Mistress of the Night p-2

by Dave Gross

  "Does anyone else know we're here?" the dark-haired priestess whispered.

  "If they have half a brain, they might figure it out," Feena grumbled as she marched on, leaving Julith scurrying in her wake.

  Moonshadow Hall was one of the earliest major buildings built in Yhaunn. Its archives were correspondingly old and extensive. Because it was the largest temple of Selune in that part of Faerun, it had also become the repository for records gathered from even older shrines. Whenever a hermit-priestess died, whenever a remote chapel was finally allowed to collapse, whenever another temple simply needed to clear the dust from its vaults, old records and tattered tomes were sent to Moonshadow Hall to be preserved for the greater faith of Selune. Row upon row of high shelves crammed with books, papers, and scrolls filled the archives. Feena had never much liked the place. It was too quiet for her, too full of dead, dry words. As she walked into the dusty shadows, she almost had to fight against the muffling silence to keep her rage burning.

  She found the High Moonmistress skimming a book that was a full handspan thick. Cool magical light shone from a humble paperweight, casting illumination across the book, an inkwell and pen, a tray with a half-eaten bowl of soup from lunch, and a scattering of parchments crowded with scribbled notes. Dhauna glanced up sourly as Feena approached.

  "I told you no one, Julith! I don't want to see anybody."

  The old priestess had been lying when she said it was only the vestments that made her look wasted, Feena realized. Without them, Dhauna looked even more aged and frail. The sleeves of her simple, soft robe had been pinned back so they didn't tangle in the pages she turned.

  Feena stepped forward without giving Julith a chance to reply and said, "Mother Dhauna, I need to talk to you."

  "I don't have time, Feena." Dhauna began to turn a page, then stopped and squinted at it. "Did I just read this?" she muttered, and flipped ahead, then back again. She looked up at Feena with an angry glare. "Our Lady of Silver, do you see what you've made me do?" she spat. She slammed the book closed hard enough to make the glowing paperweight jump and the cold soup splash. "I didn't summon you to Moonshadow Hall just so you could start interrupting me, too!"

  Feena stared at her, at the stacks of books surrounding her, and an ugly suspicion formed in her mind.

  She narrowed her eyes and said, "You intended to name me as Moonmistress-Designate from the moment you sent for me!" She stalked up to the broad table at which Dhauna sat. "With me to handle your duties and keep Mifano and Velsinore busy, you were free to continue your research! That's it, isn't it? That's why you really needed me to come to Moonshadow Hall."

  "Yes!" snapped Dhauna. "Yes, it is." She put her elbows on top of the book and propped up her head on her hands, rubbing her palms against her eyes and forehead. "I know it's not what you were thinking when you agreed to help me"

  "It isn't," Feena said. "You said you needed me."

  Dhauna looked up at her. Her eyes were tired, like drawn shadows at dusk. "I do need you, Feena," she said, raising one arm and gesturing around her. "All this… most of it I've accomplished in just the last few days and nights." There was a weary desperation in her voice. "Velsinore and Mifano are running you ragged, aren't they? I couldn't keep up with that and my duties to the temple and still try to work out what Selune is trying to tell me. I told you, I didn'tdon'tdare trust anyone inside Moonshadow Hall. They might be the very source of the danger. Even turning to Julith was a risk, but I know that I can trust you. You were the only one I knew I could safely put in charge. If you'd only come sooner…" She rubbed her eyes again. "A tenday, Feena. Give me a tenday and I think I'll have all the answers."

  Feena turned and glared out into the darkened recesses of the archives. Her fists were clenched so tightly she could feel her nails digging into her palms. The headache the half moon coronet had given her was pounding like a hammer in her head.

  "Tell me what you know."

  "Feena, I can't-"

  "Tell me," Feena pressed, looking down at the old priestess. "If I'm going to put up with Mifano and Velsinore, I want to know that it's worth it. I want to know what we're dealing with. What have you found so far?" She forced her fists open. "What are these dreams?"

  She heard Julith hiss softly in warning, but Dhauna held her hand up.

