“I will,” Joanna promised. Olivia watched the last of her children ride away into the bright autumnal day. The two older girls were both wed, and Federico was not only wed but twice a father.
I don’t feel like a grandmother, Olivia Torneo thought. Then she laughed at herself, and went inside to find her husband.
And so there was peace in Ippa. The folk of Derrenhold and Mirrinhold and Ragnar ceased to look over their shoulders. They left their daggers sheathed and hung their battleaxes on the walls. Men who had most of their lives fighting put aside their shields and went home, to towns and farms and wives they barely remembered. More babies were born the following summer than had been born in the previous three years put together. The midwives were run ragged trying to attend the births. Many of the boys, even in Ragnar and Mirrinhold, were named Ege, or Roderico. A few of the girls were even named Joanna.
Martun Hal heard the tidings of his enemies’ good fortune, and his hatred of them deepened. Penned in his dreary fortress, he took count of his gold. Discreetly, he let it be known that the lord of Serrenhold, although beaten, was not without resources. Slowly, cautiously, some of those who had served him before his defeat crept across the border to his castle. He paid them, and sent them out again to Derrenhold and Mirrinhold, and even—cautiously—into Iyadur Atani’s country.
“Watch,” he said, “and when something happens, send me word.”
As for Joanna Torneo Atani, she was as happy as she had known she would be. She adored her husband, and was unafraid of his changeling nature. The people of his domain had welcomed her. Her only disappointment, as the year moved from spring to summer and to the crisp cold nights of autumn again, was that she was childless.
“Every other woman in the world is having a baby,” she complained to her husband. “Why can’t I?”
He smiled, and drew her into the warmth of his arms. “You will.”
Nearly three years after the surrender of Martun Hal, with the Hunter’s Moon waning in the autumn sky, Joanna Atani received a message from her mother.
Come, it said. Your father needs you. She left the next morning for Galva, accompanied by her maid, and escorted by six of Dragon Keep’s most experienced and competent soldiers.
“Send word if you need me,” her husband said.
“I will.”
The journey took two days. Outside the Galva gates, a beggar warming his hands over a scrap of fire told Joanna what she most wanted to know.
“Your father still lives, my lady. I heard it from Viksa the fruit seller an hour ago.”
“Give him gold,” Joanna said to her captain as she urged her horse through the gate. Word of her coming hurried before her. By the time Joanna reached her parents’ home, the gate was open. Her brother stood before it.
She said, “Is he dead?”
“Not yet.” He drew her inside.
Olivia diCorsini Torneo sat at her dying husband’s bedside, in the chamber they had shared for twenty-nine years. She still looked young; nearly as young as the day she had left her father’s house behind for good. Her dark eyes were clear, and her skin smooth. Only her lustrous thick hair was no longer dark; it was shot through with white, like lace.
She smiled at her youngest daughter, and put up her face to be kissed. “I am glad you could come,” she said. “Your sisters are here.” She turned back to her husband.
Joanna bent over the bed. “Papa?” she whispered. But the man in the bed, so flat and still, did not respond. A plain white cloth wound around Jon Torneo’s head was the only sign of injury: otherwise, he appeared to be asleep.
“What happened?”
“An accident, a week ago. He was bringing the herd down from the high pasture when something frightened the sheep: they ran. He fell among them and was trampled. His head was hurt. He has not woken since. Phylla says there is nothing she can do.” Phylla was the Torneo family physician.
Joanna said tremulously, “He always said sheep were stupid. Is he in pain?”
“Phylla says not.”
That afternoon, Joanna wrote a letter to her husband, telling him what had happened. She gave it to a courier to take to Dragon Keep.
Do not come, she wrote. There is nothing you can do. I will stay until he dies.
One by one his children took their turns at Jon Torneo’s bedside. Olivia ate her meals in the chamber, and slept in a pallet laid by the bed. Once each day she walked outside the gates, to talk to the people who thronged day and night outside the house, for Jon Torneo was much beloved. Solemn strangers came up to her weeping. Olivia, despite her own grief, spoke kindly to them all.
