The Vampire & Her Witch

For the first time in the history of Lothian March, and perhaps the first time in the history of the Kingdom of Gaal, the aristocrats who ruled one of its territories sat across the table from a man representing their enemy and listened to him describing the impact of their actions.

It was a sobering moment that none of them had been prepared for.

Ollie was a witch. A heretic in the eyes of the Church. A man who lived among the people that humanity had called ’demons’ for longer than anyone in the tent had been alive.

But he was also one of them. He was a man who grew up in Lothian March. He’d brought food to Sir Gavin when he was injured in a tournament. His manners, though old-fashioned, were recognizable and steeped in the traditions of the knights of Gaal.

And to Loghlan and Mairwen, he was the man who had brought their son home.

In the seat next to Liam, Eira’s expression had grown complicated as she listened to Sir Ollie describing Liam as his enemy. When the two men had entered the camp tonight, they looked like a pair of young heroes returning home, and though there were moments of tension between them, they acted like men who were slowly forming a friendship.

Eira had even been disappointed that Morwen wasn’t allowed to sit next to Sir Ollie at the high table during dinner. She and Morwen had been friends ever since they were young girls, and it didn’t feel good to watch her younger friend getting ’left behind’ when there was such an interesting match-making opportunity right in front of her.

Now, however, the handsome man of mystery had revealed himself to be not only a witch but the person who stood in direct opposition to the Dunns’ expansion efforts over the summer. Eira’s father hadn’t fought against the ’Eldritch’ this summer, but men of their village had, and the ones who returned home from those battles had called the fighting exceptionally cruel, filled with traps that tried to maim and wound them rather than simply taking their lives. If Sir Ollie had been the man responsible for inflicting that kind of cruelty, then she was glad that Morwen had been spared from the chance of becoming entangled with him.

”Thank you, Sir Ollie,” Baron Loghlan said after a long pause. ”Thank you for being honest with us. I may not have Mairwen’s gift for understanding the mysteries of the heart, but even I can tell when a man speaks the truth of his, and I respect that.”

”Now, Liam,” Loghlan said, turning to look at his son. ”Sir Ollie speaks of his people and his village in much the same way any of the knights gathered here would speak of their own. He also spoke of artificers, engineers, merchants and more coming from Eldritch cities across the mountains,” he said, barely stumbling over the unfamiliar word ’Eldritch.’

”You want to know if the Eldritch live as we do?” Liam said, understanding where his father’s thinking was taking him. ”Or if they’re the monsters the Church has taught us to fear? They aren’t monsters, Father,” he said definitively.

”The Eldritch look different than we do,” the young lord explained to the people gathered at the table. ”Some of them are very different. But I’ve dined with Lady Ashlynn more than once, and sampled dishes from faraway lands beyond the mountains. They’re no less refined, and many of them are even more sophisticated.”

”I’ve seen their art,” Liam continued. ”Paintings and tapestries that are so beautiful they’d make you weep at the sight of them, and in Hanrahan, when the people saw the portraits that Dame Sybyll displayed, several people clamoured for the chance to commission that master artist.”

”Re-really?” Ollie said, fighting to hold back a burst of laughter at Liam’s statement. ”I hadn’t heard that,” he said, taking a careful sip of wine as he recovered from the shock of it. ”Did Dame Sybyll tell them who painted them?”

”No,” Liam said, frowning at the flame-haired knight. ”I assumed it was the same person who painted the portrait of Lady Nyrielle’s parents and her grandsire that were present when we dined... oh,” he said, his eyes going wide in realization.

”Exactly,” Ollie said before looking at the bemused knights and ladies to offer them an explanation. ”In the Vale of Mists, there is no greater painter than Lady Nyrielle. Many of her works hang in the ancient fortress there. The tapestries are likely the work of her handmaiden, Madame Zedya.”

”Baron Dunn,” Ollie said as he slowly stood from his chair. ”I know you may find it hard to believe, but the Eldritch aren’t the ’savage monsters’ that we grew up hearing about. Lady Ashlynn prepared a gift for you,” he said as he strode across the tent to retrieve his saddle bags, bringing them back to the table and setting them gently in front of the baron and baroness.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely true to say that Ashlynn had prepared the gift. The gift had been one of the many things that Heila arranged for Ollie in the two hours that he slept under the effects of her potion.

Heila knew Ashlynn well, and she’d seen the way Ashlynn worked to demonstrate Eldritch culture and sophistication whenever she hosted newcomers to the Vale of Mists. She’d also helped to escort Isabell, Hugo and several of their other new allies around the growing city outside the fortress walls, and she’d come to understand the sorts of things that would make an impressive statement.

With that in mind, she’d filled half of Ollie’s saddle bags with trinkets that he could present as gifts for the baron and his wife. They might not be able to bring Loghlan to the Vale of Mists to give him a tour personally, but they could at least send a bit of the Vale to him in the hopes that he could understand his potential partners better.

”These are a product of my village,” Ollie said as he pulled out a pair of fine silk scarves in rich, forest green and deep, midnight blue. The green scarf was shot through with delicate threads that glittered like spun copper in a precise geometric pattern, while the midnight blue scarf featured silver embroidery that suggested ripples on deep water.

”They’re woven by the Nightweaver clan,” he said with a smile as he watched Mairwen’s eyes light up when she touched the buttery soft, silky material of the scarf he handed her. ”The people that humans call ’Spider Demons,’” Ollie added as he passed the second scarf over to the baron.

Loghlan’s fingers twitched as he felt his heart go cold the instant Ollie mentioned ’Spider Demons.’ After all, the venom of the Spider Demon was known to cause madness that made a man wish for death, and forced families to choose between watching their loved ones fall into a spiral of lunacy and bodily maladies or granting the people they held most dear a merciful death.

”To think that they could make something so beautiful,” Mairwen said as she very pointedly wrapped the scarf around her neck, luxuriating in its softness before she reached out and plucked the other scarf from Ollie’s outstretched hand.

”I think this one suits you, Eira,” Mairwen added as she reached across the table to present the scarf to the young lady who had been trying to kindle a spark with her son. ”What do you think of it?”