The fairy said to him, when they had known each other but two days, “Tell me of yourself, Ganondorf. I want to know what you are.”

She had been standing before a mirror as she made her request, but she had turned from it to look at him. His thoughts had been idle, as they always were beneath her fountain; her voice seemed come from a far place, and he was a while in looking at her. He saw her movement as a shimmer against the glass, as though he looked upon a woman underwater. Her hair swirled about her naked shoulders; the vines she wore drifted. He ignored the glance she fixed on him; he watched her in the glass of her mirror. The glass was full of undulations, and it made him think of wind in water, urging the sea against the sand. Her body was still, but in the mirror, she continued to move. Her hair, her vines, were dancing.

“What shall I tell you,” he said, at last, “that you do not already know?”

She laughed. Her head bent back and exposed a long and slender throat; her profile was finely moulded, perfect as a statue’s. The vigour of her merriment enlivened her beauty; she glowed with it, as though her laughter were a tangible thing, that filled her like sunlight in glass.

He watched her and was unmoved.

Ganondorf Dragmire had long ceased to feel the charge of her vitality and beauty - he had ceased to feel her - inside of him, whatever she did, however she laughed. He had taught himself, at her command, at the command of his own person, to remember his pride, to remember his purpose. “Take this lesson to the kingdom above my fountain,” she had once told him. “When you walk its lawns and eat its foods and speak beneath its burning sun and sleep beneath its paling moon, remember yourself, Gerudo. Remember your pride.”

He had understood her; she was speaking no new truth. He remembered himself, in the world above the fairy’s fountain, and he remembered himself beneath it. He was not a man to go to seed.

She shook her hair now, and smiled down at him. “You wound me,” she said, and her smile was teasing. “You accuse me of knowing all? What, shall we speak of nothing—share nothing? Pretend we know all there is to know? That is a dangerous thing, my king.”

“It a useless thing to dwell on what is already obvious.”

Her expression grew serious. “But perhaps what is obvious to yourself is not obvious to me. Perhaps you give me greater due than I deserve.”

He considered her. He had no love for the humble display; there was honesty in her voice, but her glance: it spoke of something else; it prodded him, mocked him, and was full of knowledge: oh no, this woman, this fairy creature was not stupid or ignorant. She was one of the goddesses’ own, left on earth when those heavenly mothers had ascended. Mankind was her duty. She accepted his prayers, his toils, his pains; she protected him and gathered him into her arms when he was dead. The goddesses had created the world, and then they had gone. This fairy and her sisters—and the goddesses final gift to mankind—these were the only things left of Them on earth. No, this fairy was not stupid. Her mind was full of goddesses’ knowledge.

She stepped away from her mirror, and came timidly near him. He lolled against the divan, met her pale eyes. “You know exactly who I am,” he murmured. “What I am, why I am. And what I mean to do.”

“But I would have you tell me.” Her voice was a whisper; she knelt at his couch, and folded her hands upon his knee. “Tell me of yourself.”

“What is there to tell?” He sat up, suddenly, tearing away from her hands. She startled, eyes wide; he thought of a doe, caught in the moment between death and escape, gazing down the terrible length of the hunter’s crossbow. He grasped her beneath the chin, and turned her face, that he might stare into her eyes. “I am Lord Ganondorf Dragmire, who men call the Mandrag, King of the Enchanted Thieves—yes, and I mean to remind the kingdom above your fountain of this. They have forgotten. I shall remind them. I am the first son to be born of the Dragmire House, since our last prince died a hundred years ago; I am the voice of a house struck voiceless, the voice of a goddess denied. I am all these things, and I will remind the world of them.”

She drew in a breath, and he understood his grasp to be too tight upon her throat. But he did not release her just then, but sat gazing down at her. Her lips parted, and her eyes were wide, their glance milky. He opened his hand, and touched her cheek; he murmured to her, “Do you understand?”

“I do,” she breathed, and smiled.