Joanna marveled at her mother’s strength. She could not match it: she found herself weeping at night, and snapping by day at her sisters. She was even, to her shame, sick one morning.
A week after Joanna’s arrival, Jon Torneo died. He was buried, as was proper, within three days. Ege diCorsini was there, as were the husbands of Joanna’s sisters, and all of Jon Torneo’s family, and half Galva, or so it seemed.
The next morning, in the privacy of the garden, Olivia Torneo said quietly to her youngest daughter, “You should go home.”
“Why?” Joanna said. She was dumbstruck. “Have I offended you?” Tears rose to her eyes. “Oh Mother, I’m so sorry…”
“Idiot child,” Olivia said, and put her arms around her daughter. “My treasure, you and your sisters have been a great comfort to me. But you should be with your husband at this time.” Her gaze narrowed. “Joanna? Do you not know that you are pregnant?”
Joanna blinked. “What makes you—I feel fine,” she said.
“Of course you do,” said Olivia. “DiCorsini women never have trouble with babies.”
Phylla confirmed that Joanna was indeed pregnant.
“You are sure?”
“Yes. Your baby will be born in the spring.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Joanna asked.
But Phylla could not tell her that.
So Joanna Atani said farewell to her family, and, with her escort about her, departed Galva for the journey to Dragon Keep. As they rode toward the hills, she marked the drifts of leaves on the ground, and the dull color on the hills, and rejoiced. The year was turning. Slipping a hand beneath her clothes, she laid her palm across her belly, hoping to feel the quickening of life in her womb. It seemed strange to be so happy, so soon after her father’s untimely death.
Twenty-one days after the departure of his wife from Dragon Keep, Iyadur Atani called one of his men to his side.
“Go to Galva, to the house of Jon Torneo,” he said. “Find out what is happening there.”
The courier rode to Galva. A light snow fell as he rode through the gates. The steward of the house escorted him to Olivia Torneo’s chamber.
“My lady,” he said, “I am sent from Dragon Keep to inquire after the well-being of the lady Joanna. May I speak with her?”
Olivia Torneo’s face slowly lost its color. She said, “My daughter Joanna left a week ago to return to Dragon Keep. Soldiers from Dragon Keep were with her.”
The courier stared. Then he said, “Get me fresh horses.”
He burst through the Galva gates as though the demons of hell were on his horse’s heels. He rode through the night. He reached Dragon Keep at dawn.
“He’s asleep,” the page warned.
“Wake him,” the courier said. But the page would not. So the courier himself pushed open the door. “My lord? I am back from Galva.”
The torches lit in the bedchamber.
“Come,” said Iyadur Atani from the curtained bed. He drew back the curtains. The courier knelt on the rug beside the bed. He was shaking with weariness, and hunger, and also with dread.
“My lord, I bear ill news. Your lady left Galva to return home twenty days ago. Since then, no one has seen her.”
Fire came into Iyadur Atani’s eyes. The courier turned his head. Rising from the bed, the dragon-lord said, “Call my captains.”
The ca
ptains came. Crisply their lord told them that their lady was missing somewhere between Galva and Dragon Keep, and that it was their task, their only task, to find her. “You will find her,” he said, and his words seemed to burn the air like flames.
“Aye, my lord,” they said.
They searched across the countryside, hunting through hamlet and hut and barn, through valley and cave and ravine. They did not find Joanna Atani.
But midway between Galva and the border between the diCorsini land and Dragon’s Country, they found, piled in a ditch and rudely concealed with branches, the bodies of nine men and one woman.
“Six of them we know,” Bran, second-in-command of Dragon Keep’s archers, reported to his lord. He named them: they were the six men who had comprised Joanna Atani’s escort. “The woman is my lady Joanna’s maid. My lord, we have found the tracks of many men and horses, riding hard and fast. The trail leads west.”
