The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn was right, Isabell thought as she sipped the potent thornberry wine Ashlynn poured for her. The flavor was like nothing she’d ever tasted in the Kingdom of Gaal or in the old countries across the sea.

The wine was dry, exceptionally so, with very little sweetness while still possessing a strong flavor of berries picked on a hot summer day. More than just the incredibly dry, fruity flavor, however, there was a vibrant, herbaceous flavor to the wine, as if the berries had been mashed with garden herbs or something slightly lemony before they were set aside to ferment. When she finally swallowed the intensely flavorful wine, it left behind a faint, almost earthy taste like strongly brewed tea while the potent alcohol filled her throat and belly with a pleasantly warm sensation.

”That,” Isabell said, staring at the cup in her hand in pleasant surprise. ”That is amazing.”

”There’s no witchcraft to making it,” Ashlynn offered when she saw Tiernan’s reluctance as he stared at the cup in his hand. To Ashlynn, it looked almost as if the cup had engaged him in a contest of wills that he was presently losing.

”It’s just berries, honey, water, lemon-thyme, and yeast,” she said, hoping it would reassure the powerful ironmonger that there was nothing dangerous in the wine. She did, hower, decide not to add that part of Amahle’s secret was the fine silk mesh she wove using her own silk in order to produce a wine that was as crystal clear as pure spring water. That extra step alone vastly improved the final product, leaving it free of any of the sediment that could make lesser wines go cloudy and bitter if they weren’t bottled with extraordinary care.

”So this witch,” Isabell said, still struggling to process everything Ashlynn had said so far. There had been so many pieces of new information that Ashlynn mentioned casually that it was becoming difficult even for her to keep track of it all.

”This ’Mother of Thorns,’ she taught you about making wine?” Isabell asked, less because she was curious about the wine than because she needed time to collect her thoughts and organize all of the random bits of information that she was certain would be important later.

”That and many other things,” Ashlynn said as she sipped the heady wine that had become one of her favorite treats on the boiling hot summer nights in the depths of the Briar. She had to be careful about the amount of it she drank, but that was why she poured such small portions when Isabell asked for something stronger.

”But that’s jumping ahead by quite a bit. Let me start from the beginning, and things should become clearer as we go,” she said as she sat back on the plush suede cushions and started to tell her tale.

Ashlynn did her best to summarize things clearly, trying to find a balance between helping her friends understand the world she’d been thrust into and delving too much into things they would soon discover for themselves or could discuss at a later time. For now, she started with the basics, explaining who the Eldritch people really were, the differences between their clans and the many friends she’d made among them in the past several months.

By the time Ashlynn found herself explaining the wonders of High Fen City with its towering arena, breathtaking opera houses and the grandeur of High Lady Erna’s palace, however, Isabell had begun to tease out a distinctly concerning thread in the way Ashlynn spoke about her vampire patron, particularly the way Ashlynn used a diminutive pet-name like ’Nyri’ to refer to a two hundred year old vampire queen!

”Ashlynn,” Isabell said, staring briefly at the bottom of her empty cup and trying to decide whether or not she should risk asking for a refill. Already, she felt more than a little light headed and the troubles of the world felt more distant and unreal than the story Ashlynn was telling, but she was still a ways off from reaching her limit.

”You said that you became a, what was the word you used? A Senshal for this vampire, Nyrielle?” Isabell asked, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar title. ”That you have the most authority among all of her servants? But you said it’s more than being a castle mistress...”

”Seneschal,” Ashlynn said, gently correcting her friend’s slightly slurred pronunciation. ”And yes, it’s very different from being a castle mistress. It’s more like... More like being a crown regent, I suppose,” Ashlynn explained as she struggled to find a parallel in the Kingdom, even though nothing quite compared to her role as Nyrielle’s Seneschal.

”When she sleeps during the day, I rule in her place,” Ashlynn said, as though it was a simple, common sense arrangement for someone else to sit on the throne whenever the ruler took a nap. ”There is no one in her entire domain other than her who can command me.”

”Right, right,” Isabell said, finally giving in and holding out her cup again. ”Just the honeyed wine this time,” she said, glancing at the floor in mild embarrassment as Ashlynn retrieved the first bottle to refill her cup.

She truly enjoyed the strange drink crafted by the mysterious ’Mother of Thorns’ but if she didn’t pace herself then she wouldn’t be clear headed enough to understand what Ashlynn had been through and there were questions she desperately needed to ask.

”But, this is the thing I wanted to ask about,” Isabell said after taking a sip of the sweet, honeyed wine. ”You say you’re her most important servant, but the way you talk about the things she showed you in this High Fen City, it sounds more like she’s courting you than like you’re serving her. So, so what is it really between you two? Are you her servant? Or, or is it, is it more than that?”

Sitting next to her, Tiernan nodded silently, cradling the empty cup in his hands as if he needed something to hold on to but didn’t dare to drink any more tonight. He’d noticed the same things Isabell had, and he couldn’t help but think of how Ashlynn’s voice when she spoke of Nyrielle resembled his own daughter’s voice whenever she talked about the most recent handsome young man she’d taken a fancy to.

More than that, some of the things Ashlynn mentioned, like the gifts of clothing and jewels or the night out to see an ’opera’, whatever that was, were all things he might have done if he’d been a wealthier man when he was courting his wife.

He’d considered asking the very same question Isabell had several times now, and each time he firmly clamped his lips shut and refused to utter the slightest word. He was supposed to be her friend, not a proxy for her father, and Lady Ashlynn’s love affairs should be her own business...

This didn’t mean that he wasn’t curious, only that he was more hesitant than Isabell to actually ask. After all, while there had always been rumors of certain ladies of the court having dalliances with each other or with their ladies in waiting, any whispers of such relationships belonged firmly in the realm of women’s gossip. Men like him had no business sticking their noses in such scandalous relationships. But no matter what he thought, nothing could have prepared him for Ashlynn’s next words.

”Nyrielle and I are betrothed,” Ashlynn said, smiling brightly as though it was a normal, happy announcement and not a startling admission that could shake the very foundations of the Kingdom of Gaal if she’d said it at home!