She rose, quick and sudden, as though kindled with new purpose. Her hair and trails of vine swirled like robes. She threw these back, and walked unhindered into the centre of the fountain, striding onto the water, that shimmered as if with sunlight. The pool reflected the dome of the pavilion’s under-roof. Her feet did not touch the water; he saw her reflection guttering upon the ripples.

“That is what you must tell me,” she said, turning back to him. “Tell me what the kingdom above my fountain has forgotten.”

He looked levelly upon her; he was not yet prepared to give in. “They have forgotten many things,” he said.

“True.” She tilted her head, and there was a dewy innocence in her glance, a sweet consideration; he looked into it, and felt his heart stir. “But do those little things matter? The greatest things which they have forgotten: that is the truth.”

He stared at her, and she at him, and very slowly she stepped toward him and said, “Lord Ganondorf Dragmire. Mandrag. Second son of the Dragmire line. Voice of the voiceless. Voice of my heavenly mother, our Lady of the Earth, of Stories, of our goddess Din. Ganondorf Dragmire, tell me the truth that men have forgotten.”

“Yes,” he said.

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Above the fairy's fountain
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“Well then! good sir. And what do you say to the Hylian hunt? Is it hot enough for you? Sufficiently untamed? Or has this too fallen short of your Gerudo standard? Our horses toddling along like nags; our game too paltry, our dogs shy as maids? Come, be honest with me; my blood is up and the hunting fever upon me; I will suffer no sweet nonsense. Do you approve, my friend, or do you not?”

And though the king of Hyrule smiled broadly as he spoke, and leant with twinkling eyes across the saddlehorn toward his auditor, Lord Ganondorf Dragmire—heeding the king with a polite tilt of his head—heard no note of friendly solicitation in that tone: rather, he heard, and understood, every note of its demand.

Oh no, he thought, drily, the king would brook no pandering, but he would have his satisfaction. Ganondorf had known the like of this Hylian king before now: a breed of man that commanded honesty in their loud way, but wished nothing more than indulgence, like a child.

He regarded the king, seated upon the gleaming back of his stallion with his head thrown back and his face flushed, his chest heaving as he breathed in great gouts of the dusky air, his eyes full of fire and his teeth bared with smiling. The king noted the candour of Ganondorf’s stare, returned it. His smile took on a subtle shade. Ganondorf took the smile for a challenge.

The king’s very essence was a challenge, the Gerudo lord decided: his inquiries, the way he sat, the way he breathed, the way he smiled. Ganondorf took in the display with all the indolence of an observer; wondered, idly, what it might be to rise to that challenge. But no, he thought, rising was out of the question. Let the king of Hyrule throw down all the gloves he wished. Ganondorf had come to this land to pick every glove the king cared to fling down.

“You have treated me to a hunt finer than any I have yet played a part,” Ganondorf remarked, at last. His mare swayed a little beneath him; her great hooves beat the earth as she shifted. He let her move as she would, held the reins loose in his hands. “You have humbled me, my lord. I can no longer claim that we hunt in the desert. We but chase and snare in solitude; we but play games of stealth and trickery. But this…”

He let a smile flower loose across his face, as he swept his eyes about the clearing, which swarmed with king’s dogs and king’s men. “This is the truth of the hunt, my lord,” he continued. “This is its honesty. A host of men and beasts, flying in mad pursuit of the lordly stag. I am pleased to have… witnessed it.”

Harkinian’s bright eyes narrowed for a moment with consideration. Perhaps he had marked that dubious pause, Ganondorf thought, because he did not answer straight away. But Ganondorf did not really suppose the king understood him. A man in a fever knows nothing but the fever’s heat, and the king himself had spoken: his blood was up, and the hunting fever upon him.

“An honest day’s work has indeed made you honest!” the king said, finally, straightening in the saddle with a toss of his head, the shrewdness melting from his face to be replaced with something that might have been disdain. “Of course you cannot call what you desertmen do hunting. A pack of women skulking through the sand, chasing birds and groundhogs through an oasis? I would have you revoke the name ‘hunting’ from such child’s play, Dragmire—it shames the valour our honest pursuit.” He paused, smiled—perhaps, in a less prosperous man, the smile might have been called a smirk. “Which honest pursuit,” he added, “you have been so pleased to witness.”

