Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

In a story based on the fairy tale "Maid Maleen" and featuring a setting inspired by medieval Mongolia, Dashti, an orphaned peasant is taken in by the court and taught to be a ladies maid. She is taught to read and write and is assigned to be a maid to Lady Saren. That same day, Lady Saren's father decrees she must spend the next 7 years locked in a tower for disobeying his orders to marry a neighboring nobleman. Soon Dashti and Saren are locked away, and Dashti is chronicling their adventures and efforts to survive, save their supply of food from rats, and the visitors and threats that come and go outside their tower. Eventually, they escape to find Saren's homeland destroyed in war and make their way to a neighboring kingdom. Throughout their adventures they have been hopeful that the neighboring Kahn who had been Lady Saren's first romance would take them in and protect them, but when they got to his kingdom they had to work in the kitchen and hide their identify. Eventually they make acquaintance with the Kahn and help him in his battles against the the nobleman who had sought to marry Saren. A quaint fantasy with delightful illustrations by James Noel Smith. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale. Bloomsbury, 2007.