Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [22]
Feena whirled around-skirts rustling, bodice clenching, coronet pinching-and stormed out of the refectory without another word. In the hallway outside, novices and clergy alike scrambled out of her path. Feena strode down the hall and up the ramp to the temple's second floor and Dhauna Myritar's quarters. She raised her fist and hammered on the door.
"Mother Dhauna!" she shouted. "Let me in." There was no response. Feena pounded on the wood again. "I'm not. going away this time, Dhauna. We're going to talk!"
There was still no sound from the other side of the door. Feena reached down and rattled the latch. It was locked. Feena took a step back, hiked up the froth of her skirts, and threw her shoulder against the door. Then again.
With the second blow, wood splintered. With a third, the lock tore free and the door slammed open. Feena released her skirts and stomped through.
There was no one in the High Moonmistress's quarters. Everything seemed to lie just as it had on the evening when Feena had first arrived, but neither Dhauna nor Julith were present. Feena clenched her jaw. Could they have slipped out of Moonshadow Hall while she was away at the council of temples? When Dhauna had spent so much time shut away, it hardly seemed likely that she should suddenly leave.
Feena's eye fell on the books and scrolls that were piled in the sitting room. "I have even more spread out in the archives," Dhauna had said that first evening. Feena turned and walked back out into the corridor.
On its east, south, and west sides, Moonshadow Hall was relatively low, the better to allow Selune's light to enter the central courtyard. On its north side, however, it rose higher. The entire top floor of that height was occupied by the temple's archives, which were reached by a narrow, little-used ramp located along a dark corridor conveniently close to the quarters of the high priestess. Unlike the high priestess's quarters, though, the archives were protected by a substantial door that was banded with iron and secured with a heavy lock. Normally the lock was open so that any member of the clergy, should they feel the desire, could consult the archives. It was locked.
Feena pounded on the thick wood and called, "Dhauna! Julith! I know you're in there. If you don't open this door, I swear by the Bright Lady of Night that I will get an axe and chop it open!"
A faint flutter of noise from within suggested that she hadn't been wrong and that her threat had been heard. A moment later, the door opened. Julith grabbed her arm and pulled her inside, shutting the door behind her.
"Does anyone else know we're here?" the dark-haired priestess whispered.
"If they have half a brain, they might figure it out," Feena grumbled as she marched on, leaving Julith scurrying in her wake.
Moonshadow Hall was one of the earliest major buildings built in Yhaunn. Its archives were correspondingly old and extensive. Because it was the largest temple of Selune in that part of Faerun, it had also become the repository for records gathered from even older shrines. Whenever a hermit-priestess died, whenever a remote chapel was finally allowed to collapse, whenever another temple simply needed to clear the dust from its vaults, old records and tattered tomes were sent to Moonshadow Hall to be preserved for the greater faith of Selune. Row upon row of high shelves crammed with books, papers, and scrolls filled the archives. Feena had never much liked the place. It was too quiet for her, too full of dead, dry words. As she walked into the dusty shadows, she almost had to fight against the muffling silence to keep her rage burning.
She found the High Moonmistress skimming a book that was a full handspan thick. Cool magical light shone from a humble paperweight, casting illumination across the book, an inkwell and pen, a tray with a half-eaten bowl of soup from lunch, and a scattering of parchments crowded with scribbled notes. Dhauna glanced up sourly as Feena approached.