The Vampire & Her Witch

The entire great hall felt like they were balanced on the edge of a knife between hope and despair, and the slightest breeze could send them tumbling to either side. Dame Sybyll had sent an army to seize control of the villages of Hanrahan Barony, but she did it in the name of protection. The only question was, protection from who? Or what?”

”Protection from men like him,” Sybyll said, pointing at the bound and gagged former baron of Hanrahan. ”Or like him,” she added, pointing at Head Priest Germot. ”Men who would lead ye in ta’ trouble an’ strife. Or men like him, an’ his family of murderers,” she added, pointing at Loman Lothian. ”Men who would drag ye in ta’ wars ye have no need of fightin’,” she said in a voice that dripped with scorn.

”Ask yerself, if ye know yer history,” Sybyll said as she swept her crimson gaze over the people in the great hall. ”B’fore t’night, when is tha’ last time an Eldritch Lord or Lady descended on yer homes wit an army at their backs? Who was it in tha’ War of Inches who led yer fathers an’ grandfathers off ta’ die on tha’ slopes of Airgead Mountain? An’ why did they do it?”

No one spoke to answer Sybyll’s question, but no one needed to. Every eye in the room had already turned to look at the bound and shackled forms of Ian Hanrahan, Loman Lothian, and Head Priest Germot.

The Head Priest might only have been an acolyte at the time, but his predecessor had given fiery sermons from the pulpit, exhorting the people to take up arms and drive the demons from their lands. Loman Lothian hadn’t even been born yet, but his father, Bors Lothian, had been the one to call upon the barons to send their best and strongest fighting men to seize the riches of Airgead Mountain. In exchange, he promised them all rich rewards, expanded lands and greater titles if they could expand the border of his domain.

And most importantly to the people in the great hall, there had been Baron Ian Hanrahan, sending out his knights while he hunkered down in his keep to ’defend the supply lines’ and ’administer to the logistics of war’, all the while, lining his own pockets with the profits of battles fought on the slopes of the distant mountain.

”But it is true,” Sybyll continued once she’d made her point. ”Tha’ Third Army did take from ye what weren’t theirs, an’ there’s a grievance there ta’ be addressed,” she said as she bent down to pick up the first of the two chests.

”Me father paid twice tha’ price fer tha’ best of yer harvests,” Sybyll said loudly. ”Her Dominion took what we needed from ye by force, but her war isn’t wit’ tha’ common folk. For what she took, she’ll pay twice tha’ price,” the crimson-haired vampire said, opening the chest to reveal stacks of silver and even a scattering of gold coins stamped with strange emblems that resembled coiling serpents.

”She’ll pay twice tha’ price fer what we took, an’ twice again as an apology fer tha’ takin’,” Sybyll explained. ”It don’t make it right, an’ any who were hurt in tha’ raids, or who lost wagons, horses, or anythin’ else, can come ta’ tha’ keep in tha’ days ta’ come ta’ discuss how we’ll make amends.”

Throughout the great hall, people felt like they’d been thrown into an incomparably deep pit of despair when Sybyll told them about the attacks on their villages, only to be lifted high atop a mountain of gold and silver colored dreams when she spoke of paying the Baron’s Bounty for everything that was taken from the caravans, whether it had been the best of the harvest or not.

In fact, some of the merchants in town, who hadn’t been the victims of the raids, found themselves jealous of the farmers who would receive four times the value of their harvests just for the inconvenience of losing them in a raid. It wasn’t until Sybyll reminded them that those people may have been hurt or worse that they clamped down on their envy.

Others in the crowd, however, realized that there was a second chest next to Dame Sybyll, and their minds began to fill once again with gold and silver colored fantasies of what that chest might contain and what it would mean for their fortunes.

”Dame Sybyll,” Diarmuid said from his seat on the dais. ”When you say that ’Her Dominion’ is offering this restitution, you mean the Great Witch, the one you called the Mother of Trees, intends to provide for the people of Hanrahan?”

”Ye’ll come ta’ understand in time, Inquisitor,” Sybyll said with a smile. ”Fer now, it’s enough ta’ know her intentions, an’ those intentions mark a change fer all of Hanrahan,” she said as she gestured to Hauke.

The young Frost Walker lord had little to do during the proceedings thus far, but he never protested that fact. He was here as Ashlynn’s apprentice, and the most important thing he could do right now was to learn. Already, the way he’d seen Dame Sybyll manage her people differed greatly from what he’d seen from his father, Lord Ritchel, and Hauke intended to discuss the differences with Lady Ashlynn at length when he returned to the Vale of Mists.

At Sybyll’s command, however, the Frost Walker sorcerer finally moved, unfurling a roll of canvas that was nearly five paces long and half as wide. His horn glittered in shades of deep, icy blue as he gathered his energy, creating two pillars of ice that grew toward the great hall’s ceiling like trees, carrying the giant canvas high into the air until it stood above the heads of everyone on the dais.

A moment later, a halo of shifting blue, green, and violet lights surrounded the canvas, revealing a giant map that covered all of Hanrahan Barony, but extended far beyond the borders of the barony to encompass almost the entirety of Airgead Mountain, along with all the lakes, rivers, hills, and valleys in between. It was a vast swath of territory, three or perhaps four times the size of what the Hanrahans had ruled over in generations past.

Those with keen eyes noticed that the borders of this map extended farther south, east, and even north as well, encompassing lands that had been considered either too close to the Vale of Mists to risk developing as well as lands that lay in the middle distance between Hanrahan Barony and the villages that gave their loyalty directly to the Lothian Marquis.

”This is the future of Hanrahan,” Sybyll said proudly. ”Not as vassals of the Kingdom of Gaal, but as vassals of Her Eternity, the Harbinger of Death, and Her Dominion, the Mother of Trees. No longer will the people of Hanrahan bleed themselves out in deadly raids, chasing after wealth on Airgead Mountain,” she said, lifting up the second chest and turning to face Lord Jalal.

For a moment, the two felt like they were alone on the dais. This moment had stretched out between them for more than twenty years while they danced with death under the starlight. Now, it would finally come to an end...