Diplomacy

The traversal through Falster was slower than it had been through Mittergaard, and the mood of the people along the route was decidedly more suspicious and fearful. Elsa worked hard to retain a benevolent exterior, but she was still quite angry about Lotus. She could still feel him, but unlike the ability her creations seemed to have, she didn't have a sense of where her creations were, or how near or far, which at the moment was infuriating. When they finally arrived at the capital in the evening, her arrival was greeting with some element of surprise, but not as much as she would have anticipated. Either a runner had gone ahead, or her visit had been expected. The chief butler met her at the castle wall and introduced himself as Hermod Vergard. He ushered her to a somewhat cramped room in the castle, along with four of her guards, and assured her that he would inform the king of her arrival. Not being met by the king himself was further slight. After passing the night with no contact, Elsa's patience was at an end. "My apologies in advance," she said to her guards. Then she began to drop the temperature in the castle.

Once the temperature reached around 40 degrees, Hermod knocked on her door. "The king will see you now," he said, while rubbing his hands together and breathing into them in an effort to warm them up.

"Tell him I'm not ready," Elsa replied. She shut the door firmly. The walls and the windows were sweating from condensation. Elsa donned her blue ice dress with cape.

At around 35 degrees, Hermod knocked again. "Please, your majesty," he said with plaintive eyes.

She regarded him for a long moment, and then said, "very well." She released her grip on the cold and the air became tangibly warmer, although now it would take a while for the stone walls to catch up.

Hermod escorted Elsa and her guards to the throne room entrance and opened the door. The throne room had the look of a small gothic church. It was long and somewhat narrow, with an arched ceiling and arched windows at intervals all along the outside walls. There were horizontal wooden beams at intervals overhead with posts that rose vertically to support the arched stone ceiling. At the other end of the room upon the dais was a stone throne with the banner of Falster hanging from the final beam. The room continued perhaps six feet behind the throne in a semicircle with arched windows on it. To the left and right were high-backed seats where a number of dignitaries or advisers were sitting, with a railing separating the seating area from the main path to the dais. A long muted red carpet began at the door and ended at the throne. The arched windows were all open in an attempt to mitigate the cold, allowing a gentle breeze to pass through the room and ruffle the Falster herald slightly.

Sitting on the throne, wearing shining armor, was a tall well-built man with rather long unkempt dark brown hair and a stern look on his face. Armor? Seriously? Elsa thought. But as Elsa took her first steps into the room, from behind the final beam there came into her view a low pillar to his right with a large glass-domed bird cage, and sitting within was Lotus. Elsa clenched her teeth to keep her first reaction in check. Elsa and her guards walked up to the dais and stopped.

"Queen Elsa, of Arendelle," he announced grandly to the room. "Your reputation precedes you." He smiled somewhat condescendingly.

She chose a calm voice in spite of her piercing gaze. "King Terence Falster, I presume," she said. She gave a polite curtsey.

His attention became a little more focused at her apparent awareness of the politics. "And what might bring you all the way to our little kingdom?"

"Inasmuch as Falster and Mittergaard are both Arendelle's allies, and a Mittergaard prince was chased onto our shores by a Falster warship, I thought it prudent to do what I could to prevent Arendelle from being petitioned to support one side or the other." She paused in the silence. "I also felt that to the degree that I could prevent or minimize a war, the effort would be a worthy one."

"A humanitarian - the one who froze her own kingdom!" he mocked. "Frankly, you're a little late, ice queen. Particularly since you seem to already have chosen the side of Mittergaard. Perhaps you could unfreeze my navy as a gesture of good faith."

She considered momentarily and folded her hands in front of her. "Yours are not the only ships locked in place, your majesty. As a king, I presume your word is your bond?" She gestured around the room. "If you are willing to give your word before these witnesses this day that you will break your league with Weselton, then I will unfreeze the bay. Perhaps then Falster and Mittergaard could communicate on more equal terms."

