The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn was familiar with Nightweaver Venom in a way that few healers could claim to be. Her own teacher, the Mother of Thorns, Amahle, was a member of the Nightweaver Clan, and both Ashlynn and Heila had studied how to treat the toxin. The problem was that even among witches, the poison was difficult to treat.

”The thing you have to understand, sugar,” Amahle had explained one hot summer night. ”Is that no two Nightweavers are the same, so the venom is different from one person to the next, and we each have different strengths to the venom that we make, like our own secret recipe.”

”The venom has four parts to it,” she said, giving both Ashlynn and Heila a look at the small holes in her jaw that were barely visible under her tongue. ”One attacks the ears, makin’ men hear what ain’t there, one attacks the eyes, makin’ ’em see what ain’t real,” she explained, using her spider-like appendages to gesture to her ears and eyes.

”So we have to heal the eyes and ears separately to remove the venom?” Heila asked, looking eager and attentive as Amahle laid out the way that venom worked.

”Those two, an’ more,” Amahle said with a nod. ”The third part grips the mind, fogging it up and makin’ a man forget what happened an’ remember things that didn’t. The last part attacks the body, breaking it down in its own ways. The strongest of us can attack the heart, making it race when it shouldn’t, as if a person is facing the greatest fear of their life in a calm, empty room, or slowing it enough to mimic death, even before their breath leaves them.”

”The strongest of you can affect the heart,” Ashlynn said with a frown. ”But you said the fourth part attacks the body, so what else can it do?”

”It depends from one of us to the next, sugar,” Amahle said calmly. ”And where the poison settles. Some, it settles in the lungs, leaving a man short of breath or coughing up blood, other times, it settles in the gut, twisting it up until a man can’t eat nothin’ but broth and boiled oats. Anyway it goes, if it don’t claim the heart, then it’s a slow death for sure and weak men take their own lives before the venom ever kills ’em.”

The description Amahle had given Ashlynn was so horrifying that she’d been amazed that other clans hadn’t turned on the Nightweavers the way they turned on Talauia’s Glimmerwing clan. Amahle’s Clan, however, had developed a disturbingly practical method to ensure that they were never hunted to extinction by people who feared their deadly venom.

”Don’t no one wants to die by a Nightweaver’s bite, sugar,” Amahle explained. ”But many an Eldritch Lord has enough hatred in their heart to want to see an enemy suffer from our venom. Trading a bit of spit for protection gets safe havens that can last a generation or more, so the ones powerful enough to threaten us work with us instead of against us. Ain’t the best way, maybe, but it’s a way that worked enough times to keep us safe from the likes of the Jaws of Death.”

It had been a lesson that Ashlynn took to heart for reasons far beyond the desire to learn how to heal such a complicated poison. When she thought about how to build peace between the Eldritch and the humans, she often thought back to the example of the Nightweavers and how she could get each side to see the other as more useful than threatening, but doing so would only solve one piece of the puzzle.

For now, she hoped that a small act of compassion could turn into something larger. She didn’t know Sir Tommin’s family, and she had no idea whether or not they shared the Templar’s blindingly bright faith or not. Perhaps they would rather die than be healed by a witch, and perhaps Tommin would rather see them dead than owe thanks to a witch for saving them... But whether they would thank her or curse her, Ashlynn had to try.

”Can you keep her from waking while I work?” Ashlynn asked as she carefully examined Rosie’s sleeping figure. The poison had settled in her lungs, and the combination of the toxin and the smoke she’d inhaled during the fire made her breathing shallow and weak, but thanks to Zedya’s intervention, it was at least steady and free of pain.

”I can,” Zedya promised as her amethyst eyes began to glow with an even brighter light. ”Once she’s under my spell, it doesn’t take much to maintain it. But if you heal her eyes, you may remove my enchantment along with the poison.”

”Eyes last, then,” Ashlynn said as she began to gather emerald energy into her hands. ”I’ll start with her body and her mind. Hopefully, when she wakes, she’ll be willing to listen to reason, but even if she turns out to be the most stubborn and hateful zealot, we’ll still heal her son. I just hope that she’ll give me the chance to do more than that...”

Amahle had taught two different methods of dealing with Nightweaver venom. The simplest was suitable for Heila, and it required a great deal of energy. The best method for Heila would be to bring Rosie to a willow tree, laying her among the tree’s roots with her feet in the water so that the cleansing energy of the world could flow through her, though there was a risk that the tree used in the ritual would die in the process if the tree was too young and the venom had been given too much time to spread throughout the body.

For Ashlynn, however, there was a more complex method that required her to draw on the unique aspects of different trees, using the whole of the forest to bring about healing. It was something that only great witches like the Mother of Trees or the Mother of Thorns could do...