Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [1]
"You have it."
Rivalen stepped around the table and laid his right hand on her head. His fingers were cool. Within them, Variance could feel the even colder touch of the goddess.
"Shar bless you," the high priest intoned, "vigilant sister, keeper of secrets, and recorder of doctrine." He lifted his hand. "Be subtle, Variance."
"Always, Father Night."
Variance bowed her head to him once more, then turned and left quickly. Outside, the men and women who had been speaking with Rivalen were still waiting. They bowed to her as she passed. Variance ignored them. She swept back out through the Fane, past the great altar of Shar, and past the black wood screens.
The acolytes tending the doors of the Fane pulled them open in respectful silence as she approached. She stepped through.
The flying city of Shade, last enclave of an empire that fell out of Faerun's history seventeen hundred years before, spread out below her. Overhead, eternal shadow churned in black clouds, a reminder of the dark dimension that had given sanctuary to the city during-and for centuries after-the cataclysm that had laid Netheril low.
And that had given birth to the powers within her.
Variance took a step forward. Shadows wrapped around and through her, sliding into the shadowstuff that took the place of her flesh and soul. She stepped out of another shadow hundreds of yards along the street. Two human Shadovar dipped their pale faces to the dark shade suddenly standing beside them, but Variance walked on. A few long strides carried her to the very edge of Shade. Scant feet away, the ground dropped off. It was a long fall from the floating city to the soil of Faerun.
The shadows that wrapped the city were thinner at its edge. Stars glinted among the strands of darkness-stars and the silver-white radiance of a gibbous moon, waning but still bright. Variance clenched her teeth at the hated light and stepped back into deeper shadows. Calling to mind the location that Shar had revealed to her, the city to the south and west where The Leaves of One Night waited, she wove the shadows tight around herself and vanished into darkness.
Dhauna Myritar's eyes snapped open. Her body jerked and she sat upright, sucking air into her lungs in painful, wracking gulps. She stared around the dimness of her bedchamber. For a moment, everything seemed preter-naturally clear as her mind and body struggled for unity, then the hazy nausea of interrupted sleep swam over her. Dhauna shook her head, trying to clear it of the terror that had awakened her. She only succeeded in making her stomach churn. She sat back, propping herself against the headboard, and forced herself to breathe slowly.
A nightmare, a part of her mind urged her, it was only a nightmare. Lie down. Go back to sleep. You've already forgotten what happened in the dream, haven't you? By morning, you'll have forgotten you dreamed at all.
"But it's not always 'just a dream,' is it?" Dhauna muttered. "Not always."
The high priestess of Selune reached down and untwined the bed sheets-damp with sweat born from another stifling summer night in the Sembian city of Yhaunn-that wrapped around her like a shroud, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. There was a robe of clean white linen on a chair next to it. She wrapped the robe around herself, then stretched to reach her canes. Bracing them against the floor with one hand she levered her old body up off the bed, then stood still for a moment and steadied herself. When she felt balanced, she wobbled carefully across the bedchamber and out into her sitting room.
Moonlight slanted through the many panes of the big window in the south wall. Selune's celestial face was a waning gibbous tonight and at that hour, well past its zenith. Was that an omen, Dhauna wondered, a nightmare just as the moon entered its period of descent? She grunted. She was just imagining things.
She continued walking. The door of her sitting room opened into the hall outside, where sconces of frosted glass glowed with pale magical light. Dhauna shuffled her canes with