Chapter 992: The Power of Love (Part Two)
By now, the diminutive witch had completely captivated the audience. Already, their hearts had quaked and shivered in sympathy and a sort of collective mourning for Dame Sybyll’s lost parents. Only a few people in the hall still remembered Baron Brighton and Baroness Caitlin, but even the ones who didn’t know them still felt the tragedy of their loss and Sybyll’s suffering personally.
Now, after watching the dreaded Demon Lord of Airgead Mountain calling Dame Sybyll a friend and swearing fealty to her, they were listening to a demon witch telling them a tale of love with the most unlikely of suitors. But when they learned how she’d suffered the pain of the wounded soldiers in order to save their lives, whether they were friends or foes, they found themselves nodding along at the unlikely pairing.
After all, Lady Heila had already reminded them that Inquisitors sought truth, and if she had a heart that was so filled with love and compassion that she would heal even her enemies on the battlefield, taking the pain of their wounds on herself...
Then how was this ’demon witch’ any different from the Exemplars and Saints of the Church? If anyone could ever match up to a High Inquisitor, shouldn’t it be a woman as worthy of worship as Lady Heila?
"A-anyway," Heila said awkwardly, blushing furiously at the praise directed her way from so many people. "The Inquisitor I healed, he was wounded to the depths of his soul," Heila said as she resumed her story. "So, to heal him, I had to touch his heart. That’s when I learned that he was the kindest, warmest man I’d ever met and... I fell in love."
"He’s waiting for me in the Vale of Mists," Heila said, smiling as she thought of returning to the embrace of the only vampire she’d ever met who never felt cold to her. "I hope my father isn’t giving him a hard time for staying home while I’m here. Father insists that he court me for a year before he proposes, and he’s very protective of me," she explained quickly.
As soon as she said it, the tension in the room broke, and several of the fathers in the room found themselves laughing along with the diminutive witch as they tried to imagine the sort of man who dared to become the father-in-law to a High Inquisitor. But then, if his daughter were a miracle-working witch, he must be one of the greatest horned demons to ever live. Or if not, a few men thought, he’d better claim to be lest his son-in-law get out of hand!
"You see it, though, don’t you?" Heila asked the crowd. "He didn’t abandon his faith for me. His Holy Flame Blade still burns in his hands when he wields it, even though he loves a witch. You don’t have to give up your faith either," she said, looking directly at Loman and Germot.
"The only things you need to give up are your hatred and your fear," Heila said. "I know it may be the hardest struggle you will ever face, but it’s the only one that will end the bloodshed and violence. It’s hard enough to find love without a war tearing husbands from wives, fathers from children, and whole families away from their villages. Wouldn’t it be better to struggle to understand each other, and to find ways to live together?"
She said it gently, but Heila’s words fell on the clergymen’s hearts like a blow from her whip, laying their faith bare and throwing their inadequacies back in their faces. Never in their lives had Loman or Germot imagined that a demon-witch would stand above them, preaching about finding a greater struggle and rising to meet it.
Germot’s face twisted in anger at the heresy of it all and he looked ready to launch a scathing retort only to stop when he felt Loman’s hand on his shoulder and saw the battered disciple shaking his head.
Loman heard nothing but love, affection, and longing for a brighter world in the voice of the diminutive witch. If he’d closed his eyes, he might have mistaken her for a bright-eyed sister whose heart was pure and filled with the words of the Great Prophet without the stains of Church dogma that had piled on top of the Prophet’s original words over the long centuries since his death.
He’d heard anger in that voice before, and condemnation as well when she learned that Loman’s prayers had claimed the lives of seven of his own brethren and that it would claim even more without her intervention. It was a voice that challenged much of what he held true, calling into question one of the central pillars of his faith, and for that alone, he should have rejected everything it said.
And yet, looking at the sincerity in her grass-green eyes... he couldn’t deny what he saw there. And when he looked at his own reflection in those same eyes, the man he saw lay in tatters that went far deeper than his torn robes.
"Lady Heila," Diarmuid said, breaking the silence that had formed following the conclusion of Heila’s tale of unlikely romance. "Who is, who is the High Inquisitor who means so much to you? I don’t doubt you," he added quickly. "It’s just that, I thought I knew everyone who had come to the frontier from the Holy City, but I’ve never heard of a High Inquisitor in Lothian March since the end of the War of Inches..."
For a moment, Heila hesitated. There were reasons that they’d been so insistent on using titles rather than names. Hauke’s storm had made it too cold for messenger birds to fly, but word was bound to travel sooner or later.
There were just too many people, and even with guards posted on the roads and everything else they could do, they didn’t think they could stop word of Hanrahan’s fall from reaching Lothian City for more than five or six days. At that point, anything that was said here could be exposed to Bors and Owain Lothian, likely before Ashlynn was ready for them to learn of her survival.
But this wasn’t a story about Ashlynn, not really. It was a story about love and about faith that endured long after it should have died... and the people needed to hear it. On a night that had started with blood and death and fear, they needed to end with warmth, love and hope for their futures. So, if exposing a small secret could give them that, and help Dame Sybyll to consolidate her rule over her homeland with less bloodshed, then Heila was willing to take the risk.
"His name is Ignatious," Heila said after several moments of hesitation. Of course, the name meant nothing to most of the people present, but to Loman and Diarmuid, who had immersed themselves in every scrap of the venerated Inquisitor’s writings they could lay hands to or recall in the days since the first raids were reported in the Dunn and Hanrahan baronies, the name couldn’t be more familiar.
"He didn’t come here during the War of Inches," Heila explained as she met Diarmuid’s shocked gaze directly. "He came here after the War of Undying Demons and fought in the Brother’s War. That’s when the Harbinger of Death captured him and made him one of her progeny as punishment for torturing so many of her champions," Heila explained in a voice that grew quieter the more she said.
"He struggled in darkness for close to eighty years," she said softly. "But he never gave up his faith. Now he’s finally come home," she said, looking from Diarmuid to Loman and back again. "And he very much wants to meet with you."