After My Husband Abandoned Me, I Rule All Dragons novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: The Voice Tower

The tower stood at the back of the Hold, against the cliff.

It was taller than the keep and older, with no windows on the lowest floors.

The door was bricked up.

"My grandfather's grandfather sealed it," Wystan said. "Nobody remembers why. We call it the Voice Tower, and we tell children it's haunted."

"Is it?"

"Let's find out."

He'd slept a day and a night after the glacier.

So had I, with honey and hot water for my throat.

Dorrit hadn't slept at all.

She'd sat on the end of Bettris's bed all night, saying, "It was a fluke," to anyone who came in.

Wystan swung a smith's hammer at the bricks.

They came down in a cloud of old dust.

Inside, the stairs went round and up.

On the first floor there were benches.

Forty of them, in rows, facing a stone ledge where somebody had once stood.

On the ledge was a chest, black with age.

Wystan broke the lock.

It was full of books.

I opened the top one, and the ink was faded brown.

"The ninth day of the school," I read out. "Today the shepherd's boy called the miller's son down from the lake, on his own, with no help from me. He was so proud he fell over."

I turned the page.

"We are forty now. The cook's daughter is the best of them. Better than I am."

Dorrit, in the doorway, made a small sound.

I read until the light went.

The first Voice had kept the books for eleven years.

She'd taught anybody who came.

Cooks, shepherds, a blacksmith, a widow who sold eggs.

Then, in the last book, in a shaking hand:

"The King's men came this morning. They say it is not proper. They say a Voice belongs to the crown. They have set fire to the lower floor. I have sent the children out by the cliff path. I am putting these books in the chest."

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