Chapter Text
"Look," said Vaba Koume, trailing a wrinkled finger along the fleshy leaf of a succulent. "See how the plant stores its own water. Everything in the desert is attuned to its rhythms, and its harshness."
Dragmir leaned further in to look more closely at the little plant, getting sand on his tunic. A hightail lizard scurried further into its shade at his approaching finger.
"It's soft!" he exclaimed.
"Don't be fooled; it's hardier than it looks. Nothing soft survives here, and so must you be. The other Gerudo have strength in numbers, but you must be resilient. Self-sufficient."
He regarded the plant with all the solemnity of his five years, arms folded around his knees.
"Nabooru says that Tomas the trader's son says that in Hyrule, water drops right from the sky."
Koume tutted. "Nabooru should concern herself more with her own life. Her mother won't be pleased to hear she's been talking to you or Tomas. Do I need to keep a closer eye on you when we go to the Bazaar?"
"I'll be good," he replied idly, stretching his fingers out toward the lizard once more. "And Nabooru can look after herself. She's strong like the desert too."
"A storm approaches," said Vaba Koume, while she sat peeling yams on her rickety stool outside their tent. "We should head inside soon."
Dragmir looked up from his own yam, straining his ears. "I don't hear anything. How can you tell?"
"Experience," she replied, though the upward quirk of amusement to her mouth told him there was more to the statement.
"But how can you hear something I can't? You're—" he cut himself off, but not fast enough; her smirk had become an outright grin.
"My ears may be old, but my mind is still as sharp as this knife," she teased him, waving said knife in his direction. "Don't test me."
He ducked his head, shame creeping up to his ears. "Sorry."
"Anyway, there are more ways to know things than the obvious," she said, taking pity on him. "Live as long as I have, and you learn to see the shape of things. The movement of the wind, the noise or the quiet of the animals. The fact my knee hurts more than usual."
He scrunched his face up. "I thought you used magic to see the future."
"Sometimes, I do," she laughed. "But don't discount the mundane. Take advantage of all the resources available to you, for Din knows the desert has few enough of them. Forewarning can make the difference between living and dying, here. And for those of us with the magic to hear the whispers of the future itself... forewarning can change a great deal more than that."
It wasn't until later that evening that the strangeness of her words hit him. What could possibly count as a 'great deal more' than living or dying?
"Do you think I have a sister, somewhere?"
Koume glanced sharp-eyed over at him. He ducked his gaze back down to the tasseled edge of the rug, which he played at nervously with his fingers.
"What brought such a question on?"
"Tanah at the Bazaar just had a new baby. She didn't let me hold her but I got a really close look. Her name is Maya."
Dragmir went to Kara Kara at least once a week; sometimes with Koume but sometimes alone, now he was eight. Koume's little plot kept them in vegetables, but grain was easier to buy, and Koume disliked taking her broomstick to populated areas.
She made an odd noise. "And what did you think of Maya?"
He wrinkled his nose. "She was small. And loud. And kind of... squish-faced."
"Ha! So were you, once. And now look at you; a long string-bean, still loud, eating me out of house and home."
"I'm not that loud," Dragmir objected. "Nabooru is much louder than me."
"Well, that's probably true enough. And I have no idea if you have a sister."
"Naya said Tanah lost a little girl before, and the new baby will help her not be sad about it any more. Maybe... if my mother had a little girl, she won't be sad any more about giving me away."
Koume sighed, and wandered over to sit next to him, ruffling his hair.
"I had a sister once, did you know that?"
He turned wide-eyed to her. "No! Was she like you? Was she younger or older? What was her name? What did she look like?"
She laughed. "A lot like me, and neither older nor younger. Well... she claimed to be older, but the truth is we never did know. We were twins, you see. Her name was Kotake."
He digested that information. To think Vaba Koume had once had a sister, and never once mentioned it all this time!
"What happened to her?"
Her smile wavered. "There was a war, between our people and those of Hyrule. Our Chief demanded the services of my sister and I. She was a skilled sorcerer as well; she had mastery over ice, and could freeze a man's blood in his veins where he stood. So we went, the two of us, and between us we killed many Hylian soldiers."