There were a wealth of things to protest in the king’s expressions. But Ganondorf was not a lesser man; he was not a man to quarrel. He had come to this land to pick up every glove the king cared to fling down.

“You will forgive me, my lord,” he said, and bowed his head, though he did not shed his smile. “But I must protest—not of what my people call hunting; no, on this point your wisdom shall be my own. But you must give me the credit of being an honest man. Surely, if I were not, you could not entrust your lovely daughter to me?”

The king had turned away. He glanced back at Ganondorf, an eyebrow lifted, his mouth wryly twisted. The twist deepened, when Ganondorf finished speaking.

“My daughter?” He gave a careless shrug. “Lovely, is she? I do not fear to place her in your hands, Dragmire. You are quite welcome to her.”

He did not wait for an answer, but shook the reins of his stallion and trotted off.

Ganondorf watched him, and felt almost that he could pity the man.

Almost.

--

They spoke of theology, he and the king, as the company rode.

The Hylian dusk fell upon their company when they were still some miles distant from the castle. Were they to make for it, the distant would not prove excessive, and there was a full moon rising from behind the trees. But the king dawdled, and did not make for the castle, and Ganondorf finally supposed the castle was not his purpose.

Their course had been a wandering one across the Hylian Plain. The hours passed and the company unwound from about their king and trailed out behind him like a loose ribbon; as the sun began to sink, Ganondorf found he and the king were accompanied by only a few of Harkinian’s courtiers and the Duke, who rode slumped across his saddle with an expression that might have been a pout—were Ganondorf inclined to think so low of him—contourting his face.

The king was paying no attention to the men straggling faithfully in his wake. He had ridden ahead and gained the crest of a small hill. He had earlier taken it upon himself to show Ganondorf the beauties of the Hylian terrain he was quite sure Ganondorf had earlier missed.

“The hunt, true, is an expression of truth and honesty,” he was now saying, sweeping out a hand before him, glancing over his shoulder at Ganondorf with something like disdain in his crooked smile. "But the land is even more true and honest; its beauty, and its bounty, ensures that this is so. Some claim it is our mother.” He paused, and his glance became sly. “Does not your Gerudo religion claim the land is our mother?”

“Our religion,” Ganondorf said, “is the same as your own.”

Harkinian’s eyes brightened. “Is it? I seem to recall there are some rather bold differences. Do not the Gerudo say they are not the children of Farore, but of Din? She who carved out the land, and not she who shaped the men who would live upon it?”

For all his resolutions, Ganondorf’s jaw tightened. “There are some who would believe it is so.”

“I call blasphemy!” The king gave a great laugh that filled the quiet air, as if to make light of his accusation. But Ganondorf was not deceived. One did not heed beliefs lightly; he knew it and the king knew it but he supposed the king was more a child than he had originally supposed. And indeed, the king, even as he laughed, still gazed at his auditor with a fixation that belied his humour.
  
Ganondorf gave a shuddering breath, and said, “Again, your wisdom shall be mine.”

A grimace twitched across the king’s mouth. “Ah, Dragmire!” Harkinian shook his head. “You are to be my son-in-law, not my court flatterer.” He glanced beyond Ganondorf, to the courtiers milling at the foot of the hill. His face twisted. “I am well equipped with such men as it is.”

Ganondorf shrugged. “The truth cannot flatter, my lord.”

“Is that so?”

“Again, I must beg you credit me for an honest man. Have I not worshipped as you worship, in your chapels, offered prayers at your fountains to the spirits that guard them?”

Harkinian’s gaze was searching. “So you have.”

Ganondorf felt a sudden thrill rush through his body. He wished almost to edge his steed nearer the king’s, to lean near that kingly ear and whisper, “And a wiser man than you, my lord, should continue, ‘But what of it, Dragmire? What of it?’”

