The transformation came upon her like a warm breath across her skin, a shiver of sensation. Feena shook herself, the symbol of Selune jingling on the chain around her neck. When she opened her eyes again, she stood on four russet paws and the night air was rich with smells. Part of her wanted to sit back and offer a howl of joyful release to Selune's half-hidden face. She held that part back to a few delighted yips as she trotted off into Yhaunn's warm night.
I should have done this days ago, she thought. There was some truth to the tales that connected werewolves to the full moon. An innocent bitten by a werewolf and infected with its curse could be forced into a rampaging animal shape by the full moon's light. But Feena had been born a werewolf, inheriting the power from her dark father. She could change form whenever she desired. In her old days at the temple, both Dhauna's counsel and her mother's dire warnings had kept her safely inside the walls when she couldn't resist the call of her animal half. A hop over the wall in the herb garden had been only for acolytes desperate for a night in the citya human night. The city was no place for a young wolf.
But she had become both a priestess and an adult. Yhaunn was no forest, but it was better than the stone cage that Moonshadow Hall sometimes felt like. As open and airy as the temple was, it was still a human building, enclosed and cut off from the world. The wolf inside her needed to be free, away from Mifano's social niceties and Velsinore's restraining drudgeries.
Awayeven for just a little whilefrom Dhauna's dark portents of danger.
Feena growled. No! No thoughts of the High Moonmistress. This is my time.
She threw back her head and set free the howl that she had restrained before.
Every dog for blocks around went mad in a frenzy of barking. In alleys nearby, cats screeched as they scrambled for safety.
Tongue lolling in satisfaction, Feena trotted on. She followed the natural slope of the city down toward Yhauntan Bay and the Sea of Fallen Stars, letting her nose lead her to places and things she might have overlooked as a human. In a tiny square, the stink of rotting vegetables haunted the site of a farmers' market during the day. Among the shadows of one alley, the tang of blood and birtha mongrel bitch licked clean a new litter of puppies. She froze as she saw the wolf watching her. Feena kept her distance and after a time, the dog went back to licking her offspring, one eye fixed warily on the intruder. Feena spoke a silent prayer to Selune, asking her to watch over the newborn pups, before continuing on her way.
In another alley, she tore into a crawling swarm of rats, snatching them up in powerful jaws and breaking their spines with a swift shake. The vermin weren't exactly the blood-mad servants and marauding predators of Malar the Beastlord that she was used to stalking among the trees of the Arch Wood, but the skirmish left her panting and exhilarated. She rinsed the rats' foul taste from her mouth at a trough in a stable yard as the horses nearby whickered uneasily in their sleep.
Among the hovels closer to the docks, she listened outside a shack as the inhabitants wheezed and coughed. A miasma of pestilence drifted out of the shack. In the morning she would have Mifano send some of the junior clergy to the neighborhood. Prayers and medicines might stop the disease before it became a plague.
Finally, she ended up on the docks, gazing out over the sea. All around her, ships and boats bobbed at anchor, a cacophony of creaking wood and straining rope. Their hulls oozed the odors of wet wood and tar, overlaid with the stench of sweat and excrement. Feena stood as far out on the docks as she could, nose raised high to catch the fresh wind as it came over the water. She had stood on the docks many times before in human form, but never before as a wolf. There were so many smells crowded onto the sea windwater in vast quantity, of course, but beyond that…
Trees and flowers she couldn't have named.
Some powerful, bestial musk that sent a shiver down her back.
Fresh turned soil.
New cut wood.
Lightningfar out on the sea, a storm was brewing.
Some of the smells were probably her imagination, but they blended together in a perfume that set her heart racing and woke wanderlust within her.
Maybe someday, she thought, someday when Arch Wood doesn't need me anymore.
She drew a final deep breath and lowered her nose, turning to trot away from the water and back up to Moonshadow Hall.
She had barely cleared the stink of the docks when a new smell sent her cringing back instinctively, teeth bared and fur on enda dark smell, acrid, metallic, and foul. The wolf in her hated it. The human recognized it.
Poison.
No one with any honest business could be about with poison at that hour. Nose to the ground, Feena circled the trail once, then jogged along in the direction that seemed freshest. She gleaned more information as she went. A man carried the poison. He had been drinking, though not heavily, and his dinner had been some kind of spiced pork. The thick odor of clay clung to himshe would guess that he was a potterbut also the smell of cold, raw stone. It was a strange combination.
She caught sight of her quarry just as he stepped into the street-level shadows of the Stiltways.
A growl rumbled up from Feena's throat. She had been into the Stiltways as an acolyte, of course. It was all but impossible to live in Yhaunn without venturing into the district at least once. But even her human senses had reeled at the visual and auditory assault and it had taken her several visits to get used to the place. Crouched so low that she was almost crawling on her belly, her tail tucked tight between her legs, Feena creeped up to the intersection where the man had disappeared and peered inside.
Dank, vile odors wafted out at her. Sounds of pleasure and celebration mixed with groans of misery and suffering. The bright lights and chaos of the Stiltways were, at least, mostly on the levels over her head. Down below, figures moved and stumbled in shadow, their way lit only by smoky torches and shafts of light from above.
Her quarry was almost at the end of the street. The stink of the Stiltways masked the smell of the poison he carried. If she didn't follow, she would lose him.
Bright Lady of the Night guide me, thought Feena.
She rose and raced after him, the nails of her paws clicking on the stone of the street.
The man stopped and turned at the sound.
Feena plunged into the darkest of shadows. Another man curled up there, snoring and drunk. She hunkered down behind him as her quarry paused for a long moment, looking aroundthen moved on. Feena relaxed and rose.
The drunk man stirred.
"Fha… what?" he snorted. Bleary eyes focused on Feena's. "Nice dog," he slurred and reached out for her.
She slipped away from his hand and trotted after her quarry, taking more care as she ran. She stayed close to the shadows, and low. The man walked briskly, almost nervously. It seemed that he knew where he was going, but that he wasn't entirely eager to get thereor to be seen on his way.
He finally stopped again at the mouth of an alley. Feena curled into a doorway and watched as he looked furtively in all directionsup and down the street as well as up into the Stiltways abovethen stepped quickly into the shadows. He'd reached his destination. She darted up to the mouth of the alley and peered down it.
Beyond its narrow neck of a mouth, the alley opened up into a small courtyard that been practically buried by the platforms and walkways above it. Noise and some illumination drifted down from the levels overhead. Feena's quarry stood in the freckled shadows, a large dark flask in one hand as he fumbled with the heavy wooden cover on a low stone structure. A number of pipes pierced the wood, rising up and into the shadows, some passing into buildings, others ending in public hand pumps. A well.
Moonmaiden's grace, Feena cursed, if he pours the poison in there