  "No, Julith. It's all right." She sat back in her chair. Her eyes focused in the shadows and she said, "The dreams fade quickly, but with each one I remember a little more on waking. The situations vary from dream to dream, but some things are always the samea profound unease that builds to horror. Sometimes I'm walking through a dark passage. Sometimes I'm just sitting in the courtyard of Moonshadow Hall at night, with nothing reflecting in the sacred pool but stars.

  Sometimes I'm actually swimming in the poolor maybe in the seaalone. Wherever I am, the unease comes over me. Suddenly there are voices and something is dreadfully, terribly wrong. I know the voices, but what they're saying makes no sense. They're all around me, threatening to overcome me."

  Dhauna's voice tightened. Her hands were wrapped around the arms of her chair.

  "And there's something behind them," the old woman continued, "something very old, and no matter how terrifying the voices are, that thing is even worse. No matter how I try to escape it, I can't. Sooner or later, it's going to catch me and it's going to consume"

  She gasped, and her voice broke. Feena felt as if she couldn't move, spellbound by the tale, but Julith stepped around the table and moved to the old woman's side. Dhauna took Julith's hands.

  "I have to finish," the high priestess said. She looked at Feena once more. "I always wake up before it catches me, but just before I do, I realize that I'm carrying something." She gestured around them. "A book. That's Selune's clue, Feena. I'll find the answers I need here."

  Feena drew a slow breath and said, "There are a lot of books here, Mother Dhauna."

  "Yes," the high priestess agreed, "but I think I understand other parts of the dream now, too. Selune's faith is ancient, among the oldest in Faerun. We've had our dark times. The consuming horror with many voices… the old terror that destroys tranquility?" She leaned forward and whispered one word. "Heresy."

  Feena's teeth clenched. "Heresy? Mother Dhauna, is that really"

  "How old were you when the Time of Troubles fell upon Faerun, Feena?" Dhauna snapped. "Eleven? Twelve? It was before you came to Moonshadow Hall, I know that, but your mother must have told you about the fear and uncertainty that came with the casting down of the gods. Heresy is worse. It's insidious. It isn't a test of faith, it's torture, chaos that divides temples and turns sister against sister. Even in a faith so tolerant as Selune's, when heresy rises, all of us feel the upheaval."

  "Mother Dhauna…" said Julith in soothing tones, but Dhauna brushed her away.

  "What must be stirring now," she asked Feena, "that the Moonmaiden herself moves to warn us about it? Feena, believe me, whatever heresy grows in Moonshadow Hall, we have to stop it. We have to…"

  She sighed and seemed to sink in on herself.

  "Dhauna?" Feena gasped in alarm.

  The High Moonmistress shook her head and replied, "I'm just… tired. Selune's warnings take their toll." She cast her eyes over the books in front of her, then turned a tired gaze on Feena. "I need to get back to work. A tenday, Feena. I'm sure of it. You'll stay?"

  Feena nodded, numb.

  "Good. Tell no one about the dreams, Feena. Even if you're defending me."

  "I won't, Mother Dhauna," Feena promised, but the old woman was already turning back to her books.

  A soft touch on her shoulder drew Feena's attention. Julith stood beside her. The dark-haired priestess shook her head and silently gestured for Feena to follow her.

  "That's the best she's been in two days," she said as she led Feena back to the archive door. Julith glanced back over her shoulder at the pool of light that surrounded Dhauna. The High Moonmistress was gingerly unrolling a scroll that seemed ready to crumble at any
sudden movement. "I'm worried, Feena. She's becoming obsessed with heresy. What if there is no heresy?"

  "You mean, what if she's truly going mad?"

  Julith held out her hands, helpless, and replied, "I don't know what to think. Sometimes I would say yes, but the books and scrolls that she asks me to fetch, the notes that she makesthere's a method to them, I'd swear it."

  "There are things to be seen by moonlight that sunlight cannot reveal," murmured Feena. It was a favorite saying among the followers of Selune. Sometimes the

  Moonmaiden's insights could be more than a mortal mind was capable of dealing with.

  But sometimes the saying was just an excuse.

  Feena gripped Julith's hand and said, "Let me know if it gets worse."

  "I will," Julith replied. She returned Feena's gripand drew her into a close embrace. "And you come to me if you need to. I'll help you however I can."

