Mistress of the Night (13 page)

Keph's heart was pounding once more. "A priest?" he asked.

"You have the potential," Variance said again. "It's not an easy path. You need—"

"Teach me," said Keph sharply. His hands were trembling like they never had before. Blood was singing in his ears. His heart felt ready to leap right out of his chest. "Variance, please. Teach me!" He clutched at the symbol of Shar around his neck. "If there's a test... something to prove that I could do it..."

Variance stepped back. "Faith doesn't work like that, Keph."

"I need to know!"

His words echoed from the rough rock walls of the temple. The other cultists turned to stare at them. Variance narrowed her eyes.

"Lower your voice," she hissed.

Keph clamped his mouth shut. She studied him.

"Perhaps I could try teaching you an orison," she said.

Keph nodded and asked, "That's like a cantrip, isn't it? The simplest kind of divine spell?"

"Don't use the words of arcanists to describe the power of faith."

She spread her hands and shadows seemed to reach out to engulf them, screening them from the other cultists. "Kneel," she ordered.

Keph knelt. The stone floor was hard under his knees. He ignored it and focused on Variance.

Her eyes were half closed and she was breathing deeply. Just as he had mimicked Jarull's obeisance to Bolan the day before, Keph mimicked her.

"Good," Variance said. "Now ... feel the darkness. Outside you. Within you. That is Shar." She spoke slowly, drawing out her words into a kind of lulling song. "Shar. The Nightsinger. The Dancer in the Dark. The Mistress of the Night, whose heart is the primal void that existed before all else and will exist again once Shar has drawn all creation into her embrace. Shar is more powerful than

any of us. She could extinguish us with a word. Only by recognizing that and in accepting her perfection can we hope to draw on even a fragment of her power." She exhaled slowly. "Do you feel Shar's presence, Keph?"

Keph fought back the excitement that Variance's words had stirred in him. He tried to recall the feeling that had driven him to his knees when he had first entered the temple—that sense of a living, primordial darkness, all-powerful, greater, and bigger than him or the puny lights that the cultists needed to...

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I think I can."

"Hold your faith," Variance told him. "Believe in Shar." She reached across her body and made a sign in front of her face. "Mistress of the Night, guide me."

Keph repeated her gesture and her words: "Mistress of the Night, guide me."

Nothing happened.

"Again."

Variance made the sign and spoke the words once more. Keph repeated them. Again, nothing happened.

"Believe in the Lady of Loss," Variance told him. "You speak a prayer, not a command. The words must be felt as well as spoken. Again."

Nothing.

"Again."

Nothing.

Variance remained silent, but Keph repeated the invocation without her prompting. He closed his eyes, concentrating on combining words, gesture, and faith.

Shar grant me this, he begged his newly-embraced deity silently. My heart is true. I've proven myself, haven't I?

Dimly, he heard Variance chanting under her breath. Different words, maybe a new prayer. He tried to put it out of his mind and pour everything he had into the orison. His knees started to ache, cold seeping up into them from the stone. He did his best to ignore the pain. He dredged up every memory of indignity suffered at the

hands of his parents, his sister and brother, laying them before the living darkness.

Take all this, he thought, take it and give me your power!

His words became mechanical, his memories a raw sore on his soul, but still the darkness was impassive. Everything he sent into it simply vanished, swallowed.

Until the darkness stirred.

Within him, outside of him—something shifted. Keph's eyes snapped open.

"Mistress of the Night, guide me!" he called.

A force swept through him, cold, deep, and terrible. It was like the blessing that Bolan had invoked over him, but different because it welled up from within his very soul and sucked his breath away. Keph choked and fell forward, skinning the palms of his hands. Deep, ragged gasps filled his lungs once more. Just breathing caused him pain, but he didn't care.

Clarity filled his mind, a perfect void from which he saw everything around him. Shar was with him. The Lady of Loss was ready to guide his hands, to inspire him with certainty like night itself.

The clarity only lasted a moment, but Keph knew it would linger on in his heart. He looked up at Variance.

