why the two Children of Hylia tents were not set apart from the others. Perhaps they arrived last and the other research camps did not feel it was worth the effort to chase them further away, or the ones closest to them did not want to relocate themselves, but I feel as though reasonable people would be more determined to shun these demons."
Link's brow furrowed slightly. The Princess was right: only two tents had banners, but they were advertising their allegiance, and it certainly seemed as though none of the other researchers minded.
"I also wonder how anyone would not realize who you are," the Princess added. "Even though you're not currently wearing the hero's garb, you still carry the Master Sword quite visibly, and if they recognized me, wouldn't they have wondered who else than the Hero might be my one and only escort?"
This time, Link's eyebrows shot up and his eyes went to the sword on his hip, then back to the Princess. He hadn't thought of any of this at all, he'd been too busy trying to figure out how best to get to Frontier Town in the least amount of time possible.
"As you can see, my feelings are not based on anything very definite, but as long as there are no reasons not to travel by Ocarina now rather than in the morning, I would prefer it."
Link nodded, at a loss on how else to respond. What the Princess deemed a feeling not based on anything definite sounded to him like a very reasonable conclusion based on acute observations.
"Do you know of a song that would take us close to Frontier Town? I believe it is at the western end of this canyon, on the shores of Lake Illumeni, is it not?" the Princess asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Link looked down. "It is, Princess, but I unfortunately don't have a song that would take us to that area. The closest would be Maritta again, or Haven in Tabantha. It's about the same distance as the bird flies, but the terrain and weather would slow us down if we were to go to Haven. The roads have detours and are far from being straight lines in both cases, but Haven is well into the coldest part of Tabantha."
Link also didn't want to go to Haven. He'd refused to look at a Royal Newsletter they'd seen in Maritta about the attacks on the Sea Folks settlements, which would probably have given him the number of victims, because he didn't trust himself to handle the information. He figured that most Sea Folks outside of Given were probably dead, but he couldn't afford to change that 'probably' into certainty right now. It was difficult enough as it was to lie to himself about the possibility that he was being too pessimistic just so he could continue to function. Going to Haven, or to any of the other settlements, would result in seeing how few survivors there were with his own eyes, and he'd lose his head over it, and be helpless against the Enemy and useless to Hyrule.
In other words, he was being a coward. He knew it, and he didn't care. This was what he needed to do to keep a relatively clear head while trying to figure out how to fix the Master Sword and how to find the Enemy, or even at least some of the monsters roaming the land. Hyrule needed him to focus on the living right now, and he stood a far better chance of doing that by delaying closure and grief.
"The journey from Maritta will be even longer than it was to get here," Zelda said. She sighed. "We both agreed that some land travel would give us a chance to find some of the monsters attacking people... hopefully we do and this delay will turn out to be productive. Would you be ready to travel now?"
"Yes, Princess. May I hold on to Poe again?"
"Yes, please, by all means."
She dismounted just as he did. She didn't actually need assistance, and she most certainly did not need to watch him seemingly float off Butter as if gravity had obligingly agreed to only kick in once his feet were on the ground. Just because it was impressive shouldn't, couldn't mean that she had to keep watching it over and over again.
Link could understand the need to be independent, so he made no remark, swallowing back his concern that the Princess would eventually hurt herself with the way she always landed on her feet too hard when dismounting. She was managing the ride very well, but her general posture and her relative difficulty mounting and dismounting made it quite clear she did not usually ride much.
And yet, she had not once complained, even after riding for hours. It'd be poor repayment for her efforts to act as if she couldn't handle herself and go beyond offering a hand when the timing made it natural, especially since if she did injure her ankle by landing a bit hard, he could easily find some heart petals or use one of the red potions he still had left. She'd only be hurt for a few seconds.
Maybe he could try subtly dismounting faster in the future to see if he could very naturally offer a hand without looking like he felt that she required it.
As before, he took hold of Butter and Poe's reigns, positioning himself so they wouldn't be able to kick him, and played the Market Song one handed.
Zelda played along, just as perfectly as before, and light surrounded them both.
The song brought them to the exact same spot as before, in the woods near Maritta.