  Startled, Feena stiffened, but then relaxed. There was a genuine warmth in Julith's voice and embrace.

  "I will," she said.

  "If you need to be alone," Julith added, "I can tell you how to get rid of Velsinore and Mifano."

  A smile spread across Feena's face and she stepped back.

  "No, that's all right," she said. "I think they're done with me for today. But you're right. Some time alone is what I need."

  When silence finally fell over Moonshadow Hall that night, Feena, wearing her own blouse and homespun skirt once more, slipped out of the chamber that Velsinore had reluctantly assigned her and down to the temple's kitchen. At the back of the big room there was a stout door. Feena murmured a prayer to Selune that nothing had changed substantially since her days as an acolyte at the temple, and drew back the door's heavy bolt.

  The door swung open on a small kitchen herb garden built onto the side of Moonshadow Hall. Feena closed the door behind herself and stepped through the dew-damp beds to the wall that surrounded the garden. A squat, weathered pillar that might once have been a statue was right where she remembered it, if a little mossier and a little more deeply sunk in the ground. She stepped carefully on top of it and reached up.

  As an acolyte, she had just barely been able to reach the top of the wall with her fingertips. Now she could wrap her hands securely over it. With a quick hop and a little straining, she was up on top of it then slithering down into the shadows on the other side. An alley nearby formed a conveniently private niche. Feena slipped out of her clothes and tucked them into a bundle in a corner. Then she closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened herself to the wild power within her spirit.

  The transformation came upon her like a warm breath across her skin, a shiver of sensation. Feena shook herself, the symbol of Selune jingling on the chain around her neck. When she opened her eyes again, she stood on four russet paws and the night air was rich with smells. Part of her wanted to sit back and offer a howl of joyful release to Selune's half-hidden face. She held that part back to a few delighted yips as she trotted off into Yhaunn's warm night.

  I should have done this days ago, she thought. There was some truth to the tales that connected werewolves to the full moon. An innocent bitten by a werewolf and infected with its curse could be forced into a rampaging animal shape by the full moon's light. But Feena had been born a werewolf, inheriting the power from her dark father. She could change form whenever she desired. In her old days at the temple, both Dhauna's counsel and her mother's dire warnings had kept her safely inside the walls when she couldn't resist the call of her animal half. A hop over the wall in the herb garden had been only for acolytes desperate for a night in the citya human night. The city was no place for a young wolf.

  But she had become both a priestess and an adult. Yhaunn was no forest, but it was better than the stone cage that Moonshadow Hall sometimes felt like. As open and airy as the temple was, it was still a human building, enclosed and cut off from the world. The wolf inside her needed to be free, away from Mifano's social niceties and Velsinore's restraining drudgeries.

  Awayeven for just a little whilefrom Dhauna's dark portents of danger.

  Feena growled. No! No thoughts of the High Moonmistress. This is my time.

  She threw back her head and set free the howl that she had restrained before.

  Every dog for blocks around went mad in a frenzy of barking. In alleys nearby, cats screeched as they scrambled for safety.

  Tongue lolling in satisfaction, Feena trotted on. She followed the natural slope of the city down toward Yhauntan Bay and the Sea of Fallen Stars, letting her nose lead her to places and things she might have overlooked as a human. In a tiny square, the stink of rotting vegetables haunted the site of a farmers' market during the day. Among the shadows of one alley, the tang of blood and birtha mongrel bitch licked clean a new litter of puppies. She froze as she saw the wolf watching her. Feena kept her distance and after a time, the dog went back to licking her offspring, one eye fixed warily on the intruder. Feena spoke a silent prayer to Selune, asking her to watch over the newborn pups, before continuing on her way.

  In another alley, she tore into a crawling swarm of rats, snatching them up in powerful jaws and breaking their spines with a swift shake. The vermin weren't exactly the blood-mad servants and marauding predators of Malar the Beastlord that she was used to stalking among the trees of the Arch Wood, but the skirmish left her panting and exhilarated. She rinsed the rats' foul taste from her mouth at a trough in a stable yard as the horses nearby whickered uneasily in their sleep.