"And then what happened?"
"I came back, alone."
Nabooru rarely happened to be in Kara Kara when Dragmir went to buy supplies, but occasionally he did run across her.
"Dragmir!" She waved at him, across the crowds.
He hurried over to her, the empty bag swinging from his hand. "Nabooru! I missed you, the last few times I came."
"You nearly did this time, we're about to leave! We've been here since yesterday. Mom had some business to see to with the town leader."
"Oh." His shoulders sagged with disappointment.
"Hm, but maybe you could come back with us? You could see the city!"
Hope flared in his chest. "I thought I wasn't allowed in?"
She propped one hand on her hip, eyeing him critically. "If you wear my veil no one will guess you're voe. You're still pretty short."
The urge to protest his height warred with his excitement, and excitement won. "Yeah, alright! Oh, Vaba Koume might worry about me though."
Nabooru dismissed his concern with a casual flick of her hand. "We'll send her a messenger hawk. Come on, this way! We'll need to hurry if we don't want to get left behind."
Dragmir had never realized just how small his life out in the scrub land with Koume was until he set eyes on the Sacred City. People crowded the paved streets. Water cascaded wastefully down from the aqueduct-walls, onto vines of soft fragrant fruit.
Nabooru grinned as his gape-jawed expression, and reached out to pluck a wildberry to pop into his open mouth. The sweet juice burst in his mouth as he chewed, the tartness prickling at his cheeks.
"You look like such a tourist," Nabooru laughed. "Come on, let me show you round."
They were clambering up to the palace roof when a sharp shout came from below. Nabooru ushered him quickly upward, but the captain of the guard was waiting up there, head stuck out of a tower window.
"Nabooru, your tutor is searching for you. I would strongly recommend that you do not keep her waiting further."
Her shoulders sagged. "Alright, I'm going."
"Bring your.... friend... with you, I'm not chasing desert rats through the palace."
Nabooru's tutor took one look at him over her half-moon spectacles and sent the guard out of the room. Then turned her hawkish gaze on Nabooru.
"You brought a voe into the city? Obstinate child!"
He shrank backwards, but Nabooru merely put her hands on her hips. "How did you even know?"
"How many golden-eyed Gerudo children do you think there are running around?"
Nabooru frowned. "He's my friend. Why does it even matter if he's a voe?"
"You risk bringing his curse upon us all, is why it matters! You invite madness within our walls. But regardless of the reasons, how can you expect to one day uphold the law as Chief if you cannot respect it now?"
He looked wide-eyed to Nabooru, seeking reassurance, but her gaze was locked with the older woman's. Her mouth still had a mulish slant, but she sagged in defeat.
The tutor called the guard back in. "Please see our... guest... back out of the city. The young lady and I have lessons on the law waiting for us, it seems."
"Sorry," he whispered to Nabooru as he passed. "I didn't mean to get you in trouble."
Her eyes followed him out of the room, but she didn't speak to him again.
"Vaba!" he called, as he returned home. "Vaba?"
He found her inside, stirring soup.
"Vaba, Nabooru's tutor said..." he trailed off, but Koume merely continued stirring and waited. "She said that there's a curse on me. Was she... Am I cursed? Will I go mad?"
Koume took a long time to answer, busying herself with setting the spoon on the side of the pot.
"I can't give you the answers you seek, vehvi." She held up a hand to forestall his plaintive reply. "All I can give is my own opinion; my own judgement. And I see no madness in you. Only cunning, like that of the desert fox. And more than anything, I see earnest love which our people are fools to turn away. I believe a great future lies ahead of you, there for the grasping."
His throat clenched tight with emotion. If Koume saw the glisten of his eyes in the lamplight, she was kind enough not to mention it.
"Come now, enough of this despondent talk. Tell me about the city; it's been some years now since I last saw it, I want to hear all about it."