Terence leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and gave a penetrating gaze as he rubbed his chin. "An interesting proposition…" he said. "I will have to think on it and discuss it with my advisers." He leaned back again. "Do you know why I'm doing this?" he asked abruptly. Elsa recognized it as a rhetorical question. "Because our countries deserve to be united under strong leadership. It is our destiny. We will be stronger united than divided. King Horatio could never grasp this. That is why Falster remains the tail instead of the head."

Stronger for what? Elsa wondered cynically. "Unity compelled from above is unity in name only," she said. "Your people will remain divided in spirit, and the sword will never depart from your house."

He sat back on his throne and said dismissively, "So much power at your disposal, but you have no vision. You don't deserve ice powers. I will call for you tomorrow after I've discussed your proposition with my advisors. You may go."

"One last thing, your majesty. You are holding several Mittergaard ambassadors prisoner. They must be freed."

He flashed to anger and jumped to his feet. "You would lecture me in my throne room, ice queen? I will handle Mittergaard spies as I see fit!"

Elsa closed her eyes and felt the room. She balled her fists and gave a small stamp of her foot for dramatic flair. In an instant the ice covered the floor and crackled up the walls, and a spike of ice shot up to eye level in front of each person seated about the periphery and in front of the king. There were shouts and gasps. "Do not trifle with me, king Terence," she said sternly through narrowed eyes. "We are both heads of state. It may so be that by putting you in remembrance today of the international rules of warfare that I spare you tomorrow from having other nations join against you solely on the basis of some cause. Diplomats are to be accorded courtesy." The room was dead silent.

He grabbed the spike in front of his face and slowly stepped around it. Gradually his anger faded to a grin of grudging respect. "Aaron," he called, while fingering the ice.

"Aye," came the reply from somewhere to Elsa's left.

"Free the ... diplomats."

"Yes, your majesty." Terence and Elsa stood with their eyes locked unflinchingly while the man clop clop clopped around the outside of the room and then opened and shut the door.

"Thaw my throne room," he demanded.

"Release my bird," Elsa responded.

There was a quiet stalemate for a moment, and then he gestured and someone removed the glass dome. Lotus immediately bolted out the nearest open window. Elsa withdrew her ice.

"Good day to you, king Terence," she replied calmly. "I will await your interest tomorrow." She turned and began to walk towards the door with her guards.

As she was walking, she heard the king say, "perhaps someday the world will know what you would be without your powers."

Nothing like you, she thought with disgust. She had to bite her tongue. Suddenly she saw the two guards in front of her fall, and had only enough time to tense her own muscles before something heavy, dropped from the rafters above, struck her also on the head, knocking her unconscious as it drove her roughly to the floor.

Elsa awoke in a fetal position on the floor of a dark room. Her head was splitting. She raised her face off the floor and noted that the floor was coarse and gritty. She lifted a trembling hand to brush the dirt that was sticking to her cheek. She touched her head next, checking for blood, but found none. She tried to take in her surroundings. It was a very small room indeed – no more than four feet across, and rounded, like the inside of a bowl. She couldn't make out a door in the dim light. She looked up and saw why: directly overhead was a heavy metal grate with dim light coming through from somewhere unseen off to the side. The room wasn't even tall enough to stand. She shifted to a sitting position and held her throbbing head in her hands. She sat trying to clear her mind. The room felt hot. What had happened? Something had fallen on her and her guards from above. It was obviously premeditated. Did king Terence really intend to add this insult to his list? Surely he wouldn't be one of the ones that admiral Naismith had warned her about, one who wouldn't think through the repercussions of killing her. He was power hungry and self-absorbed, but not a fool. She banished that thought. What of her guards? Benjamin and Ladd – those were the two she had seen fall, and she assumed the two behind her had fallen also. Were they alive? She was hearing a constant low roaring sound. Was it from the environment or just in her head? She realized she was also hearing distant voices outside her little cell.

" – would be doing the world a favor, I tell you," said a squeaky voice.

