Mistress of the Night

by Don Bassingthwaite

  The dark-haired woman—Julith—sighed and swung the door wide. “She’s in her bedchamber,” she whispered. “Please, try to keep her calm.”

  Feena looked at Julith, but the other woman was already turning away. Feena stepped inside and shut the door. Dhauna’s sitting room was cluttered with stacks of books and bundles of scrolls. Papers hid the desk. She stared at the mess in surprise as she passed on into the bedchamber.

  “Feena!” Seated in a chair before a dressing table, Dhauna Myritar twisted around to greet her.

  Feena only barely managed to bend in respect. Somehow, it seemed, her muscles had forgotten how to move and her eyes had forgotten how to blink.

  The High Moonmistress of Moonshadow Hall was all but lost within the silver lace and blue silk of her vestments, her head and face overshadowed by a high, stiff collar. For as long as Feena had known her, Dhauna had been a cheerfully plump priestess often mistaken for a woman twenty years younger than her actual age. But no one would underestimate the woman’s age again. Her brown skin had faded to the color of crumpled parchment, and her dark gray eyes had lost their luster. She was not merely thin, but so gaunt that her gown was loose on her wasted frame.

  “Mother Dhauna …” Feena murmured in shock.

  “Oh, stand up!” Dhauna’s gesture was sharp, making her irritation plain. “It’s the vestments. They make me look like a starving dwarf. Life waxes, life wanes—time catches us all, eventually.” She swatted at Julith’s hands as the priestess attempted to brush her fine, white hair. “It looks fine, Julith!” Her eyes focused on Feena again. “You took your time.”

  Feena finally blinked and fumbled for the excuse she had spent so long fussing over. The shock of the changes in the high priestess had her shaken. Was that what Mifano had been trying to warn her about?

  “I couldn’t come any sooner, High Moonmistress,” she managed. “It’s been a busy month. Two of the village women were …” Her carefully rehearsed words began to slip away from her. She clutched at them desperately. “… were sick. And one was pregnant with a difficult boy.”

  Dhauna grinned and replied, “In my experience, all boys are difficult.”

  “He had a jaundiced leg,” said Feena hastily. She grimaced as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

  “And the rest of him?” asked Dhauna.

  “Twisted,” Feena said.

  Dhauna laughed.

  Julith stood behind the high priestess, a simple circlet of silver bearing the disk of the full moon in her hands, staring open-mouthed at their exchange. Dhauna stretched around and glanced at the circlet.

  “Not that one,” she ordered. “The moon’s road tiara! You know that!”

  “But Mother Dhauna—”

  “The tiara!” As Julith laid down the circlet, Dhauna turned back to Feena. “Why didn’t you come, Feena? The truth this time.”

  Feena looked down at her feet. Above the soles of her sandals, they were very dirty.

  “I didn’t want to face Moonshadow Hall and Yhaunn again,” she confessed. She glanced up. “You know I don’t belong here.”

  “You’re happier in the fields and woods, I know. It’s your nature, just as it was your mother’s nature. Even more so, I suppose.” Dhauna winced as Julith set an ornate confection of a tiara—six crescent moons surrounding a full moon—on her head. The white puff of her hair sank under the weight and Julith reached for a comb to fix it in place. Dhauna ignored her, keeping her gaze on Feena. “But I called for you, Feena.” A pleading tone entered her voice. “I called for you at every turning of Selûne’s face.”

  “I know,” said Feena. “I heard every call.”

  “Then why didn’t you come?”

  “I couldn’t just drop everything and abandon my village!” Feena protested. “The people do need me.”

  “I know that! I gave you time,” Dhauna’s voice rose in accusation.

  Feena’s rose as well. “Eventually!”

  “When I realized you weren’t going to come quickly enough.”

  “ ‘Be here for the full moon of Eleasias,’ you said.” Feena spread her arms. “Here I am!”

  “Just barely! Ow!” The High Moonmistress let out a shriek. She clapped one hand to her head and whirled around in a cascade of silk and lace to snap at Julith. “What are you doing?”

