The Vampire & Her Witch

Talauia was the next person to arrive at Ashlynn’s camp, all but pulling the lumbering form of Ritchel along with her.

”Has it started, has it started yet?” the winged witch asked as she fluttered over to Ashlynn, slowing only when she realized that the Mother of Trees wasn’t alone. Her wings hummed in the air, creating small whirlwinds of mist around her as she hovered closer to the witch and the powerful vampire, as her desire for even a scrap of news overwhelmed her near instinctive hesitation to approach a vampire as powerful as Nyrielle.

”I’m worried, worried about Heila,” Talauia said as she hovered toward Ashlynn. ”Can you see the battle from here? Are there trees close enough?”

”It’s too far,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head at the Thistle Witch. ”The trees of the Vale will carry my sight, but if I wanted to see into Hanrahan Barony, I’d have to go at least as far as the summer villa,” she confessed. ”If I had already been to Hanrahan, and I’d been able to plant a seed there, then maybe I could reach that tree, but right now...”

”Right now,” Ashlynn said with a heavy sigh, ”the limit of my power lets me feel the direction that Heila has gone, along with a vague sense of how she is. I should know if she’s badly injured, or... or if the worst happens,” Ashlynn forced herself to say, even though she hated to think that she might have sent her closest friend to die in this battle.

Tragedies could happen even when all of the preparations had been made to prevent them, and if she didn’t admit that, then she wasn’t being honest about the risks she was taking with the decisions she was making. Heila should be fine. So far as they knew, the greatest threat was Sir Tommin and his Holy Light Blade, and Dame Sybyll felt confident in countering him. But there was always the possibility of the unexpected.

”It’s the same for me,” Nyrielle added. ”Sybyll should be awake by now, but she isn’t in any danger at the moment. I’ll know if she’s gravely injured, or if she touches the Void, but otherwise... I won’t know whether or not she succeeds until the end.”

”But you’ll know, you’ll know,” Talauia said, seizing on the way Nyrielle phrased things at the end. ”How will you know?”

”Because Sybyll is my Executioner,” Nyrielle said with a light smile. ”And because she’s gone to kill her cousin, Ian Hanrahan. If all goes as I expect it will, then she’ll capture him alive and torment him until dawn. But before she kills him, she’ll touch the Void, and I’ll feel it when she does. So long as I feel that touch sometime close to dawn, I’ll know that she’s succeeded.”

”I envy you, old friend,” Ritchel said in a deep, rumbling voice as he lowered himself to sit on a fallen log. ”The battles you’ve spoken of against humans sound impossibly grand. Hundreds of warriors on either side? They make our battle in the High Pass feel like a minor scuffle. I’ve never taught Hauke how to fight in such a large battle...”

Ritchel still bore the scars of that ’scuffle’ in the high pass, and he had yet to recover from the wounds that Talauia inflicted on him in the midst of that battle. Without regular care from the Thistle Witch and the infusion of strength that Nyrielle provided him with blood vitality crystals, he would have wasted away weeks ago.

But anyone who looked at the former Frost Walker lord could see that his poor health bothered him very little. As far as Ritchel was concerned, he should have died that night when the ancestral spirits possessed his son and tragedy unfolded. Instead, he’d received kindness, compassion, and healing from the very people his ancestors had betrayed. So, to Ritchel, every day he still lived was a gift, and one that he hoped would allow him to see both the High Pass and his son, Hauke, growing and prospering.

”He has Heila to guide him, and Dame Sybyll as well,” Ashlynn said gently. ”I believe in your son, Lord Ritchel. He’s worked hard to learn as much as he can, and he’s protected by the Runic Blade of Eternal Ice. Even an Inquisitor should struggle with him for an opponent.”

”I can attest to that,” a familiar voice called from the mist. The speaker made no sound as he glided forward across the freshly turned soil, stepping gracefully despite the mud that threatened to splatter his crimson robes.

”The sword your son carries withstood a clash with my Holy Flame Blade,” Ignatious pointed out as he joined the group. ”Even if young Hauke found himself face to face with Templar Tommin, his blade wouldn’t lose out to the other man’s weapon, and so far as we know, the Inquisitor who was sent has no weapon to match mine.”

”Sir Ignatious,” Ollie said, standing up from the cookfire where he’d been preparing a simple dinner to follow their day of work preparing the land of the Enchanted Grotto. ”Did you come to pray for Heila? I can join you, if you’d like,” the young knight offered politely.

Ollie might not be particularly devout, but Ignatious had come to the young knight’s vigil and prayed with him before Ollie began his trial of witchcraft. It was part of the ceremony of becoming a knight that Ollie had thought he’d have to do without, but Ignatious had given him not only the prayers appropriate for the occasion, but some genuinely insightful guidance as well, and Ollie had never forgotten the favor the vampire had done for him that night.

”I came to pray for everyone’s safety and success, not just Heila’s,” Ignatious said with a warm smile that never would have formed on his lips a year ago. But much had changed since Nyrielle came to free him from High Lord Hamdi’s domain, not the least of which was the reawakening of his heart and the healing he experienced at Lady Heila’s hands.

”But, if you want to say an extra prayer for Heila’s safety tonight,” Ignatious added as he wrapped an arm affectionately around the young knight’s shoulders. ”I won’t complain,” he said with a slight wink.

Over the course of the next hour, they were joined by several other figures, from Thane and Commander Bassinger to Zedya and Lennart, even Georg ’dropped by’ with a basket full of sweet and savory hand pies, along with a small hand cart loaded to the brim with casks of wine and cider for everyone who would be staying up through the night.

By the time the sky began to fill with stars, Ashlynn and Nyrielle had taken a seat on the ground facing each other as each woman shut out the world around them to focus on the mystical connections that bound them to their coven or progeny. A faint emerald aura surrounded Ashlynn, swirling and dancing with the deep, midnight blue energy that rose from Nyrielle’s alabaster flesh as they strained for the slightest hint of what might be happening in the battle.

”You’re not going to offer to help?” Erkembalt asked, nudging Aspakos as the pair of sorcerers watched Ashlynn and Nyrielle’s magic with eyes that perceived more than many of the people watching.

Seeing witchcraft blending with and reinforcing the sorcery of a vampire should have been one of the most impossible things in the world, yet for these two women, it seemed almost... natural. As if this was the way the world had always been meant to work, and every time the two men saw it, they felt like they were on the edge of learning something profound from the experience.

”There’s no need,” the broken beaked sorcerer said with a shake of his head. ”If the fate of the world shifted, it shifted the night that Lady Ashlynn declared war on the people who wronged her. This battle will change the destiny of many people, but in the scheme of things, it’s a single point of light in a grand design that was already painted in the stars above. There are no secrets to pry from the heavens that would be worth the price I’d pay to know them.”

”There you go again,” the artificer said with a huff as he gulped down half his tankard of cider. ”Making yourself sound mysterious and important. If you don’t know and won’t help, just say that,” he huffed.

It wasn’t long after that, however, before Nyrielle spoke, wincing as she felt an echo of the pain that wracked Sybyll’s body more than a hundred leagues away.

”It has begun,” she said in a voice that trembled more than anyone had heard in many years, if ever. ”Despite the darksteel armor,” she added in a whisper, ”the Church has found a way to make Sybyll suffer...”