Butter and Poe both required quite a bit of soothing again, Poe's panic making Butter's own reaction worse, exactly as it had upon travelling here the previous evening.
Paguen greeted them and took the horses again, falling into a genuflex for Zelda and instantly being granted leave to rise, just like the night before.
The Inn Keeper in Maritta was delighted to see them again and offered them the very same room they had left that morning. At Zelda's request, he brought them a meal to eat privately, just like the previous evening.
To Link, it all felt as if they'd wandered pointlessly around in a circle. Other than gaining a new name to seek out, they had made no progress whatsoever in finding a cure for the Master Sword, and they had found no sign of a monster outbreak, and of course no information whatsoever on the Enemy.
And now they were back in Maritta, once more on the eve of long ride. A significantly longer ride than the one they'd endured today, too: getting to Frontier Town would take at least two full days.
Her meal finished, the Princess had excused herself and settled into reading a book on the oldest legends of Hyrule, which Link presumed she'd brought with her from the Castle's library. It was one he'd read before, but he hadn't been looking for information on the sword at the time, so the odds she'd find something useful were not all that bad.
He took the Safe Journey book from his pouch and read the notes on Frontier Town. As expected, it was nothing to cheer him up: almost a mirror of the description for Midah. If anything, the one new element made it even more worrisome than Midah had been:
Frontier Town: Code Pink. Non Violent but unpleasant… trade possible but difficult and usually unfair. Verbal abuse and attempted theft likely. Bitterness still expressed over our being given land."
The last update was dated from the previous Spring.
Link frowned and closed the book, putting it back into his pouch. If the people of Frontier Town were still protesting the refugees being given unused and unwanted land some fifty years earlier, they were probably still blaming the ones who'd done the giving, too. Which meant the Princess might find herself being greeted just as poorly as himself.
He glanced at her again: she was sitting at the small table they had used for their meal, completely focused on the book of legends, her eyes not even straying from the pages as her hand wrote in a notebook she'd also produced from her travel bags.
He made up his mind quickly: there was definitely something he could do with the time they would take to get to the archeologist whose notebook they had found inside the Goddess.
"Princess Zelda?"
Zelda startled and looked up at Link. "Yes? Oh! Did I lose track of time? I don't mean to be keeping you up!"
"Not at all, Princess," Link replied. He palmed the back of his neck, heat creeping to his cheeks. This was the right move, it was the only move, but it was still embarrassing. "With your leave, I want to practice stretching Nayru's Love further. I will do my best not to push myself too far again, but…" he trailed off.
Zelda's eyes widened in understanding. "You'd hardly be able to train and enhance it if you weren't putting as much effort as you can into it," she said, completing his thoughts. "I will check on you regularly."
He swallowed and nodded. "Thank you, Princess."
He looked around the room for hiding spots. He only had one green potion left and he didn't like using blue potion just to restore magic. However, if he did end up using his one remaining magic potion, he could put a replacement together so long as he found a few green magic pods. He nodded to himself, satisfied after a quick inspection: under the beds, behind the curtains, under the wardrobe, IN the wardrobe… plenty of places to find things.
Zelda did not notice, her nose already back in her book.
Link planted his feet shoulder-width apart and joined his hands, palms together, in front of his chest: the actual gesture didn't matter much, but as was the case with any spell, being consistent with how you positioned and moved your body helped with focus and intent.
The blue diamond of light appeared around him. Link focused on it, visualizing it as part of himself, and mentally pushed outward. He forced it to go a bit further than he usually did, counted to 100 in his head, and let go.
He fished the Safe Journey book out of his pocket and opened it at random page. It happened to show a map of Castle Town, so he read through street names and business names, and once he was satisfied that he was still able to focus, stowed the book away again.
He got back into position and cast the spell again, stretching it to the same point but this time, counting only to fifty before letting go, playing it safe.
He took the book out of his pouch again, but he could feel a hint of temptation not to bother, which made him change tack. He tucked the book under one arm and with the other hand, opened the wardrobe and reached to the back of the upper shelf. His fingers closed on what felt like a tiny round bottle, but which was actually a rare type of magical berry that could restore a bit of magical energy when ingested. The oddly shaped berries were colloquially known as magic pods and believed by most people to be fictional. Link popped it in his mouth, crushed it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, and swallowed.