He smiled, and while Koume returned to the soup he launched into an excited ramble—which he paused only long enough for him to spoon mouthfuls in—and continued long beyond dinnertime. By bed, he'd long forgotten the woman's harsh words.
Nabooru leaned one hand against the cliff, grinning that infectious grin of hers at him. The confident grin of the Chief's daughter, to whom nothing was withheld or denied.
"Bet I can get to the top."
He looked skeptically up at the rock face, assessing. There was a blur of motion in the corner of his eye as she set off, fingers digging expertly into cracks in the rock, hair pulled up into a tight top ponytail.
"You'll fall!" he called after her. "The section near the top is too flat."
She looked over her shoulder down at him. Her toes were already almost out of reach. "If I do, you'll catch me, right?"
He sighed and began to work his own way up the rock, pushing up with powerful legs. He drew level as she was surveying the aforementioned flat bit, brow furrowed at its complete lack of handholds.
"Let me," he laughed.
He focused, one palm pressed flat against the rock. As he released the power a crack split the rock, zigzagging up away from his splayed fingers. Tiny shards of rock rained down on them, dust settling on their red hair.
Nabooru, who had stopped to watch the display with wide-eyed wonder, grinned that quicksilver grin again, and pushed up beyond him. Her nimble fingers grasped the edges of the crack, and she levered herself up to reach the top of the cliff.
He followed more sedately, trying not to let on how the tightly-controlled magic had drained him.
"What would you have done, if I wasn't here?"
She flopped onto the dusty clifftop, arms stretched out and looking at the clear blue sky. "You were though. You're always there for me when I need you."
On the morning of his twelfth birthday, Koume lifted her rheumy eyes to the snowline of the mountains which dominated the view to the north of their home.
"Pack up your things for a hike. I have something to show you."
Her expression discouraged asking questions; if he asked, he knew, she would merely deflect with some ludicrous non-answer. He went to dig out his pack from the general detritus of his sleeping area instead.
His resolve lasted until about three hours in, as he trudged upward next to her hovering broomstick. The midday sun bounced back at them from the scattered snow of the highlands, and he was unpleasantly sweaty.
"Where are we going?"
Her response was predictably unhelpful. "I know you've led a sheltered life, child, but even you should recognize a mountain when you see one."
"Ha ha."
"Keep going and you'll find out," she replied, before pushing the broom to a new burst of speed that had him hurrying to keep up.
They reached their destination with the last purple rays of the sunset, as the sky above darkened to navy and the temperature dropped. He built a fire for them at the base of the gigantic statue carved into the cliff side.
"This is what we came to see?"
Koume looked up at the carving, though her cloudy eyes must see little of it. "It is."
"Who is she?"
"When the Gerudo were new to the desert," Koume began, in that singsong sort of tone which she always adopted for stories, "there were eight tribes, led by eight great warriors. Seven of them looked on the desert and crafted for themselves a new way of life, and turned their worship away from their old gods from the old lands, towards the Goddess of the Sands. Whether she and Din the Golden Goddess are one and the same is a question I leave to the Hylians; they care about such distinctions, whereas I do not."
Dragmir sat quietly while she re-gathered the thread of the story.
"The eighth tribe were not satisfied with this meager scraping of territory, living on the edge of what the earlier settlers to these lands considered habitable. They cast their eyes inward, to the jewel of the crown of this continent."
"Hyrule," he breathed.
"Hyrule," she confirmed. "Their leader unearthed a great power, gathered together all the tribes of the Gerudo into one great army, and led them on a mission to conquer those ripe and fertile lands."
He frowned. "They can't have succeeded, or the Gerudo would still live in Hyrule today."
"Oh, they succeeded," she replied. "For a while, at least. But the Hylians cried to their goddess, and she sent them a Champion, and a magic sword, and lent to them her own power, to strike back against their occupiers. The clan was wiped out, and even their history forgotten by most."
They sat quietly for a moment, the soft crackle of the fire the only sound in the still crevasse.
"Why did we come here?" His vaba did nothing by accident; there was some lesson to be derived, from this impromptu history lesson. "Why today?"