“We shall follow it,” Iyadur Atani said. “Four of you shall ride with me. The rest shall return to Dragon Keep, to await my orders.”
They followed that trail for nine long days across Ippa, through bleak and stony hills, through the high reaches of Derrenhold, into Serrenhold’s wild, wind-swept country. As they crossed the borders, a red-winged hawk swept down upon them. It landed in the snow, and became a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in a grey cloak.
She said, “I am Madelene of the Red Hawk sisters. I watch this land. Who are you, and what is your business here?”
The dragon-lord said, “I am Iyadur Atani. I am looking for my wife. I believe she came this way, accompanied by many men, perhaps a dozen of them, and their remounts. We have been tracking them for nine days.”
“A band of ten men rode across the border from Derrenhold into Serrenhold twelve days ago,” the watcher said. “They led ten spare horses. I saw no women among them.”
Bran said, “Could she have been disguised? A woman with her hair cropped might look like a boy, and the lady Joanna rides as well as any man.”
Madelene shrugged. “I did not see their faces.”
“Then you see ill,” Bran said angrily. “Is this how the Red Hawk sisters keep watch?” Hawk-changeling and archer glared at one another.
“Enough,” Iyadur Atani said. He led them onto the path to the fortress. It wound upward through the rocks. Suddenly they heard the clop of horses’ hooves against the stone. Four horsemen appeared on the path ahead of them.
Bran cupped his hands to his lips. “What do you want?” he shouted.
The lead rider shouted back, “It is for us to ask that! You are on our land!”
“Then speak,” Bran said.
“Your badges proclaim that you come from Dragon Keep. I bear a message to Iyadur Atani from Martun Hal.”
Bran waited for the dragon-lord to declare himself. When he did not, the captain said, “Tell me, and I will carry it to him.”
“Tell Iyadur Atani,” the lead rider said, “that his wife will be staying in Serrenhold for a time. If any attempt is made to find her, then she will die, slowly and in great pain. That is all.” He and his fellows turned their horses, and bolted up the path.
Iyadur Atani said not a word, but the dragon rage burned white-hot upon his face. The men from Dragon Keep looked at him, once. Then they looked away, holding their breath.
Finally he said, “Let us go.”
When they reached the border, they found Ege diCorsini, with a large company of well-armed men, waiting for them.
“Olivia sent to me,” he said to Iyadur Atani. “Have you found her?”
“Martun Hal has her,” the dragon-lord said. “He says he will kill her if we try to get her back.” His face was set. “He may kill her anyway.”
“He won’t kill her,” Ege diCorsini said. “He’ll use her to bargain with. He will want his weapons and his army back, and freedom to move about his land.”
“Give it to him,” Iyadur Atani said. “I want my wife.”
So Ege diCorsini sent a delegation of his men to Martun Hal, offering to modify the terms of Serrenhold’s surrender, if he would release Joanna Atani unharmed.
But Martun Hal did not release Joanna. As diCorsini had said, he used her welfare to bargain with, demanding first the freedom to move about his own country, and then the restoration of his war band, first to one hundred, then to three hundred men.
“We must know where she is. When we know where she is we can rescue her,” diCorsini said. And he sent spies into Serrenhold, with instructions to discover where in that bleak and barren country the lady of Ippa was. But Martun Hal, ever crafty, had anticipated this. He sent a message to Iyadur Atani, warning that payment for the trespass of strangers would be exacted upon Joanna’s body. He detailed, with blunt and horrific cruelty, what that payment would be.
In truth, despite the threats, he did nothing to hurt his captive. For though years of war had scoured from him almost all human feeling save pride, ambition, and spite, he understood quite well that if Joanna died, and word of that death reached Dragon Keep, no power in or out of Ryoka could protect him.
As for Joanna, she had refused even to speak to him from the day his men had brought her, hair chopped like a boy’s, wrapped in a soldier’s cloak, into his castle. She did not weep. They put her in an inner chamber, and placed guards on the door, and assigned two women to care for her. They were both named Kate, and since one was large and one not, they were known as Big Kate and Small Kate. She did not rage, either. She ate the meals the women brought her, and slept in the bed they gave her.
