Fallen Queen (Mariposa Book 1) Page 2

  Olzore was a nature’s gift of a fort, said to have not once fallen since it was built. There was a narrow valley and rough lands in the front, and a valley with a shallow stream of water behind it.

  The queen’s army attacked without hesitation, but utterly failed. The fort did not fall to her attempts at infiltration, ambush at night, or battle. It mocked her.

  Filled with hatred, the queen ordered a new operation so vast in size that no one had ever dared to think of it.

  “We’ll tear down that valley, Peijak.”

  Her generals followed the order with pleasure, for the queen believed that the word “impossible” was a mere assembly of meaningless sounds. They secretly constructed an enormous plan that would take two years to complete, only to satisfy the queen’s determination to take down a single fort.

  Not knowing that Rarke was in danger of falling apart because of the war that had lasted nearly ten years, Swan focused only on the imminent plan.

  The Rarkians continued to fight little battles to fool the enemy, deploying countless soldiers and starting to dig through the valley and build tunnels.

  They weren’t enough. Swan started to draft workers from the nearby conquered countries. She even brought people from her homeland of Rarke into forced labor.

  One day, three months before the end, those who were tired of war rebelled in Rarke. A messenger arrived at the queen’s camp.

  “I have been ordered to bring Queen Swan Sekalrid Rarkalia back to the palace, Your Majesty. By force, if need be.”

  She laughed at the messenger. “Who would dare order me to go anywhere? Duke Brionake will suppress the—”

  He cut her off. “Duke Regent’s orders.”

  An arrest warrant with Duke Brionake’s seal fell near her feet.

  Brionake was the head of the rebellion. She lost half of her army and her right wing.

  Those who had praised her brought her down, saying that she was mad for war. Her beloved people and the man she trusted with her life turned their backs on her. The shocked queen forced Peijak to flee and returned to the palace alone.

  She saw her children at a palace that now felt inexplicably foreign. She couldn’t recognize them, for she had abandoned them at birth. She didn’t even know their ages.

  “You’ve grown so much,” she said. “You must be…”

  “It is an honor to finally meet you, Your Majesty,” her eldest son said.

  It was a hard blow.

  Her ears, which had remained deaf to all the people’s tearful pleadings, opened at last. She realized her madness at the single uttering of a child.

  The nobles forced the befuddled queen to kneel. Some supported her, saying that she would be a sage queen now. Those who feared she would take revenge on them raised their voices and sentenced her to die for neglecting state affairs.

  Her armor, which felt like a second skin after almost half her lifetime, was thrown into the furnace.

  Her husband kneeled in front of her. “I loved you.”

  She chuckled at the paradoxical nature of the first revelation of his true intentions. “I still cannot believe this is my end.”

  “Forgive me.”

  “I do not blame you.”

  “I failed to protect…”

  “You protected Rarke.”

  “You. I failed to protect you.”

  He had aged quite a bit over the years, but he sobbed like a child in front of her. Time had left its marks on the face of this man who had sworn to belong to the queen.

  The war had begun when she was twenty-six.

  “It’s…how old am I now?” she asked.

  She did not even know her own age. What a foolish life it was. The conquest that had started with a loving desire to enrich her people had starved them instead and turned Rarke into a living hell.

  “You will soon be thirty-seven.”

  “Ah…and you will be thirty-nine. No, forty?”

  “Forty. It’s been a long time.”

  She could not speak anymore.

  Thirty-seven years of ferocious fighting. All she had left was land rotten with blood and the resentment of thousands.

  She embraced her destiny without tears, letting her husband’s cries pass like the wind, unmoved by them. It was like he was shedding her tears through his eyes.

  In ineffable self-loathing, she asked for one last thing. “Belbarote, I ask that you be gentle with Peijak. He…his only fault is that he stayed by me, like a moth drawn to fire. I will pay for everything.”

  Belbarote’s wet lips touched her dirt-covered forehead. She smiled, thinking it was quite warm.

