Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [104]
"Be gone!"
Moonlight shattered darkness. Julith blinked and gasped. Feena's chest heaved as she lifted her hands away.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Moonmaiden's grace____________________" The fear that had clouded
Julith's eyes was gone and they shone in the light of the chapel. "There was a woman-a Calishite-a Sharran priestess. She stepped out of shadows and cast spells on me, then disappeared with Keph. She changed my memories!"
The hollow that had been in Feena's belly filled with ice as she remembered Keph's tales of the Sharran cult.
"Variance," she said. "Her name is Variance."
"There's something else," said Julith. "Keph asked her how she found him. She told him that Selune's clergy aren't all so faithful as the moon goddess might think. If she was telling the truth…"
Someone had told the Sharrans that Keph had been captured, and Variance had taken the young man back. Feena blew out her breath and prayed that Selune would guard him from the danger he'd been plunged into. But they had their own danger, didn't they?
"By Our Silver Lady," Feena whispered, "there's a traitor in Moonshadow Hall."
She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. The traitor had to have been among the party that had set out in pursuit of her. Unfortunately, that was almost all of the priests and priestesses of Moonshadow Hall. All of the chaos going on in the temple and a traitor, too, she groaned silently. The threat of a Sharran attack, a traitor to the faith____________________
"Is this what you were trying to warn us about, Selune?" she murmured under her breath. "Is this the darkness in the dreams?"
"Feena," Julith asked, "if my memory of Keph's escape was false, what about the threat of an attack?"
Feena narrowed her eyes behind her fingers. "I think we still need to take it seriously," she said. "From what Keph told me about Variance, it doesn't sound like she does anything by accident. Even if she's only trying to panic us-"
Panic. The hair on the back of Feena's neck rose. If her discovery of the Sharran in the Stiltways hadn't been so thoroughly crushed-or if she had never found him at all and the well had been poisoned-Moonshadow Hall would have been on alert against the Sharran cult much earlier. There would be no racing around, bracing the temple against an unsuspected attack. They would have been on alert for days. Variance, she realized, had tried to panic them before.
But the attempt had failed because Feena's discovery had been kept secret from Selune's clergy. Or at least most of them.
She lowered her hands and looked at Julith.
"In the false memory Variance created for you," she said, "Keph mocked our confidence that there were no Sharrans in Yhaunn. How did Variance know that? I only ever told four people that I suspected there were Sharrans at all. You…" Julith's eyes went wide and she shook her head. Feena sighed in relief. "Thank Our Silver Lady, I didn't think so."
"But you told Dhauna." Julith swallowed. "And she…"
"Even if she had somehow betrayed Selune in her madness, she was dead before you and Keph were even captured. It couldn't have.been her." Feena drew a tight breath and said, "But I also told Mifano and Velsinore."
Color burned in Julith's cheeks. "The two people in charge of Moonshadow Hall-and one of them is a traitor."
"Exactly. But they're not in charge of Moonshadow Hall." Feena lifted her chin and said, "I am." She picked up the book of the New Moon Pact and handed it to Julith. "Keep that safe. Whatever happens, it needs to be protected."
She rose to her feet, and Julith rose as well.
"Feena, whatever you're planning, I want to be with you."
Feena gave her a fast hug and said, "Thank you, Julith. Selune bless you." She turned to the great silver-bound doors of the chapel. "Selune bless us both."
Drawing a deep breath, she strode forward and flung the doors wide.
CHAPTER 15
The corridor outside the winter chapel