Return to the Nine Kingdoms

33

Wendell
Wendell had become a remarkable horseman in the years since he'd relied solely on his attendants and carriage drivers for traveling within and around his own Kingdom. The day before, he'd ridden as hard as he'd dared through Little Lamb Village and into the Thousand Mile Forest, but even the skills he'd acquired could not permit his horse and those of the Guards who rode with him from nearly falling to exhaustion. Not many suitable horses had been available for trade in the tiny farms outside of the forest, but Wendell had managed to acquire a nice young mare for the rest of his journey south to the battlefront.
Quartermaster Silvestri had seen to it that the mare had been returned to its original owner and Wendell himself had vowed to return in the coming weeks to the farmer's home with a handsome fee of gratitude. A majority of his men, who had not been as lucky in procuring their own steeds, had allowed their horses rest while those who had found suitable exchanges accompanied the King.
"High Commander," King Wendell had ordered before setting off again for his castle, "do see to it that the Guards have taken care of those horses and will return them properly to each of the farmers. Were any of them wounded?"
"Aye, Majesty. Two were lost on the bridge and went over the side with the Trolls during the cavalry charge," High Commander had admitted.
Wendell had sighed with deep regret. If he could have removed the Troll threat without a single ounce of harm to his own people, he would have preferred it over arranging recompense for their lost livelihoods. He was already sitting astride the fresh horse he would ride north and the night stretched out far and wide in front of them. He hoped, then and there, to do better by this animal, but he knew he must push the beast over hill and dale, forest and rock to reach his castle and his Mirrors.
"The Quartermaster has assured me that this mare is fresh and well-suited for the journey north," King Wendell had announced. "I will, after all, not require a squad—"
"Your Majesty!" High Commander Davis had interrupted. "That is highly irregular and danger—"
"The squad will slow me down and use more resources than necessary. They can, instead, accompany the cargo. I believe that the Troll is still in camp?"
"Your Majesty," High Commander Davis had begun again, unwilling to move on from his point.
"That will be all, High Commander, that I will hear of it."
Defiantly, King Wendell pulled the reins and urged the horse into a gentle stride, warming up to the trot and eventual galloping gait he would need from her. He would need to pace the horse effectively, only pushing her to gallop through the parts of the journey where it was safest. Even then, he wasn't sure that he could make it back, alone, before daybreak.
And he was tired. He hadn't slept but for a few hours since Wolf and Virginia fell through his Mirror nearly three days before the battle against the Trolls. Fatigued, Wendell had to encourage himself to stay alert. As he had rounded the turn in the road that led toward SNMH, Wendell had pulled the horse left, choosing to ride closer to the edge of the forest and to avoid coming upon any of the men and women who might be on their way to recover from the fighting. An ease had begun to blossom in Wendell's chest, underneath his dirty, stained uniform, and the closer he got the the castle, the less anxious he felt over Rose's abduction, and wherever Wolf and Virginia had chosen to be. Everything will be alright, he had told himself silently. I just need to get to my Mirrors.

