Mistress of the Night

by Don Bassingthwaite

  Feena’s head jerked. She blinked sleep from her eyes, sat back, and stretched. A night spent walking and running without rest was trying hard to catch up with her and her chosen hiding place wasn’t helping. Moonshadow Hall’s archives had seemed like an ideal refuge: all but abandoned, no windows to give away the small magical light she conjured, a table and chair at which to read, easy concealment among the tall shelves in case someone should happen to come by.…

  Then again, there was a reason no one came to the archives, wasn’t there? She had to fight against the muffling quiet just to keep herself alert, and with no windows there was also no way of marking the passage of time.

  She stared down at the list of the names again—the last members of the New Moon Pact. More than anything else in the great white book, those names called to her. Not that there was much else in it that had more than the faintest ring of truth. The pact had been tried by people who disdained them. Great deeds, hallowed traditions … those hadn’t been important in the face of charges of foul heresy.

  Selûne’s priests and priestesses and done more than suppress the New Moon Pact six hundred years ago. They had killed its history. Their own history. Feena clenched her teeth. There had to be something, some additional scrap of legend.… She turned a page and bent back to the book.

  Something shifted in the shadows.

  She froze, watching the darkness, but nothing moved.

  But there had been something. Feena rose slowly, her heart beating faster. Her lips pulled back from her teeth. One hand sought the paperweight she had cast her light onto. She lifted it and waited.

  When the shadows shifted again, she hurled it.

  Illumination streaked across bookshelves and scroll racks, sliced through shadows—but revealed nothing. The glowing paperweight arced across empty space until it hit a wall and bounced to the floor. Crack. Clatter. Rrrollll …

  For a moment, the archives were silent again. Then sound tickled Feena’s ear, a sound that grew and condensed like mist on leaves. Whispers. She could almost make out words—almost, but not quite. And behind the words was some force—something dark and alive—something ancient. The hair on her neck rose.

  I know this, Feena realized. Moonmaiden’s grace, this is Dhauna’s dream!

  The light of the paperweight vanished like a torch plunged into water. She hurled herself to the side out of instinct and felt a cold breeze as the sound of whispers rushed past. She gasped, shaken. If it was a dream, it was like nothing she’d ever felt before.

  “Wake up, Feena,” she told herself. “Wake up!”

  Nothing happened.

  In the darkness, whispers surged like waves on the sea. Dhauna had described feeling as if the whispers were going to overcome her, that whatever ancient force lurked behind them would consume her. The whispers shivered through Feena, tugging on her body and her spirit. Fear wrenched her heart.

  The shadows shifted again. Feena dodged once more. Whispers whirled and tore at her. If the force behind them expected her to flee as Dhauna had, though, it was wrong.

  Feena came to her feet howling with a wolf’s voice.

  It had to be a dream. Her human form flowed into her hybrid wolf-woman shape with barely a thought. She leaped into the darkness, tearing at it ferociously. Her claws shredded through the shadow. Feena tumbled free and snarled triumphantly. For a moment, the whispers stretched thin, like strained voices—then rushed back in a thunderous roar.

  Feena’s snarl died. She threw herself away but the dark thunder slammed into a bookcase behind her. The shelf exploded into splinters and tatters of paper. Flying wood pierced her like a tiny arrows, spattering pain against her hide. Feena yelped in sudden alarm. The force—whatever it might have been—was too powerful. She couldn’t fight it face to face. She needed to get away.

  A growl answered her unspoken need: Here!

  She twisted. A long gray tail was just vanishing into the archive’s maze of shelves. A wolf’s tail!

  Feena hesitated for a heartbeat, then scrambled after it. Behind her, the roaring darkness lashed at the floor where she had stood, gouging long strips out of it.

  The moment she plunged in among the stacks, though, the roar seemed to sweep away into the distance. A glance over her shoulder showed what seemed like a corridor of books stretching out behind her until it twisted around a corner. How had she moved so far? She looked back around. The tail she had glimpsed was gone again and not even her wolf’s nose could sniff out anything more than dust and crumbling parchment. Had she imagined the other wolf? The whispers were building again, growing in volume as if the dark force had plunged into the maze after her. If it caught her.…

  She whined desperately, Help!

