The Vampire & Her Witch

The look on his mother’s face pierced Erling’s heart like a broadhead fired from his bow.

It was a secret he’d never planned to reveal to her, at first, because he thought he’d get in trouble for talking to ’demonic ravens,’ and later because he came to understand his mother’s heart.

”Do you hate the demons who killed Father?” Erling had asked in the first years of his tenure as Baron Fayle. At the time, he’d been invited to join Tybal Aleese on a raid while Reynold followed his father as a squire. Erling had resolutely refused the invitation, afraid of what would happen if he betrayed his promise to the raven, but afterward, he’d begun to wonder if he’d disappointed his mother in doing so.

”Would you rather I ride out to avenge him?” Erling asked hesitantly, shifting uncomfortably in his mother’s presence. ”If it...”

”I’d rather you stayed away from stupid, pointless wars,” Ragna told him. ”I don’t... I don’t hate the demons who killed your father any more than I hate the lord who called him to war in the first place,” she said bitterly.

”But hating them doesn’t do me any good,” she added, shaking off the dark cloud that clung to her and ruffling her growing son’s hair. ”I’d rather focus on what we have than what we’ve lost and the people who took your father from us. People who live for violence die by it sooner or later, whether you do anything or not. Best to leave them alone for as long as you can...”

Erling had promised his mother that he wouldn’t ride to war and she wouldn’t lose him the way she’d lost his father. He promised that he’d take care of her and keep her safe. He’d renewed that promise every time he received an invitation from Lord Owain to go hunting ’demons’ in the Southern Steppe and refused. Over time, the ache in her heart had eased, and lately, she’d turned to finding a match for her son among the many eligible women of the march.

But now that Erling’s secret had been exposed, all of the old wounds opened up again, and Erling could see the anguish rippling across his mother’s face along with entirely new hurts born of a secret she was never meant to know.

”Mother, I’m sorry, I...” Erling started, only to stop when Lady Ragna shook her head.

”You did what you always promised you would,” Ragna said, blinking back the moisture that had begun to collect in the corner of her eyes before she rounded on Ashlynn. ”I’m not sure that I can approve of what your Eldritch allies have done though, your Grace,” she said sharply. ”Toying with us for so many years and taking advantage of how young my son was,” she said as her voice grew firm.

”It makes it hard to trust your intentions,” Ragna warned. ”Even when we benefit from your schemes.”

”I can understand that,” Ashlynn said patiently. ”But at the same time, we’re living in a different world today, Lady Ragna. Let’s both give each other some room. I won’t apologize for manipulating your family, on Nyrielle’s behalf or my own. The wars may have ended for the people of the march whenever Bors or his predecessors decided to put a stop to their campaign of conquest, but the fighting never really stopped for the Eldritch,” she said.

”Like it or not, we were on opposite sides of a war,” Ashlynn said as her tone grew firm enough to match Lady Ragna’s. ”Your son was one of Bors’ vassals, in command of half a dozen knights and all of their soldiers. Getting an offer of peace, under the circumstances, is already extraordinary. The fact that Baron Erling kept his end of the bargain for so long is a testament to his character,” she praised. ”That buys both a great deal of trust and gratitude from me. If you’re willing, all I ask is that you extend me the same for the support we’ve given Fayle over the years.”

”If I understand correctly,” Ragna said, narrowing her eyes at Lady Ashlynn. ”You weren’t involved in my son’s matters at all. You’re even younger than he is. So all of this came from the Eldritch Lady of the Vale who...”

”Enough, Mother,” Erling said, setting a hand on his mother’s arm. She felt like she’d transformed into a small, auburn-haired bear, ready to charge Lady Ashlynn and keep fighting until the powerful witch admitted that her side had been wrong to manipulate such a young lord, but... Lady Ashlynn wasn’t their enemy.

”I just want to understand,” Erling said, turning his gaze to Ashlynn. ”Why strike peace with me at all? You can’t get much further from the Vale of Mists than Fayle Barony. I would think that if you were going to strike a deal with anyone, it would have been... Ah,” he said, interrupting himself. ”But then, you already had arrangements with the Dunns and the Hanrahans, didn’t you?”

”Not the way you might think,” Ashlynn said as the tension in the room eased. ”And the deal between you and High Lord Dirar has less to do with Nyrielle and the Vale of Mists than you might think. Lady Nyrielle allowed it because the risk was small, but she never would have proposed something like this.”

”One thing you need to learn is that vampires nurse old hurts, and they’re haunted by them in ways that are difficult to understand until you’ve experienced it,” Ashlynn explained. ”For humans, memories fade with time, and the pain of old hurts dulls over the years,” she said with a slight catch in her voice, sounding more as if she hoped her words were true rather than believing that they were.

”In this case, the original ’hurt’ was inflicted by Caleb Lothian,” Ashlynn explained, surprising both Fayles as she brought up Bors Lothian’s famous uncle who had fought in the War of Four Templars. ”Caleb and his brothers carved up the borders of the march, fighting on separate fronts in an effort to prove who among them was the most worthy of claiming the Lothian throne.”

”Caleb captured a significant portion of what is now Fayle Barony,” Lady Ragna said, frowning as she remembered the stories she’d heard from her husband about the years his father spent fighting at the Lothian Templar’s side. Once, those stories had sounded heroic, and she’d reassured her husband that he’d find similar glory of his own following Bors. It was only later that she realized how fortunate her father-in-law had been to return alive from those ’glorious’ battles.

”Caleb Lothian is half the reason that Fayle extends all the way to the River Tuilig,” Lady Ragna acknowledged. ”But we’ve never had the wealth to establish more than one village on the riverbank. Even if Erling hadn’t made his promise, it’s unlikely we’d have had any reason to go further south.”

”But Caleb attacked much further south than the River Tuilig,” Ashlynn said. ”Far enough to find a village of human freeholders living beyond the control of the Kingdom of Gaal and in peace with the Eldritch people of the Southern Steppe.”

”Caleb had every man, woman, and child he found in that village burned as heretics,” Ashlynn said quietly. ”But he never found the village’s leader. That man was Wolstan,” she said. ”And everything he loved while he was alive lies buried beneath the ashes, little more than a day’s ride south of the River Tuilig...”