The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

AON LAY IN BED AND LISTENED TO A DISTANT ROOSTER
CROW FOR THE
third time. She'd been awake since long before sunup. Today, she'd decided, she would return to the Carse. She'd spent the past week shaking off the effects that had lingered since her last visit. This had never happened before.

When she'd first emerged from the bog to find Laius eyeing the hourglass—its final sands trickling away—she'd taken a deep breath. Inside the Carse, the fear always filled her like something liquid and heavy. It weighed her down. Once she was outside, the heaviness drained away, and the fear vanished. She'd waited for this to happen. The fear vanished, as always. The weight did not.

For the next few days, Aon still felt that heavy weight pulling at her arms and legs and head like leaden marionette strings. Every move she made was slow and labored. And all the more curious was the nagging sensation that it was
familiar.
Like she was still in the bog and yet wasn't. Almost as if she'd taken a part of the Carse with her.

Or maybe left a bit of herself behind.

For the first couple days, Mrs. Grandwyn mistook Aon's symptoms for the flu and confined the girl to bed. Mrs. Grandwyn cheerily served chicken soup and reminded Aon to keep her head high because all illnesses passed. For the better part of a week, Aon was convinced this feeling would never pass.

But it did. Just this morning, she finally felt like the weight was no longer tugging at her. For the first time since her return, she felt back to normal. Which proved to be a whole new problem. She missed the weight. She
craved
it. She hadn't realized it—she had been too worried about the weight lingering—but when the heaviness was inside her, Aon hadn't felt broken. The idea of returning to the Carse so she could feel that way again filled her with excitement.

Late that night, Aon and Laius slipped from the house with the hourglass. Aon had lent it to her stepbrother so he could stare at it when he practiced blowing glass each morning. Now he carried it with him wherever he went, pleased to be entrusted with something that he knew meant so much to Aon. At one with the shadows, Aon and Laius made their way to the entrance of the Carse.

“Two turns?” Laius asked. If the boy had a problem with Aon spending that much time in the bog, his ability to express it was limited to a lopsided grin and crinkled brow.

Aon nodded. “Two hours this time.” When she saw how unsure Laius seemed, she added, “Don't worry. I won't be alone.” She didn't know if she could trust Pirep and Tali. They seemed just as willing to eat her as help her. But then, they'd given her the secret to warding off the Carse's effects. As long as she could continue to express her sadness, she could travel anywhere in the dark bog.

Laius took his place across the road from the Carse's entrance, nodded, and gave the hourglass its first turn. With the sands trickling down, and eagerness practically prodding her every step, Aon returned to the Carse.

Immediately, she felt that familiar weight. Her arms drooped at her sides, and her stride was sluggish. And she loved it. She felt the fear, but it wasn't nearly as strong as it had been. Which seemed suspicious. She ventured forward, on her guard.

Aon's thoughts strayed to Jeniah. There were things she hadn't told the princess in her letters. Like how she'd shared the story of the princess and the dying queen. Or that she'd met creatures who shared names with two fabled cousins. Or how she'd allowed her implike guides to believe that she, Aon, was Jeniah.
These details aren't important
, Aon had reasoned while writing the letters.
She wants to know what is keeping her from the Carse. Why bother her with things that don't matter?

But now, back in the Carse, she felt ashamed about the omissions. Jeniah had been nothing but honest with her from the start. Aon was a traitor. Not only to the princess but to all the Monarchy. She wasn't worthy of the royal family's trust. She was nothing but a liar. She wanted to give up right now . . .

Aon clenched her jaw and marched forward. Another new trick of the Carse. Guilty feelings had almost succeeded in making her abandon her charge. Almost. She had to smile: she'd forced the Carse to change how it dealt with her. Which meant she was winning.

Aon returned to the hook-shaped rock. As if they knew she was coming, the imps emerged from the sludge and led the girl onward. “What does the Highness want to know?” Pirep asked.

“There is an ancient warning,” Aon said. “It states that no monarch can enter the Carse, or else the Monarchy will fall.”

“The Highness is here,” Tali said. “Has the Monarchy fallen?”

Aon ignored the question. “I wish to understand what the warning means. I believe the answer lies somewhere in the Carse.”

Pirep gave an odd little croak that Aon thought
might
have been a chuckle. “Many answers lie in the heart of the Carse,” Pirep said. “Answers to questions no one asks.”

Tali clawed at the ground. “What does the Highness fear more? The answers or the questions?”

Aon fixed the imps with a confident stare. “I fear neither.”

The imps burbled at each other, saying words Aon didn't understand. Then they turned and trod deeper into the Carse, motioning for Aon to follow. She fell into step behind them.

The trio wended its way around massive tree roots that arced up out of the ground. Aon held her nose as the pungent odors grew worse. Now she could smell hot tar and rotting meat. None of it affected Pirep and Tali. They traipsed ahead without a care in the world.

As their path curved to the left, Aon stopped to find a massive boulder blocking the way. The imps quickly scaled the rock, going up and over without a second thought. Aon eased her way around, only to discover other rocks strewn about, some half-sunk in the mire, others piled one atop another as if aspiring to climb up out of the darkness. She hadn't seen stones like this anywhere else in the Carse. Where had they come from?

As Aon made her way back to the path, the answer became clearer. Ahead was a wooden-framed doorway wrapped in moldy ivy. It dripped ooze and looked ready to collapse onto the stony ground that held it up. But it was most certainly a doorway.

“What is this place?” Aon asked.

“The first monarch,” Pirep said. “Before Nine Towers, the first monarch lived here. A mighty castle.”

