Wings of Fire Part 39

"Now," said Ege diCorsini. He signaled the trumpeter. The trumpeter blew again.

Then the dragon came. Huge, silver, deadly, he swooped upon the men of Serrenhold. His silver claws cut the air like scythes. He stooped his head, and his eyes glowed like fire. Fire trickled from his nostrils. He breathed upon the castle walls, and the stone hissed, and melted like snow in the sun. He roared. The sound filled the day, louder and more terrible than thunder. The archers' fingers opened, and their bows clattered to the ground. The swordsmen trembled, and their legs turned to jelly. Shouting, the men of Ippa stormed over the broken gates, and into Serrenhold.

They found the lord of the castle sitting in his hall, with his sword across his lap.

"Come on," he said, rising. "I am an old man. Come and kill me."

He charged them then, hoping to force them to kill him. But though he fought fiercely, killing two of them, and wounding three more, they finally disarmed him. Bruised and b.l.o.o.d.y, but whole, Martun Hal was bound, and marched at sword's point out of his hall to the courtyard where the lords of Ippa stood.

He bowed mockingly into their unyielding faces.

"Well, my lords. I hope you are pleased with your victory. All of you together, and still it took dragon fire to defeat me."

Ferris Wulf scowled. But Ege diCorsini said, "Why should more men of Ippa die for you? Even your own people are glad the war is over."

"Is it over?"

"It is," diCorsini said firmly.

Martun Hal smiled bleakly. "Yet I live."

"Not for long," someone cried. And Ferris Wulf's chief captain, whose home Martun Hal's men had burned, stepped forward, and set the tip of his sword against the old man's breast.

"No," said Ege diCorsini.

"Why not?" said Ferris Wulf. "He killed your father."

"Whom would you put in his place?" Ege diCorsini said. "He is Serrenhold's rightful lord. His father had three sons, but one is dead, and the other gone, who knows where. He has no children to succeed him. I would not reign in Serrenhold. It is a dismal place. Let him keep it. We will set a guard about his border, and restrict the number of soldiers he may have, and watch him."

"And when he dies?" said Aurelio Ragnarin.

"Then we will name his successor."

Glaring, Ferris Wulf fingered the hilt of his sword. "He should die now. Then we could appoint a regent, one of our own captains, someone honorable, and deserving of trust."

Ege diCorsini said, "We could do that. But that man would never have a moment's peace. I say, let us set a watch upon this land, so that Martun Hal may never trouble our towns and people again, and let him rot in this lifeless place."

"The Red Hawk clan will watch him," Jamis Delamico said.

And so it came to pa.s.s. Martun Hal lived. His weapons were destroyed; his war band, all but thirty men, was disbanded and scattered. He was forbidden to travel more than two miles from his castle. The lords of Ippa, feeling reasonably secure in their victory, went home to their castles, to rest and rebuild and prepare for winter.

Ege diCorsini, riding east amid his rejoicing troops, made ready to attend a wedding. He was fond of his niece. His sister had a.s.sured him that the girl was absolutely determined to wed Iyadur Atani, and as for the flame-haired, flame-eyed dragon-lord, he seemed equally anxious for the match. Remembering stories he had heard, Ege diCorsini admitted, though only to himself, that Joanna's husband was not the one he would have chosen for her. But no one had asked his opinion.

The wedding was held at Derrenhold, and attended by all the lords of Ippa, except, of course Martun Hal. Rudolf diMako attended, despite the distance, but no one was surprised; there was strong friendship between the diMako and the Atani. Jamis Delamico came. The bride was p.r.o.nounced to be astonishingly beautiful, and the bride's mother almost as beautiful. The dragon-lord presented the parents of his bride with gifts: a tapestry, a mettlesome stallion and a breeding mare from the Atani stables, a sapphire pendant, and a cup of beaten gold. The couple drank the wine. The priestess said the blessings.

The following morning, Olivia diCorsini Torneo said farewell to her daughter. "I will miss you. Your father will miss you. You must visit often. He is older than he was, you know."

"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 sc.r.a.p 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 l.u.s.trous 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 h.e.l.l 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 captains 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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.