Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [28]
"For the glory of the Lady of Loss," it read. "Let all know her power and despair."
Sharrans. There were Sharrans in Yhaunn.
The flask's stopper had rolled out of the dead man's other hand. Feena retrieved it and replaced it in the flask. A cold feeling was forming in the pit of her belly. If the enemies of Selune were operating in the city, there was certain to be trouble.
But at the same time, her thin, wolfs lips drew back and she bared her teeth in grim satisfaction. Archives for Dhauna, social graces for Mifano, accounts for Velsinore-a fight for Feena. Finally, something she could handle without feeling like a complete fool. Feena touched one clawed hand to the medallion around her throat as she stood and turned away from the poisoned corpse.
Bright Lady of the Night, she thought, thank you! – -
The creature turned away. On one of the walkways overlooking the courtyard and its well, Variance Amatick waited another moment, then parted the shadows that had concealed her. A Selunite and a werewolf. So what she had been told was not an exaggeration.
"I hadn't expected to find you hunting the night, Moonmistress-Designate," she murmured to herself.
She took a step forward into shadow-and emerged on the ground in the courtyard. The dead man's eyes stared up at her. It was a nobler death than she would have given him. A score of deaths and a flask proclaiming the glory of Shar would have been a good lure. The body of a fanatical Sharran cultist would have been even better.
But a Selunite to witness and stop the whole affair before Variance even had to dirty her hands, that was a gift from Shar herself.
That the well had not been poisoned was no great loss. A score of people had been spared death that night, but it would come for them eventually. The Selunite had seen and heard all that was necessary. Moonshadow Hall would have to respond.
Still, there seemed little point in wasting a corpse when it could be used to create even more havoc and confusion.
Variance knelt down and broke the cord around the dead man's neck, tugging it and the symbol of Shar away. She tucked both into a fold of her own mantle. The Selunites knew their enemy, but no one else needed to.
"Have no fear," she told the corpse. "The Lady of Loss will know your soul. There's just one more sacrifice for you to make."
She rose and stepped back. Whispering a prayer to Shar, she crooked two fingers as if beckoning someone. Or something.
Shadows swirled and condensed into a massive black dog with a hide like night itself. Variance pointed at the cultist's body.
CHAPTER 4
What?" Feena asked, looking from Velsinore to Mifano in stupefied disbelief.
"There are no Sharrans in Yhaunn, Feena," Mifano insisted. "We'd know if there were."
Sitting beside him, Velsinore nodded her agreement. Feena clenched her hands and her fingernails scraped across the polished top of the table around which the three of them sat. As soon as Moonshadow Hall had begun stirring that morning, she had commandeered one of its receiving rooms for the meeting. Her intention had been to keep unnecessary panic from spreading through the junior members of the temple. It was beginning to look increasingly like the privacy would serve instead to keep word from spreading of another clash with Mifano and Velsinore.
"But I told you what I saw," Feena growled. She lifted one hand and pointed at the flask that stood in the center of the table. Getting it back to Moonshadow Hall had not been easy. Shifting into wolf form and carrying the flask-poison lingering within it-in her mouth had been out of the question, of course. Shifting to human form would have left her naked. She had been forced to duck through alleys and shadows in her monstrous hybrid shape all the way back to the temple and her waiting clothes. "You can read the inscription on that yourself."