The mare was just to the point of breaking when Wendell crossed from the outskirts of Little Lamb Village. He thought he'd pushed her too hard, only stopping for a brief respite in the village, but she seemed content to carry on through the last part of their journey together. She trotted right through the opening at the top of the road into the castle grounds where the gates should have been locked and guarded.
The Guards who had been disabled by Wolf and Virginia in their attempts to leave the castle for their own quest to rescue Rose had been relieved of their duty so they might recover in their barracks, but those that were meant to replace them had gone from their posts as well. Even as King with the freedom to roam his own grounds if he chose to, even he should have been stopped at the gate to ensure that he was no enemy of the Fourth Kingdom.
"We are at war, people!" Wendell announced to no one.
The horse plodded along wearily now, and the rising sun on his right side began to reveal a certain kind of desolation to his home. When he finally approached the outer courtyard of his castle, he noticed immediately that things were not as the should have been.
The torches, which should have still been burning, were cold and and melted snow dripped from the sconces. The Guards who would have been assigned to remain at the terraces, walking their patrols while their brothers and sisters fought in the battle with the Trolls miles and miles away, were absent. Even the butler that Barnaby would have assigned to the door was unresponsive when Wendell dismounted and banged on the wood.
The mare, untethered, wandered through the courtyard and toward the stables, perhaps smelling the troughs of clear water and fresh feed. The clatter of its hooves over the cobblestones echoed through the courtyard oddly. Wendell pushed open the door at the handle, that old pretentious feeling of having to do things that a King shouldn't have to do creeping into his thoughts, and took a step into the quiet castle.
The grand entrance, a foyer renowned throughout the Kingdoms as one of great importance for having hosted not only Queen Snow White and her King Florian, but nearly every King, Queen, and Emperor of the Nine Realms, was completely empty. The welcoming glow of the entrance was gone and had been replaced by a dullness so cold that ice even appeared to have taken over every surface. In the chair next to the door where the older butlers had been allowed to recline between welcoming guests, the butler that Wendell had been expecting, was slumped forward, the skin on his balding head blue and coated with frost.
"Barnaby?" King Wendell called. His voice echoed and carried, but there was no response. He bent down into a squat in front of the butler and lamented the fact that he could not recall the man's name. "Barnaby, what's going..."
The man was still breathing, though slowly, and the frost around him was beginning to melt. Drips fell from the white hair that ringed his head and small snowflakes drifted down from his collar and into his lap. Wendell stood, achingly tired from his three days of no rest and his two days of traveling by horseback, and looked around helplessly for any other signs of life.
"My Mirrors!" he cried as the thought suddenly burst into his mind.
He touched the butler gently on the shoulder but spun away to find his way to the Mirror Room. The foyer opened into the entrance hall and Wendell sped down the length to the spot in the wall where the change in the wall's paper coverings were only slightly noticeable. Frost coated the invisible frame of the doorway and Wendell knew at once that he wouldn't need to use the sconce latch to enter.
"What in Kingdom's name?" Wendell cursed. The door was slightly popped open and the normally dark room glowed with a dull and cold white light.
Wendell pushed open the door, struggling against a pile of snow that had collected in its path. Once inside, he immediately caught sight of a strange figure encased in ice from head to dainty toe.
"Iyla!" Wendell cried as he rushed toward her.
She was trapped, her eyes and mouth frozen wide open, as if she were silently screaming for help, in crystal-clear ice that seemed to be the source of the white glow. Iyla appeared to be unaware of his presence and her eyes refused to follow him as he circled her frozen statue of a form. Her left arm was raised above her head and her hand was slightly clenched and pointing at the wall across from her. Wendell turned slowly, following her gesture, and realized at once that she was directing his attention, albeit unknowingly, to the empty space on the wall where the Traveling Mirror had once hung.
"No!" Wendell cried when he realized.
He'd been so distracted by the sight of his Queen immobilized by ice, that it hadn't occurred to him that the Mirror Room was startlingly devoid of most of its Mirrors. Queen Iyla herself stood over the thick panes of glass that normally hid the most dangerous of Mirrors. Wendell saw once he looked under the Queen's dainty feet that the glass had been shattered, inconceivably, and Iyla was only suspended from falling into the vault that should have concealed the Mirror to Rule the World. Underneath her, the vault was empty. The Mirrors to Remember and Forget, the Traveling Mirror, and the Spying Mirror were all gone. Only the Messaging Mirrors given to him by the Dwarves remained—two were cracked in several places and covered in thick swaths of ice and a third was shattered completely, its glass mixed with ice on the floor. The fourth reflected Wendell's horrified expression back at him.
His Mirrors were lost—stolen by the only person who could have left this particular destruction behind. She'd frozen her own daughter in a prison of ice that, unlike the frost that covered the butler, refused to melt even one drop. Barnaby and the others on the castle grounds were hopefully still alive like the butler and could be fully revived within the hour. But Queen Iyla, her tears of anguish locked permanently on her pale cheeks, would remain as she was, frozen forever.
"My Queen," Wendell said softly.
He'd torn himself from gaping at the empty spaces where the Mirrors had been and had turned back to the woman he'd so reluctantly joined himself to at the behest of Queen Cinderella. He touched the glass-like surface of the ice with his bare fingertips but not even that small amount of warmth was enough to grant a tiny drop of moisture release from the ice. The tendrils of comfort he'd felt with every mile the mare had brought him closer to the castle were gone. Despair filled his heart, though he wasn't entirely sure why.
Outside of the Mirror Room, Wendell's castle was beginning to come to life again. He could hear the distant, angered calls of several Guards, their voices distinctly ordered and demanding. They called for their commanders, they shouted orders at one another, and not a single one of them seemed to know what in Kingdom's name was going on.
Wendell felt the heaviness of his own body drawing him down and he found himself incapable of bearing the weight any further. Queen Iyla's frozen prison was cold on his back as he turned away from her face and slumped down next to her. Where he would have expected the icy water to soak his uniform, he felt only the cold hardness of the ice itself, impenetrable and enduringly solid. Around him, the shattered pieces of the Mirrors seemed to reflect, still, the state of his own affairs. Stunned with how quickly his victory had been stolen away, Wendell sat in silence until sleep overwhelmed him.