  Among the hovels closer to the docks, she listened outside a shack as the inhabitants wheezed and coughed. A miasma of pestilence drifted out of the shack. In the morning she would have Mifano send some of the junior clergy to the neighborhood. Prayers and medicines might stop the disease before it became a plague.

  Finally, she ended up on the docks, gazing out over the sea. All around her, ships and boats bobbed at anchor, a cacophony of creaking wood and straining rope. Their hulls oozed the odors of wet wood and tar, overlaid with the stench of sweat and excrement. Feena stood as far out on the docks as she could, nose raised high to catch the fresh wind as it came over the water. She had stood on the docks many times before in human form, but never before as a wolf. There were so many smells crowded onto the sea windwater in vast quantity, of course, but beyond that…

  Trees and flowers she couldn't have named.

  Some powerful, bestial musk that sent a shiver down her back.

  Fresh turned soil.

  New cut wood.

  Lightningfar out on the sea, a storm was brewing.

  Some of the smells were probably her imagination, but they blended together in a perfume that set her heart racing and woke wanderlust within her.

  Maybe someday, she thought, someday when Arch Wood doesn't need me anymore.

  She drew a final deep breath and lowered her nose, turning to trot away from the water and back up to Moonshadow Hall.

  She had barely cleared the stink of the docks when a new smell sent her cringing back instinctively, teeth bared and fur on enda dark smell, acrid, metallic, and foul. The wolf in her hated it. The human recognized it.

  Poison.

  No one with any honest business could be about with poison at that hour. Nose to the ground, Feena circled the trail once, then jogged along in the direction that seemed freshest. She gleaned more information as she went. A man carried the poison. He had been drinking, though not heavily, and his dinner had been some kind of spiced pork. The thick odor of clay clung to himshe would guess that he was a potterbut also the smell of cold, raw stone. It was a strange combination.

  She caught sight of her quarry just as he stepped into the street-level shadows of the Stiltways.

  A growl rumbled up from Feena's throat. She had been into the Stiltways as an acolyte, of course. It was all but impossible to live in Yhaunn without venturing into the district at least once. But even her human senses had reeled at the visual and auditory assault and it had taken her several visits to get used
to the place. Crouched so low that she was almost crawling on her belly, her tail tucked tight between her legs, Feena creeped up to the intersection where the man had disappeared and peered inside.

  Dank, vile odors wafted out at her. Sounds of pleasure and celebration mixed with groans of misery and suffering. The bright lights and chaos of the Stiltways were, at least, mostly on the levels over her head. Down below, figures moved and stumbled in shadow, their way lit only by smoky torches and shafts of light from above.

  Her quarry was almost at the end of the street. The stink of the Stiltways masked the smell of the poison he carried. If she didn't follow, she would lose him.

  Bright Lady of the Night guide me, thought Feena.

  She rose and raced after him, the nails of her paws clicking on the stone of the street.

  The man stopped and turned at the sound.

  Feena plunged into the darkest of shadows. Another man curled up there, snoring and drunk. She hunkered down behind him as her quarry paused for a long moment, looking aroundthen moved on. Feena relaxed and rose.

  The drunk man stirred.

  "Fha… what?" he snorted. Bleary eyes focused on Feena's. "Nice dog," he slurred and reached out for her.

  She slipped away from his hand and trotted after her quarry, taking more care as she ran. She stayed close to the shadows, and low. The man walked briskly, almost nervously. It seemed that he knew where he was going, but that he wasn't entirely eager to get thereor to be seen on his way.

  He finally stopped again at the mouth of an alley. Feena curled into a doorway and watched as he looked furtively in all directionsup and down the street as well as up into the Stiltways abovethen stepped quickly into the shadows. He'd reached his destination. She darted up to the mouth of the alley and peered down it.

  Beyond its narrow neck of a mouth, the alley opened up into a small courtyard that been practically buried by the platforms and walkways above it. Noise and some illumination drifted down from the levels overhead. Feena's quarry stood in the freckled shadows, a large dark flask in one hand as he fumbled with the heavy wooden cover on a low stone structure. A number of pipes pierced the wood, rising up and into the shadows, some passing into buildings, others ending in public hand pumps. A well.