A covered wagon came to the gates of Hyrule Castle Town. Even though it had been some years since Ganondorf's visit to the castle, there had been no motion from either side. Rumors persisted that Zelda was pushing her father to investigate the Gerudo lands, but that the king was refusing the idea on its face. None of this was enough to increase the guard at the gate, and there were not enough of those to bother searching one wagon as it trundled into the marketplace, creaking and rattling.

The sun was high and bright. A crisp, clear day, like many visited on Hyrule during the summer. The wind was so fine.

The wagon trundled past bustling crowds and stalls and larger shops, the driver cloaked in black and making eye contact with no one. The horses moved with no more than the necessary vigor, just active enough that they would not draw attention by their sloth. No one noticed as the wagon passed out of town on its way to the castle. It wound around the cliff face, and the guards took note of it as it drew near.

It pulled up to the first gate, and the driver pulled the horses to a stop, and a guard walked to the wagon.

"Hey now," he said, "making your way to the castle? What cargo is it you have there?"

The driver turned and said nothing, but reached back and pointed at the interior of the wagon with a hand made of bleached white bone.

Nabooru had followed Ganondorf's trail through the desert, past the Haunted Wasteland, and just when she thought he might be going to the Desert Colossus the trail went off in another direction entirely, deeper into the sands. She followed it with her band of hunters, women loyal to her who knew that they would not be seeking game. When they emerged from the sandstorm of the wasteland they drew short and took their time to absorb the import of this new site that Ganondorf had chosen as his staging grounds: of all the places in the world, only the Arbiter's Grounds were more sacred to the Gerudo than the Desert Colossus.

Nabooru left her guards and their horses at the front entrance of the temple, knowing that they would not want to intrude upon the honored dead who were interred there. She went in alone, not knowing what she would find. It was impossible to know how many people Ganondorf had brought with him based on his tracks; it had looked like he was alone, but skilled enough trackers would be able to walk behind him without leaving a trace of having done so.

The Arbiter's Grounds were a tower and a temple and a shrine and a tomb all at once, extending four enormous levels above the sands and an unknown number below it. The levels above were meant for ceremonial purposes, for worship, and for judgment. All of those who had committed great crimes against the Gerudo had been tried here over the centuries, and their bodies were entombed in the lower levels alongside Gerudo champions whose souls were to keep the evil ones bound. Deeper still were the mass sepulchers of the Gerudo, where the bones of all the sisterhood would mingle until they had turned to dust.

Nabooru walked through the chambers of the first floor, which was itself meant as a place for worship, lined with statues of the nameless Goddess of the Sands. Nabooru stopped in front of one idol, the face of which was framed by a crown of serpents, and offered up a prayer. If the goddess would listen anywhere, it would be in this place. She touched her heart and then the heart of the statue, and prayed for an end to madness. The goddess did not answer her, and she walked on.

She exited the first hallway and walked through chambers which strangers could not know, but which the Gerudo were taught the layout of as soon as they could walk. An enormous staircase led up to the second level of the temple, which was the true entrance to the place of worship. She passed through two chambers, the first filled with images of serpents and the second whose ceiling was a single mosaic image of the Goddess, before she came to the main audience chamber, an enormous room housing an enormous door flanked by four torches that burned with everlasting blue light. Ganondorf was seated in the middle of this room facing the door, wearing his black robes, his eyes shut and his mouth forming words in a language she did not know as dark power rolled off of him in waves. Aside from the four blue torches there were many more which burned with a normal fire, but they seemed darker in his presence. Everything did.

"Ganondorf," she said.

The spell broke, and he opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. His eyebrows rose, but only for a moment.

"Nabooru. What brings you here? Is there news?"

"No," she said, and grimaced. "The Hylian King has sent no envoys. There is no indication that he means to move against us. I have sent sisters to Hyrule Castle Town to gather what intelligence they can, and hired Hylians to do the same where we can't walk unmarked, but there is nothing."

"There is not nothing," he said, and turned back to face the door. "Zelda still tries to convince Marense to move against us. Every day she seeks an audience with him, and every day she pleads her case."

"And every day she is denied," she said, crossing her arms and scowling at his back. "I do not know what dreams she has had, Ganondorf, or what dreams you have had-"

"They are not dreams," he said, and it was not with any anger but she understood that it would not be possible to argue with him. "It is an opening of my thoughts, which occurred at the same time as hers. Something has happened. She knows what, but I do not. All I know is that the gods have moved against us again, and soon their servants will move in kind."

This was dangerous ground; Gerudo kings were known to experience things that other Gerudo could not, and Ganondorf was known throughout Hyrule as a very powerful wizard. Rumors still swarmed of his hand in some calamity for the Gorons, but it had been resolved quickly enough that rumor remained only that. Still, she couldn't help thinking that he was being paranoid, or giving in to the rare madness that sometimes plagued Gerudo kings. She wondered if he might begin to dream soon, and then forget the barrier between dreams and the waking world. She wondered, only for a moment, if he might need to be held in this place.

