The 10th Kingdom

by Kathryn Wesley

  “Anthony,” Prince said, “what’s being scared like? What does it feel like?”

  “What do you mean, what’s it like?” Tony asked. “It’s like being scared.”

  Suddenly he realized what he was saying—and what Prince Wendell was asking. Something was happening. Tony looked at Wendell, really looked at him. He wasn’t looking at a Prince. He was looking at a frightened little dog.

  “Careful of your paws with all the glass,” Tony said gently.

  “My mind is going,” Prince said. “My brain is shrinking.”

  Tony couldn’t handle another crisis. “You’re imagining

  it.”

  “My dreams are getting more and more dog-like. And when

  I wake up, it takes longer and longer to remember who I am. And instead of calling you Anthony, I wanted to call you Biscuit Giver.”

  That just made Tony sad. He looked at Virginia, but she— of course—hadn’t heard a word that Prince Wendell had said. She was still staring at the broken pieces of glass as though she had lost everything.

  Maybe she had.

  Then there was a shout behind him. Tony turned. A crowd was gathering.

  “Look,” a man shouted. “The mirror-breaker.”

  “He’s broken a magic mirror,” a boy said. “Seven years bad luck.”

  “I don’t believe in silly superstition,” Tony said. Then he heard the strangest sound. It was the sound of breaking glass, only more so. It was as if there was a tinkling, shattering wave of breaking glass coming toward him. The sound shook him and enveloped him.

  He looked at Virginia. She was staring dully at the crowd. She didn’t seem to hear the glass sound at all.

  “What you don’t believe in can’t hurt you,” Tony said with more bravado than he felt.

  Then something hit him hard on the head.

  “Ow!”

  He staggered about, clutching his forehead. It was bleeding. There was a stone at his feet.

  “What?” Virginia asked.

  “It was a great big rock,” Tony said, looking up. A bird was flying away from him, as if it had dropped the rock. ‘ ‘What are the chances of that happening?”

  The crowd was starting to advance on them. This crowd looked ugly. Not quite as bad as the crowd that had tried to kill Wolf, but close.

  “Mirror-breaker,” a man said. “Get out of the town. We don’t want your bad luck here.”

  “Get out of town!”

  Tony reached for Wendell. Virginia shook her head, and then they all started to fun. The crowd chased them to the edge of the cobblestone streets, but didn’t follow into the mountains beyond.

  The road was windy and narrow and not nearly as pleasant as Tony could have hoped. He’d left with only the bag in his hand, the bits of the mirror that he’d been able to salvage. He hoped that Virginia had something else with her.

  “It’s no good just walking,” Virginia said. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony said. “But we can’t stay in town, can we?”

  “Anthony,” Prince Wendell said, “you see that stick over there? Just coming up to it now. Perfect size. Be a good man and pick it up and throw it into the grass over there.”

  ‘ ‘I’m not going to start throwing sticks for you,’ ’ Tony said, “or you’ll completely forget who you are.”

  “Oh, go on. Just throw one stick.”

  “No.”

  “Just one,” Prince Wendell begged. He wagged his tail and looked quite appealing.

  “All right,” Tony said. “Just one.”

  He picked up the stick Wendell had been talking about and threw it. Wendell ran after it and brought it back, his tail wagging so hard, his entire backside moved.

  “That was great!” Prince Wendell said, sounding more like a dog voice-over in a commercial than a prince. “Throw it again!”

  “No.”

  “Go on,” Prince Wendell said. “You know you want to.” The broken glass sound began again. It grew louder and louder. Tony looked around for its source, but he had a hunch he wouldn’t find it.

  “Oh, no,” Tony said, “I can hear that sound again, that bad-luck sound.”

  “Well, I can’t hear anything,” Virginia said.

  He looked all around him, stepping back to see if anyone was following them. Then he screamed in pain and fell to the ground, clutching his foot.

  “What?” Virginia asked.

  “My foot! My foot!” He rolled over on his back yelping in pain.

