Mistress of the Night Read online

The transformation came upon her like a warm breath across her skin, a shiver of sensation. Feena shook herself, the symbol of Selûne 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 Selûne’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 city—a 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.

  Away—even for just a little while—from 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 birth—a 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 Selûne, 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 wind—water 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.

  Lightning—far 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 end—a 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 him—she would guess that he was a potter—but 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 around—then 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 there—or 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 directions—up and down the street as well as up into the Stiltways above—then 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.

  Moonmaiden’s grace, Feena cursed, if he pours the poison in there.…

  The wooden cover wasn’t yielding to one hand. The man set the flask on the ground and hauled at the cover with both hands. It groaned and began to shift. Feena reached into her spirit, seeking
the point of balance between woman and wolf—and shook herself.

  Her chain and the battered symbol of Selûne jingled softly.

  The man started and the wooden cover slipped from his fingers.

  “Who’s there?” he called, peering back into the alley.

  Without taking his eyes away, he bent down, groping for the flask.

  Feena flung herself down the alley, exploding out into the courtyard on legs as long and as powerful as a human’s, but bent like those of a wolf. She still had a wolf’s tail and a wolf’s head, as well, but her torso and arms were those of a woman for all that they rippled with short reddish fur. Her hands, however, were huge, her fingers long, thick, and tipped with claws. Her muzzle all but incapable of forming human words, she let out a dangerous snarl as she leaped.

  The man gasped and jerked back toward one of the courtyard’s walls. Feena landed with a thump on the wooden cover of the well and spun around to face him.

  He clutched the flask in his hand. She growled and stretched out clawed fingers. The man’s eyes darted around the tiny courtyard as he sought a way past her. From the top of the well, however, she commanded the space. He started to take a step and she jumped forward to block his way.

  The dim light from above flashed on her medallion. The reflected light caught his eyes—and they widened.

  “Selûnite!” he gasped, pulling away. His features hardened into sneering resolve. “You won’t have me, moon-bitch!”

  Jerking the stopper free, he raised the flask to his lips and drank greedily.

  Startled, Feena froze. When finally she barked and lunged forward to bat the flask away, it was too late. Only a few drops of the dark, acrid liquid splattered across the man’s face. His eyes opened wide, the pupils huge, and he let out a strangled, gasping rattle before thrashing back against the wall. Dark froth oozed out of his mouth and across his lips. One hand clawed at his neck and a pendant there.

  “Shar …” he slurred.

  Horrified, Feena stepped away as he stumbled off his feet, fell to the ground, and lay still.

  Moonmaiden’s grace, she silently cursed.

  Feena bent down swiftly and touched his neck, feeling for a pulse as best she could with her clumsy taloned fingers.

  Nothing—he was already dead. But his dying words.…

  She seized his hand and pulled against muscles drawn as rigid as steel by the poison. The dead man’s fingers loosened enough to allow the pendant he had seized to fall free. A wooden disk, its rim dark but its center even darker. By better light, Feena knew it would be black surrounded by purple.

  A follower of Shar.

  Feena let his hand drop and scrambled for the flask as it spun slowly in the shadows. Spilled poison stained the neck and sides. She picked it up carefully, holding it in a beam of pale light from above. A scrap of paper with crude writing had been pasted to the flask’s side.

  “For the glory of the Lady of Loss,” it read. “Let all know her power and despair.”

  Sharrans. There were Sharrans in Yhaunn.

  The flask’s stopper had rolled out of the dead man’s other hand. Feena retrieved it and replaced it in the flask. A cold feeling was forming in the pit of her belly. If the enemies of Selûne were operating in the city, there was certain to be trouble.

  But at the same time, her thin, wolf’s lips drew back and she bared her teeth in grim satisfaction. Archives for Dhauna, social graces for Mifano, accounts for Velsinore—a fight for Feena. Finally, something she could handle without feeling like a complete fool. Feena touched one clawed hand to the medallion around her throat as she stood and turned away from the poisoned corpse.

  Bright Lady of the Night, she thought, thank you!

  The creature turned away. On one of the walkways overlooking the courtyard and its well, Variance Amatick waited another moment, then parted the shadows that had concealed her. A Selûnite and a werewolf. So what she had been told was not an exaggeration.

  “I hadn’t expected to find you hunting the night, Moonmistress-Designate,” she murmured to herself.

  She took a step forward into shadow—and emerged on the ground in the courtyard. The dead man’s eyes stared up at her. It was a nobler death than she would have given him. A score of deaths and a flask proclaiming the glory of Shar would have been a good lure. The body of a fanatical Sharran cultist would have been even better.

  But a Selûnite to witness and stop the whole affair before Variance even had to dirty her hands, that was a gift from Shar herself.

  That the well had not been poisoned was no great loss. A score of people had been spared death that night, but it would come for them eventually. The Selûnite had seen and heard all that was necessary. Moonshadow Hall would have to respond.