"This statue represents the Chieftain of the Eighth Clan. The Eighth Heroine, historians who know the story call it. But it was carved long after the failed invasion of Hyrule, by people who had heard about it third-hand. What almost no one remembers is that the clan was led by a King."
That had him sitting up straight. "A male?"
"That's right. They don't remember why, now, but that is why the lowland tribes give their sons to the Goddess of the Sands; why boys are considered bad luck. That is why you were smuggled to me in secret, when you should have been brought to me with pride and honor to study the arcane arts."
He let himself imagine that for a moment, quietly pensive.
"Anyway, you're no longer a child. You have a right to know your own history. How else can we make our own choices?"
He lay in his bedroll that night, one hand tucked under his head, listening to Koume's rasping snores. In the clear starlight, he could still just make out the eroded face of the statue. He tried to imagine the stern features of a King overlaid on them; his own face scowling out from the stone.
What would it be like, to command such power and loyalty? To walk openly among the rest of his people; to have their admiration instead of their fear and disgust? What would it be like to lead them, towards a great and glorious future?
He failed, though, some small part of his mind pointed out. And his failure is why you are shunned.
And a tiny, tiny part of him responded: but maybe if I tried, it would work this time...
"Will you teach me to scry?"
Koume looked up at him, and set her darning carefully aside.
"Why do you want to learn?"
She'd never asked why he wanted to learn anything before, and he frowned for a moment. "Because you said that... knowing what's going to happen can make a difference. That it can be life or death. If something terrible happens, if I knew about it beforehand, I could stop it. Or... prepare. To deal with it better."
He played, over and over in his head, the anguished cries of the young girl who'd been brought to them in her mother's arms last week. Saw the vivid red welling up through her mauled tunic; the ashen tone to her gold-brown skin, and the trembling of her arms. Felt once more the hot tears which had spilled down his own cheeks, as well as her mother's, when Koume's magic could not save her.
"Not everything can be predicted," Koume said gently. "Nor everything which can be predicted, stopped."
"I know that," he replied, squashing the urge to stamp a foot petulantly. "But you said I should use all the resources available to me. I have magic; I could learn to do this."
After what felt like an eternity, Koume nodded. "Sit."
He did so, tilting his head curiously at her as she bustled around. She returned with a pouch, from which she pulled thin sticks of incense. She lit one, placing it in the brass plate hanging from the lantern above their heads. Then she breathed fresh life into the embers of the fire in the grate.
"Watch the flames. Control your breathing. De-focus your eyes, let the vision come to you."
He complies, letting the tent around them fall away from his perception. The world narrows to the leap and dance of flame; the languid curl of smoke and the bright-crack spark of the coals. The incense hangs heavy in the air, coating his tongue.
"What do you see," a murmur comes through the fog of reality.
"I see... conflict. Hyrule, it must be; green and lush. But... in shadow. Stalked, by a Beast."
"What manner of Beast?" comes the query, a little sharper in tone.
"It... I'm not sure. It's as if I see both the oasis floor and the reflection on its surface, overlaid. I see fire, sweeping across the land, rage; great hooves churning mud and tusks and mad, red eyes."
There's a hitch of breath, and he frowns; refocuses.
"But I also see... ice, beneath great wings of death. Frigid, putrid corruption, choking the land. Eyes that hold the stars themselves... pitiless, and merciless."
He blinks, and the vision falls away.
Koume handed his drink back, re-heating it with a flourish of her hand. Her expression was pinched.
"The vision I saw...." he trailed off, unsure how to finish the thought.
"If you saw conflicting images, things are still in flux," Koume assured him brusquely. "Things as large as this... all we can see is what might be. Our actions determine what comes to pass."
A scuffed footstep had him whirling round, a hand wreathed in fire held ready out in front of him.
"Woah! It's just me!"
He let the hand drop harmlessly down by his side. "Nabooru? What are you doing here?"
She tilted her head, hands propped on her hips. His blood picked up at the sight, the pose emphasizing her slender waist and well-defined muscles. He was finally taller than her, but where he remained lanky she was already flourishing into the toned physique for which Gerudo women were famed.
