"Your Majesty. Your Majesty."
Someone was saying this rather frantically, over and over again.
Then Astir slowly became conscious of the fact that someone was shaking him, but it seemed far away—almost as if it was happening to someone else.
He wondered why the person was shaking him and why someone was calling for the king.
It took him a little while to remember that he was the king. And if he was being shaken and called for, it was probably important. Urgent even.
He forced his consciousness to slowly climb up from the blackness where it had been lying dormant for an unknown length of time.
He didn't hear himself groan, but Addison did. The older man leaned in closer, his voice urging Astir to wake.
"Your Majesty, please, come back. Wake up." He shook Astir's arm so vigorously, the young man's entire body shook.
Astir mumbled something, but it was incoherent.
Addison looked around quickly and locked eyes with a young guard who was watching the scene anxiously. "Quick, get me some water!"
The young man tottered off, swaying back and forth like a drunken man, grabbing the backs of chairs to steady himself. Everyone was still affected by whatever magic had been used on them, but the effects seemed to be wearing off.
The guard found a pitcher of water halfway down the table and he brought it to Addison as quickly as he could manage. Without any hesitation, Addison upturned the pitcher, spilling its entire contents on Astir's face.
Astir jerked and he mumbled a bit louder; he sounded angry. But, at last, his eyes blinked open. He looked disoriented, but at least he was awake.
Addison—with the guard stepping in to help—pulled Astir upright and leaned him against a leg of the table. It took Astir another couple of minutes to recognize his foster father's face and then to realize that they were under a table.
"What the hell . . ?" he mumbled, his words finally formed enough that they were understandable.
"Majesty, we were attacked," Addison said bluntly, trying to fill Astir in as quickly as possible. "I don't know by what or by whom, but it wasn't just the dining room that was affected; everyone in the castle was knocked out—even the outside guards. There are people straggling in from the city who say that they experienced the same thing, so I think—but haven't yet confirmed—that the entire city was hit by . . . whatever that was."
"I don't understand," Astir said groggily. "Who could have done such a thing? And for what purpose?"
"I don't know who could have done such a thing—there's no one on earth who can do magic on that scale, that I'm aware of—but as to why . . ."
He put his hands on Astir's shoulders, bracingly, then took a deep breath. "Majesty, your son, the prince, is missing."
Astir stared at him blankly for so long, Addison wondered if he had relapsed. But apparently he was just suffering from shock, because he finally managed to stutter, "Wh-what do you mean?'
Addison looked over to where Ysabel lay beside them. "As best as I remember, you and the queen had the baby with you. Unless you handed him off to someone . . . he's not here."
Astir wrenched himself from Addison's grasp and began crawling on his hands and knees, looking frantically under the table. "No, that's impossible. He has to be here."
"I have everyone who can look looking for him," Addison said. "They're searching the castle."
"Search everywhere!" Astir shrieked. "Wake everybody up. Get everyone up and have them look!"
Addison started to reach for the queen, but Addison grabbed him by the wrist, stopping him. "Don't wake Ysabel," Astir moaned. "Don't wake her until we find Lucien."
"She may wake on her own," Addison pointed out.
"Find him before that." He looked at Addison with desperate eyes. "Find him."
Twenty-four hours later, every room, alcove, and crevice in the castle had been searched, and guards—led by a grim-faced Hadrian—had searched every home in Castle Town. But there was no baby prince. Perhaps just as bizarrely, there was nothing else missing—not gold or valuables or other people. Only the prince was gone.
Ysabel—who had woken up during the first hour of searching—was completely inconsolable. She had locked herself in the bedroom and refused to come out or see anyone. She even refused food and Astir both; he spent the night in a guest room staring at the canopy of the bed, unable to sleep.
The ambassadors from the other kingdoms were questioned rather sharply by Astir. None of the other kingdoms had been attacked and none of their heirs were missing. They sent condolences and offers of assistance, but Astir was suspicious of all of them; each, he thought, might be concealing the plot to steal Hyrule's only heir.
Addison had to go behind Astir and quietly apologize to the ambassadors for the king's thinly-veiled accusations and threats; the king was, of course, out of his mind with grief, Addison explained. And it fell to Addison to send messages of thankfulness to the other royals for their offers of help and promise to keep them informed. In fact, Addison—who had stepped down to the somewhat less-demanding role of Grand Vizier after Astir became king—once again found himself running the kingdom in Astir's name. But although he technically didn't have the authority to act as a Lord High Chancellor, no one challenged him. Someone had to be in control when the monarchs weren't.
As the long days dragged by and not even a ransom demand was forthcoming, everyone increasingly despaired that something worse than kidnapping had happened. People outside the castle began to whisper that the prince had been stolen and murdered—some said by foreign agents who wanted to start a war between Hyrule and one of the other kingdoms; other said that he had been killed as part of a dark magic ritual that would grant immortality. No one in the castle, however, dared to even think such a thing, much less breathe a word of it. It was said the queen was grieving herself to death and the king alternated between abject despondency and sudden flares of rage. The wrong word might drive the queen to suicide or the king to order someone's execution. So nothing was said at all.
After a couple of weeks, Astir dragged himself back to his duties; the business of the kingdom couldn't stop—not even for something as tragic as the kidnapping of the sole heir. He was haggard—he had a full beard, as he hadn't shaved since the loss of his son—and his patience was still nearly non-existent, but even this less-than-ideal version of their king was considered better than no king at all and more than a few people breathed . . . not necessarily a sigh of relief, but at least they breathed a little bit easier. Addison continued to do the lion's share of the work, but at least the king was visible.