  Here!

  She moved forward. Growls guided her through turns and at intersection with other book-lined corridors.

  Here! Here!

  She followed, though she saw nothing. She had to run to keep up—at least until the same flowing transformation as before caught her a second time. Suddenly she was a wolf, loping along easily on four legs.

  But as she dashed past one intersection, the whispers surged and shadows boiled out. The darkness had found her. Feena half-turned, ready to meet it, but before she could, a form flashed past her—another wolf, but one as black as the night itself.

  It vanished down the cross-corridor. The wolf-voice guiding her gave a short, commanding bark: Keep moving!

  Feena moved on. The whispers faded again and after a moment Feena realized that even if she couldn’t see or smell the wolf guiding her, she could hear it. Nails clicked in rapid rhythm ahead of her—

  —and behind her! Two sets behind her, in fact. Feena twisted her neck to look past her flanks. Two wolves were pacing after her, one light gray and lean, the other white and heavier, with the bright eyes of a young animal.

  Her racing heart stuttered. She had never seen these wolves before, yet she knew their names:

  Niree Swifthands.

  Brant Hallower.

  The black wolf that had defended her: Rade.

  The voice that called her, the gray tail she’d first glimpsed, was Tyver the Peacemaker.

  It was the last of the New Moon Pact. She stumbled, and Niree darted forward and nipped at her legs. Feena jumped forward. The corridor gave one last twist and opened up.

  She was back at the reading table. The moon glow of the paperweight had returned, though, and the paperweight itself was sitting on the table once more. The gouged floor and the shattered bookshelf had been restored. Everything was exactly the way it had been.

  Except that two women—Enshu Venerun and Qualise Domo, she knew intuitively—and a man stood waiting for her by the table. Feena slid to a sharp stop, her paws scrabbling against the floor. The man, Tyver in his human form, crouched down to face her. He took her hand—abruptly she was human again—and helped her stand. His grip was cold but firm.

  “Have faith and be strong, Feena Archwood,” he said, “for Selûne is with you.”

  Feena gasped with sudden certainty. “Dhauna’s dreams—they were real! They were warnings!”

  “They are real,” said Qualise. “They’re your dreams now, High Moonmistress.”

  “I’m not—” Feena began to protest, but her voice froze. The rite had been performed. Dhauna had named her successor—and with her death, the mantle of leadership passed on.

  Feena swallowed and said, “Moonmaiden grant me strength.”

  “The strength is in you,” said Qualise. “Understand that and you understand much.”

  She stepped aside so that Feena could see the table. The great white book that detailed the pact’s trial was gone. In its place was another, slim and elegant instead of bloated and thick. Feena stared at it in wonder. The new book was bound in fine black leather with Selûne’s phases set in silver down the center of the cover. Where other representations of the phases began with a crescent and grew through half and gibbous to the full moon’s bright disk before returning t
o a crescent, the black book turned that order inside out. On its cover, the full moon shone at the top, shrinking to gibbous, then to the half moon, then to a crescent. In the center of the cover, a hair-thin ring of silver made an empty circle—the new moon.

  Somewhere close, the tide of whispers was growing again. She twisted around. Rade had joined Niree and Brant. All three wolves faced outward, a growling wall of fangs and muscle. Feena spun back to the other members of the vanished pact.

  “What is the darkness?” she asked. “Was Dhauna right? Is it heresy? Does Selûne really want the New Moon Pact reborn to fight heresy in her faith?”

  “Yes and no,” said Tyver.

  “No and yes,” said Qualise.

  “All things come,” said Enshu, “in their proper time.” Feena looked at her. She was a stout woman with a strong face crossed by a scar. She reached out thick hands and drew Feena forward, guiding her to the chair beside the table. “Dhauna Myritar tried to move too fast. Now your time is too short.”

  “I don’t understand,” Feena gasped.