"I came to see you, and Koume told me you were out here. What are you doing here?"
'Here' was the shadowed canyon bottom a half-mile from home. The sides crowded close overhead, blocking all but the harsh noon sun.
"I'm practicing."
"And you can't do that at home... why?"
He thanked Din for the dark tint of his skin, which covered his blush. "I've been trying out some more... combat-focused magic recently. Just in case, you know." After much pestering of a reluctant Koume. Possibly for good reason; he'd nearly set the tent on fire with his lack of control.
The rise of her eyebrows told him she'd heard the bit left unspoken just as loud and clear as if he'd said it. She hopped up onto a boulder. "Go on then, let's see it."
"'Booru... it's dangerous. I don't want to hurt you."
She shrugged, loose-limbed. "Then don't. I trust you."
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, before giving up on finding an answer to that. He turned his back on her, and brought all his focus to bear on his next casting. The straw dummy set up at the end of the canyon exploded. Tiny fragments of burning straw floated through the air, stinging the skin of his forearms.
Nabooru's laughter and rapturous applause sparked through him like fresh breath through the embers of last night's fire.
"Do it again. Let's see how precise you can make it."
"How much further is it?"
Koume turned on her broom. "Are you five again, not fifteen? We'll be there any moment now.. ah!"
As they rounded the corner, Dragmir gasped. Rising proud from the rock face was a towering statue of the Goddess of the Sands, hands resting upturned. Koume maintained the temple within; he'd never been allowed to come before now. Clearly he was now considered old enough to be respectful within its hallowed halls.
He crossed the threshold into vast, cool darkness. Koume lifted a hand, and torches around the wall roared to life, illuminating carved floor-to-ceiling reliefs in flickering light. He turned on his heel, craning his neck to see them all. When he spoke, it was in an awed whisper.
"This place is incredible."
"It is the Heart of our people; a testament to the skill and resilience of the Gerudo," she said, a fond undertone to her voice. "And the place the Chieftains come, to be crowned."
He drifted around the walls, running his fingers over the carvings. They depicted the history of the Gerudo tribes, from their arrival on Hyrule's shores to almost the present day. One panel had been painstakingly carved out, chisel marks marring the surface of the stone. Only faint impressions remained; if he squinted in the torchlight he thought he could perhaps discern the outline of a great demonic figure, framing what might be the throne in Gerudo City.
Koume's voice echoed back to him through the hallways. "Stop dawdling, apprentice-mine! The altar room is this way, I must show you how to prepare the offerings."
For all that Koume complained constantly about being old, Dragmir had never seriously considered that anything could ever topple her. Surely, when the harsh desert winds had ground the city walls down to sand, there would Koume be, griping about it getting between her toes.
It felt viscerally wrong to be holding vigil as she coughed and wheezed her last. As the fever tightened its grip on her, she became steadily less coherent, calling out to people she'd known long ago.
"Kotake, is that you?"
Dragmir roused from his light sleep, picking his head up from his folded arms on the side of her bed. The lamp cast his shadow across the bedspread.
"Sister-mine," Koume croaked. "Next time... I think I should like to go first. Or... together."
"Vaba..."
Her eyes refocused on him. "Vehvi. Ah, look at you. A man, already." She reached out to grasp his hand in one leathery palm—so cold, now. "Promise me—"
His voice caught in his throat. "What?"
A hacking coughing fit took over her, and he passed her a cup of water. She closed her eyes, and he felt his own drifting shut again, deep exhaustion weighing on them.
"Promise me..." she rasped, voice barely even a whisper, "that you will stay true to yourself."
She released her grip as her last exhale slipped through her lips. He pressed one hand to his mouth to stifle the unearthly noise clawing its way up from his chest.
It might have been minutes or hours before he rose, to scratch out a perfunctory message with numb fingers. He watched the messenger bird until it was a dot in the sky, and then turned to start gathering up the sickroom.