The urge to be idle vanished instantly. He opened the book at a random page again just to make sure, and closed it after finding that reading the details on a map was once again not an issue and required no effort of will whatsoever.
Zelda tried to stop staring when Link put the book he was using to test that his soul was not overly tired back in his pouch, but she absolutely couldn't. The Hero had just found a magic pod, something so rare that most people who pretended to have seen one were deemed liars by default, in the first place he'd looked.
Were the picori particularly fond of him? Maybe that was just one of the blessings that followed the Hero's soul? The tendency to easily find needful things was hardly something that would make it into legends, so she had no way to know.
She filed the matter away for another time: right now, she thought she might actually be able to make a useful suggestion to the Hero.
"Princess?" Link suddenly asked. "Is something the matter?"
"No! No, I'm sorry for staring. I was wondering… would you be opened to a suggestion on magical training?"
The Hero's eyes widened slightly. His magic training had been focused on small magic, the assumption having always been that he would never get access to the powerful Ancient Spells used by some of the past heroes, because those spells had long since been lost. That assumption had turned out to be wrong. Any advice the Princess might have derived from her own training could be extremely useful.
"Yes, Princess," he said eagerly. "Absolutely."
"All right. I will trust you now with a family secret."
Link's eyebrows shot up, but before he could protest, the Princess continued.
"I'm not sure whether you are aware, but about one third to one half of the Royal Line have access to some kind of magic. The Princesses of Destiny tend to manifest some variation on the power of light, usually referred to as the Golden Power, but other members of the family sometimes develop some kind of magic as well. My grandmother had access to the gift of Prophecy and could speak to people using only her mind." Zelda pointed at her own forehead at that.
"My Father the King, on the other hand, does not appear to have any magical abilities," she continued. "I myself also have prophetic dreams but cannot speak with my mind, and I can access the power of light. Prince Naydri, like my father, does not appear to have any magical gifts, but Prince Hylrick possesses healing magic."
Link's eyes widened: this was completely new information. "Are Prince Hylrick's abilities kept a secret?" he asked.
"They are," Zelda confirmed, "because they are very limited, and we fear that if they were known, it would become far too easy for him to be accused of only using them when it suits his fancy, of allowing people to suffer or even die in some misguided attempt to respect the will of the Goddess."
She sighed. "We are not depriving anyone of help by doing this. At best, he can mend small cuts and ease minor pain a bit, and he can only do so once or twice before being completely exhausted. He can, however, detect when someone close by is in need of healing, and once he knows, he can arrange for them to receive the care they need, usually through some kind of roundabout way in an effort not to betray himself."
Link nodded to signify that he was following so far. This kind of ability was one he could easily picture Prince Hylrick trying to improve, so he could guess that whatever method had helped the Crowned Prince was what the Princess wanted to suggest he try.
"Prince Hylrick was able to improve the range of his... let's call it detection. He was able to expand his range by first focusing solely on expanding it. He's now working on refining it, and he also does exercises to try and increase what he can do himself, but those three things, detection range, detection refinement and actual healing, are three completely different aspects of his magic and he is training them separately. I think you may benefit from applying the same principle."
Link tilted his head. "You are recommending I focus on increasing the range of Nayru's Love and maintaining it for longer in separate exercises? Rather than simultaneously like I was doing just now?"
Zelda nodded. "Precisely. Not only are you likely to progress faster this way, but any time you are practicing to extend the aura, if you're only casting the spell in very short bursts, you'll have a chance between each attempt to self assess and determine whether it's safe to continue."
Link scratched his head.
"It's counterintuitive, isn't it?" Zelda asked with a smile. "I would feel the same way if I hadn't seen this method work very well for my brother, and for myself. I've trained to use the power of light and I'm working on fine tuning my prophecies, using very similar principles."
Link nodded. "My progress so far in making all three Goddess spells more powerful has been very slow. Thank you, Princess, I will try your advice."
He figured if it didn't yield any better results than what he was doing now, he could always switch gears again, and without insulting the Princess since he'd have evidence then that the method that worked for the royal family was not working for him.