Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [56]
If there had been any benefit to the night's confrontation with the tall priestess, Feena hoped, maybe it would be that Velsinore would stop bothering her. How had Mother Dhauna put up with the woman?
Feena clenched her teeth. And there was Dhauna. The High Moonmistress had woken on the morning after her seizure claiming no memories of the event. Mifano and Velsinore had given Feena knowing looks. Even in private, Feena hadn't been able to coax Dhauna into admitting that anything had happened. Julith, however, reported that she was skimming through materials in the temple archives with a new and frantic energy.
There would be answers within a tenday, Dhauna had promised. Feena was beginning to doubt that.
She'd had no time to look into the threat of Sharran activity. When she raised the issue again with Mifano, couching it in the most diplomatic terms she could manage, he had once more denied the possible existence of a cult of the dark goddess in Yhaunn.
"We'd know, Feena," he'd said. "Sharrans can't hide themselves forever. Shar thrives on sacrifices and wicked deeds. We watch for those but we've seen nothing out of the ordinary." He'd given her a sideways glance. "Except for a suspiciously mauled body in the Stiltways, that is."
Feena had said failed to respond.
Her chances of finding any clues almost five nights later, after Manas and the city guard had already surveyed the area, Were questionable. As she'd told Julith, though, she had to at least try. Velsinore had mocked her for leaving the Selunite battle against Shar to fight the bloody followers of Malar, but it didn't seem as if Moonshadow Hall was trying very hard in the battle against Shar either. There was something more to be found, something more going on than either Mifano or Velsinore knew about-Feena was certain of it.
And while she missed the keen insight that her wolf-shape's nose gave her, there were places two legs could go that four could not. She would enter the Stiltways as a woman.
The district was busier than it had been before. Its lower levels seemed darker as well. Feena paused in the shadows to let her eyes adjust and to get her bearings, then plunged onward. While her departure from the Stiltways the last time had been hasty and furtive in an attempt to conceal her monstrous hybrid wolf-woman form, she had taken care to make note of landmarks. Even so, her progress through the darkness of the Stiltways's streets was haphazard. She was forced to backtrack several times. She clenched her teeth. Manas had said the Sharran's friends claimed he hadn't frequented the Stiltways. When she'd followed the man, however, he'd moved quickly and with purpose. Even if he hadn't frequented the mazy district, he'd been more than familiar with the route to the well.
Feena stayed alert as she walked, not just for the human predators and denizens of the Stiltways, but for signs of more monstrous presences, the kind of creatures that might maul a body. Especially the kind that would maul a body with poison flowing through it. Over the past several days, shed given the question a lot of thought. It was possible that feral dogs had done the damage, but they would have smelled the poison on the Sharran just as she had and shied away. More unnatural predators might not have minded the poison, but she hadn't caught the scent of any such creatures before. Was it another werewolf, or other lycanthrope, as Manas had suggested? It was possible, but unlikely-Feena couldn't understand why any intelligent creature would risk poisoning itself just to ravage a corpse.
Unless someone had deliberately set out to make the Sharran's death look more violent than it really had been and to pin that violence on her. In which case, who and why? She couldn't believe that