Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [97]
The clergy of Moonshadow Hall had returned. How long had she been asleep? Feena stifled a curse and touched the paperweight, dismissing its glow with a thought. The white book was still on the table, just as it should have been. Feena flipped it closed, then scrambled out of her chair and flung herself silently in among the shelves, sliding deep into their maze. When Velsinore's voice became more than a whisper, Feena stopped and pressed herself down against the floor. The robe billowed loosely around her-loose enough to accept a change in form. Narrowing her eyes in concentration, Feena shifted and became a wolf. Sharp ears twitched, listening.
Out in the center of the chamber, Velsinore spoke a prayer and light blossomed.
"Gather them all, sisters!" the tall priestess commanded. "They'll go in the vaults with the others."
Priestesses murmured, and Feena caught the slither of parchment on parchment. They were gathering the scrolls and books Dhauna had left laid out on the table. Someone grunted under a weight. The white book! However flawed the account might be, it was the only record of the New Moon Pact. Feena's ears pressed back and a low growl escaped her.
One of the priestesses gasped in alarm and parchment crackled sharply.
"Velsinore!"
Feena tensed in alarm, but Velsinore only grunted, angry. "Be careful, Chandri! It might be something among them that drove Dhauna and Julith to madness." She grunted again, and said, "Perhaps it's time these archives were purged."
"Velsinore," asked one of the other priestesses timidly, "what will happen to Julith now?"
"Selune will judge her, Tam." Velsinore's voice was calm. Her footsteps retreated. "After the funeral, when the moon is waxing again-Selune will judge her."
"What about what the Sharran told her?" bleated Chandri.
Velsinore's footsteps stopped.
For a moment there was silence, then Velsinore said, "Attend to your work, sisters. When Selune waxes, we'll put an end to the Sharran and his kind. Now hurry- there's a lot to do."
Her footsteps began again, marching out of the archives. Other footsteps scurried in her wake. After a moment, the archives were silent once more, though Velsinore's light remained.
Feena put her jaw down on her paws and allowed herself a thin growl. Obviously Julith and presumably Keph along with her had been captured, but she wondered what the young man could have said to put Tam and Chandri into such a state of alarm. She whined and slapped her tail on the floor. She needed to get out of the archives and find out what was going on. Feena started rise, to change back into a woman.
Silver flashed in the corner of her eye.
Feena sank back down and peered in at the lowest level of the shelves she crouched beside. Back behind dusty, cracked scrolls-there was something there. Something that shone with silver, but that only a wolfs sharp eyes might see and even then only if the animal was stretched out on the ground. Feena made her transformation, then knelt down again and reached blindly past the scrolls. Her fingers closed on a slim book, its leather binding furred and soft with age. She pulled it out carefully.
The book's cover was black. The silver that decorated it was dull and mostly tarnished, but the hair-thin ring that stood in the center of the cover was still somehow bright.
"Moonmaiden's grace," Feena breathed.
She rose and moved out into the light. Drawing a shallow breath, she opened the cover of the book. Leather that should have crumbled held firm. There was magic at work.
Cramped, heavy script filled the first page. The book bore no title, but it began with a date: Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lost Wayfarers. Feena bit her lip. That was five months after the suppression of the New Moon Pact. Eyes wide, she read:
Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lost Wayfarers. To the one who comes-
Hear the tale of the New Moon Pact, destroyed by lies. In Selune's name and by her grace, I make this record. All around me, the tales of the Pact are wiped away day by day. My pack is gone,