And what of it? Ganondorf had taken the good Duke’s advice, learned the Hylian traditions, debased himself in practising them, stooped to pick up every glove the king cared to fling down. But what of it? His Gerudo heart beat still too strongly, too heatedly, too quickly, with what was to come. The thought made him giddy, made him burn. And that the king might come so close to understanding, that he might come so close to playing a worthy opponent, if only he would stretch his mind beyond the petty despairs and the garish show of majesty under which he sought to hide, if only he were not so blind!

Ganondorf’s heart thrummed, and he forced himself to turn from the pensive, almost surly gaze of the king. He forced himself to breathe.

He found the Duke making his slow, unsteady way up the hill toward them. The Duke’s mare was not one of those borrowed from the royal stables, but his own, borne all the way from his holdings in the extreme south of Hyrule, the providence of Ordona. She was neither as young nor as fleet as the king’s mounts, but the Duke had made no attempt to keep pace with the company during the hunt; he had fallen away at the first sighting of the stag, and this was the first Ganondorf had noticed of him since.

“Lord Chester!” he said, when the Duke had gained the crest. “And how does this day agree with you?”

“Good, if it’s me lord the king’s pleasure that it do,” the Duke retorted, inclining his sullen gaze toward the king. Harkinian glanced back at him, then away. The absence of a greeting—even a nod of acknowledgement—was pointed.

The Duke’s eyes narrowed. “Brothair. It grows dark as a giant’s armpit; d’ye insist on taekin’ us across the whole land before we start back faer the castle?”

The king’s head snapped around, and he fixed a hard, narrow stare upon his brother. “There was time enough for you to start back to the castle if such was your desire.”

“But it ain’ up tae me, is it?”

Ganondorf turned aside, to hide a smile that slid involuntarily across his face.

“Are we tae start back faer the castle, then?” It was not so much a question as a demand, which the Duke uttered with such unhurried care he seemed to be speaking to a man of slow wit.

His tone was not lost on Harkinian. His brother replied, with equal meticulousness, “We are not going back to the castle, brother. You may, if you are so inclined. As for myself and my men, we ride for the Lodge, and return tomorrow.”

The Duke subsided, like a man pulling back from a threatened blow.

“My friend.” Harkinian turned toward Ganondorf, tilted his head. “I believe you are satisfied with what you have seen of this land?”

“A man cannot be satisfied by marvels, but I shall do my best, my lord.”

The king seemed mollified; his face softened, and he gave his crooked, accustomed smile. “Ah. Well then.” He shrugged. “There is too little to see by the dusklight, so we must make a necessary end to our expedition. We pass our night in my hunting lodge. It is not far from this place. Marvel at it, if you would, Dragmire.”

He eyed Ganondorf, and Ganondorf saw again that sparkle of challenge in his eye. Ganondorf inclined his head and let the man have his pride.

He could almost pity a man who could not let go.

--

The king’s intention for that night’s lodgings being now revealed, the pace of the company quickened. The king rode ahead, Ganondorf behind, and caught only flashes of his host through the swarm of his courtiers now riding close to their liege. Harkinian pressed on with something like grim determination hardening his spine and the line of his shoulders. Perhaps his brother and his complaints had unsettled the king.

The Duke himself had vanished into the throng.

They reached the hunting lodge in good time. The building rose stark and alien against the backdrop of the woods, a massy work of stone with an excess of windows and balconies bunched up like some great, hump-backed mountain. It was grossly out of place, too small for its ornaments and too misshapen to suit the sleek profile of the trees arranged behind. Ganondorf, with a flash of passion that surprised even himself, thought it disgusting.

The king had sent his serving men ahead with the stag to the hunting lodge earlier that day. The kitchens were situated outside, and even before the company had come near enough to dismount and hand over their steeds to the stablehands, the smell of vension washed strong and heavy over them. It was a smell without savour, without spices, without appeal.

But then, Ganondorf thought, the cooks were Hylian. Hylian pride and Hylian assumptions of superiority were enough to sweeten any meat.

He dismounted, and handed off his horse to a stableboy.