  Virginia bent down to investigate. “Keep still.” She caught his waving foot and examined it. “It’s just a nail.”

  She pulled it out and Tony screamed again. He could feel the blood flowing in his shoes. They both examined the huge, rusty nail. They looked at each other, and then thunder boomed.

  The heavens opened and within an instant both he and Virginia were soaking wet. Tony looked skyward. A giant cloud hung above them, but ahead and behind, the sky was blue.

  “Look,” Tony said, pointing upward. “This is the only place it’s raining. On me. It’s clear skies over there. I’m cursed. I’m doomed. Seven years’ bad luck. I’m not going to last the week out.”

  Virginia gave him a withering look. “It is also raining on me, Dad,” she said, heading off.

  Virginia had found a bam just down the road. It wasn’t much of a barn: the roof was nearly gone and the walls barely held together, but it did provide some shelter from the rain. She didn’t tell her father about her greatest fear for him—that for the next seven years it would rain on him and anyone who was near him.

  She wouldn’t be able to take that.

  There was a farmhouse about a quarter mile away. Maybe when the rain stopped, she would ask them for food.

  Her father was crouched on the bam floor, trying to put the mirror back together. He was working it the way he worked his jigsaw puzzles at home. He’d used most of the pieces, but there were still large gaps.

  “We’re going to have to go back,” Tony said. “There’s so many pieces missing.”

  Virginia looked at the hundreds of pieces that they had and slumped. Even if they had all the pieces, they would never be able to reassemble the mirror. They were stack here forever.

  Her father watched her. He was as scared as she was, only in his usual way he was trying to find a solution. But he knew as well as she did that there was no solution, and there never would be.

  She picked up one of the larger pieces and turned it over. “What’s on the back?” she asked, not sure what compelled her to ask the question.

  Still, she turned over piece after piece. All of them had black backing.

  ‘ ‘What are you doing?’ ’ her father yelled. ‘ ‘It took me hours to put those in the right place. You’re mixing them up.”

  She didn’t pay any attention. She kept turning pieces over until she found one with writing on the back.

  “Look,” she said.

  He stared at it for a moment, and then he helped her. They tamed over piece after piece until they had a line of mirror pieces, backs showing. There was a small red dragon emblem followed by parts of words.

  “It’s some kind of cryptic clue,” Tony said. “Man red by the war ... It’s probably a reference to bleeding.”

  “Bleeding?” Virginia asked. “It’s a mirror. It’s not a clue, it’s a maker’s seal. Man red ... Manufactured. That’s it. Manufactured by the War ...”

  “Manufactured by the War of Rag Mounties?”

  “Mountain,” Virginia said.

  “That looks like the tip of a ‘d’ ... The Warves of Drago Mountain.”

  “No. It’s a bigger gap.” She moved the pieces until she saw something she liked. “Manufactured by the Dwarves of Dragon Mountain.”

  Prince Wendell leaned over to look at the pieces.

  “Do you know it?” Tony asked Prince. Tony paused for a moment, and then he said to Virginia, “He thinks he knows it.”

  She smiled.

  �
��Well, let’s go there,” Tony said. “Quick, before I have any more bad luck.”

  Virginia looked through the open bam doors at the farmhouse beyond.

  “Let’s see if we can beg some eggs and cheese from that farmhouse there,” Virginia said.

  Her father shook his head. “It’s that broken glass sound again,” he said, “fading in and out like a radio signal. Let’s go. Maybe it won’t find us.”

  Virginia sighed and shook her head. Hoping for that was like hoping it would never rain again.

  The farmer sat on an ancient chair, watching as the metal merchant he’d hired worked with his new statue. The room was extremely hot. The merchant had a fire going, and he used a winch to hold the statue over the flames. The gold was dripping, which the farmer took to be a bad sign.

  “That’s not gold,” the merchant said.

  “It is,” the farmer said, but he didn’t really have the conviction he’d had just a moment before. He rather liked the statue— called Frozen Rage—even though the three Trolls in it were the ugliest creatures he had ever seen.