  The whispers pressed in on all sides. The New Moon Pact was pulling together to make a circle around her. A look of urgency crossed Enshu’s face.

  “Some things should never be understood,” she snarled—and shoved Feena hard back into the chair.

  Feena woke to voices. Real voices.

  All thought of the dream vanished. Someone was at the door of the archives. No—more than just someone. Feena caught sour tones. It was Velsinore.

  The clergy of Moonshadow Hall had returned. How long had she been asleep? Feena stifled a curse and touched the paperweight, dismissing its glow with a thought. The white book was still on the table, just as it should have been. Feena flipped it closed, then scrambled out of her chair and flung herself silently in among the shelves, sliding deep into their maze. When Velsinore’s voice became more than a whisper, Feena stopped and pressed herself down against the floor. The robe billowed loosely around her—loose enough to accept a change in form. Narrowing her eyes in concentration, Feena shifted and became a wolf. Sharp ears twitched, listening.

  Out in the center of the chamber, Velsinore spoke a prayer and light blossomed.

  “Gather them all, sisters!” the tall priestess commanded. “They’ll go in the vaults with the others.”

  Priestesses murmured, and Feena caught the slither of parchment on parchment. They were gathering the scrolls and books Dhauna had left laid out on the table. Someone grunted under a weight. The white book! However flawed the account might be, it was the only record of the New Moon Pact. Feena’s ears pressed back and a low growl escaped her.

  One of the priestesses gasped in alarm and parchment crackled sharply.

  “Velsinore!”

  Feena tensed in alarm, but Velsinore only grunted, angry. “Be careful, Chandri! It might be something among them that drove Dhauna and Julith to madness.” She grunted again, and said, “Perhaps it’s time these archives were purged.”

  “Velsinore,” asked one of the other priestesses timidly, “what will happen to Julith now?”

  “Selûne will judge her, Tam.” Velsinore’s voice was calm. Her footsteps retreated. “After the funeral, when the moon is waxing again—Selûne will judge her.”

  “What about what the Sharran told her?” bleated Chandri.

  Velsinore’s footsteps stopped.

  For a moment there was silence, then Velsinore said, “Attend to your work, sisters. When Selûne waxes, we’ll put an end to the Sharran and his kind. Now hurry—there’s a lot to do.”

  Her footsteps began again, marching out of the archives. Other footsteps scurried in her wake. After a moment, the archives were silent once more, though Velsinore’s light remained.

  Feena put her jaw down on her paws and allowed herself a thin growl. Obviously Julith and presumably Keph along with her had been captured, but she wondered what the young man could have said to put Tam and Chandri into such a state of alarm. She whined and slapped her tail on the floor. She needed to get out of the archives and find out what was going on. Feena started rise, to change back into a woman.

  Silver flashed in the corner of her eye.

  Feena sank back down and peered in at the lowest level of the shelves she crouched beside. Back behind dusty, cracked scrolls—there was something there. Something that shone with silver, but that only a wolf’s sharp eyes might see and even then only if the animal was stretched out on the ground. Feena made her transformation, then knelt down again and reached blindly past the scrolls. Her fingers closed on a slim book, its leather binding furred and soft with age. She pulled it out carefully.

  The book’s cover was black. The silver that decorated it was dull and mostly tarnished, but the hair-thin ring that stood in the center of the cover was still somehow bright.

  “Moonmaiden’s grace,” Feena breathed.

  She rose and moved out into the light. Drawing a shallow breath, she opened the cover of the book. Leather that should have crumbled held firm. There was magic at work.

  Cramped, heavy script filled the first page. The book bore no title, but it began with a date: Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lost Wayfarers. Feena bit her lip. That was five months after the suppression of the New Moon Pact. Eyes wide, she read:

  Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lost Wayfarers.

  To the one who comes—

  Hear the tale of the New Moon Pact, destroyed by lies. In Selûne’s name and by her grace, I make this record. All around me, the tales of the Pact are wiped away day by day. My pack is gone, but by Selûne’s hand I survive. By her will, I carry its ancient history in my heart. On this day dedicated to the honored dead, I begin my secret record. Bright Lady of Night, grant me the years to finish it.

