The Vampire & Her Witch

Abbot Recared didn’t hesitate.

In the hours since Owain humiliated the Inquisition at Bors Lothian’s funeral, the Abbot had been searching for a way to reclaim the authority that the new Marquis had so publicly stripped from the Church.

He’d sat at the table that had been meant for the Hanrahans with the taste of his own cowardice still sour on his tongue, watching Owain perform the role of the grieving son, and he’d told himself that there would be a time and a place to reassert the Church’s power.

Now, standing in the wreckage of a wedding that had just been torn apart by a woman who had risen from the dead, the lord of Lothian March was calling for the Inquisition to do what the Inquisition was created to do.

To some, it might seem like he was a dog barking for his master, but to Recared, Owain had just delivered him the opportunity to remind the entire Lothian Court about the power wielded by his Inquisitors. Whether Ashlynn Blackwell was truly a witch or not didn’t matter.

She’d led an assault on Lothian Manor and confessed to surviving Owain’s attempt to murder her. The details could be manipulated later to fit the narrative. Evidence could be ’found.’ The correct story would be told. So long as Lady Ashlynn and her followers were reduced to piles of ash and bone, there would only be one set of voices telling the story, and Recared intended to have one that put the flames of the Inquisition at the very center of the march’s salvation.

”Brothers,” Recared said as he rose from his chair, making certain that his voice was loud enough for not only his own followers but the entire hall to hear as well. ”You heard Lord Owain. The woman standing before us bears the Mark of the Witch! She has confessed to surviving death itself, a perversion of the natural order that the Holy Lord of Light condemns above all others!”

”She is no different from the Demon Lady of the Vale and the Undying Demons of old,” Recared cried, eliciting a round of startled gasps from many of the women and children at the lower tables. ”And she will burn for her crimes!”

He turned to the men seated around him. The table that had been reserved for the missing Hanrahan delegation was large enough to seat a lord, his family, and a full complement of knights, and Recared had filled it with his most trusted Inquisitors and their most promising acolytes. A dozen men in the crimson and gold robes of the Inquisition and a dozen more in the unadorned crimson of acolytes looked up at their Abbot with expressions that ranged from grim determination to barely concealed terror.

”Rise,” Recared commanded. ”Join hands. We will show the court the power of the Holy Lord of Light, and we will burn the witch where she stands.”

The Inquisitors rose first, their chairs scraping back against the stone floor with a sound that cut through the murmuring of the hall. The acolytes followed a heartbeat later, some of them fumbling to clasp the hands of their brothers as the prayer formation took shape around the table.

It was the formation that the Church had used for centuries, passed down from the first saints to learn that one man’s faith alone was no match for the power of the witches and greater demons who roamed the lands on this side of the sea.

One man’s prayer, if he was devout enough, could summon a column of flame that could smite a single, ordinary demon. But a dozen men or more, working in concert, could produce a conflagration that rivaled the breath of the demons they were sworn to destroy.

”Our chains are heavy, our path is long,

But in our Struggle, we are strong.

Blood to embers, bone to ash,

Beneath the Lord’s eternal lash.

Two dozen souls, a single spark,

To drive the shadows from the dark!”

The Holy Lord of Light demanded a price for his miracles. It was often impossible to know how great the price would be before a person paid it. For the acolytes at the table, if their faith was frail or fragile, it might even destroy any hope they had of rising to the rank of Inquisitor or living a long life.

Recared knew the risks, and he accepted them without hesitation, because the alternative was to sit at his table and watch the authority of the Inquisition die in front of the entire court of Lothian March.

Recared’s eyes swept over his followers, and a small smile formed at the corner of his lips as he saw nothing but faith, devotion, and determination reflected in their eyes. These were his best men and the brightest, shining stars among the acolytes. The people he’d chosen to follow him here from the Abbey in Maeril because he knew they could be depended on and their voices joined with his in a prayer that echoed through the chamber of the Great Hall the way it would resound from the pulpit of a great cathedral.

”Behold the orb of Sacred Flame,

To burn the witch in His great name!

Across the sky the judgment flies,

As fire falls from Western skies.

By Prophet’s Laws, burn and bloom,

And send this witch unto her doom!”

The prayer wasn’t fast. It required concentration, coordination, and above all, the genuine faith of every man in the chain. Each Inquisitor who joined added his own voice to the incantation, weaving his devotion into the collective prayer like threads being drawn into a rope, and each thread made the rope stronger.

Heat began to build in the air above the table. At first, it was nothing more than a shimmer, like the distortion above a road on a hot summer’s day. Then a spark appeared, bright and golden, hanging in the air above the clasped hands of the Abbot as if a piece of the sun had descended to hover just above his reach.