The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1136: A Gap Of Understanding

Ashlynn resisted the reflex to smile when she heard the frustration in Liam’s voice as he spoke about the Church and the lack of support he’d received from their miracle workers. It wasn’t fair to compare the sorcerers of the Church to the capabilities of a witch, but Liam wasn’t in any position to understand the subtleties of what made the comparison so unfair.

What was important about Liam’s reaction, and the part that brought a smile to her lips, was the genuine feeling she heard from him when he spoke about needing supplies to care for his men, combined with the pressure the Church placed on him for ever-growing ’donations’ in order to support the Dunn’s expansion efforts.

"I’m sure that there are many good people of faith and conscience in the Church," Ashlynn said gently. "People like Inquisitor Diarmuid, or my cousin, Eleanor, who believe in their missions and choose to do what’s right, even when their superiors want them to do something more... self-serving," she said, choosing her words with care.

"But the Church itself is built on a legacy of theft, deceit, and control," she continued, thinking of the warning she’d received from the spirit of Claire duGaal and Amahle’s conclusion about how the Church had wrestled the power of Oracles away from the natural cycle of the world.

No matter what their intentions had been when the Church first stopped that power from returning to the world and finding the next place where it was needed, over several generations of ’Saints,’ the Church had come to believe that the power they stole belonged to them.

When a thief truly believes that they are entitled to the things they stole, they start to feel entitled to other things, and the Church had been acting like a self-righteous thief long before Ashlynn was ever born. When the source of the spring is poisoned, all who drink the water become tainted in some way. There might be good individuals within the Church who resisted the taint, but until something changed at the very top, there would be no end to the misery they wrought.

Now wasn’t a time to focus on the Church and its wrongs, however convenient it might be in order to drive a wedge between Liam and the Kingdom. His feelings were proof that a wide enough crack existed to drive a wedge, but she needed more than just his frustration and resentment if she wanted to build a true alliance.

"Before you left, I offered your family a vast domain," Ashlynn said, turning away from Liam to look out over the growing city beyond the fortress walls. "Territory that would include both Eldritch communities and human ones. I told you then that you would have to rule over the Eldritch with the same care that you have for the people of Dunn."

"Tell me something, Lord Liam," Ashlynn said as she turned her gaze back to the young lord. "When you worked in the healer’s tents alongside Emmie and Heila, were you able to care for the Eldritch as well as you cared for the humans?"

Ashlynn’s question took Liam slightly off guard, but he didn’t allow the surprise he felt to show on his features. Instead, he raised one hand to his clean-shaven chin, allowing the lace spilling from his cuff to flutter in the wind as he thought back on that long night as he followed the petite, horned squire from one bedside to the next.

That night, he’d seen every type of wound imaginable on the battlefield. Men with arrows still buried in their flesh, men with bones crushed from the impact of maces, or limbs severed by the powerful axes of the Iron Tusk Clan. He’d heard the low, agonized groans of human soldiers in pain, and the plaintive, whimpering sounds of the Golden Eyed Clan as they fought to keep from crying out.

In the healer’s tent, everyone bled red blood, and pain was pain, no matter what sounds a person made as they struggled against it. More than that, the look of fear in their eyes when they thought that this night might be their last, and the look of relief on their faces when they received the witch’s medicine... Whether it was a human face or one with a blunt snout for a nose, much of what he saw was the same.

"I did my best that night," Liam said, picking his words with great care as he tried to find a way to articulate the truth in a way that Lady Ashlynn would understand. "But caring for the Eldritch as well as I cared for the soldiers of Hanrahan or the Church, that would have been impossible that night."

"Oh?" Ashlynn asked in a carefully neutral tone. "Tell me why."

"Because I don’t know them," Liam said with a deep, heavy sigh. "Because I can’t speak to them," he said, pursing his lips together as he remembered yet another frustration.

He spoke to the wounded soldiers of Hanrahan like they were his own men. He asked them about their children or their women, and he promised that they’d hold them again soon. He teased the men who were single about the scars they’d wear after this battle and how they could prove to young women that they were brave enough and strong enough to defend a family of their own.

The hard part was over, he told them. They just had to find themselves a beautiful young woman to impress with their tales of heroism, and they’d be bouncing young sons on their knees in no time.

But when it came to the strange faces, the ones covered in fur or sporting dull gray tusks, or heads covered in feathers instead of hair... They’d looked at him with those same pained eyes, seeking any comfort he could give them, but he had no words for them. Many of them didn’t even understand the King’s common tongue, and those that did only seemed confused when he tried to offer reassurances.

"We’re very different people, Lady Ashlynn," Liam said, shaking his head as he looked out at the city under construction. "I’ve fought them, but I don’t understand them. I’ve learned how they build villages so I can understand their defenses, but I don’t know why the Heartwood Clan builds burrows in the earth while the Nightweavers build tree-houses..."

"I just know that they do," he said bluntly. "And that one of them prefers to protect their homes with hidden traps while the others turn the area around their villages into a labyrinth of barricades."

"When the only thing I ever learned about them is how to fight them," Liam concluded. "How could I ever care for them as well as I care for my own kind?"

"So, no, Lady Ashlynn," Liam confessed. "That night, in the healer’s tent, I couldn’t care for the Eldritch as well as I cared for the soldiers of Hanrahan or the Church. But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn how to," he added. "It just means that I’ll have to work hard to understand the people you’d be entrusting to my rule. But I’ve never been afraid of hard work before, my Lady, and I’m not afraid of it now."