"I did it," he gasped. "I called on Shar." He sucked in another breath and elation burst inside of him. "I cast a spell!" Variance reached down a hand to help him up, but he just grabbed it and kissed her fingers. "Thank you!"

"Don't thank me," said Variance. "Thank the Dark Goddess."

The priestess was smiling, however. She twisted her hand, reversing the grip, and pulled Keph to his feet with surprising strength.

The shadows she had summoned dispersed. The cultists surrounded them. They were staring in awe—at him, Keph realized. Shar's newest devotee had suddenly surpassed them all.

Bolan was staring as well, though not in awe. His eyes were dark, cold pits in his flawless face. Keph flinched

back from his anger, but Variance met the priest's gaze boldly.

"Have respect, Bolan," she said. "You may be looking at your successor."

Bolan's face didn't move, but he managed to turn his response into a sneer. "A tiny magic, Keph. Do you think it will be enough to save you when a Selunite werewolf goes for your throat?"

There was more than disdain in his voice, though. Maybe it was some lingering touch of clarity, but Keph was certain that he heard a trace of fear as well.

He laughed.

A shadow flickered over Bolan's face and he whirled away. Variance's hand tightened on Keph's.

"Don't mock him," she said. "He's right. An orison is nothing."

"No," said Keph, "it's everything." He bowed deeply to her. "Ask me anything, Variance, and I would do it. That's the debt I owe you."

His heart and soul were alive, burning with a fierce, dark joy. Maybe it had been only an orison, but it meant that Strasus was wrong. He had magic.

ft

CHAPTER 6

Your lies have given the boy confidence," Bolan observed.

Variance turned from watching the tunnel down which Keph and the other cultists had departed. Keph was laughing and joking with the cultists he knew, the ones Jarull had introduced him to. The energy within the young man was raw. He would do something dark that night and call it an honor to Shar. She felt a certain pride.

"Which bothers you more, Bolan?" she asked. "His confidence or my lies?

"His confidence," the alchemist said promptly. "It's unseemly. Shar teaches hopelessness and desperation. 'Never follow hope or turn to success, for such things are doomed. Do not strive to better yourself or plan for the future, for the future shall be bleak.'"

Variance looked down at the squat man and

said, "That self-defeating dogma is suitable for devotees, but not for priests. If we didn't seek to better ourselves, of what service would we be to Shar? If we can't hope for success, why bother trying?"

Bolan's face betrayed nothing.

"Your lies, then," he said after a moment.

"If lies truly bother you, you have no business being a priest."

Variance walked back toward the altar Bolan had constructed. For a makeshift temple, his creation was actually respectable. The darkness of Shar was true in him.

"It's not the lies as such that bother me," Bolan said as he stomped after her. "His faith is hollow." "His faith is real, Bolan."

"He spoke no oath. You should at least have allowed me that!" He caught her arm, turned her around, looked her in the eye, and said, "And he cast no spell. That was your doing. I could sense it. He can no more work divine magic than he can arcane."

Variance shrugged. "I wasn't lying when I said his will was strong. With time, maybe he could enter Shar's priesthood. But for now—" she gave the stunted man the faintest of smiles—"he is unmarked. Keph is with Shar, but not o/Shar. He can do things we can't, yet we have a hold over him."

Bolan bent and scooped up the velvet altar cloth.

"It seems to me," he replied as he folded the cloth, "that you're the one with a hold over him. Keph and Jarull both. Every time I meet with that orc-blood Jarull, all I can see in his eyes is you."

Variance raised an eyebrow. Bolan's mouth twitched, the most expression she had ever seen break through his flawless face. He looked away.

"It is your prerogative, Mother Night," he mumbled.

He laid the cloth on the altar and murmured a prayer to Shar—not magical, simply devotional. When he bowed to the altar, Variance bowed as well.

Bolan straightened and began covering the braziers

that had illuminated the ceremony. The smell of dying coals and hot metal filled the air. The darkness in the temple deepened.

"I still think we should have had someone who was truly bound to Shar," he said. "Someone to take Cyrume's place." His stained fingers clenched on the lid of a brazier. "I'd like some time alone in my laboratory with that Selunite monster who killed him."