  Two weeks later, the sentence was carried out on the scaffold for all to see. It was the end of a twisted patriotism and rancid madness. With the death of the tragic queen, her horrifying conquest disappeared into history.

  Thus, the bloody war that left an unhealable wound between Morgana and Rarke ended with Morgana’s victory.

  Belbarote Paseid Brionake, the first king of the Brionake Dynasty, ordered that Rarke end the war with Morgana under all circumstances, even if it meant they had to sign an unfair treaty. Dernajuke IV, the king of Morgana, and the first emperor (Valarjef I), did not miss the chance to elevate Morgana as the only empire on the continent.

  The twenty-fifth Queen of Rarke, Swan Sekalrid Rarkalia’s path was recorded in history. She would be remembered as an innovative and ruthless strategic genius, the Iron Queen, a tyrant.

  Under the cold dew of the north, all she left behind were resentful cries, seven books of war, and two sons she’d barely even spoken to.

  “I’ll call for you once everything is taken care of. Trust me and wait, Pei,” Swan had told him.

  So, he had trusted her.

  But not so long after, the news of the queen’s imminent execution reached even Peijak, who was hiding in a small town in the fallen Rhine Kingdom. He had faithfully followed her for his entire life, and he could not even imagine losing her. As soon as he heard the news, Peijak took his surviving troops and knights and rode to the palace of Rarke.

  Ten days later, the stone wall surrounding Muiyadro greeted him glumly under the gray, drizzly sky. Peijak stared at the severed head hung under the wolf banner on the wall.

  Her red hair, as beautiful as twilight, was shorn at the neck and matted with rotting blood.

  “A lie…” Peijak murmured.

  Her murky blue eyes stared into the southern sky as if to mourn the unfinished deed. The bodies around her reeked of hearts rotten from betrayal. Swarms of maggots and bugs crawled in the pools of blood and rain.

  Peijak cut off the rope and held the rotting head of the queen with his shaking hands. He slowly caressed her rotten cheek.

  “A lie…” he said through clenched teeth. “She dedicated her life to this country. She was a good queen who didn’t hesitate to risk her life to give her people rich land to farm. She was a great queen, the first in the history of Rarke to achieve such magnificent accomplishments of expanding the country’s territory and rebranding it as a country with an indestructible army instead of a weak one. Without even thinking twice about it, they betrayed that invaluable leader, who will be incomparable to all those who follow her…

  “A lie. This is a lie.”

  Peijak raised his head. His view was blurred by the rain and his angry tears, but he could still see the white wolf banner on the wall as clear as ever.

  “B…Brionake!”

  His furious cry spread across the rainy field like thunder.

  “Sir Dollehan, the enemies are coming,” one of his men told him.

  Peijak pierced the ground with his terrifying pitch-black spear. It was a precious gift, with so great a meaning she had not been able to give it a name, so Peijak volunteered to become an actualization of its meaning himself.

  He pierced the queen’s head on his long spear. Then he turned her head away from the south.

  Her blank eyes stared at the palace of Rarke.

  “You ungratefu
l fools of Rarke!”

  Peijak fixed his eyes on the Brionake banner following the soldiers running toward him to arrest him and his troops. It was Belbarote Paseid Brionake, the new king of Rarke, and the man who was once the queen’s.

  “I detest you! Usurper Brionake! I detest Rarke!” Peijak cried out as he glared at Brionake, who was now at the front.

  Peijak turned away from the betrayers and spurred his horse. The knights of Rarke who had once worshipped the queen chased after him. Those who followed Peijak until the end rode south without stopping to get away from their pursuers.

  Then Peijak and hundreds of knights loyal to him kneeled in front of Fort Olzore, the fort that had defeated the queen after years of war.

  “I, the sixth son of the former King Dolomete the third of Rarke, brother of Queen Swan Sekalrid of Rarkalia, request refuge at Morgana.”