"I do not yet believe they will, Ganondorf. Even if Zelda knows some thing which you might have done, you have not done it. The King of Hyrule is not a bad king, and is not the kind of tyrant who would go to war for a crime that has not been committed."

"Perhaps not," Ganondorf said. "Perhaps not. Perhaps he is the good and just king that the land needs to keep it ordered as it is, and separated according to the boundaries that already exist." She winced as his voice rose. "This would not be enough. The Princess's words sow discord and hatred against our people; distrust of us has been higher since our visit than at any other time since the civil war. At this rate, if I rely on diplomacy then I will not be able to have the fields for our people within my lifetime."

"That has always been your dream, Ganondorf," she said, and instantly knew she had erred.

The dark power flowed off of Ganondorf again, and he rose and turned to face her. He was grinning, that particular grin which showed all of his teeth, not like a smile but as if he were about to kill something by biting it. "Yes. My dream, that we should share in the bounties of the earth as readily as the other races. It is a dream that I will see fulfilled, Nabooru, and I will do whatever I have to to fulfill it." She said nothing, waiting. "You have been my confidant for my entire life, so I will share this with you now: there is a power guarded by the Hyrulian Royal Family, sealed beyond the gates of the Temple of Time."

"The Golden Power," she said, recalling ancient script written in the small, neat hand of a king.

"The Triforce," he said, and he was looking past her now. "The very power of the gods. With it, I would give the Gerudo what should be theirs by right of birth: our people will want for nothing, and be queens of this land."

Madness. Madness floated in the air between them, but something worse than madness, too, because Ganondorf was not truly mad, she did not think: he was hungry. She could feel his hunger from five paces away, a deep-seated thing that would swallow the world.

"We would never desire to rule over the other races," she said, though she knew there were those among her sisters who would want just that. "And even if we did - the other peoples of the land would never see that power in your hands, Ganondorf. Or in anyone's hands. We are as the gods have made us, and it is not a terrible thing." She swallowed as his expression did not change. "Is this why you are preparing? Do you fear the King of Hyrule will learn of your plans?"

"There is no doubt he will. But by the time it is known, and by the time the people of Hyrule marshal their forces, it will be much too late, and we will seize Hyrule and everything in it."

"Ganondorf, that is impossible. We are too few. There aren't enough Gerudo alive in the entire desert to form an army big enough to," and the words turned to ashes in her mouth, and the hissing of the flames sounded very loud. She looked around, glancing at the walls and into the shadows, seeing strange shapes dancing there in the light of the fires. She became very aware of herself, and of Ganondorf, and of the tremendous shadows that filled this sacred place, and of the many, many ghosts who lurked here. There was a place her mind refused to go, but she could feel herself up against some truth and she had to embrace it, to see it for all that it was. "What have you done?"

He said nothing, but his grin shifted into something else, an expression she did not know. He raised both of his hands, and in the corners of the room the tiling of the floor shattered, and the sand beneath it heaved and spat. She looked to each corner, back and forth as quickly as she could, so she knew that all at once figures began to rise from each break in the floor. She did not understand what they were at first, the way they moved, the shape of their limbs-and then she saw them, really saw them. She saw the bleached whiteness of their limbs, the long silver spears in their hands, their too-long frames that let in light through every part because they had no torsos, just ribcages, no bodies, just hips holding up air. She saw the way their skulls were warped into the shape of helmets, at the burning red fire in their eyes, the same fire in Ganondorf's eyes, and the skeleton things rose out of the ground, and more rose behind them.

She fell to her knees and vomited.

"It is magic that fuels the Stalchildren," Ganondorf said, "a natural magic, born of conflict and hatred. They did not exist two decades ago - the wars that raged in Hyrule Field gave birth to them. I can recreate that magic, now, and so we have the Stalfos to form the backbone of our army."

She spat on the ground and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and tears were streaming down her face and she nearly retched again but she fought it down. "What have you done? Ganondorf, these are the bones of our people, of our beloved dead!"

"Not just theirs," Ganondorf said. "My predecessors are here, too, and more than their bones. Their wraiths are still powerful, still angry, and would see a terror wrought on any living thing. I need only exert my authority, and then direct them."

"The kings," she said, and she fought the urge to weep in disgust and terror. "You have brought back the bad kings. Oh, Ganondorf. Ganondorf. Do you know what you've done? The forces you've disturbed?"

"Better than you, I think," he said, and now his mouth was set in a hard line. "Though not, perhaps, better than the Hylians."

"What?"

"Let me ask you a question," Ganondorf said. "Do you know how many skeletons, broken down into bones, can fit onto a covered wagon?"

The tarp over the wagon exploded, and the guard shielded his eyes with his hand. The sound was like hail falling on a hard roof, and when he realized he was not being struck he looked up.

The driver threw its hood aside, and its head was a skull, huge and long like that of a horse crossed with that of a man. It shoved a sword's tip into his chest, punching through his armor like parchment, piercing his heart. The guard's last act was instinctual, tied up in the training that was his duty: he grabbed hold of the blade with his left hand (it cut through his gauntlet as easily as his armor and blood ran there but he did not feel it) and with his right he thrust his pike into the center of the driver's robe. Then he died, his teeth bared in defiance of the death that had come for him.