  The young priestess stood with the tiara in one hand the comb in the other, and a look of dismay on her pale face. “The moon’s road tiara is too heavy, Mother Dhauna. Your hair’s too fine to support it, even with a comb—”

  Dhauna’s face twisted and her eyes came back to life with sudden rage. “Then give me the full moon circlet, you stupid girl!”

  Silence fell over the bedchamber like a shroud. Julith’s eyes went wide and Feena was certain that she saw her hands tremble. There must have been surprise on her own face as well. Dhauna stared for a moment—then seemed to crumble.

  “Julith,” she whispered, “I’m sorry.” She gestured with withered fingers. “Please—go on ahead to the courtyard. Feena will help me finish and walk with me to the Full Moon Blessing.” She looked over her shoulder at Feena and asked, “Won’t you?”

  Feena nodded. “Of course.”

  Julith set the moon’s road tiara on the dressing table and bent deeply to the high priestess, then fled the room. Dhauna sat back with a sigh. Feena stepped up to her cautiously. More had changed about the High Moonmistress than just her wasting body.

  “Mother Dhauna,” Feena asked, “are you all right?”

  “No, Feena, I’m not,” Dhauna replied, sitting up again. “There’s not much time before the ceremony.” She pointed to the dressing table. “If you could help me.…”

  Feena picked up the lighter circlet and settled it over the high priestess’s hair. Dhauna looked at herself in the mirror that hung over the table.

  “Good enough.”

  “Why did you call me here, Mother Dhauna?” asked Feena. “What’s wrong?”

  In the mirror, Dhauna’s eyes shifted to look at her. “Selûne has been sending me dreams, Feena.” She looked at the mirror again. “Though it seems that the Moonmaiden measures her sendings by the strength of my faith rather than the strength of my body.”

  Feena knelt beside the wizened priestess’s chair. “What are these dreams?”

  “Warnings,” Dhauna said as she wrapped her hand around Feena’s. “Impending danger—great danger—from within the faith, I think. Possibly even from within Moonshadow Hall.” She smiled at Feena’s look of alarm. “Or so I have come to believe. The wisdom of gods is a mystery to mortals. I’m still searching for the deeper meaning of the dreams.”

  “The books in your sitting room,” said Feena.

  Dhauna nodded and said, “Guidance from those who came before us. The books come from the archives. I have even more spread out there. I don’t believe I’ve read so much in my entire life.”

  “What have you found?”

  “Nothing yet. Scraps. Clues.” She released Feena’s hand and brushed fingers through Feena’s hair. Feena could smell old parchment and fresh ink on them. “Julith helps me. I couldn’t hide the dreams from her for long. But if the danger is within Moonshadow Hall, I need help from someone outside the hall. Someone I can trust. Someone who isn’t afraid of controversy.”

  Feena closed her eyes and said, “I should have come sooner.”

  “It would have been better if you had,” said Dhauna. “Will you help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” Dhauna’s hand rested briefly on Feena’s head in a blessing gesture—then the high priestess sighed and struggled to sit upright. “Though I think the first thing you could help me with is getting out of this chair!”

  The High Moonmistress’s ornate vestments were beautiful and in times past Feena had known her to wear them as easily and as casually as an old shawl. She found herself holding billows and bustles out of the way as Dhauna eased herself out of the chair and reached for a pair of canes. Feen
a took one from her and offered the old priestess her arm instead. Dhauna accepted it gratefully. Their progress along the corridor outside her quarters and down the ramp to the temple’s ground floor was still slow, however. Just inside the door that led out to the cloisters and the temple courtyard, Dhauna paused, her head bowed for a moment in prayer, and Feena sensed the divine surge of the goddess’s touch. Dhauna breathed a sigh. Releasing Feena’s arm and shifting her grip on her cane, she stood solidly on her own two feet.

  “For ceremonies only,” she told Feena with a smile. “Such is the price of vanity.”

  She strode through the door a little awkwardly, but with renewed strength. Feena followed in her wake.

  Outside, the temple courtyard was filled with the clergy and novices of Moonshadow Hall, as well as with those citizens of Yhaunn who paid honor to Selûne. Dhauna circled around the cloister to the full moon gate. During the day, the courtyard could be entered freely through any of the seven open gates that led into it, but tradition dictated that by night only the gate corresponding to the phase of the moon could be used—and since the closed gate of the new moon was nothing more than a brick-filled arch, the courtyard was never entered during the dark of the moon. Feena remembered youthful frustration at being forced to walk all the way around the cloisters when cutting across the shadowed courtyard would have saved her precious time. Having grown older, she found the walk strangely comforting, a moment of contemplative transition between outside world and sacred ceremony.

