The Vampire & Her Witch

”Ashlynn,” Loman whispered, staring at her in utter disbelief at the notion that she would strip the people of their faith. ”You can’t forbid worship, no matter how strong your armies are! You, you’d be denying them a chance to reach the Heavenly Shores,” he stammered as a thousand different reasons that her ’unreasonable and necessary’ compromise couldn’t be allowed.

”The light that shines from within a man’s heart was placed there by the Holy Lord of Light,” Loman recited from memory. ”And no cruel oppressor or worldly tyrant can extinguish that light, or take it away from a man.”

”Only the man himself can turn away from the light,” Ashlynn said, continuing the verse after Loman stopped reciting. ”For the Light can illuminate a path, but only the man may walk it. And if a man is forced to struggle against his will, then no matter how far he walks, he will never reach the light,” she added, tacking on a portion from later on in the same passage in order to make her point.

”The verse goes both ways, Loman,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head at the young priest. For a moment, her eyes flicked to the window, but even before she looked, she knew that the sun was still too high in the sky for her to summon Ignatious to help pry her brother-in-law free of dogmatic arguments. That knowledge didn’t stop her from wishing for help or that the sun would set just a little bit faster, but there were good reasons to have this conversation now, and just between the two of them, so she pressed on despite her discomfort with the topic.

”And I never said I’d forbid worship,” Ashlynn added. ”I said people must renounce the Church. The Church and the Faith aren’t the same thing, and you know it.”

”Still,” Loman said as he realized the contradiction he’d stumbled into. ”If you force the Church out, then...”

”I know, Loman, I know,” Ashlynn said, holding up a hand and sighing in exasperation. Clearly, it was too soon for him to consider details, and trying to teach him a lesson about perspective so soon after he’d arrived in the Vale of Mists was likely to do more harm than good if she pressed on. ”I shouldn’t even have brought this up. I’m not trying to be a bully or a tyrant, Loman,” she said as she changed her approach.

”But some day soon,” she said pointedly. ”After the last battle between the Vale of Mists and Lothian March ends, we’re going to need to sit down and talk. When we do, we need to make some very real decisions. I intend for all of our people to live side-by-side, not in two halves of a divided kingdom.”

”That means drawing up new territories,” Ashlynn continued, hoping to get Loman to understand the scope of change she intended to bring about. ”It also means appointing new governors. I’m open to allowing some of the barons to keep their current lands, but they must accept the Eldritch people living within their borders as their people, with the same rights and duties as the humans who have lived under their rule.”

”Do you really think that’s possible, Ashlynn?” Loman asked skeptically. ”Hugo mentioned that you had several people who had relocated to a village here, and that they seemed happy, but they also came here because you took members of their family captive. None of them has the choice to leave. How many of them would go back to their homes in the march if you let them?”

”Some, to be sure,” Ashlynn acknowledged, frowning slightly as she listened to the sounds of food simmering above the fire, trying to judge whether or not something was too hot and needed to be moved by how vigorous the bubbles in the soup sounded, or the sizzle of duck legs cooking in their own fat.

Ashlynn kept the meal simple, both because she wanted to focus on her conversation with Loman and because she wanted to produce something easier for him to eat. A cream soup of wild mushrooms foraged in the Vale and a pottage of peas and carrots could both be eaten with a spoon, and he wouldn’t need a knife and fork to enjoy meat served on the bone. She just had to be careful not to burn any of it while the conversation grew intense enough to draw her attention away from the meal.

”When this war is over, and spring comes,” Ashlynn said as she stood in order to attend to the dishes over the fire again. The pottage smelled fresh and herbaceous with plenty of parsley and thyme, but the soup had nearly bubbled over from sitting too close to the fire.

”We’ll let anyone who wants to leave do so. I never intended to keep anyone here longer than that. The time for secrets will be over soon enough,” she said, dipping a spoon into a hot, bubbling soup once she’d adjusted the pot, blowing on the steaming spoonful several times before taking a taste of the warm, creamy broth and savoring the blend of sweet cream with sharp, cracked black pepper.

”Whether we can all live together when this is over will depend a great deal on the concessions we’re willing to make in the name of peace,” Ashlynn said as she adjusted the seasoning of the soup, adding a pinch of salt and stirring it gently.

”Some things aren’t going to be negotiable. Dame Sybyll has been promised rule of Hanrahan and Airgead Mountain and all the lands between the two, and I will not take that away from her,” she said, more as an example than because she wanted to make a significant point about Sybyll’s claim to her family’s lands.

There were other things that weren’t negotiable, but her brother-in-law clearly wasn’t ready to confront them yet. The Church would have to alter its teachings about ’demons,’ or there would be no peace in the kingdom that Nyrielle and Ashlynn wanted to build, but Loman’s reaction had made it clear that she’d have to bring him around on that point slowly.

She didn’t want to destroy the Church if she didn’t have to. She still hadn’t let go of some of the teachings she’d grown up with, and she felt like, buried beneath centuries of dogma, there was a core of teachings that even the Eldritch could embrace...

But clearly, Loman wasn’t ready to think about separating his faith from the Church, and if she couldn’t convince her own brother-in-law to reform the faith, at least locally, then she had no idea how she would convince people like the High Priest in Lothian City.