"His remains were scarcely identifiable when I found him," lied Variance. She folded her hands and added sadly, "Shar will bless him—he died in her service. A shame he wasn't able to complete his mission before the Selunite caught him."

She kept her face as expressionless as Bolan's.

The alchemist nodded and said, "The cultists are saying it was an entire pack that took Cyrume down. His martyrdom grows in the telling."

"The better to inspire others," Variance said.

He returned her nod and turned it into an obeisance. "I thank the day that the Temple of Old Night sent you to me, Variance. Together we'll bring Moonshadow Hall low."

Variance smiled and said, "Thank you, Brother Night."

Bolan lit a candle from the embers of the last brazier before he covered it, then turned toward one of the many patches of deep shadow that cloaked his temple. To human eyes, perhaps, the shadow was impenetrable. Variance, however, saw through it easily enough. Beyond lay the narrow passage that Bolan—and Variance as well-used to enter and leave the tunnels. The priest probably thought he had a few more secret exits hidden from her. Variance was willing to allow him that delusion.

She followed him through the shadow and into the passage beyond, walking with surefooted ease where Bolan stumbled by flickering candlelight. If he'd guessed over the tendays since she had arrived in Yhaunn and presented herself to him that her confidence in the darkness was anything more than the blessing of Shar, he said nothing.

As they reached the end of the passage, however, he said, "I think Shar has held her hand over us, Variance. We've been lucky."

"How so?"

"The Selunites must have figured out what Cyrume intended, but they haven't taken any action against us. They didn't even tell the city guard."

Variance froze dead in the passage. Bolan continued on several paces before turning to look back at her.

"Mother Night?" he asked.

Variance forced herself to remain calm.

"You know something you haven't told me," she said.

In spite of her best efforts, her anger must have been clear. Bolan shook his head sharply.

"I only just found out myself, Mother Night!" His voice cracked with poorly concealed fear. "I have a client, a devotee of Selune, who comes to my shop to buy tinctures and medicines for Moonshadow Hall. She gossips, though I'm certain she has no idea who she gossips to. She says the guard interviewed the Selunite werewolf, but the werewolf claimed an alibi. The beast must have taken Cyrume's holy symbol too, because the guard has no idea that he was a Sharran or what he intended to do. Only the Selunites know. And we've been watching for signs of reprisal, but there are none. From what my client says, the Selunites are more concerned with some internal matter than with us." He spread his hands and repeated, "We're lucky. Our own plans can proceed uninterrupted."

Variance bit back a curse.

Bolan must have interpreted her silence as anger, because he quickly added, "I can see if there's anything more we can learn—"

"No need," she said. "You're not the only one with a source among the Selunites. I'm meeting mine tonight and he's considerably better placed than a servant devotee. I'll find out what's going on inside Moonshadow Hall."

"While it still stands," said Bolan. He sounded relieved— and particularly zealous after having avoided her wrath.

"Of course," replied Variance.

She flicked her fingers and Bolan continued up the passage.

Feena stepped into the receiving room and closed the door.

"She's sleeping," she said.

"Good." Mifano sat at the room's table, in the same seat he had occupied the day before. The silver-haired priest was dressed to go out—Feena could smell the scent he wore from across the room.

Velsinore, in contrast, still wore the ceremonial robe she had donned for moonrise. She stood on the far side of the table, arms clasped behind her back.

"What happened, Feena?" she asked.

"I don't know," Feena said. She stepped up to the table and settled her hands on the back of a chair. "Julith says she left Mother Dhauna reading at her desk and went to her own room. She responded to Dhauna's screams just the same as the rest of us. She doesn't know what happened. I don't know what happened."

But she could guess. Dhauna had nodded off over her books—and another dream had come upon her.

Moonmaiden, she prayed silently, what danger could be so dire that you would risk killing a faithful priestess with warnings?

Out loud, she said, "I think she'll be all right in the morning."

Mifano frowned and glanced at Velsinore. Her lips twitched as if in some shared communication. Mifano looked back at Feena.

"We're not that optimistic," he said.