The Vampire & Her Witch

Isabell thought she’d prepared herself during the carriage ride. She thought that she was ready to enter this world of Eldritch people and witchcraft. Last night, despite everything she’d seen, from the strange sham of a tribunal for the traitor to the calm, matter-of-fact way that Ashlynn had revealed the truth that Marcel was a vampire, she felt like she was ready to approach Ashlynn’s world with an open mind.

Now, however, with an Eldritch woman in front of her, a witch no less, holding out a goblet of.. Of a potion that the woman insisted would help her, she found it difficult to make a move.

”Would it be easier if I left it for you and gave you time alone?” Heila asked, sensing the other woman’s reluctance. ”I won’t take offense. I still remember how Lady Ashlynn was when she first woke up here. I looked after her then, and that’s why she asked me to look after you now, but I won’t force anything on you.”

”No, it’s fine,” Isabell said, taking the goblet from the diminutive, horned woman’s hand. Thinking of it as medicine helped, and when she remembered how often she’d told her children to drink their medicine down and how exasperated she felt when they wined and pleaded about the bitter taste of herbs, she found her resistance crumbling. After all, what kind of parent would she be if she didn’t do as she told her children to?

Keeping the image of her children’s faces as they pleaded not to drink their medicine firmly in mind, Isabell raised the cup to her lips and drank it all down, imagining herself to be setting an example, even if the person who needed the example set was herself.

The greenish liquid wasn’t thick the way she’d expected, nor did it have the same bitter taste as the medicine prepared by the apothecaries she was used to visiting. Instead, it was light and sweet, like the juice of freshly squeezed cucumbers, with only a faint taste of fresh, minty herbs and the slightest hint of very weak wine.

”How long does it take to,” she started to say, only to trail off in amazement as she felt a soothing coolness spreading through her body, from her throat and her stomach until it reached the top of her head and the tips of her toes.

The feeling of salt in her eyes and the tight, squeezing pain that gripped her head faded away like fog in a stiff breeze, leaving only the barest memory of discomfort behind. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought she hadn’t drunk a single drop last night, to say nothing of drinking Ashlynn’s potent wine until she was close to blacking out.

”That, that is amazing,” Isabel said, marveling as she stared at the goblet in disbelief. ”It feels... fresh. Natural. Is all witchcraft like this? Does it require some kind of sacrifice to make it? ’One must suffer so another can heal?’” Isabell asked, thinking back over everything she’d heard from the Church about witchcraft over the years.

The potion didn’t feel evil, it was completely the opposite. Or, not exactly opposite, she corrected herself. It didn’t feel evil, but it didn’t feel holy either. Natural really was the best word to describe what it felt like, as if it was simple and ordinary, formed of things grown in a garden instead of the result of ’demonic’ or ’dark magic.’

Perhaps there was something insidious about having witchcraft feel like part of the natural, living world, but as Isabell struggled to think of the sweet-looking young woman in front of her as being somehow insidious. Rather, between what Ashlynn had said last night and the woman in front of her now, it was becoming easier and easier to regard the Church’s teachings as suspect.

Isabell had never been particularly devout. Years of bloody civil war in the Emerald Kingdom had eroded her faith in a way that few people in the Kingdom of Gaal ever experienced. To her countrymen, fighting against the demons was natural and holy. It was a clash between those who were clearly good and ’creatures’ that were ’twisted by their own evil.’

But Isabell had seen the horrors of wars fought over territory, resources, and tribute. When she returned to the Kingdom of Gaal from across the sea, and especially when she listened to men like Owain Lothian talk about the upcoming holy war, she didn’t find the Kingdom’s wars to be any different from what she’d experienced across the sea.

Owain wasn’t a holy zealot, unable to restrain himself from slaying evil with his sword to protect his people. He was an ambitious lord, filled with a lust for conquest and a desire for the wealth and power that would come from expanding his lands. Perhaps there was some faith underlying all of that, but it was buried so deeply beneath the filth of his baser motives that it might as well not exist.

But despite her lack of faith, the only stories of witches and their craft that Isabell had ever heard were the ones the Church allowed to be told. Like building a defensive rampart on soft and shaky ground, Isabell’s image of witchcraft was fragile and couldn’t withstand direct confrontation with the truth.

She didn’t believe that it required dark sacrifices to give witches their power, not really, but she had never heard any other explanations for the mystic forces witches wielded either. And so, rather than remain ignorant, she asked Heila directly for an explanation of how the pleasant-tasting potion worked.

”’One must suffer so another can heal?’” Heila asked, repeating Isabell’s words back to her and blinking in confusion. ”That isn’t right at all. No one suffers for this. Something this minor, it barely takes any of the world’s energy to complete it.”

”I see,” Isabell said as she sank briefly into thought. She hadn’t seen much of the Eldritch world yet, but Ashlynn had told her more than once last night that the things she had been taught were so far from the truth that it was better to know nothing than to try to find kernels of truth in the Church’s teachings about the Eldritch. She’d also said that Heila was her closest friend among the Eldritch people and that she trusted her lady-in-waiting with her life.

”Heila,” Isabell asked as she regarded the diminutive horned woman. ”I’m trying to understand, but everything I know about your people and about witches is... is probably a lie,” she admitted with a heavy sigh. ”Lady Ashlynn is someone I consider a good friend, and I don’t want to do or say the wrong things when I’m her guest, but I need some help and a good many answers before I meet with her again. Can you help me?”

”Of course I can help you,” Heila said, smiling brightly as she watched the older woman methodically thinking things through. Ashlynn had said that Isabell was one of the smartest, most reasonable people she knew. She was certain that, given time and the truth, Isabell would come to the right conclusions, but she would need to work some things out for herself before she felt confident in her conclusions.

Ashlynn’s instructions had been very clear. Heila was to answer any questions she felt that Isabell was ready to hear the answers to, and she was to be as objective and truthful as possible. Heila would have done much of that anyway, but Ashlynn had given her one additional instruction that had surprised the Willow Witch.

”She may ask about me,” Ashlynn had said. ”She’s my friend. She’s one of the only people in Blackwell City who was never overawed of my father, and when she spoke to me, she spoke to Ashlynn instead of speaking to the count’s daughter.”

”I treasure her friendship as much as I treasure yours,” Ashlynn said. ”So if she asks about me... be honest, even if I wouldn’t. I hope you can be friends with her too, so don’t hold back when she asks how things have been. You won’t be betraying my confidence, you’ll be helping me in a way that only someone who has been close to me all this time can.”

Now, as Heila looked at Isabell’s calm, curious presence, seeing the woman working to fit the pieces of information she had collected so far into a grander image of the truth, she understood why Ashlynn had made that request of her. Isabell, she realized, was like Sir Marcel, someone who needed to reason things out for herself from the facts instead of being told the conclusion.

Since that was the case, and because Isabell was clearly very important to Ashlynn, Heila would do her best to help the older woman understand in the hours they had before Ashlynn woke, and the topics they discussed would become much more serious.

”I can help you understand,” Heila said with a warm smile. ”But first, let me help you to freshen up and get something to eat as well. You’re in for a treat because Georg has been expecting your arrival, and he’s a great cook, even compared to the palace chefs in High Fen City...”