The driver kicked the guard's corpse off of its sword, and the pike fell out of its own accord. It looked down the path; the other guards were coming. It looked up; the bones of dozens of bodies were swirling in the air above it. It chittered, its skull shivering at the sound coming out of its hollow throat.

The storm of bones slammed into the ground, arranging themselves into their new unnatural alignments, and seven dozen Stalfos sprang up, shining pikes and swords in their hands. The guards stopped in their tracks, arrested by horror. The driver, the Old Dead King, screeched the charge, and the Stalfos surged. The sergeant of the guard roared for her corporal to run and warn the castle, and the corporal turned and fled.

The sergeant raised her fist and the rest of the guards fell in beside her, spears at the ready. They were hopelessly outnumbered, being only a dozen. The sergeant shouted to charge; perhaps she said "For the King!" It is impossible to know; no one would ever hear the story repeated.

The guards charged forward to meet their end as the Old Dead King flew threw the air, screaming like wind cutting between desert stones, its swords flashing in the air as it sailed past the charging Stalfos and fell upon the Hylian line.

That was the beginning, and those were the first casualties of war. They were not the last that day, to Hyrule's sorrow, and more blood would flow ere bone was shattered and the sun set.

Numbness had seized Nabooru's body. She felt apart from herself, as if controlling herself from a distance, seeing her will enacted by her limbs but unable to ascribe any significance to it. Ganondorf was still talking, though he had turned away from her.

"Not all of the wraiths will obey me now; Kotake and Koume are even now sealing away one in particular who I think is my predecessor. He will take years to bend to my will, but when he does..."

"You cannot do this," she said, from very far away. "You will kill us all."

"I will elevate us," Ganondorf said, gesturing at the fires in their cradles so that they leaped and danced. "Today the King of Hyrule will die, and that will be only the beginning. If I am lucky then Zelda will be dead as well, and-"

The sound of steel whispering was very loud in that place, and Nabooru realized she had drawn her swords. The weight felt good in her hands. Ganondorf's back was rigid, and the set of his shoulders told her everything that flitted through his mind. Or nothing at all, she realized. She no longer knew this man, and that realization was good too, lent her own motion solidity and weight so that she was no longer adrift.

"Your hunger for power has taken on the color of madness. You would embroil the Gerudo in a war they cannot win, even with your magic. You would damn all of your sisters to Hylian prisons and Hylian gallows for a dream, for nothing. We will disappear, Ganondorf. We will be no more." She gathered her strength into her thighs as she sank into a crouch, judging the distance between herself and the king. With a leap she would be upon him before he could turn. Even Ganondorf was not that fast. "I cannot let you do this."

"You betray me?" he said, his voice calm and level.

"I love you," she said, "more than I have ever loved any of our people. But you are lost, and you are too strong to be allowed to wander in this madness. I love you, but I love our people more."

She did not know why she had not leaped yet. Ganondorf lowered his head, and his hands came up so that he rested his fingertips against his forehead. She was glad he was facing away, that she did not see his face. Now was the time to strike, now-

"In acknowledgment of your years of service," he said, "and out of respect for your love for me, I will forget that you bared steel against your king." His voice wavered on "forget," and her heart caught in her throat. "You are excused, Nabooru. Go home. Take our sisters with you, and wait for my return. We have a long and terrible task ahead of us."

"I cannot," she said, and the points of her swords sank down to the floor. "Don't you understand? You will kill us all for your ambition!"

"I fight for our people."

"You fight for yourself!" The words echoed in the dark, bouncing back and forth from the walls, assaulting the two of them from every direction. The Stalfos watched them like silent judges. "You fight for your pride, and your greed, and your hatred! There is no love left inside of you save for a love I can't understand, and I will not remain to watch the man I have known since he was a boy become a monster. I cannot see you become this evil thing!"

"Then go," he said, and turned to face her. She had expected some sorrow on his face, the evidence of tears or tears withheld, but no such thing shaded his countenance. His face was twisted with rage, a killing rage like she had never seen before, and she realized she was seeing him as he really was, how his enemies must have seen him, and her swords fell from her hands at the look in his eyes. "Go." He bared his teeth and his eyes were filled with a terrible yellow light, and when he shouted "GO!" the walls shook.

She turned and fled, her swords forgotten. She went out of the hall and into the anteceding chamber, and that is when Ganondorf began to scream. She flew down connecting staircases and through hallways, and his voice kept rising and rising, an anthem of hatred and fury expressed into a single throaty note. The statues of the goddess shed dust as his voice filled everything and his power shook the temple, and she ran, and she ran.

His voice was still rising as she dashed out of the entrance of the Arbiter's Grounds, and her terrified sisters were only barely keeping their horses under control. They needed no direction, and leaped onto their horses when she did, and as a body they fled into the swirling sands.

She looked back only once as his voice began to fade, drowned out by the wind, and a terrible light poured out of every entrance to that sacred place. She turned her face forward, squeezing her eyes shut, willing death on the sorrow she felt. She could not stay. She would not stay.

That was the last time she would ever see her king.