  The priestesses of Moonshadow Hall know me as Asha the Silent. Six months ago, I had a different name and a different form. Until Selûne laid her hand upon me, my name was Halftail and I was a wolf.

  When the time is right, I pray that you read what Selûne granted me human hands and mind to record. I pray that you restore the name and lore of the New Moon Pact, charged by Selûne in the earliest nights of the world to watch and defend against the darkest shadows. What time has consumed, not even gods can recall, but know this—these words were spoken by those who first made pact with the Moonmaiden, just as they were spoken by the last. This is the sacred rite of the New Moon.

  Feena closed the book and squeezed her eyes shut. Her dream … the New Moon Pact …

  “Oh, Dhauna,” Feena murmured. “Bright Lady of the Night, have pity on a tortured spirit.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The shadows seemed to go on forever, bleak and black. Cold, their touch was like a dark sea fog rolling across Keph’s body and spirit. Variance was gone. He was alone—and helpless. There was nothing he could do but … drift …

  Sound came back to him first.

  “The call went out at dusk as you instructed, Mother Night,” Bolan’s voice said. “The faithful are assembling now. They will bring weapons.”

  “Good,” replied Variance. “Go make what preparations you need to for yourself.”

  “I’ve been preparing for this for years, Mother Night.” Bolan sounded like he might actually cry. Keph could hardly imagine tears breaking out on that cold white face. “I have a chest filled with formulas I thought I might never use. The poison Cyrume took was the least of what waits for the Selûnites.”

  Smell … Recognition of an odor that had been in his nose for some time filtered into Keph’s consciousness: raw, cold stone. He was in the cliff tunnels. In Shar’s temple. His heart clenched and his eyes opened.

  Darkness weighed upon the air. The only light was a dim glow, a single candle that burned on the other side of the temple. Against it, Bolan and Variance were silhouettes, the alchemist squat and nightmarish, the Calishite woman tall and stiff. Her arm reached out and came down on Bolan’s wide shoulder.

  “This is the time we have been waiting for. This is what the
Temple of Old Night sent me to Yhaunn to oversee. The Selûnites’ attempt to steal Keph from us was only the final blow.”

  Keph caught his breath at the lie. What—?

  Bolan hissed in righteous anger. “Moonshadow Hall will crumble!” He stepped away and bowed low, the candlelight shifting with his movements. “We will do honor to Shar tonight.”

  “I do not doubt it,” said Variance. “Now, go. I have preparations of my own to make.”

  Bolan bowed again and the light bounced—then dimmed and faded as the squat man trotted away. Keph almost gasped and called out after him: Leave the candle, Bolan, please!

  The words faltered in his throat. Darkness, utter darkness, cloaked Shar’s temple.

  “You’re finally awake.”

  Variance’s voice—far kinder than the last time she had spoken to him—emerged from the shadows. Her footsteps approached across the raw stone of the floor, as sure as if she walked through the brilliance of daylight. Keph flinched away. For the first time, he realized that he was stretched out on wood, maybe a broad bench. His arms and legs were untied. He sat up, and the movement brought pain. Fire shot through his ankle and across his face where the priest Aeso had struck him. He gasped and fell back.

  “Be still.”

  A hand touched him. He tried to pull away, but Variance pressed him down against the wood with shocking strength.

  “By the glory of Shar, be healed.”

  The agony that surged through him was almost worse than his injuries. Keph jerked and spasmed, his head cracking back hard. The false brightness of pain exploded across his vision—but when it cleared, the ache in his ankle was gone and his face felt no more than tender. Variance lifted her hand away.

  Keph gulped air and sat up, trembling with relief. He stared blindly into the darkness. She’d healed him.

  Why?

  Variance gave a soft laugh and said, “Do you think that just because you’re blind, I am as well? I see confusion on your face, Keph. You have questions. Ask them.” He heard liquid pour. Variance put a metal cup into his hand. “Water,” she said. “Nothing more.”