The Vampire & Her Witch

While Jocelynn and Nyrielle enjoyed their picnic beside the mural of Blackwell Harbor, Serle Otker was receiving a very different introduction to the Vale of Mists.

One of the Blackwell Templars had acted as his ’personal escort’ for their journey from Lothian Manor to the Vale of Mists, and while there were no shackles on Serle’s wrists, the sandy-haired Templar had made it very clear that the Baron of Otker was far from a respected guest.

When they reached Vale City, Serle had been working hard to prepare himself for months spent suffering in a village of squalid, primitive huts among the demon savages until the High Pass opened and he could begin his proper exile as a ’Lord Ambassador’ to the High Lady Erna.

What he saw in Vale City, however, defied all of his expectations.

Oh, there were demons a-plenty, including strangely proportioned demons with long, spindly legs and glassy eyes, or towering, shaggy monsters with glowing horns in the middle of their forehead that Serle had never heard of before.

But he’d known for weeks now, ever since the raids against Hanrahan and Dunn, that there were strange, new demons in the west. The only surprising thing about the demons he saw now was the staggering number of them.

The armies the Vale of Mists had fielded against Bors Lothian in the War of Inches had been small, numbering a few hundred at most. To Serle and everyone else who knew their sums, it was fairly obvious that the Vale of Mists held, at most, a few thousand demons.

Yet now, in the middle of the night, he saw thousands of demons lining streets as wide as those in Keating City, spilling out of pubs and market squares to cheer for their conquering heroes and it seemed like there was no end to them.

But as shocking as it was to learn that the Vale of Mists held so many demons, the part that shocked him more was their city itself. The scaffolding of construction was omnipresent, but that couldn’t hide the fact that several of the buildings they rolled past were decades old. If not for the odd sizes of some of the buildings, either smaller or larger than he would have expected, many of the shops and homes looked to be just as well built as the buildings of his hometown of Otker... if not better.

In fact, as they drew closer to the imposing fortress that resembled a hand emerging from the face of a cliff, the buildings closest to the fortress looked to be every bit as luxurious as his own manor or some of the church’s finer temples!

Serle’s shock lasted all the way through the brief welcome their caravan was given in the courtyard when the most enchanting and alluring woman he’d ever laid eyes on welcomed Lady Jocelynn as her ’sister-in-law.’ Since Lady Ashlynn was Lady Jocelynn’s only sibling, the greeting made no sense at all, but Serle had almost no time to consider it before one of the beautiful woman’s attendants approached the wagon where he was being held.

The woman was plain-faced and generally forgettable aside from her striking amethyst eyes, but the quality of the richly embroidered purple dress she wore made it clear that she enjoyed some level of status in the Vale of Mists, enough that Serle mentally categorized her as a lady-in-waiting or some other servant of high status that he shouldn’t risk offending. After all, to offend a highly placed servant was to offend her master, and Serle’s ledger dripped with so much red ink that he could scarcely afford to offend a mouse.

”You must be Lord Serle,” the woman said in a calm, collected voice that held none of the warmth she’d used when she spoke to Lady Jocelynn. ”We’ve been expecting you, your lordship,” she said as the ghost of a smile flirted with the corner of her thin lips.

”Of course, of course you’ve been expecting me,” Serle said, nervously smoothing his slightly rumpled doublet. After a day on a ship and a night spent in a wagon, he was hardly at his most presentable, but he made the best of it he could, bowing deeply to the servant with his fingers pressed to his chest in an awkward imitation of the salute he’d seen the demons using.

”Baron Serle Otker, Lord Ambassador to the High Fen, at your service, Lady...?” Serle asked, letting his voice trail off into a question while doing his best to make his own importance clear. There were limits to how much Lady Ashlynn could have told them with messenger birds; if he could at least create the impression that the title he’d been given as a cover for his ’exile’ was a thing of genuine importance, perhaps he wouldn’t suffer in squalor the way he’d thought!