  As Dhauna stepped through the full moon gate, clergy and worshipers parted before her, making a wide aisle across the moonlit grass to the sacred pool at the courtyard’s far end. The High Moonmistress proceeded down the grassy aisle at a stately, measured pace. On either side, men and women bent in respect as she passed.

  Feena, however, stopped just inside the gate. Julith stood at the back of the crowd, and Feena slipped in beside her.

  “I’m sorry for what happened in Dhauna’s bedchamber,” Feena whispered.

  The young priestess sighed and shrugged. “I’m getting used to it,” she murmured back. “Some days she’s better than others.”

  Her eyes were fixed on the other end of the courtyard. Dhauna had set aside her cane and was standing in front of the sacred pool, her back to the crowd. Overhead, the moon was almost perfectly aligned with the courtyard, the high priestess, and the pool. Dhauna raised her hands. “Selûne,” she called, “Moonmaiden, Bright Lady of Night, Our Lady of Silver—tonight we honor your fullest aspect and pray for your blessing of strength …”

  As Dhauna continued her invocation, Feena leaned in closer to Julith.

  “Some days?” she whispered. “Getting used to it?” She pressed her lips together, then asked, “The dreams?”

  Julith started, then nodded.

  Selûne’s warnings were taking their toll on more than Dhauna’s body, it seemed.

  Feena leaned back toward Julith and asked, “How long has she been having them?”

  Julith’s gaze darted to her. “Feena!” she hissed and nodded at Dhauna and the sacred pool.

  Feena rolled her eyes and said, “We’re not novices, Julith. No one is standing over us to make sure we follow the ceremony. How long?” Feena nudged the other priestess. “Come on.”

  “A little bit less than a month.” Julith managed to speak almost without moving her lips. “Since the waning gibbous moon.”

  The night she had first sent for me, Feena thought. She winced.

  “Do you know what happened?” Feena asked.

  Julith gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “I found her barefoot in the courtyard in the middle of the night, almost at moonset. She’s been barely eating since then. She’s developed an obsession with the archives. And her moods …” The priestess fell silent for a moment, then added, “There are only a few of us in the temple who really notice the lapses of her mind, but it’s clear that her health is failing.” She glanced sideways at Feena. “If you’re her friend, you should probably know that there’s pressure on her to step down.”

  Feena’s eyebrows rose. Dhauna Myritar had led Moonshadow Hall for well over twenty years—it was hard to think of the temple without her at its head.

  “Pressure?” she asked. “Who from?”

  Before Julith could answer, the High Moonmistress lowered her arms. On cue, a chorus of novices began to sing a hymn. After a few bars, the crowd joined in as well, a sweet roar of sound that would have been impossible to hear over. Julith and Feena dutifully added their voices to the song, but Julith caught Feena’s eye and nodded toward the sacred pool again.

  Four figures had stepped forward from the crowd. Two were acolytes bearing silver pitchers. Dhauna took the pitchers and poured their contents—milk and pale wine—into the sacred pool as a sacrifice to Selûne.

  Flanking the acolytes, however, were Mifano and Velsinore. Feena’s eyes narrowed as another piece of the rivalry between the two fell into place.

  The hymn ended. Feena leaned toward Julith once more as they knelt along with the rest of the crowd to receive the High Moonmistress’s benediction.

  “Dhauna hasn’t named a successor yet, has she?” Feena guessed. Julith nodded. “But Velsinore and Mifano are the prime candidates?”

  Julith nodded again. Feena grunted and straightened, her suspicion confirmed. Dhauna wanted her to help, but dodging the two rivals wouldn’t be easy.

  “In the face of darkness,” called Dhauna from the front of the courtyard, “be strong, for the Bright Lady of Night gives you her blessing.” She folded her hands. “May Selûne guide your steps in the night and bring them to a new dawn.”