  Still, there seemed little point in wasting a corpse when it could be used to create even more havoc and confusion.

  Variance knelt down and broke the cord around the dead man’s neck, tugging it and the symbol of Shar away. She tucked both into a fold of her own mantle. The Selûnites knew their enemy, but no one else needed to.

  “Have no fear,” she told the corpse. “The Lady of Loss will know your soul. There’s just one more sacrifice for you to make.”

  She rose and stepped back. Whispering a prayer to Shar, she crooked two fingers as if beckoning someone. Or something.

  Shadows swirled and condensed into a massive black dog with a hide like night itself. Variance pointed at the cultist’s body.

  CHAPTER 4

  What?” Feena asked, looking from Velsinore to Mifano in stupefied disbelief.

  “There are no Sharrans in Yhaunn, Feena,” Mifano insisted. “We’d know if there were.”

  Sitting beside him, Velsinore nodded her agreement. Feena clenched her hands and her fingernails scraped across the polished top of the table around which the three of them sat. As soon as Moonshadow Hall had begun stirring that morning, she had commandeered one of its receiving rooms for the meeting. Her intention had been to keep unnecessary panic from spreading through the junior members of the temple. It was beginning to look increasingly like the privacy would serve instead to keep word from spreading of another clash with Mifano and Velsinore.

  “But I told you what I saw,” Feena growled. She lifted one hand and pointed at the flask that stood in the center of the table. Getting it back to Moonshadow Hall had not been easy. Shifting into wolf form and carrying the flask—poison lingering within it—in her mouth had been out of the question, of course. Shifting to human form would have left her naked. She had been forced to duck through alleys and shadows in her monstrous hybrid shape all the way back to the temple and her waiting clothes. “You can read the inscription on that yourself.”

  “A badly-written label is hardly an inscription,” Mifano said as he picked up the flask again. “Anyone could have written this and stuck it to the flask. Anyone could have gone to a less than ethical alchemist and bought the poison. Anyone can invoke Shar’s name if they choose to.” He set the flask down. “It’s not a cult, Feena. I think you stumbled across a misguided madman working on his own.”

  “But there could be a cult at work,” protested Feena. “How do you know there isn’t?”

  Velsinore leaned forward. Her face was cross. “Because we do,” she said. “Honestly, do you think we don’t take the threat of Shar’s followers seriously? We monitor every tale and rumor that passes through Yhaunn—and around it, too. We have faithful who aid us in watching. We’re vigilant, Feena! You know the spoor of Malar’s servants, don’t you? You know when they come to Arch Wood. If there was any sign of a Sharran cult spreading in the city, we would have known.”

  “This is a sign!” Feena banged the table.

  “No, it isn’t!”

  “Sisters!” snapped Mifano.

  Feena caught her tongue. Across the table, Velsinore stiffened into silence. Mifano sighed and set the flask down.

  “Feena,” he said. “I don’t want you to think that we’re belittling wh
at you did last night. It’s like the shack you mentioned by the docks—by checking that disease now, we prevent a plague. You did the same thing. Shar’s evil found a single servant, her toehold in the city. You broke that toehold. And how many people would have died if that well had been poisoned? You saved them, too.”

  “But I … that wasn’t …” Feena began. Words failed her. She pressed her hands over her face and groaned in frustration. “Oh!”

  “I’m glad you think so highly of your service to Selûne,” said Velsinore as she rose from the table. “Someone else probably would have let such praise go to her head!” She swept out of the room.

  At least the bitterness and resentment in the tall priestess’ voice was plain.

  Mifano’s cheer simply rang hollow as he stood and asked, “What would you like done with the remaining poison, Feena? A victory toast for the heroine of the hour, Moonshadow Hall’s shield against Shar? You didn’t even have to lay a hand on that cultist—he killed himself just at the sight of you!”

  Feena glared at him over the tops of her fingers and said, “Get rid of it, Mifano.”

  “As you wish,” he replied, scooping up the vial. “I’ll return the flask to you, though, shall I? It will make a wonderful souvenir.”

  “Get out,” Feena snarled.

  Mifano slid gracefully out the door, then leaned back in.

  “By the way,” he said, “Lady Monstaed has sent her regrets—she won’t be able to meet with you today. Maybe she heard about what happened at Ladysluck Tower yesterday. Well done.”

  He vanished again. Feena let him get a good long head start before standing and following.

  What was I thinking last night? That Selûne guided me to a problem I was capable of dealing with?

  “Moonmaiden’s grace,” Feena cursed under breath. “Could I really have been that wrong?”

  As much as she hated to admit it, Velsinore’s argument made sense—the clergy of Moonshadow Hall probably would have already found a Sharran cult if one was operating in Yhaunn. They were attuned to the activities of Selûne’s enemies. Mifano made sense too. Maybe she had stopped Shar’s power before it could grow behind a single madman. Maybe that had been Selûne’s only intent, guiding her to prevent the deaths of innocent Yhauntans. Maybe she was a hero.