Healers from all parts of the Monarchy had gathered in Nine Towers to examine Her Majesty. For weeks, the halls of the royal palace echoed with their discussions. Everyone had a different theory about the nature of the illness that gripped Queen Sula. In the end, they could agree on only these two facts:

There was no cure.

A month more was as long as anyone dared hope she would live.

It was not unusual for monarchs to take ill and die relatively young. It had, in fact, been the case for as long as anyone could remember. But there had always been a plan. When Jeniah, the queen's daughter, turned eighteen, her mother would abdicate and allow the princess to ascend to the throne. That was how it had always worked, for the nearly one thousand years their family had ruled.

But Jeniah had just turned twelve. And if the healers were to be believed, she would ascend to power much sooner than planned.

When word spread of the queen's fate, Jeniah locked herself in her bedchambers for three days. No one disturbed her. The servants who'd helped raise the young princess left trays of food near her door so she wouldn't starve. But no one spoke to the heir apparent. It was impossible to understand what the girl felt.

Jeniah sat in her room, refusing to cry. She braided her long, black hair with green glass beads. She played her recorder, filling the room with a lullaby her mother had taught her. But she would not cry. She knew the tears would comeâand that they would be unstoppableâonce her mother was truly gone. Knowing death was coming for the queen didn't make Jeniah sad. She was too terrified to be sad.

Jeniah knew nothing about
being
a queen. She had never been permitted in the throne room when her mother held court. “The time will come for all that,” the princess's caregivers had promised each time Jeniah asked to watch. “Someday.” Everyone had believed Jeniah had six more years to learn.

But “someday” turned out to be “now.” She wasn't ready. She was scared she wouldn't have time. Surely there was much to learn about being a fair and just leader.

Jeniah had to turn her terror into resolve. She
would
learn how to be a queen. The time for tears would come. For now, she had to stay strong. She stared in the mirror, shook her finger at her reflection, and reminded herself to be brave.

So, when the queen knocked softly on Jeniah's bedroom door at the end of the princess's third day of seclusion and whispered for her daughter, the young girl answered with squared shoulders and a straight back. “You should be in bed,” she told her mother. Her words sounded braver than she felt. For months, Jeniah had watched her mother's health dwindle away.

The woman who stood at her door was barely recognizable as the one who'd raised her. The queen's illness made her appear much older than she truly was. Her eyes were swollen; her back was hunched. Where mother and daughter once shared smooth, dark skin, the queen's was now dry and cracked. Despite all that, Jeniah didn't have to search hard to find the kindness she'd always seen in her mother's regal face.

“Come,” the queen said, her voice wavering. “We're going to the top of Lithe Tower.”

As she took her mother's arm, Jeniah's breath seized. Lithe Tower was the tallest of the castle's nine monoliths, twice the size of the others. It was the highest point in all the land, with a view reserved for the monarch. The only exception occurred when an heir apparent was escorted there shortly before the start of a new reign.

This truthâthis hard, hard truthâweakened Jeniah's march up to the tower entrance. Her knees trembled.
This is real
, she told herself. For the three days she'd locked herself in her room, her mother's illness had not been real.

Jeniah and the queen strode arm in arm down a narrow passage made of rough, silver-dappled stone. As they came to a wooden door at the hall's end, the queen produced a long key. It had teeth in four directions, like a weather vane.

“Bring the torch,” Queen Sula instructed as the lock on the door clicked open. Jeniah took a torch from the wall. Together, they crossed the door's threshold. The spiral staircase beyond was so narrow, they had to proceed single file. They climbed and climbed the endless stairs. The princess moved closer to her mother, where the scent of the rose water and mint salve that eased the queen's pain overpowered the passageway's musty smell.

The queen struggled with each step, keeping one hand on the wall. Despite this, Jeniah imagined that the shadows cowered from her mother's approach the farther up they went.

As Jeniah's legs started to ache, the stairs disappeared into an opening in the ceiling. Queen and princess emerged from the dark stairwell onto the very top of Lithe Tower. They stood on a wide, flat stone circle covered by a clear glass dome. When Jeniah moved to the edge and looked down, she could see the eight other cloud-colored spires that made up the rest of Nine Towers forming a circle around Lithe. Not far from the castle gates, a slender dirt road split the countryside on its way to the nearest town, Emberfell.

“Look around,” the queen said.

Jeniah stepped back. Nothing blocked her view. The Caprack Mountains on the horizon joined land and sky like jagged gray stitches. That one seam kept the pair united in all directions.

Her gaze swept down from the skyline. Rolling fields, lush green forests, and verdant farmland rich with golden harvests stretched out from the base of Nine Towers. A twisting river cut a swath through the west lands, looking like liquid fire in the setting sun. As dusk approached, lanterns from a patchwork of towns and villages made a pinprick mosaic of light across the land.