Winter came early, as it does in Serrenhold. The wind moaned about the castle walls, and snow covered the mountains. Weeks passed, and Joanna’s belly swelled. When it became clear beyond any doubt that she was indeed pregnant, the women who served her went swiftly to tell their lord.
“Are you sure?” he demanded. “If this is a trick, I will have you both flayed!”
“We are sure,” they told him. “Send a physician to her, if you question it.”
So Martun Hal sent a physician to Joanna’s room. But Joanna refused to let him touch her. “I am Iyadur Atani’s wife,” she said. “I will allow no other man to lay his hands on me.”
“Pray that it is a changeling, a dragon-child,” Martun Hal said to his captains. And he told the two Kates to give Joanna whatever she needed for her comfort, save freedom.
The women went to Joanna and asked what she wanted.
“I should like a window,” Joanna said. The rooms in which they housed her had all been windowless. They moved her to a chamber in a tower. It was smaller than the room in which they had been keeping her, but it had a narrow window, through which she could see sky and clouds, and on clear nights, stars.
When her idleness began to weigh upon her, she said, “Bring me books.” They brought her books. But reading soon bored her.
“Bring me a loom.”
“A loom? Can you weave?” Big Kate asked.
No,” Joanna said. “Can you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you can teach me.” The women brought her the loom, and with it, a dozen skeins of bright wool. “Show me what to do.” Big Kate showed her how to set up the threads, and how to cast the shuttle. The first thing she made was a yellow blanket, a small one.
Small Kate asked, “Who shall that be for?”
“For the babe,” Joanna said.
Then she began another: a scarlet cloak, a large one, with a fine gold border.
“Who shall that be for?” Big Kate asked.
“For my lord, when he comes.”
One grey afternoon, as Joanna sat at her loom, a red-winged hawk alighted on her windowsill.
“Good day,” Joanna said to it. It cocked its head and stared at her sideways out of its left eye. “There is bread on the table.” She pointed to the little table where she ate her food. She had left a slice of bread untouched from her midday meal, intending to eat it later. The hawk turned its beak, and stared at her out of its right
eye. Hopping to the table, it pecked at the bread.
Then it fluttered to the floor, and became a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman wearing a grey cloak. Crossing swiftly to Joanna’s seat, she whispered, “Leave the shutter ajar. I will come again tonight.” Before Joanna could answer, she turned into a bird, and was gone.
That evening Joanna could barely eat. Concerned, Big Kate fussed at her. “You have to eat. The babe grows swiftly now; it needs all the nourishment you can give it. Look, here is the cream you wanted, and here is soft ripe cheese, come all the way from Merigny in the south, where they say it snows once every hundred years.”
“I don’t want it.”
Big Kate reached to close the window shutter.
“Leave it!”
“It’s freezing.”
“I am warm.”
“You might be feverish.” Small Kate reached to feel her forehead.
“I am not feverish. I’m fine.”
They left her. She heard the bar slide across the door. She lay down on her bed. They had left her but a single candle, but light came from the hearth log. The babe moved in her belly.
“Little one, I feel you,” she whispered. “Be patient. We shall not always be in this loathsome place.” Longingly she gazed at the window.
At last she heard the rustle of wings. A human shadow sprang across the walls of the chamber. A woman’s voice said softly, “My lady, do you know me? I am Madelene of the Red Hawk sisters. I was at your wedding.”
“I remember.” Tears—the first she had shed since the start of her captivity—welled into Joanna’s eyes. She knuckled them away. “I am glad to see you.”
“And I you,” Madelene said. “Since first I knew you were here, I have looked for you. I feared you were in torment, or locked away in some dark dungeon, where I might never find you.”
“Can you help me to escape this place?”
Madelene said sadly, “No, my lady. I have not the power to do that.”
Wings of Fire Page 48