  Creaaaak. The fort’s door opened.

  Peijak wept at the grand sight of Olzore opening its door after so many days. As he took each step across the border his respected and beloved sister could never cross, Peijak let the rage build inside him.

  Morgana was entranced by all the information the man who once fought in the fields with the queen of Rarke had to offer. Pleased with Peijak’s loathing for Rarke, the king of Morgana granted him a title and land.

  As proof of his loyalty to Morgana, Peijak presented all the original copies of the letters the queen had supposedly written herself and founded a new house. It was the beginning of a new force of power in Morgana, named Mariposa.

  Thirty-two years later, as he met an end to his life stained with hatred and madness, Peijak Dollehan Mariposa prophesied, “Tell Rarke. The queen you betrayed will return with me.”

  And two hundred years passed.

  Chapter One

  There was a small town in Galabua of Rarke, near the forests at the southeastern border. Though it was small in size, it was a busy town, full of life, with travelers coming and going. With rundown houses built at an arm’s length of each other and the fields spotted with ripening crops, the place looked almost like an undeveloped vacation site.

  Its people were peaceful. They didn’t even feel that threatened by being not too far from the Gerad border, where there was a war going on. Rather than showing hostility, they mingled like family with the merchants and travelers who came with news from the outside.

  It was a serene land where there was no man too rich and no man too poor. Life was easy there.

  But there’s no place without exceptions. Even in this ordinary town, there was a celebrity whom all the residents found odd. She was the second daughter of the horse dealer, who had recently gotten a very handsome deal with the royal family of Rarke. The girl was a head smaller than a grown man and had dark-red hair that shined even redder under the sun. Her eyes were of the same shade. She was an unusually pretty girl for a small country town.

  But the reason for her fame was not her outstanding beauty or virtue. The men in the town were all country bumpkins who did not have eyes for distinguished beauty to begin with, and they had all watched her grow up. There was nothing to marvel at about her appearance.

  And her character? The girl, who’d just stepped into her twenties a few years ago, was as fierce as the old man who sold beans, whom all the townspeople agreed was the fiercest of all.

  Her reason for fame could be summed up in one word.

  Reuyen, the daughter of the only horse dealer, Jess Detua, was a genius.

  Though a couple young men had recently gone to war by choice or by force—for even a peaceful town like this could not escape the impact of war—leaving the town quieter than before, Reuyen was at the center of all kinds of trouble. She was both idolized and envied by the local men until fairly recently.

  Everyone knew that she was the daughter of a man who raised and sold horses, so her remarkable equitation made sense. What didn’t make sense was her swordsmanship and archery, even taking down birds flying in the sky, which no one had taught her.

  Young, competitive countrymen challenged her for no apparent reason and tried with all their might, but like the headstrong girl she was, Reuyen beat their pride to the ground without hesitating. Her mother baking bread as an apology to the crying, broken men became an everyday sight in the town.

  If that had been all, they would have just thought she was gifted. But it wasn’t.

  The only place with books in the town was a tiny old bookstore. This meant that the only way to gather any kind of knowledge and information in specific areas was through learning from the town’s visitors. Yet Reuyen was erudite enough to teach the outsiders instead.

  When it came to the ancient history of Rarke, even the eighty-year-old hunchbacked teacher stopped his lectures when Reuyen was around, for he could not follow her. Though some argued that her words were made up, most of them were true, and there was no way of verifying the rest.

  When someone asked, “Where did you learn all that?” she replied, “I don’t know,” made a sulky face, and changed the subject.

  One day, bursting with curiosity, the adults of the town all went up to her father, Jess, and questioned him. The funny thing was, not even the father knew how or why his daughter knew the things she did. What was even funnier was that the so-called genius girl never admitted to being a genius herself. Today, her reaction was the same.

  “I understand that I seem smart,” Reuyen said to the crowd that had gathered, “but it’s not right to say that I’m a genius. So, stop asking.”