In the hours following, he put away the bedding and sickroom things, built a pyre, and laid Koume on it with bunches of safflina tucked around her, and flat stones on her eyes. With that burst of activity over he lapsed into staring blankly into the distance, his vision blurred by the tears which had left tracks on his cheeks. His hands gripped a mug of peppermint tea that had long since gone cold, his throat too raw to drink it.
Nabooru tugged it gently from his fingers and set it aside, before gathering him into a hug. He hadn't even heard her come in.
Outside, he lit the kindling with a snap of his fingers, and Nabooru's warm presence against his side was all that kept him steady through the long night.
"I should go see to the Temple," he announced over breakfast the next day. He'd slept until the sun was almost overhead, an unheard of lie-in when Koume—
Nabooru had noticed him pausing with spoon still mid-air. He swallowed the mouthful of barley and made himself finish the thought. He had never slept so late with Koume chivvying him out of bed in the pre-dawn gloom every day to tend the goats.
"The council of elders will take care of it," she said, muffled around a mouthful of porridge. "Don't worry about it."
"I want to. It's been neglected, during her illness."
She laid her spoon down, sighing. "You should leave it be. They don't want you there."
"I was her apprentice, she's been training me for years—"
"Koume got a lot of leeway with the council because of her war record, and her age, and the fact she trained my mother and my mother's mother and her mother too—" she twirled a hand in the air, a and so on gesture. "But you have to realize that with her gone, they won't honor her patronage of you."
"You're the next Chief, surely you can—"
"Drag. Don't be like this. They're not going to overturn a core tenet of the Priesthood because I asked really nicely."
He bared his teeth. "Did you ask at all?"
"They wanted to come and take over her funeral," she snapped. "I managed to argue them down from that at least."
He flinched as if slapped, and her eyes softened.
"Look, I am sorry. But you need to accept how things are." She waited for a response he couldn't bring himself to give, and then pushed her bowl away. "I need to get back. I have other duties."
The silence stretched between them as she gathered her things. She paused at the threshold, one hand holding up the door fabric. "See you around, Dragmir. My condolences for your loss."
He sat motionless on the floor for a long time, feeling emptied-out. His abandoned porridge had congealed so much he had to hack at it with a spoon to clean the bowl. As outlets for his frustration went, it was woefully inadequate.
Dragmir's home was nearly a half-day's hike from the Bazaar on foot, and another from there to the City. Far enough to keep him largely in peaceful solitude, but still close enough for trips to the market. And for the steady stream of supplicants coming to seek magical assistance with their health, animals and love lives. The morning he saw smoke rising on the horizon—the deep, midnight blue which signified the death of the incumbent Gerudo Chief—he made the trip in three hours, clinging to Koume's old, recalcitrant broomstick with white knuckles and gritted teeth. Three years without use hadn't done it any favors.
The days of sneaking into the city in vai clothes were long gone; even with his hood up to hide his stubble, his voice rang out deep and rich.
"Voe are forbidden in the Walled City," one of the guards told him, face like stone. The other eyed him with open fear and curiosity.
"I am Gerudo," he snarled into the face of their impassivity. "I must see Nabooru. If you won't allow me entry, go get her!"
The guards shifted their weight, drawing attention to their scimitars. "She is busy. Preparations for her coronation are underway."
Hot frustration pricked at the corners of his eyes. A mad urge swept through him, to carve a bloody swath through the streets of the city all the way to Nabooru, where he would deposit the heads of these insignificant insects at her feet. He itched to call a firestorm down on this entire hateful city. He turned and walked a few paces away instead, shivering as the feeling coursed through him. He focused on his breathing, and imagined the power grounding itself through the bare soles of his feet to the sand below.
After some time a cough behind him announced the approach of one of the guards.She looked down her nose at him despite his greater height.
"Chief Nabooru commands you to leave. If you do not leave of your own accord, I am instructed to ensure it."
His throat worked soundlessly for a moment, and the guard's grip on her weapon tightened. He raised one hand, empty of dagger and crackling magic both.
"Peace, I shall take my leave. Please tell Nabooru... I am sorry for her loss. I hope that she has support, in this difficult time."