The Vampire & Her Witch

With several days to prepare for what might be one of the most important feasts since the construction of Lothian Manor, Hugo Hanrahan had expended an extraordinary amount of effort to ensure that everything was placed exactly as it needed to be. Ashlynn had expected to be impressed based on the few snippets she’d heard from Hugo when he checked in for permission or to get answers to questions, but even her expectations had been wildly exceeded by what Hugo had accomplished.

Banners hung from the rafters of the Great Hall, suspended between the chandeliers where they could bathe in the soft glow of hundreds of wax and tallow candles. Ashlynn and Nyirelle’s banners were the most prominent, but they’d been joined by several others that were immediately identifiable to the natives of the march.

House Dunn’s watchtower hung alongside the rolling hills of Hanrahan and the grapes of Fayle in a display that clearly elevated three of the baronies to a higher status than any of their peers. Those banners were joined by a black banner marked by six white stars within a crescent shaped like a hoofprint, along with a cerulean banner bearing the three white sails of the Blackwell coat of arms, and a white banner bearing an icy-blue spiral-shaped horn and the outline of four mountain peaks.

Each of the latter three banners occupied a position of greater prominence than the banners of the barons, just below the banners representing Ashlynn and Nyrielle themselves.

But the banners were only the beginning of Hugo’s work.

A dozen intricate tapestries hung on the walls, depicting everything from waterfalls in the mist-shrouded forest of the Vale to a peaceful village on the slopes of Airgead Mountain in a clear display of the beauty and splendor of the Eldritch world. Strangely, however, those tapestries were interspersed with thirteen other tapestries, clearly collected from the Great Temple in Lothian, depicting the Thirteen Sacred Constellations.

Seeing the familiar icons, several of the knights and their families in attendance visibly relaxed, only to tense again as the towering men and women of High Lord Dirar’s retinue paused before various tapestries, bowing or offering some kind of gesture of respect to the Sacred Constellations.

Perhaps the strangest part of the arrangement, however, was the way Hugo had repurposed the dais at the head of the great hall. As before, Ashlynn wanted her table placed in the center of the hall, with the rest arranged in a spiral around her table. But rather than leave the dais empty, Hugo had set up something that resembled a festival bazaar with long tables covered by wooden trays, colorful cloths, and simple stands, displaying a wide assortment of wares.

”What is all of this?” Wes Iriso asked as Hugo guided him and Sorcha toward the bazaar at the head of a long line of guests waiting to be shown their seats.

”These are gifts from Her Dominion and Her Eternity,” Hugo explained with a broad smile. ”It was Lady Heila’s idea,” he added, nodding to the petite horned witch who had been clinging to Ignatious ever since he arrived from the temple shortly after Nyrielle’s arrival at the manor.

”No, it wasn’t,” Heila insisted, shaking her head from side to side. ”I had the idea of stuffing a few gifts in Ollie’s saddlebags when he and Liam went to negotiate with the Dunns. I never imagined something this... grand,” she said, struggling to find a word that would describe the impressive collection of curiosities on display.

”Well, Lady Ashlynn was impressed when she heard Lord Loghlan talking about the impact it had on his knights and their ladies,” Hugo said. ”So she asked me to help arrange something similar. Only this time, the assortment is larger for having more time to prepare. Choose something you like,” Hugo said, stepping aside and gesturing to the bazaar. ”It’s yours to keep.”

Wes and Sorcha entered hesitantly, uncertain what to do as the first guests to be offered an opportunity to select a gift. Thankfully, the horned witch followed closely behind them, explaining several of the items as they went.

”These scarves are spun by the Nightweaver Clan,” Heila said, holding up a silk scarf that had been dyed a deep, rich crimson. ”The silk is very strong; it won’t tear easily, even if you snag it on something thorny,” she said with a light giggle. ”My teacher, Auntie Amahle, is from the Nightweaver Clan and she made things like this all the time.”

”She’s also the Mother of Thorns,” Heila added helpfully when she realized that they had no way to recognize the name. ”A Great Witch like Lady Ashlynn.”

”A... A Great Witch made these?” Sorcha said, swallowing heavily as her hands froze on the lightweight piece of fabric. ”Truly?”