It was the most beautiful thing Jeniah had ever seen.

“This is our Monarchy,” Queen Sula said. “It has been a land of peace and prosperity for a thousand years. Your first duty as queen is, and always will be, to protect that.”

Jeniah nodded. Standing in place, she turned around slowly. She memorized every inch of the land, as if sealing the promise to serve as guardian. As she did, something curious happened. The tiny dots of warm, amber light that marked every village and town for miles flickered and, one by one, turned bright blue. She turned to her mother, eyebrow raised.

The queen smiled. “Tonight is what the people call Tower Rise. It's a rare holiday. It occurs only when a new monarch ascends Lithe Tower for the first time.”

The queen held up her right hand where she wore two identical rings, each with an opal wrapped in silver filigree. Only the monarch could wear these. Queen Sula slid one ring from her own finger onto Jeniah's. “The people know you're here, watching over them. They know you are no longer merely a princess. You are now Queen Ascendant. This is their tribute.”

Jeniah closed her fist. The ring hung so loosely on her finger, she was afraid it would slip off. In the distance, the blue lights winked as if the entire Monarchy were showing approval. Jeniah imagined she should have felt honored by the people's gesture, but instead she felt embarrassed, as if she'd been caught spying. Still, she continued to survey all that would soon be hers to govern. Her eyes fell just east of the river and stopped.

Between the rushing river and a thriving forest sat a small patch of land, a blemish scarring the middle of the otherwise gorgeous realm. Jeniah had almost missed it. Even now, as she tried to look directly at it, she found it difficult. Almost as if her eyes
didn't want
to see it.

Determined, she moved to a brass spyglass mounted in a Y-shaped stone at the platform's edge. She trained the glass's lens on the dark area. Black trees with black branches and black leaves grappled with one another in an eternal choke hold. Shadows seemed drawn to the unsightly regionâa serrated slash shaped like the curved blade Cook used to butcher cows. No light could touch it.

Or maybe light
refused
to touch it.

The queen laid a hand on the princess's shoulder. “Do you know what that is?”

Jeniah knew. Her heart had told her, the moment her eyes fell on the spot. “Dreadwillow Carse.” The words thrummed on her lips. For as long as Jeniah could remember, the name had only ever lived as a whisper among the royal family's servants. A footnote in the lectures of her teachers. An oddityâlike a treasonous, distant relativeâthat was never, ever discussed.

“And what do you know about it?” the queen asked.

Never, ever discussed, save one fact that had been repeated to her over and over since Jeniah could first talk. “I'm not to go there. Ever.”

“Very good,” the queen said. “Wherever you go in the Monarchy, you will be welcomed warmly. But you must never set foot in Dreadwillow Carse.”

Jeniah, who'd never been good at holding in the thoughts that pressed against her insides, asked the necessary question. “Why?”

The queen stood as tall as her illness would allow. “It is forbidden. The people rely on us to maintain peace and prosperity. And it is written in the oldest books: if any monarch enters Dreadwillow Carse, then the Monarchy will fall.”

A chill crawled on spider's legs over Jeniah's hands. She'd been told before never to enter. She'd never been told the Monarchy was at stake. “Do you understand?” the queen asked.

Jeniah knew that tone. It meant the queen wasn't to be questioned. Yet it was a tone that always
inspired
questions in Jeniah. “But whyâ?”

“You can never go to Dreadwillow Carse,” the queen interrupted. And then she repeated, “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mother. I understand.”

But Jeniah didn't understand. Each step she took as they descended the crooked stairs fanned the flames of new questions for which she
needed
answers.

What was Dreadwillow Carse? How was it possible they did not rule there? And, most important, why would the Monarchy end if she entered the Carse?

When they returned to the castle halls, the queen's gait faltered. Jeniah took her mother's arm and guided her back to her bedchambers.

“Time is short,” the queen said. “Tomorrow, you will meet with a new tutor. He will teach you what you need to know to rule over your people justly. Listen to everything he says.”

“Yes, Mother.”

The queen laced her fingers with her daughter's. “You will make an excellent queen.”

THAT NIGHT, LYING
in bed, Jeniah tried to think about how badly she wanted to make her mother proud by upholding the legacy of benevolence laid out by her ancestors. She tried to think about how the lives and happiness of everyone in the Monarchy depended on her learning to become a fair and just queen. She tried to think about anything and everything that wasn't Dreadwillow Carse.

If any monarch enters Dreadwillow Carse, then the Monarchy will fall.

She failed
.

BOOK: The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse

3.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads