Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [11]
"I'd like you all to join me in a song of welcome. Moonshadow Hall opens its arms tonight as one of its own children returns home." She held out her hands. "Feena of Arch Wood, daughter of Maleva, come forward and be recognized."
"Oh, Moonmaiden's grace," Feena cursed under her breath. She shot a glance at Julith as the entire crowd turned toward her. "Is this one of Dhauna's bad days?"
Julith wrinkled her face and gave a tiny shrug.
"Wonderful," Feena muttered.
She stepped forward. The chorus of novices led the crowd in another hymn as she walked the length of the courtyard up to the High Moonmistress. Mifano gave her a playful wink as she passed. Feena glowered at him.
Dhauna reached out and took her hands. "Let all on whom Selune's light falls be welcome if they desire," she said with a soft smile. "Welcome back to Moonshadow Hall, Feena."
"Thank you, Mother Dhauna," Feena replied humbly. Dhauna turned her toward the watching crowd.
"Friends," she called, "this is Feena Archwood, a true priestess of Selune, and by Selune's grace-" The high priestess reached back and dipped her hand into the sacred pool, sending ripples through the shining reflection of the full moon, then pressed her dripping fingers to Feena's face-"I name her Moonmistress-Designate and my successor at Moonshadow Hall!"
Feena stared at Dhauna in shock.
CHAPTER 2
There was probably no one in Yhaunn who could have said exactly how the district known as the Stiltways came into existence-merchants and traders, shops and taverns so solidly packed around a few twisted streets that they filled tall buildings from top to bottom and burst out of the sides like fat from an overstuffed sausage. There were various explanations bandied about, rising and falling in popularity from year to year. That, for example, the district had in the distant past been the site of the original encampment in Yhaunn's ancient quarry and that the first buildings of the Stiltways had grown up within the encampment's walls. Or that the Stiltways had been built around and within the shell of the first fortified tower in Yhaunn after the city's protectors had moved themselves to a bigger, better keep farther up the quarry. Or that the Stiltways' first cramped, crooked buildings had been built along the walls of a dark gully-since buried- and that if one made ones way into the lost cellars beneath forgotten basements, one could still find that gully and the horrid spirits that lurked there, spirits sometimes said to be guarding a fabulous treasure.
That last theory, of course, found its greatest adherents among crackpot treasure hunters and children too frightened to stray from their mothers' sides.
The Stiltways were an image of Yhaunn in miniature: bustling and successful, but so hemmed in on either side that they could no longer grow out, only up. Their lowest level, where the streets twisted through damp darkness, was home to the most desperate of thieves, thugs, and fences. Prosperity and dignity rose with altitude. Three, four, and even five stories stood above the buried streets of ground level, all interconnected by a groaning, ever-changing maze of bridges, ladders, stairs, and ramps. A proper lady from the better part of the city could pass through the upper levels of the Stiltways by day, buy a new dress, and gossip with friends without ever even thinking of the hard-currency girls working in the perpetual shadows two floors below.
By night the shadows rose like foul cream. Proper ladies didn't come to the Stiltways after dark unless they wanted their friends to gossip about them.
On the highest level of the district, one enterprising landlord had managed to bring the bustle and the success, the shadows and the danger together. The tavern called the Sky's Mantle sprawled across the rooftops, a beacon to the more adventurous of the city's wealthy, a chance to brush against the darker dangers of the Stiltways in complete safety. And of course, on a warm summer night, to enjoy the rarest of luxuries in crowded Yhaunn: a wide terrace, open to moonlight and the