  “Nope,” the merchant said. “That’s fool’s gold.”

  “I got it at a knockdown price on account of it being the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen.”

  Outside, a man’s voice yelled, “Ow! Ow!” The farmer looked at the merchant. The merchant’s eyes were wide.

  “Where’s those noises coming from?” the farmer asked.

  The bubbling statue suddenly started to shake and split. The merchant swore, and the farmer watched in horror. Then the statue exploded, sending gold everywhere.

  It landed on the farmer, drenching him in hot gold. When he wiped his eyes, he saw three Trolls lying on the floor, clutching their legs and arms like people whose limbs had gone to sleep.

  “Suck an Elf troop!” the large male Troll shouted.

  The farmer got up and kicked his chair aside. The merchant was wiping the gold from his eyes. He looked terrified.

  “Rubber legs,” said the female Troll. She stood up and fell over. The third Troll threw up all over his shirt. They were acting drunk and, the farmer knew, drunken Trolls were dangerous.

  “We have shamed the Troll nation,” said the first Troll.

  “Only temporarily,” said the female.

  “We’ll disgrace our way back to the top!” said the third as he staggered backwards.

  The farmer was just thinking about escape when there was a knock at the door.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone home,” Tony said. He hadn’t really escaped the broken-glass sound. It had caught him in the middle of the field and twisted his ankle. Now he was standing on a farmer’s porch, begging for food. How low could he go?

  “There is,” Virginia said. “I can hear banging.”

  She knocked on thedoor again. Tony heard the broken glass sound coming at him like a freight train. He tried to pull Virginia back as the door opened.

  The three Trolls stood inside, along with two men covered in melted gold.

  “Oh, my God!” Tony shouted. “They’re back!”

  “Sniff a sandal,” said Burly. “It’s them.”

  “Kill them!” Blabberwort shouted.

  Virginia was already off like a shot. So was Prince Wendell. Tony brought up the rear. He glanced over his shoulder. The Trolls were rolling on the ground, clutching their legs.

  They hadn’t gotten their land legs back. A tiny, tiny stroke of good fortune. Tony ran after Virginia. They had to get as far away as possible, because now that those Trolls were back, they were never going to give up.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The mountains all around them were the biggest mountains Tony had ever seen. Tall and gray and forebidding. He adjusted the pack on his back, thankful that he and Virginia had been able to find camping gear, and stared at the sign ahead of them.

  Dragon Mountain Questing Permits Required

  The sign had the same little dragon symbol, but it all looked very old. Just like the tents around them, frayed and wrecked by the winds. This area had obviously once been a base camp for climbers. And just as obviously it was no longer.

  “There’s nothing here,” Virginia said. She sounded panicked.

  “Let’s not make any hasty judgments,” Tony said. “It’s probably just up the mountain a bit.”

  He didn’t believe that, though. There wasn’t a building in sight. And the path going up the mountain was steep. He hoped they wouldn’t have to do regular climbing. With all the walking they’d been doing this last week, he’d gotten into shape, but he wasn’t in that good a shape.

  Besides, one of them would have to carry Wendell, and that wouldn’t be pretty.

  They didn’t talk much as they went up the path. It was hard

  to climb, and narrow. The farther up they went, the thinner the air got too. Tony had read somewhere that there was some kind of illness connected to thin air. He hoped he didn’t get it.

  As they walked, he could think about all he’d done. The worst was breaking the mirror. Maybe. He hadn’t had a productive life. The only thing he felt he’d done right was Virginia. She at least stuck by him. And she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  Even if she was mad at him.

  She wasn’t talking as they made their ascent. She was focused, sure, but there was more to it than that. He knew his daughter. Her temper was boiling.

  They walked for hours. The views of the mountains and the valleys beyond were gorgeous, but after a while even the view got tiresome.

  The path grew narrow and Virginia, who had taken the lead, stopped. She looked up. Tony followed her gaze. The mountain was huge and daunting, and to go up a rabbit path like the one that was facing them was nearly impossible.

