CHAPTER 831: A TREE FOR ISABELL (PART TWO)

"Imagine building a healer’s hall," Ashlynn suggested while her friend’s pen danced across the parchment. "Because you desire people within the hall you built to get well, the hall itself will draw on the energy of the world to help the injured to heal and the sick to recover. Infections will be rare, and even pain may be reduced within the walls of the healer’s hall you build."

"You’re telling me," Isabell said as her pen froze on the page. "That I could help to heal people just by building a place that was filled with my desire for people to get better? Or that, if I build a library," she suggested as she tried to fit the principle to another topic. "Then, I could dampen sounds that might be distracting and help people to study?"

"All of those things and more," Ashlynn said with a nod. "It’s different from the totems and charms that belong to the Cypress Witch," she explained. "Though there is some overlap. Your witchcraft would lend itself well to things that are constructed rather than simply carved. If you craft the head and handle of a mallet and fit them together, for example, it will become a much stronger tool."

Isabell’s hand trembled slightly as she set down her pen, her mind racing with possibilities, some of which sparkled with the promise of greatness and others that felt dark and frightening. Her mind thought back to the dam that had failed three years ago, flooding dozens of farms at the height of the rainy season and leaving the reservoir too low to irrigate those very same fields in the dry months.

But if she brought the power of witchcraft to bear to do what no amount of mortar and well fitted stones could accomplish... could she construct a dam that wouldn’t fail?

Or did it go even further than that? If she designed and built a new plow to be pulled by horses, could she ensure a better yield of crops? Not because the blades of the plow were sharper or cut the soil to the right depth for the seeds the farmer was planting, but simply because she desired the fields worked by that plow to grow and thrive and feed as many people as they could?

"You’re offering me the chance to solve problems I’ve wrestled with my entire career," she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. "To build things that could save lives, prevent famines, end droughts..." She looked up at Ashlynn with eyes that gleamed with dangerous hunger. "Do you understand what you’re tempting me with?"

"It’s been the same for everyone in the coven," Ashlynn said gently. "Heila cares for people just as much as you do, but she was searching for ways to do something meaningful. The willow tree suited both her desire to help and her desire to fight by my side," Ashlynn said. "It’s the same with Ollie and Virve. We’re all driven by our desires to do things and witcraft gives us greater strength to do what we’ve always wanted to do."

"The power isn’t infinite," Ashlynn cautioned. "And there are always prices to be paid. Energy has to come from somewhere. If you build a grand hospital that heals the sick simply for walking through its doors, then it will likely leave the ground around it barren and desolate for dozens of leagues. You can break the limits if you choose to," she warned. "But you must be willing to accept the consequences afterward."

"I see," Isabell said in a slightly deflated tone as Ashlynn’s words brought her spiraling thoughts back down to a smaller scale. Still, even on a smaller scale, she couldn’t stop the flood of ideas as her mind started to explore the possibilities. On the parchment, she quickly sketched several tools from simple items like a mason’s square to complex cranes and even a large waterwheel before her mind started to turn in other directions, imagining how the power of witchcraft might be able to enhance each of them.

"So as long as I used the power of witchcraft to build things, I could empower them to be better at their purpose," she said as she tapped the tip of the pen on the water wheel. "But nothing is ever that pure. I spoke with Lady Heila about how her tree gives her both the power to heal and the strength to lash out at anyone who threatens the people she shelters."

"So, if the call ever came, and I built engines of war again," she said as she began to idly sketch the familiar lines of a simple catapult. "They could become the most devastating engines of destruction ever seen in this world," she said as her voice trailed off.

Dark visions filled her mind’s eye, obscured by black smoke and the cloying stench of death. One of the hardest things she’d learned to do was to hurl fire. A fast moving projectile of any sort would extinguish flames just the same as blowing out a candle. That was why she worked so hard to design clay pots that could be filled with oil, hurled over walls and shattered on impact.

It was the follow-on projectiles that ignited the oil, and once the flames were lit, even more oil could be poured on the fire to spread it. But as a witch, if she wanted to see a city burn, what was stopping her from putting it all together at once?

Or, she could go further. Her pen danced again across the page as she imagined a trebuchet infused with anger and rage as it hurled boulder after boulder at a fortress until nothing was left but rubble.

"Ashlynn," Isabell said softly as her pen stopped. Her face had gone pale and she spoke softly, as if she was afraid that speaking of a thing would summon it into existence. "Are you certain that someone like me should have power like this?"

"I know you don’t want me to march to war," Isabell said quickly before Ashlynn could respond. "But Owain Lothian has already threatened to take my son hostage as his squire and to press my daughter into marriage to one of his lackeys who are a decade older than her. I, I might not hate him the way you do, but if anyone threatens my family," she said as her gray eyes grew haunted and dark behind her silver rimmed spectacles.

"I don’t think I could stop myself from using this kind of power against them," she said, suddenly realizing that the distance between herself and Ashlynn’s drive for war was much, much smaller than she’d thought it was... and that realization terrified her more than anything she’d seen since she came to the Vale of Mists.