  “Then what are you, I say?” an old man asked.

  “I don’t know. But you all should be aware, the east wind has turned the other way, so it’s going to rain a lot once the sun sets. Why don’t you go and bring your laundry inside or something?”

  “What? Really?” The old man looked up to the sky, which held not the slightest hint of a cloud, with a curious frown.

  “You can doubt me all you want, but do warn Lea. It looked like she was putting out her vegetables to dry.”

  It would rain if the swallows flew low and the cumulus was high. Her predictions were not one of those hit-or-miss sayings. Just how did she know them, specifically? She was right most of the time, but there was something about her. Everyone thought she must have been hiding something.

  “How long are you going to stay huddled there, gentlemen?” she asked.

  There wasn’t even an inkling of respect in the question she spat out as she held up a bundle of wood. The adults soon started eyeing each other and then they all dispersed. A stranger might have laughed at them for scattering away for shelter from the rain when the sun was still shining strong, but they knew that Reuyen was right seven or eight times out of ten, so they had nothing to lose in believing her this time.

  “Thank you, Reuyen! Time to bet if you’re right again!”

  Reuyen swallowed a sigh as she watched the adults running like children.

  She put the bundle of wood down at the doorstep of the smaller room in her father’s house. Her little brother, who was resting his head on a hard, wooden pillow and picking at his teeth, looked up with a blank expression on his face.

  “What are you up to, sis?”

  “Sidan, stop just lying around and help me move the wood. Is that all that’s over there?”

  “Why are you bringing it inside?”

  “We didn’t fix the shed leak.”

  “Rain?”

  “Yup.”

  Sidan tilted his head and looked at the clear sky through the old window. Clear as clear could be. After sulking for a bit, he dropped his toothpick and went out without another question. The Detuas had learned through experience that every one of Reuyen’s words and actions had meaning.

  Reuyen brushed the dirt off her hands, checking that her easygoing brother, who took after their mother, was heading to the pile of chopped wood and hay under the fence. Sidan’s voice came in from the yard.

  “Hey, genius sis. Don’t you think it’s taking too long for our bi
g brother to return? When do you think he’ll be back? It’s already fall and it’s going to get cold soon.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Why wouldn’t you? You know everything. C’mon, say something smart again. You’re good at that stuff.”

  She scrunched her face and glared at him, but he didn’t notice. A sigh escaped her mouth.

  Reuyen, the genius of Gyujen. She had heard enough of it. But she felt completely indifferent to being called a genius.

  She didn’t not know why people called her that. It was true that she was more erudite than anyone else in the town. But a genius had to have an extraordinary ability to accomplish something out of nothing. She was not a genius in that way.

  When she was young, Reuyen was as much a troublemaker as any other child. But the year she turned seven, she realized she was different from the others.

  It was the day her father first gave her a filly as a birthday gift. The filly was only a few years old, and was beloved by the girl for quite a while. The moment she climbed on the saddle with the help of her father, she was elated at getting the horse she loved so much.

  The sky felt closer from atop the horse; she could see the world from a higher point, changed. That was the only time Reuyen ever fell off a horse.

  Swan Sekalrid Rarkalia.

  When she came back to her senses, her surprised mother was clutching her hand and crying, and her father was blaming himself for letting too young a girl to ride a horse. Her older brother was talking to the local doctor, who had come running after hearing the news.

  “Why did you let a seven-year-old get on a horse? Are you even thinking or what?” Her parents started arguing louder and louder after the doctor left, and her younger brother started crying. It was total chaos. Reuyen broke into tears in the midst of all the commotion too.

  A strange man’s voice ringing clearly in her head made her cry even harder.

  Swan.

  Her mother was surprised by her tears, and rushed to embrace her.

  Her trickles of tears turned into weeping, and Reuyen’s father stomped out to sell the horse at the market. But for what? She could not stay focused with all the sorrow crashing into her like waves. She stumbled out of the room to stop her father.