No one ever dared step into her domain.
The crumbling, fire-damaged roofs, the gaping holes in the walls overlooking the sheer cliffs of Loch Moray, and the scorched, unsteady floors all combined to make the south wing of Ironcross Castle a forbidding place to enter. But as Joanna made her way quietly through a blasted room toward the wooden panel and the secret passageway that would take her down to the subterranean tunnels and caverns, she suddenly sensed that someone had been through there, and quite recently.
She paused and looked about her in the encroaching dusk. There was little to be seen. Dropping softly to her hands and knees on a plank by the doorway, she peered closely at the ash-covered floor of the passage beyond the door. She herself always avoided those corridors for fear