”You may call me Zedya,” the amethyst-eyed woman said smoothly, looking at Serle with the same gaze that he’d turned on street urchins and beggars. ”Madame Zedya,” she added, correcting his instinct that she must have been some sort of lady.

”I’ve prepared a place for the lord baron,” she said, addressing the Templar in that same cold, detached tone. ”You can leave him in my care.”

”Are you certain, Madame Zedya?” the Templar asked. ”I’m sure he won’t try anything foolish, but Lady Ashlynn said he shouldn’t be free to wander...”

”He won’t be,” Zedya said firmly. ”You have my word on that. You should go with the rest of your men,” she said, frowning at his bright white tabard, emblazoned with the radiant sun of his order. ”You aren’t a prisoner here, but you won’t find a warm welcome dressed like that. Consider carefully how you conduct yourself while visiting here,” she warned the young templar.

”Come, ’Lord Ambassador,’” Zedya said, turning back to the captive baron. ”Your chambers await,” she said, walking away from him without waiting to see if he was following.

The pace that Zedya was taking was brisk, even though she didn’t look like she was rushing, and Serle had to quicken his pace just to keep up with her as they moved through the large corridors of the ancient fortress.

”Madame Zedya,” Serle said, wringing his hands as they walked. ”I wonder if you might answer a question for me?” Serle asked, looking for an opportunity, any opportunity, to win over this important servant.

”I might,” Zedya said. ”Or I might not. You’re free to ask, if you’d like. If you weren’t allowed to speak, you’d have been fitted with a gag,” she said, making no effort to conceal her disdain for the captive baron.

”Yes, um, well, since I haven’t,” Serle said, blotting away the sweat that formed on his brow with a handkerchief. ”I notice that Sir Ollie has quite the reputation here. He seemed well respected by the de- er, the people in the city.”

”Sir Ollie helped many people to find and establish a new home for themselves in the Vale,” Zedya said in a tone that was slightly less frosty than the one she’d used before. ”Many people admire him here, and many stand in his debt.”

”Yes, yes, that’s it exactly,” Serle said, eagerly rushing into the narrowest of windows that Zedya had opened. ”I also stand in his debt. He saved my Melsinde the other night, you know; she was the very first person he rescued from the dark witchcraft of the, the Lothian... throne,” he said, swallowing heavily when she furrowed her brows and frowned at him for using the term ’witchcraft.’

”Anyway, he saved my Melsinde,” Serle said in a rush. ”And I owe him a debt for it that I haven’t been able to find a way to repay. I wondered if, if you might have any notion of what I could do to help repay my debts to the, um, the Cypress Witch,” he said, nearly choking on the title.

After being rebuffed twice during breakfast the other day, once for offering to commission a suit of armor for Sir Ollie and the second time when he offered his daughter as a potential bride for the young knight, he’d all but given up on the idea of currying favor with Sir Ollie himself. But, since the young man was so respected by the demons, if he could convince the demons that he respected their local hero, perhaps making some kind of gesture wouldn’t be entirely wasted.

”You know, that’s a very good idea,” Zedya said, surprising the sweating baron. ”If you want to do something to repay Sir Ollie, I think the best thing that you could do is to follow in his footsteps,” she said as a faint gleam appeared in her amethyst eyes.

”First, let me introduce you to your roommate,” she said, stopping at an iron-bound, wooden door. ”Sir Rain has been in desperate need of a playmate,” she said with a wide smile that fully revealed her fangs. ”And I think that the two of you will get along very well indeed,” she said as she opened the door.

Serle had heard that Sir Rain Aleese had somehow offended Lady Ashlynn when he arrived in the Vale of Mists, so as soon as Zedya told him that he’d be sharing a room with the disgraced spare heir of Aleese, Serle prepared to protest being quartered with a known pariah.

The sight that greeted him when the door opened, however, struck the words from his mouth before they could even escape his lips, and his eyes opened wide in surprise.

”Sir Rain?” Serle said, blinking in disbelief. ”Is that... really you?”