The Vampire & Her Witch

”Merciful Light above,” a woman at a nearby table breathed, pulling her children closer to her as the heat washed over her like the opening of an oven door. ”What are they doing?”

”They’re going to burn her,” her husband said, his face gone pale as he scrambled to push his chair back from the table, putting distance between his family and the growing flames. ”Move, quickly, get away from them...”

At the Fayle table, Baron Erling was already on his feet. He grabbed his mother’s arm, pulling Ragna away from their seats with a roughness that he would apologize for later.

”Back,” Erling shouted at the wives of his knights and their children. He’d sent their husbands to stand with Loghlan’s knights and Lady Ashlynn’s men, leaving no one else to protect their families but him. He wanted nothing more than to upend the heavy oak table to take shelter from whatever madness the Inquisition was about to unleash, but even if the women and children helped, he doubted they had enough strength to move such a massive, heavy table so he did the next best thing.

”Get away from the tables, all of you, now,” he said as he raced for the wall where a heavy tapestry depicting a battle against the demons of the Vale of Mists hung. Erling might be a small man, but his arms and shoulders were as powerful as the limbs of his horn bow, and he tore the tapestry from the wall in a single, powerful pull.

”Take cover, quickly,” Lady Ragna shouted, taking up the other end of the tapestry and waving for the children to take shelter behind the heavy fabric first while their mothers followed afterward. ”You’ll be safe here,” she promised, though the look she gave her son was anything but certain.

At the Otker table, Serge dove under the table, one hand clutching his goblet and the other reaching for Charlotte. His sister shook his hand away, her tear-streaked face fixed on the growing ball of light with an expression that was equal parts terror and a fierce, desperate refusal to look away from what was happening to the woman who had just reunited with her sister.

”Get under the table, Charlotte!” Serge hissed.

”N-no,” Charlotte said, though her voice shook badly enough that the word came out in two syllables. ”No, I won’t look away,” she said more firmly. Lady Ashlynn wasn’t running for cover. She was just standing there, holding her sister and refusing to move from the spot where she stood.

The knight and Inquisitor who came with her hadn’t moved either, and in fact, none of the men wearing the emerald green and midnight blue gambesons who had attacked the manor with Lady Ashlynn seemed to be shrinking back from the miracle taking shape in the air above the Inquisition’s table even as the knights who joined them from Fayle, Dunn and Iriso looked increasingly uncomfortable.

The spark had become a sphere. It hung in the air above the Inquisition’s table like a miniature sun, pulsing with each verse of the prayer as more and more Inquisitors added their faith to the fire. The golden light was so bright that it cast sharp, black shadows beneath every table and chair in the hall, and the heat radiating from it made the air ripple and dance, turning the far walls of the great hall into wavering, indistinct shapes.

Candle flames throughout the hall guttered and stretched toward the sphere, drawn toward it the way iron filings were drawn to a lodestone, and several of the nearest candles simply went out, their flames ripped from their wicks and consumed by the growing inferno above the Abbot’s hands.

At a table filled with the knights who owed their fealty directly to the Lothian Marquis, Captain Albyn struggled against the blinding light and the intense heat of the Inquisition’s miracle. He wanted nothing more than to rush out to protect Lady Jocelynn and Lady Ashlynn as well, but even his sun-weathered skin flinched at the intensity of the heat focused on the pair of sisters standing at the center of the hall.

”Get down, you fool,” Sir Garrik Maeril snapped, grabbing hold of his soon-to-be peer and pulling him behind an upended bench. ”Even knights have limits. Recared is an Abbot for a reason; let him handle the witches.”

”No, but...” Albyn started only for Sir Gilander to cut him off.

”Sir Garrik is right,” the aging knight said. ”I know you want to prove that you had nothing to do with this wickedness, but it’s best to let the Inquisition do what must be done. You’re a good man, Albyn,” Gilander said as he placed a hand on the Blackwell captain’s shoulder. ”Lord Owain was deceived as well. No one will fault you for standing back now while Abbot Recared does as Lord Owain ordered him to.”

Albyn wanted to protest. He didn’t belong here, standing shoulder to shoulder with men who had pledged their loyalty to a monster like Owain Lothian. He belonged out there, with Lady Jocelynn, Captain Devlin, and all the others... but against the heat of the burning orb the Inquisition had summoned, he felt utterly powerless to make a move.

”Holy Lord of Light,” Recared intoned, his voice rising as the sphere of fire swelled to the size of a wagon wheel above his head. ”Allow your humble servants to cleanse this corruption from our midst! Let your sacred fire burn away the darkness that has taken root in this hall!”

The prayer reached its crescendo, and the sphere of Holy Fire hung in the air, bloated with power, radiating a heat so intense that the nearest wine decanters began to steam and the white linen tablecloths closest to the Inquisition’s table started to scorch and brown at their edges.

Everyone could feel the heat. It pressed against the skin of everyone in the great hall like the breath of an open furnace, and people who had been watching in morbid fascination were now shielding their faces with their hands, turning away from the blinding radiance of the Inquisition’s miracle as tears streamed from their light-ravaged eyes.

But a few refused to look away. Aubin, despite the tears running down his face, stared at the ball of fire with the horrified recognition of a man who understood exactly what the Inquisition had just created and what it would do to anyone it touched. And Loghlan, at the Dunn table, watched with the grim, unblinking focus of a man who was about to learn whether the trust he’d placed in a dead woman’s army had been well founded.

Then, with an agonizing slowness, the sphere of Holy Fire began to descend toward the woman in the cavalier hat and the sister she held in her embrace...