Chapter 690: A Long Story (Part One)
Ashlynn was right, Isabell thought as she sipped the potent thornberry wine Ashlynn poured for her. The flavor was like nothing she’d ever tasted in the Kingdom of Gaal or in the old countries across the sea.
The wine was dry, exceptionally so, with very little sweetness while still possessing a strong flavor of berries picked on a hot summer day. More than just the incredibly dry, fruity flavor, however, there was a vibrant, herbaceous flavor to the wine, as if the berries had been mashed with garden herbs or something slightly lemony before they were set aside to ferment. When she finally swallowed the intensely flavorful wine, it left behind a faint, almost earthy taste like strongly brewed tea while the potent alcohol filled her throat and belly with a pleasantly warm sensation.
"That," Isabell said, staring at the cup in her hand in pleasant surprise. "That is amazing."
"There’s no witchcraft to making it," Ashlynn offered when she saw Tiernan’s reluctance as he stared at the cup in his hand. To Ashlynn, it looked almost as if the cup had engaged him in a contest of wills that he was presently losing.
"It’s just berries, honey, water, lemon-thyme, and yeast," she said, hoping it would reassure the powerful ironmonger that there was nothing dangerous in the wine. She did, hower, decide not to add that part of Amahle’s secret was the fine silk mesh she wove using her own silk in order to produce a wine that was as crystal clear as pure spring water. That extra step alone vastly improved the final product, leaving it free of any of the sediment that could make lesser wines go cloudy and bitter if they weren’t bottled with extraordinary care.
"So this witch," Isabell said, still struggling to process everything Ashlynn had said so far. There had been so many pieces of new information that Ashlynn mentioned casually that it was becoming difficult even for her to keep track of it all.
"This ’Mother of Thorns,’ she taught you about making wine?" Isabell asked, less because she was curious about the wine than because she needed time to collect her thoughts and organize all of the random bits of information that she was certain would be important later.
"That and many other things," Ashlynn said as she sipped the heady wine that had become one of her favorite treats on the boiling hot summer nights in the depths of the Briar. She had to be careful about the amount of it she drank, but that was why she poured such small portions when Isabell asked for something stronger.
"But that’s jumping ahead by quite a bit. Let me start from the beginning, and things should become clearer as we go," she said as she sat back on the plush suede cushions and started to tell her tale.
Ashlynn did her best to summarize things clearly, trying to find a balance between helping her friends understand the world she’d been thrust into and delving too much into things they would soon discover for themselves or could discuss at a later time. For now, she started with the basics, explaining who the Eldritch people really were, the differences between their clans and the many friends she’d made among them in the past several months.
By the time Ashlynn found herself explaining the wonders of High Fen City with its towering arena, breathtaking opera houses and the grandeur of High Lady Erna’s palace, however, Isabell had begun to tease out a distinctly concerning thread in the way Ashlynn spoke about her vampire patron, particularly the way Ashlynn used a diminutive pet-name like ’Nyri’ to refer to a two hundred year old vampire queen!