  “If we go any farther,” Virginia said, “we may not be able to get back.”

  “My paws are sore,” Prince Wendell said.

  Tony was wheezing. He hadn’t realized it until they stopped. ‘ ‘One more hour,’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘and then we’ll give up. All right?’ ’

  No one answered. He assumed that meant they agreed. He started up the rabbit path, hoping that his luck would hold.

  Wendell’s castle was at least cleaner than her own. The Queen stood in Wendell’s bedroom, peering down at the courtyard below. She had hidden in the carriage as it made its triumphal journey across the Fourth Kingdom. The Dog Prince had enjoyed the trip, although toward the end she had to prevent him from rolling on the Troll King’s head.

  When they had arrived at the castle, the Dog Prince had provided cover for her, talking—poorly—with the advisors, and leading them off so she could sneak into the castle. Now she was making certain no one saw her, hiding behind curtains and staying out of the way.

  They’d find out about her presence soon enough.

  “This is a lot better than the other place,” the Dog Prince said from behind her. “I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

  The Queen turned away from the window. The Dog Prince stood in the middle of Wendell’s bedroom. His shirt was buttoned wrong, and his hair stuck up in a weird quaff.

  “Nobody helped me,” he said. “I did it myself. What do you think?”

  He really was horribly dog-like. So eager to please, so upset when someone yelled at him. She was trying to choose an appropriate response when she heard tapping.

  It seemed to be coming from one of her mirrors. She took the cloth off it to reveal Burly the Troll and his two siblings, covered in the remains of some gold dust, knocking on the mirror glass as if it were someone’s front door.

  “Hello! Hello! Anyone there?” Burly said.

  Then they saw her and they grinned. What an ugly lot they were.

  “We’re back, Your Majesty,” Burly said.

  “Alive and kicking,” Blabberwort said.

  “And madder than ever,” Bluebell said.

  The Queen couldn’t help herself. She started to laugh. When she got control of herself, she said, “I must say, I am most surpr
ised to see you.”

  They looked at each other, obviously pleased that she was smiling. There seemed to be someone else kicking behind them. She could barely make out the shapes of two men, hanging upside down from their feet.

  “Your Majesty,” Bluebell said, “could we use one of your mirrors to contact our dad?”

  “He’ll be very worried about us,” Burly said.

  “Just a quickie to tell him we’re okay,” Bluebell said.

  The Queen stopped smiling. What to tell them? They might be somewhat useful. She would have to keep them on her side. “You haven’t heard the awful news, then?”

  “We haven’t heard anything,” Bluebell said. “We’ve been gold.”

  She sighed and made the words as gentle as possible. “Your father has been murdered.”

  They staggered backwards away from the mirror. They didn’t say anything and then, in unison, they started to cry. It took them several moments to get control of themselves. Burly, the eldest, managed first.

  “Who did it?” Burly asked.

  Their reaction had given her time to concoct the right story. “That girl,” the Queen said. “She poisoned him.”

  The Trolls stared at her, obviously unable to accept the news. She had to control them now. If she didn’t, they would make a mess of everything.

  “Many terrible things have happened since I last spoke to you,” the Queen said. “My friends, if only for your father, swear you will track her down.”

  “We swear it!” they shouted.

  She smiled. This was a piece of luck she hadn’t anticipated at all.

  It wasn’t a path anymore. It was a mountainside, slanted enough so that Prince Wendell could try to scramble up it. Virginia went first, using rocks for leverage, which meant that Tony had been staring up a dog’s butt for the better part of the last hour.

  He put his hand on Wendell’s haunches and shoved the dog over the last precipice. Wendell disappeared, but Tony heard the broken glass sound again.

  Then he felt his pack shift. Both straps ripped, and before he could react, his rucksack fell off his back and tumbled down the mountain.

  “No! No! No!”

  He watched as it burst open hundreds of feet below. Food, drinks, pans, and his sleeping roll tumbled in a thousand different directions.