"And bring Arendelle down on my head? No. I'm going to try things this way. Bake a little of the magic out of her and see how pliable she is then." She recognized that as king Terence's voice. "Anyway, I can't take credit for the idea. Just as you can't take credit for your invitation to be here. Who knows: she might end up being a quiescent ally, or a trophy, and if she ends up dead, well, none the worse for the effort, eh little man?"

"Please, titles," said the squeaky voice. It was so familiar – whose was it?

"Duke," said king Terence.

Elsa gasped: Weselton! It was the duke of Weselton! Here!? She put her hands through the grate and attempted to move it. It was either too heavy, or cemented in place. "King Terence," she said weakly, "you're keeping poor council!" She could barely hear herself. It was unlikely they were hearing her. She gripped the grate and froze it, then shook it with what strength she had to see if it would crack.

"She's awake," she heard king Terence say. "It's time."

An unfamiliar face looked through the grate, but the man wasn't standing on it – his face was just outside the grate. If she were to shoot out an ice spike, she could kill him instantly. He said in a hushed voice, "I'm so sorry, your majesty." As his face slipped out of view, he added, "God forgive me ... God forgive me..." A moment later her room began to rock. It was then that she realized it wasn't a room at all. It was a kiln.

"No!" she exclaimed, as the motion caused her to tumble against the side. She felt the vibration as the pot traveled along some kind of track. She could see the high ceiling beyond the grate moving past. The roar was getting louder, and it was starting to get hotter. She panicked. She tried to drive ice spikes through the walls, with no effect. She coated the grate with ice and tried to crack it with expanding ice, but it was too thick and securely fixed in place. She iced the entire inside of the pot and tried with all her might to flex it outward but to no avail – the ice wasn't staying anymore. The air was getting hotter; it was becoming uncomfortable to breathe. The ice below her crackled away and she put down more before she was scalded. The pot was filling with steam. She screamed as she put down more ice, but it was becoming more and more futile. She screamed again, but all she could hear was the roar. "Enceladus," she screamed, "I need your help!" But being inside, and as weakened as she was, she had no hope of creating the portal he would need to reach her. "Enceladus, help me," she begged. "Anna! Someone…"

No! ... Don't act in fear...

From their vantage point on a ledge to the side of the metal smith's forge, Terence and the duke watched. "What is it you're waiting for?" asked the duke.

"I'm waiting for that light to go out," he responded. They watched the blue light through the mouth of the forge flicker as the heat distorted it back and forth. They watched for a good ten minutes as it gradually grew dimmer.

And dimmer.

And dimmer.

And finally went out.

"Pull her out," he instructed the metal smith. The metal smith pulled the kiln out as quickly as he could as Terence and the duke descended the stairs to ground level. The kiln was hissing from the heat. The metal smith, with great thick gloves on his hands and long tongs, detached the metal grate and pulled it off the pot. He carefully peeked over the top without touching the edge and then jumped away with an expression of shock. Terence and the duke exchanged a glance and hastened their progress to the kiln as the metal smith pulled the heavy metal chain that tipped the pot to pour out its contents.

From within rolled a sooty glass ball, hissing from the heat. The metal smith threw several buckets of water on it to wash off the soot. The water boiled away on contact, but it did the job. Then the men all stood back in amazement. Before them was a perfect glass sphere, four feet in diameter, and centered within, suspended in a fetal position, her hands folded as if in prayer, her eyes shut in a serene expression, was Elsa.

"Remarkable!" said Terence as he slowly walked around the orb.

The duke looked back and forth from the orb to the king, and frowned. "The best thing you could do with this is drop it in the deepest ocean!" he asserted in a low voice.

"Oh, no, this is too magnificent," he replied. "Too magnificent," he repeated, as he stopped and stared at Elsa within the crystal clear ball. "This is definitely a trophy!"

"Have you lost your mind?" the duke countered. "Do you think Arendelle will respond any better to this than if she was dead?"

"It's too late now, my friend," he replied. "I will have to play the cards I have been dealt."