That was more than could be said for the queen. While hearing court cases one morning—on the prince's one-month birthday, in fact—Astir admitted to Addison that he hadn't seen his wife in three days, even though he was once again sleeping in their shared bedroom. If he asked after her, eventually someone would report that they had seen her walking around the castle or going into the chapel or the library, so at least he knew that she wasn't lying dead from grief somewhere in the castle, but she had a way of not being found if he was personally looking for her. So he left her alone to deal with her grief on her own terms and in her own time.
So he was quite surprised when she woke him up in the middle of the night by throwing a book on him.
"Astir, look! Look!"
Astir rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes. "What is it?" he asked, trying to orient himself.
"Look at what I found."
She sat down on the bed beside him and practically shoved the book up his nose.
He took from her as an act of self-defense, but his blurry eyes couldn't make out the words in the dim light of the solitary candle she had put on the bedside table.
"Do you see?" she asked. She sounded hopeful—eager even. It was like she was a completely different person.
"I can't read it," Astir said, squinting at the blurry words on the page. His eyes didn't want to cooperate—probably because it was the wee hours of the morning and they were supposed to be at rest.
Ysabel jerked the book away from him impatiently. "This is an account of Link's death," she said. "Listen to this part: His Majesty Link knew that his time for parting was nigh, so he gathered to him all his kin—his children and his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren, down through all the generations. And he told each of them, in their turn, that he would watch over them from the Other World and would come to their aid when they needed it most."
She looked at Astir as if that was supposed to mean something very profound. But maybe his brain was still asleep—or maybe Ysabel had gone a bit crazy from grief—because he didn't understand what she was getting at.
"What am I supposed to see in that?" he asked.
She sighed, as if weary of teaching a not-too-intelligent child an obvious lesson. "Link will help his descendants if they are in trouble. We're both his descendants and we're in trouble."
Astir blinked in confusion for a few minutes, trying to follow her line of logic. "But . . . Ysabel," he said, trying to be gentle, knowing what he had to say would crush her hope, "that's . . . that's just something in a book—poetic license. The person who wrote it may have added that part because it sounded nice; it's not necessarily true. And even if it is true, there's not any real way Link can help from the Other Side; that's just something he said to make his family feel better when he was dying."
"But it is true, and he can do it," Ysabel said triumphantly. She put down the book and picked up another one that had been lying in her lap. "This is from a story about Amichen, the first queen of Meridor. She came here from Shi-Ha to marry one of the younger princes, but their party was attacked en route by bandits—right around where the city of Via is now. It says she was "abused"—which I think means she was raped—and she was left for dead.
"But while the Princess lay there, more dead than alive, a woman and a man—beautiful and radiant in appearance—came to her and encouraged her to live. They promised that her life would be worth the living if she would only bear the pain for a short while. They also told her that if she did not help, Prince Naissus would die and they would both be forced to reincarnate and live their lives again because they had a great destiny they had to fulfill together.
"Princess Amichen chose to live and later discovered, when she saw their likeness on their tomb, that the woman and man who had appeared to her were none other than Zelda and Link."
Ysabel slammed the book closed with a satisfied thump. "See?" she said triumphantly.
Astir still couldn't make out her logic. "So . . . what? We wait to see if they show up and help us . . . in, what, a dream? Or maybe one of us has to be close to death . . ?"
He prayed she wasn't thinking about trying to kill herself in the hope that the ghosts of Link and Zelda would appear to her.
But, instead, she laughed. "No, stupid." She playfully poked him in the leg with the corner of the book. "You have the Soul Scepter."
Astir quickly pushed himself upright and stared at her. "Are you serious?" he asked gravely.
"Of course." She smiled. "The answer was right in front of us the—"
"No."
It was her turn to look confused. "What . . . 'no' to what?"
"No, I will not use the Soul Scepter to call up Link and Zelda." He thought her mad for even suggesting it.
Her cheerfulness vanished in a flash, like an eclipse of the sun. And her face was almost that black. "What do you mean you won't use it?" she asked accusingly.
"Ysabel, that thing is dangerous. Link and Zelda knew that; that's why they didn't use it but a handful of times, and only when necessary."
"That's not true," Ysabel retorted angrily. "Zelda used it every day for a year or so after Link died."
Astir put his hand against his chest. "If you haven't noticed, I'm not Link. And you're not Zelda. And I don't think either of us has the right to use the Soul Scepter. It's a weapon, Ysabel, not an oracle."
She shoved away from him, getting to her feet. "I can't believe you have an opportunity right in front of you to get some help finding our son and you won't take it."
Astir threw the covers off and put his feet on the floor. But Ysabel moved away from him, not willing to even be near him now. "Even if they came when I called," he argued, "what makes you think they would know anything?"
"They may not know," she allowed, "but you won't know unless you ask."
"Ysabel . . . I don't dare," he whispered sadly. "Not even for our child."
"That's the difference between mothers and fathers, I suppose," she said coldly and with great bitterness: "I would do anything for my child. If I had to kill someone to get him back, I'd do it right now without hesitation."
Her words didn't say it, but her accusing eyes did: If I had to kill you, I would.
She turned her back on him and started to walk out.
"Ysabel, I forbid you to use the Soul Scepter," he called after her. "I forbid it as King."
She never stopped or acknowledged his command; she just walked out without a word.
Astir lay back down in a huff, then rubbed his face with his hands. Then he sat back up and rang for the night servant. A moment later, a young man hurried into the room. "Yes, Your Majesty?" he asked, looking anxious to please.
"Go to the chapel guards right away and tell them no one is to go into the chapel without my permission—not even the queen. You've got that? No one."
The young man nodded. "No one, Your Majesty. Not even the queen."
"Once you give them that message, wake Addison and tell him I need to see him immediately. It's urgent."
The man nodded again. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"Now go. Hurry."
The young man turned and ran out of the room. Astir laid down again with a sigh, and stared up at the canopy of the bed, wondering what he was going to do.
