Chapter 1707: The Missing Piece (Part One)
Chapter 1707: The Missing Piece (Part One)
"A new academy?" Adala asked, blinking in surprise at the question. Of all the places that she might go in Lady Ashlynn’s service, she never expected that going back to school would be among them.
"I’m going to be honest with you," Ashlynn said as she reached out for one of the pastries filled with sweet, purple cream, tearing it apart into bite-sized pieces as she spoke. "What we just did in the Great Hall, telling everyone that we have nearly a dozen people who can match the Church’s Exemplars in battle, was both an exaggeration and a misdirection," Ashlynn said bluntly.
"Don’t misunderstand," Ashlynn added, holding up a finger when she saw Adala’s eyes going wide. "There really are that many witches and vampires, but not all of them are capable warriors, and even among the ones who are, some are very inexperienced."
"You’ve seen Sir Ollie," Ashlynn said, offering up the flame-haired knight as an example. "On the battlefield, he’s worth more than a hundred ordinary soldiers and even a dozen knights would struggle to pull him down," she explained. "But it isn’t the soldiers or the knights we need to worry about."
"The Inquisitors and the Templars," Adala said, recalling the ball of Holy Flame that Abbot Recared had summoned to attack Ashlynn and her followers the night before. "But you have some of them on your side already, don’t you? And more will come once they learn the truth of the Church’s schemes," she said confidently.
"I wouldn’t count on that," Ashlynn said, shaking her head and furrowing her brow. "You haven’t heard about everything that happened in Hanrahan yet. Loman sacrificed the lives of several of his acolytes in order to call down a ’miracle’ that slaughtered friend and foe alike. He believed that it was worth paying any price to defeat the ’demons’ attacking Hanrahan, and he isn’t the only person in the Church who is willing to make those sacrifices..."
"Lord Loman?" Adala said, feeling as if her stomach had fallen into the snow on the ground. It had only been a month or so since she met with the handsome Lothian lord in her father’s latest bid to find someone to marry her off to, and he’d struck her as exceptionally gentle and kind.
But then, he was also bound and determined to follow the doctrine of his faith. She’d freed herself of his interest by suggesting one of the most heretical things she could think of, capturing ’demons’ to use as slaves the way slaves were traded in the Iron Kingdom.
When that hadn’t been quite enough to get him to storm out of their meeting, she’d pressed further, suggesting that, over time, they could turn those slaves into loyal pets, as welcome in the home as hunting hounds and every bit as beloved... That still hadn’t provoked Lord Loman into storming out, but he’d quickly moved to other topics and ended their lunch early, putting an end to any schemes to marry her off to Owain’s younger brother.
"Faith is a tricky thing," Ashlynn explained. "Even proof of the Church’s misdeeds can be refuted by an ardent belief that the Church would never do the things it’s done. Until people experience the pain of having the Church turn against them, evidence of wrongdoing can be dismissed as fabrications or slander."
"Even more dangerous, however, are the people who will believe that the Church has done horrible things, but think that the actions must be justified because the Church represents the will of the Holy Lord of Light," Ashlynn added. "We can’t count on many people defecting. The Templars from Blackwell are something of an exception, as are High Priest Aubin and Seeker Diarmuid. We shouldn’t expect the same from everyone in the Church."
"So it’s a problem of numbers and time," Adala said, pursing her lips as she considered what Ashlynn had said so far. "Then, your academy is meant to train witches to fight against the Church’s Templars and Inquisitors?"
"Not witches," Ashlynn corrected. "A person has to either be born a Great Witch or transformed into a witch by a Great Witch," she said. "But anyone can learn to practice sorcery. That’s actually how Ollie started, by learning sorcery to use his darksteel cleaver."
"The academy is about teaching more than just sorcery though," Ashlynn continued. "And it’s about more than just training people to fight against the Templars and the Inquisitors and other miracle workers of the Church. We have to do some of that at first, but I have two other goals for the academy."
"First, I want to create a place where humans and the Eldritch can go to learn together," Ashlynn explained. "There’s enough hatred on both sides that I think creating a space for young people from both sides to come together, and both learn and make friends, is going to be important."
"So I would be attending classes with Eldritch people?" Adala said, trying to imagine what it would be like to attend a lecture alongside people with bearish claws or horns like a ram... people who could tear her limb from limb if they wanted to. "I suppose it will be dangerous there too," she said quietly.
"Not in the ways you might be thinking," Ashlynn said, suppressing a giggle by eating a bite of her pastry. "One day, you’ll meet Ambassador Georg, the unofficial greeter of Nyri’s fortress, and you’ll realize how big of a softy he and other Eldritch people can be."
"And if you’re ever having a really rough time of it, Georg makes the best cookies," she said, popping another bite of pastry into her mouth. "He’s a good person to talk to too."
"It sounds like you made a lot of friends in the Vale of Mists," Adala said, still trying to imagine what sort of Eldritch person could bake cookies and failing to come up with anything.
"I did, because I didn’t have to hide who I really was anymore," Ashlynn said with a soft, tender smile on her lips and a distant look in her eyes. "I hope it will be the same for you and Charlotte too."
"Even though we..." Adala started to say, only for her eyes to narrow in suspicion as her mind finally caught up with something Lady Ashlynn had said. There had been so many hammer blows and shocks to her system that she’d missed it, but again and again, it had been there in the words and phrases Ashlynn so casually used.
’My Nyrielle’ ... ’Nyri’s fortress’ ... Again and again, Lady Ashlynn had referred to the fearsome Eldritch Lady of the Vale in a way that went far beyond the mutual respect of rulers who had agreed to share a pair of thrones.
"Lady Ashlynn," Adala said, swallowing heavily before she could ask the question that demanded to escape her lips. "You and Lady Nyrielle... are you...?"