”No, no, these were made in Ollie’s village,” Heila explained quickly. ”Auntie Amahle is on the far side of the mountains; she couldn’t visit us now, even if she wanted to. Not with the High Pass closed for the winter.”

”Oh, I see,” Sorcha said, sighing in relief before blushing furiously as she realized it might offend the Willow Witch.

”If you want to see something special, look at these,” Heila said, ignoring Sorcha’s obvious embarrassment and gesturing to the next table over. ”You’re from Iriso, right?” Heila asked, making sure she’d remembered the right names and faces from the brief introductions Ashlynn had given as they moved from the inner bailey to the Great Hall.

”We are,” Sorcha said, nodding briefly before her eyes went wide in surprise. ”Is that... granite from the Shattered Hills?” Sorcha asked, staring at a small game board roughly the length of her forearm and half as wide.

The board itself had been carved from the rich, purplish heartwood of a cedar tree, set with several narrow strips of iridescent black granite that shimmered in greenish-gold tones. The layout of the granite strips created a series of alternating spaces, but neither Sorcha nor Wes recognized the specific game.

”When Princess Jocelynn came to visit the Vale of Mists, Lady Ashlynn sent several things with her to be turned into gifts for tonight,” Heila said, biting back her desire to say that it was the least that Jocelynn could do to help her sister after the way she’d hurt Ashlynn nine months ago. ”I think the granite for this was taken from the wedding gifts that Princess Jocelynn received,” she said in a carefully neutral tone.

Heila had yet to find a comfortable way to interact with Ashlynn’s sibling. She wanted, very badly, to be the kind of person who could welcome Jocelynn into not only their home in the Vale but into their coven as well.

It would be so much easier, Heila thought, if Jocelynn had been a stranger, like Isabell, who she could welcome with open arms. Someone that Ashlynn loved without reservation. But even Heila, the gentle, yielding Willow Witch, had a hard time looking at Jocelynn with neutral eyes when she remembered the destruction Ashlynn left in her wake on the night she’d learned that Jocelynn had been the one to betray her secret.

”Perhaps you’d prefer one of these,” Ignatious said, coming to Heila’s rescue the instant he felt her heartbeat quickening as her thoughts took an unexpectedly sharp turn. ”Lord Jalal brought strands of rough-cut stones that would make for an excellent necklace,” he added, reaching out to one of the nearby trays and selecting a strand of pale citrine that all but glowed in the warm candlelight of the Great Hall.

”It would look stunning on you, my love,” Wes said, graciously accepting the strand of stones and holding it up for Sorcha to appraise. ”Don’t you think?”

”These are from Airgead Mountain?” Sorcha said, looking from the strand in Wes’s hands to the nearly two dozen strands waiting on the table. ”All of these stones are from Airgead?”

”I think that her Dominion is making a point,” Wes said with a wry smile. ”Several of them really... In three years of bloody war, how many of these stones did Bors Lothian plunder from Airgead? And now, here they are, laid out as gifts...”

”So what, she’s rubbing our faces in it?” Sorcha said, wrinkling her nose at the notion. ”That the Eldritch are wealthy?”

”No,” Wes said, shaking his head at his exceptionally blunt wife before pointing back at the game board. ”They have things we want badly enough to fight for them. But we also have things they desire and can make into beautiful pieces.”

”They only had a few days to make those game boards,” Wes pointed out. ”And if I’m right about where they obtained our granite, the pieces they worked from weren’t large... Imagine what they could do if we sent slabs of our stone upriver to the Vale instead of risking the trip through Otker Canyon,” he said, already starting to imagine the possibilities.

Beside him, Heila nodded enthusiastically as she watched one of Ashlynn’s many messages land. Her joy, however, was short-lived as she turned to face the table at the center where Lady Ashlynn and Lady Nyrielle already awaited her.

Up until now, Heila had enjoyed the seat directly beside Ashlynn, and she’d treasured that closeness. As the first witch of Ashlynn’s coven, she’d earned that place and the respect that came with it. Now, however, someone else had taken that seat, and she’d have to move one more place to the side.

For anyone else, Heila liked to think that she could have accepted the move with the grace befitting the lady that she’d become. But to see Jocelynn sitting there, as though she still somehow possessed the right... That was much harder to accept than she’d thought, and she wasn’t entirely certain how she’d get through the night...