Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [39]
"Shar is a simple goddess," Bolan said. "The Mistress of the Night is direct. Other deities require followers to pledge themselves in long trials and tests. Service to Shar requires only one simple act."
Bolan released Keph's hands and turned around to seize the black velvet that covered the altar. He pulled it off with a flourish.
A young girl dressed in a pretty white nightgown lay on the altar, arms at her side and eyes closed in sleep. Keph stared in shock.
It was Adrey.
Bolan put a heavy-bladed knife into Keph's hand. "Kill her," he said.
The hilt of the knife was cold in Keph's hand. He couldn't move. He couldn't take his eyes off his niece, just as he hadn't been able to take his eyes off Roderio's injured body after the accident. It wasn't right. Could Bolan really want him to kill Adrey? The only member of his cursed family he couldn't bring himself to hate?
"Kill her," Bolan said again. "Prove your devotion to Shar."
"Hail to the Mistress of the Night," chanted the cultists. Keph raised the knife slowly.
It couldn't be right. How could Adrey be here? When he'd set out for Wedge Street, she'd been safe within Fourstaves House. Anywhere else and he might have thought that the Sharrans had kidnapped her-but not from Fourstaves House. The wards that Strasus had woven and re-woven around the house made that virtually impossible. Additional wards cast around Adrey's room by her parents and grandparents made it more secure than any other chamber save Strasus's own study. Keph gritted his teeth, trying to force back the muddling effects of the Elixir of the Void. There had to be another explanation for Adrey's presence. If Adrey was actually there.
He looked at her sleeping form again; so still, so perfect. Too perfect. He tried to recall what shape the black velvet had concealed on the altar before Bolan had whisked it away. Had there been any shape at all?
No. There hadn't. Keph clenched his teeth. That wasn't Adrey on the altar. It wasn't anyone or anything at all.
Dagnalla had soothed and entertained all of her children with magical illusions. Ironically, Artless Keph had been the one to see through the apparitions at the youngest age. The girl on Shar's altar was no more real than Dagnalla's flights of whimsy, he realized. It was just an illusion.
And yet she looked so much like Adrey. The knife trembled in Keph's hand. "Shar awaits," Bolan hissed.
Keph looked down. It's only an illusion, he thought. It's all part of Shar's test. You're not really doing anything wrong. Nobody even realizes you've figured it out! He glanced up into the darkness.
Do it, he told himself.
"Hail to the Mistress of the Night!" he shouted and plunged the knife down.
The only resistance it met was the altar itself. Steel hit stone and skittered across it with a horrid shriek. The girl wavered and vanished. The knife fell out of Keph's fingers and he staggered back-the shock he felt might as well have been real. Inside his chest, his heart was thundering like a smith's hammer.
Bolan stepped forward and Keph dropped down before him.
"Your intention proves your devotion," the priest said. "Your sacrifice to Shar is your own illusion of love." He rested his hands against Keph's head. "Mistress of the Night, a new follower enters your embrace," he prayed. "Bless him and cleanse him that he may continue in your work."
Cold darkness poured into Keph's body, searing away the haze of wine and scouring him clean of fear and doubt. He gasped at the touch of the goddess and when Bolan lifted his hands away, he rose. The alchemist-priest held something out to him: Shar's black and purple disk. Keph took the symbol, wrapping trembling fingers tight around it.
Terrible screams ripped through