Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [108]
Velsinore whirled and lashed out with her sword.
Caught by surprise, Mifano gasped in shock as the shining blade sliced into his body. Feena heard the metal grate against bone and leaped back in shock. In the cloisters, confusion rose into screaming chaos. Velsinore twisted around, letting go of the sword, and shoved Mifano's jerking body to the ground. Feena and Julith dodged forward almost as one to catch him.
As they reacted, Velsinore turned and sprinted out of the courtyard, back toward the waning half moon gate. The priests and priestesses standing in the gate and the cloisters scrambled to get out of her way. In less than a heartbeat, she had vanished into Moonshadow Hall.
"Moonmaiden's grace!" Feena cursed at the merciless distraction.
Mifano's blood was pouring across her hands. The silver-haired priest's breath was coming in rattling rasps.
"Down!" ordered Julith. "Put him down!" She raised her eyes to the swirling, swooning clergy. "Chandri! I'm going to need your help to save him!" She glanced at Feena. "Go get Velsinore! I'll handle this!'
Feena grimaced and slid Mifano into her arms, then rose and charged after Velsinore. Clergy dodged out of her way almost as quickly as they had dodged out of Velsinore's. Feena opened the door through which the traitorous priestess had vanished and plunged inside.
There was no sign of Velsinore, but even in scant moments she could have easily gotten out of sight. With the milling priestesses and priests out in the cloisters still screaming, the echo of running footsteps would be drowned out as well. Sound and sight weren't the only means of tracking at Feena's disposal, however. She concentrated, seeking the balance between woman and wolf that was her hybrid form. It wasn't easy-both woman and wolf were furious and it was tempting simply to let the beast take over. Feena strained and resisted the impulse. She wanted answers and she wasn't going to get them if she tore Velsinore apart.
"Selune, help me," she murmured and took a deep breath as fur rippled over her skin and her joints shifted within the folds of the robe.
Her next breath brought a flood of scents to a wolfs nose: The odor of human fear, thick and overwhelming as panic swirled in Moonshadow Hall; the musty scent of funeral drapes and candles; the rich smells of Idruth's kitchen. She picked Velsinore's scent out of the flood easily, though-musty like the drapes, but with a hint of something dark and metallic: the odor of the medicines in the infirmary. With a start, Feena realized she recognized that smell from somewhere else. It was remarkably similar to the Sharran poison. Not the same, but close, as if the medicines and the poison originated in the same place.
What had Velsinore been doing?
Feena loped after the priestess. Velsinore's scent led down toward the kitchen. Feena growled. The kitchen garden… she couldn't be the only person who knew the trick of getting out over the garden wall. With Moonshadow Hall on alert against the possibility of a Sharran attack, the door from the kitchen to the garden would certainly be sealed, but it wouldn't be nearly as heavily guarded as the temple's main gates.
If it was sealed at all, she realized. The main gates were Mifano's responsibility as the bearer of the Waxing Crescent, but the kitchen, like the infirmary, was Velsinore's.
She paused outside the kitchen and shifted back into her human shape, then opened the door carefully and peered inside. Everything seemed still and quiet. Across the cavernous room, she could see that the door to the garden had indeed been sealed. A huge plate of solid steel had been fastened into place over it. No one was getting into or out of Moonshadow Hall that way without considerable effort.
Which meant that Velsinore was trapped inside the kitchen. Feena stepped through the door and put her back against a wall. There was still no movement.
"Velsinore?" called Feena. "Velsinore, why did you do it? Why did you