Aon surveyed the mounds of shattered gray stone. If there was a castle to be seen, it existed only in Pirep's imagination. Peering through the curtain of fog, Aon could just make out the mangled, rusted web of metal that remained of a once-great portcullis alongside the crumbling doorway.

Aon had known nothing of a castle that came before Nine Towers. But if the royal family had once lived behind these fallen walls, there was a chance she'd learn what she needed here.

Straight ahead, the ruins of a turret jutted up out of the swamp like a malformed fang. Aon watched as a wisp of gray light emerged from the ever-present vapor near the top of the fallen tower. The light took the shape of a transparent man, tall and thin. The man, who wore a crown with nine points, stepped from the turret onto a decaying balcony. He looked out into the Carse, and then bowed his head and silently wept.

A second later, the light winked from existence. Then the scene repeated: the man formed inside the turret, stepped onto the precipice, and wept. This happened over and over.

Aon pressed her hand against an archway to steady herself. “Is that . . . Is that a ghost?”

Tali spat. “No ghosts! No such thing. Shades. Shades in the Carse. Nothing but shades.”

When Aon moved to get a closer look, a flicker of light caught her attention. She turned to see more shades near a pile of broken timber and chains that might once have been a drawbridge. The shades wore armor emblazoned with the royal crest, signifying the monarch's personal army. They loaded and fired a catapult aimed at the castle, and then did it again. Over and over, like the shade in the turret.

Aon saw the faces of the shades and gasped. These soldiers launched their ghostly assault with wide smiles.

“What's going on here?” Aon asked. But it seemed clear.

Insurrection. The king's own soldiers—who had no doubt sworn a blood oath to protect their liege at all costs—had once attempted to overthrow him. Aon had studied the history of the Monarchy, but this was one fact she'd never learned. A revolution should be worthy of at least a footnote.

“King Isaar,” Pirep explained, pointing back to the turret. “The Just Ruler, they called him. The Peace Bringer. The Mad Monarch.”

Aon whirled around. “Mad? What do you mean ‘mad'?” This was another fact missing from the history books. Isaar had only ever been referred to with awe. No book had ever called him mad.

Tali scaled the remains of a balustrade. The creature's stubby arm indicated the entirety of the castle ruins. “He stayed inside. Trebuchets! Battering rams! Siege engines! All laid waste to his home.”

A picture of the king formed in Aon's mind. She could see him valiantly defending his homestead from usurpers in the name of the Monarchy he'd helped forge. “How was that mad?”

Pirep made a guttural sound, a mix between a sigh and a sob. “Isaar ordered them to attack. No one knew he was inside.”

The shade of King Isaar returned to the precipice again. Now that she was closer, Aon could see deep lines marking the monarch's face. Her mother's face had looked like that.
Worry lines
, she'd called them. From the look of King Isaar, Aon suspected he had experienced every worry ever known.

“Why?” Aon asked. “Why would he do that?”

Tali belched. “Because he was
mad
!”

So, it wasn't insurrection. Isaar had ordered the castle destroyed. The soldiers were following orders, not knowing their king was inside. This could be why the princess had been forbidden from entering the Carse. To prevent her from learning about her mad ancestor. But it didn't seem likely. How would the entire Monarchy fall at the discovery?

“King Isaar,” Pirep said. “He is why we have a Carse.”

Aon shuddered. “What does that mean?”

The imp was about to reply, but then stopped and squinted up at Aon. “Is the Highness unwell? The Highness looks unwell.”

It took the question to make Aon realize she
wasn't
feeling well. Her hands had gone clammy, and her temples throbbed. This was the longest she'd ever spent inside the Carse. The longest
anyone
had spent inside, as far as she knew. It occurred to her that maybe it was unwise to stay much longer.

“I—I think I have to go,” Aon said. She stumbled backward. The fear and guilt were gone. Now she felt only befuddled. Another trick of the Carse. “How long have we been here?”

She'd always had a good sense of time. She'd made her way out of the swamp before in just under an hour. But suddenly, she found herself less sure how long it had been.

Pirep belched. “Hard to tell. Time, in the Carse.”

“I should go,” Aon said, rubbing her hands. They had started to itch.

“Much to learn here, the Highness,” Pirep called to her. “Many answers for you in the Carse. Many, many answers.”

She's trying to get me to stay
, Aon thought. If she was going to continue searching the Carse, she needed to find a way to beat this latest trick.

She made her way through the wooden archway and paused to steady herself. Her fingers grazed a notch, and when she examined it, she found several curved lines etched into the rotting wood.

A rose blossom.

Aon swallowed hard. Her mother had etched that symbol into every piece of glass she'd ever blown. This rose matched all the others precisely, like a signature. Its presence on the door frame could mean only one thing: her mother had been here. Years ago, clearly. The etching was weathered. But her mother had made it this far in. Aon gently pressed her fingertips into the blossom's grooves. She closed her eyes and choked back a sob.
You left this for me
, she thought.
A message. I'm on the right track . . .

The brief moment of clarity faded as confusion clouded Aon's mind. A wave of dizziness overcame her. Using all her effort to focus, Aon made her way out toward the path that led from the Carse. She repeated the details she'd learned at the castle ruins over and over, wanting to get them exactly right when she wrote to Jeniah.

I'm here to help the princess
, she reminded herself with each step.
If I find what the princess needs, she can return Father. That's why I'm here.

Aon thrust the lantern out in front of her to light the path. As she did, she caught a glimpse of her hand. Her fingers had become wrinkled and gray. Black warts covered each knuckle.

Aon picked up the pace. She suddenly understood why she no longer felt fear or guilt. The bog had changed tactics yet again. She now knew what became of anyone who remained inside too long. She also now understood what had happened to Pirep and Tali. If Aon stayed too long, she would become like the imps.