The Vampire & Her Witch

On the second floor of the arena, the men of the Black Wolf Brigade howled and cheered for their commander and his brother as they faced off against opponents who seemed to directly counter them. Blood flowed from wounds on both the vampires’ bodies and the gladiators alike. More than once, Savis had been thwarted in his attempts to kill one of the remaining man when his lunch stopped short and the chains binding him to Tausau pulled taut, allowing his prey to slip away.

”We won’t win like this, Brother,” the white furred vampire snarled. His voice was low and barely audible but the ears of a vampire had no difficulty understanding his words, even over the din of the crowd and the clank of chains as they moved.

”I can buy you an opportunity,” Tausau said in an equally quiet tone. His arm ached from repeated heavy blows rained down on the shield he carried and the leather-wrapped wooden shield itself had cracked and splintered in more than one place. ”Polearm or spear?”

”Polearm,” Savis said decisively. The thrusts of the serpentine gladiator wielding the spear were powerful and swift but the halbered weilded by the Glass Eyed warrior was several times more difficult to deal with, hooking his chains and always landing its blows more precisely than he would have thought possible for someone without an extraordinary gift like the one he had received from Hamdi.

”Now,” Savis roared, lunging toward the spear wielding gladiator.

”Raaaarrrr!” Tausau roared, using his stunted arms to flip the failing shield through the air and sending it careening at the face of a bearish swordsman with enough force to knocke the man off his feet. The move looked desperate at best, foolish at worse, but it created half an opening for the Clanless vampire to lunge at the halberd wielding gladiator.

But even as Tausau lunged toward his target and Savis rushed beside him, aiming for the serpentine spearman, the final remaining swordsman was left completely unimpeded. With a roar of his own, his heavy two-handed sword came down in a brutal arc, slicing across Tausau’s back from one shoulder to the opposite hip, spilling vampire blood across the sands to the excited roar of the crowd.

On the first level of the arena, in a pocket of growing darkness surrounding Nyrielle, however, everyone had ceased paying attention to the battle below as the negotiation between the terrifying Harbinger of Death and the humble purveyer of luxury goods took a turn for the worse that no one had imagined.

”Perhaps I should cleanse this floor of the vultures who would only pick at her flesh until there was nothing left of the woman I love!”

Nyrielle’s words sliced through the idle chatter and even the people who had begun to speculate about Beilan’s impending fall from grace felt their blood go cold. Just what was it that this careless merchant had said to doom not only himself but all of them who gathered here today for the opportunity to befriend the woman who conquered the Tangled Wood in a day? Didn’t he know that such powerful lords could never be offended?

”It’s not like that, my love,” Ashlynn said, stepping between Nyrielle and Beilan and placing a hand on her lover’s chest. ”There is a cost, yes, but I don’t need to bear it alone. I’ll have a larger coven soon,” she said, lightly touching her own chest directly above the seed she’d been nurturing since before she left the Briar. ”We can do this in a way that doesn’t overburden anyone.”

”Please,” Ashlynn said, stepping close to Nyrielle and looking up at her with pleading eyes. ”You have built the walls that defend our home. You’ve resurrected the fortress town and the villages from the ashes. You’ve kept the Vale of Mists alive when many would have given it up for dead.”

”When I needed it, the Vale gave me safety, shelter, and the love of my life,” Ashlynn said softly. She had spent more time in the Briar than she had in the Vale of Mists, but she had always been a guest in Amahle’s swamp.

When she thought of ’home’ she thought of Georg’s delicate pastries, or Thane calling her ’little sister’ and spending just as much time listening to her troubles as he did helping her to develop her new abilities as a vampire’s Seneschal. Now, though she ached to see her sister and her parents again, she ached even more for the place that had given her a new life when the world she came from nearly dragged her to her death.

”Let me give something back to the Vale and its people,” Ashlynn whispered. ”Let me do something no one else can do.”

All around them, the assembled crowd waited with baited breath. A few with sharper senses had heard some of what Ashlynn had said, but most hadn’t heard a word after she spoke of Nyrielle’s rebuilding of the Vale of Mists. Only Beilan and his wife Nereida were close enough to hear Ashlynn’s heartfelt plea, but neither of them felt strong enough in the face of Nryielle’s dark fury to add their pleas to Ashlynn’s. For the moment, they could only wait and put their faith in the woman who had placed herself directly in the path of that fury and hope that Lady Nyrielle wouldn’t simply sweep her aside to kill them for offending her.

”Aren’t you already doing enough?” Nyrielle whispered. Slowly, her claws withdrew as she wrapped one arm around Ashlynn’s waist and gently stroked her lover’s cheek with the other hand. ”Why must you push yourself this hard?”

”I’ve seen how the Vale falls if we fail to transform it,” Ashlynn said, her emerald eyes flickering with the ghosts of her visions in the trail of the Ancient Willow. ”Without allies, we are overrun by the Lothians and the Church. Without the resources to take the war to them, our walls will crumble, and that’s just the battle against Owain and the forces he can assemble. A Crusade will be much, much worse,” she said as a tear spilled down her cheek.

”I nearly lost everything to Owain Lothian,” Ashlynn said, stepping back and wiping the moisture from her eyes. ”I didn’t know how to fight back then. And now, someone is threatening my everything again and I have much, much more to lose.”

”But I refuse,” Ashlynn said, turning to look at Nereida and Beilan. ”Master Beilan can find a way to trade in more than just Witchwood. There are other things that only witches can make. The Mother of Thorns showed me the way,” she explained. Making potions to trade in Crystal Lake City had been a lesson in more ways than one, and Ashlynn had learned even more in the months since her first visit to the oldest city of the Ancient Clan.

”So you intend to treat my darling Ashlynn like another mine full of unique treasures,” Nyrielle said, her face returning to a cold, impassive mask as she looked over Ashlynn’s head to meet the gaze of the serpentine merchant. A trace of power flowed along with her words, giving everyone who heard her speak the impression that she spoke from a place beyond the grave...

And that she might drag them to that place if the answers she heard displeased her.