  The crowd rose in a rustle of fabric and a murmur of voices, the ceremony complete. Feena rose as well, turning to Julith. Dhauna’s voice, however, brought the attention of the entire courtyard back to her.

  “Friends!” she shouted. “Friends!”

  When silence had fallen again, she spread her arms and smiled.

  “I’d like you all to join me in a song of welcome. Moonshadow Hall opens its arms tonight as one of its own children returns home.” She held out her hands. “Feena of Arch Wood, daughter of Maleva, come forward and be recognized.”

  “Oh, Moonmaiden’s grace,” Feena cursed under her breath. She shot a glance at Julith as the entire crowd turned toward her. “Is this one of Dhauna’s bad days?”

  Julith wrinkled her face and gave a tiny shrug.

  “Wonderful,” Feena muttered.

  She stepped forward. The chorus of novices led the crowd in another hymn as she walked the length of the courtyard up to the High Moonmistress. Mifano gave her a playful wink as she passed. Feena glowered at him.

  Dhauna reached out and took her hands. “Let all on whom Selûne’s light falls be welcome if they desire,” she said with a soft smile. “Welcome back to Moonshadow Hall, Feena.”

  “Thank you, Mother Dhauna,” Feena replied humbly. Dhauna turned her toward the watching crowd.

  “Friends,” she called, “this is Feena Archwood, a true priestess of Selûne, and by Selûne’s grace—” The high priestess reached back and dipped her hand into the sacred pool, sending ripples through the shining reflection of the full moon, then pressed her dripping fingers to Feena’s face—“I name her Moonmistress-Designate and my successor at Moonshadow Hall!”

  Feena stared at Dhauna in shock.

  CHAPTER 2

  There was probably no one in Yhaunn who could have said exactly how the district known as the Stiltways came into existence—merchants and traders, shops and taverns so solidly packed around a few twisted streets that they filled tall buildings from top to bottom and burst out of the sides like fat from an overstuffed sausage. There were various explanations bandied about, rising and falling in popularity from year to year. That, for example, the district had in the distant past been the site of the original encampment in Yhaunn’s ancient quarry and that the first buildings of the Stiltways had grown up within the encampment’s
walls. Or that the Stiltways had been built around and within the shell of the first fortified tower in Yhaunn after the city’s protectors had moved themselves to a bigger, better keep farther up the quarry. Or that the Stiltways’ first cramped, crooked buildings had been built along the walls of a dark gully—since buried—and that if one made ones way into the lost cellars beneath forgotten basements, one could still find that gully and the horrid spirits that lurked there, spirits sometimes said to be guarding a fabulous treasure.

  That last theory, of course, found its greatest adherents among crackpot treasure hunters and children too frightened to stray from their mothers’ sides.

  The Stiltways were an image of Yhaunn in miniature: bustling and successful, but so hemmed in on either side that they could no longer grow out, only up. Their lowest level, where the streets twisted through damp darkness, was home to the most desperate of thieves, thugs, and fences. Prosperity and dignity rose with altitude. Three, four, and even five stories stood above the buried streets of ground level, all interconnected by a groaning, ever-changing maze of bridges, ladders, stairs, and ramps. A proper lady from the better part of the city could pass through the upper levels of the Stiltways by day, buy a new dress, and gossip with friends without ever even thinking of the hard-currency girls working in the perpetual shadows two floors below.

  By night the shadows rose like foul cream. Proper ladies didn’t come to the Stiltways after dark unless they wanted their friends to gossip about them.

  On the highest level of the district, one enterprising landlord had managed to bring the bustle and the success, the shadows and the danger together. The tavern called the Sky’s Mantle sprawled across the rooftops, a beacon to the more adventurous of the city’s wealthy, a chance to brush against the darker dangers of the Stiltways in complete safety. And of course, on a warm summer night, to enjoy the rarest of luxuries in crowded Yhaunn: a wide terrace, open to moonlight and the cool sea breeze.

  In one corner of the Mantle’s terrace, the laughter of a cluster of young men and women trailed away into barely-restrained silence. Keph Thingoleir watched as one of their number—a golden-haired half-elf lass in a sleeveless jerkin of black leather—rose from the table and swaggered with predatory grace toward the bar. Her route took her past his table and the young man watched her carefully.