Keph nodded slowlythen emphatically.
"The Lady of Loss gives you voice," Bolan said kindly. "Speak."
"I embrace Shar," Keph croaked.
He could taste vomit and wine and whatever bitter substance had been mixed with the wine. The numbness on his lips had spread up his face and across his scalp.
"Stand and approach her altar."
Keph pushed himself to his feet and staggered toward Bolan, Variance, and the velvet-draped altar. The distance was misleading. What looked like it should have taken only a few steps to cross seemed to take many. Bolan and Variance swam in the shadows. Keph stumbled on until finally Bolan's hands grasped his. Even though Keph knew that he was taller than the alchemist-priest, Bolan appeared to tower over him. Keph squeezed his eyes shut, then looked again. Bolan was his proper height once more, though he looked up at him with eyes that were as deep as the night sky.
"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 herbut 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 backthe 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 Moonshadow Hall. In the central courtyard, Feena's headand the heads of everyone else who stood listening as Velsinore sang the moonrise prayersnapped up. Velsinore gasped in shock, her song shattered.
Against the big windows of Dhauna Myritar's sitting room, a silhouette reeled.
Feena reacted on instinct alone, charging across the courtyard and through the cloisters, back into the temple and up the ramp to the High Moonmistress's quarters. The screams were even louder inside, echoing through the halls. Every priestess and priest she passed seemed stunned to silence.
"Dhauna!" Feena shouted as she ran. "Julith!"
"Here!" Julith shouted back.
The door of Dhauna's chamber had been flung open. Julith's call came from inside. Feena caught herself at the door and choked on her breath.
On the floor of the sitting room, Julith wrestled with Dhauna, trying to pin her down. The old woman was thrashing like a demon. Her face contorted and she screamed as if all the hordes of the Abyss were parading before her. Books and scrolls were scattered everywhere.
"Help me!" Julith yelled.
Feena leaped into the room, grabbing for Dhauna's flailing arms. One she caught, the other she missed. Dhauna's fingernails scratched a trail across her cheek.
"Moonmaiden's grace!" Feena spat. She caught hold of both of Dhauna's hands and held them firm. "Dhauna!" she shouted at the High Moonmistress. "Mother Dhauna… calm down…"
Dhauna fixed her with burning eyes. "Too late!" she howled. 'Too late"
Her voice soared up into a renewed shriek. Feena glanced at Julith, then at the door. Crowded into the doorframe, Velsinore and Mifano stared back at her.
Dave Gross
Mistress of the Night
Cultists squeezed around Keph, slapping his shoulders and shaking his hand for all the world as if he had just won some contest at a Midsummer fair.
A few slipped back their cowls to reveal men and women he had already met through Jarull. Keph couldn't recall any of their names. They seemed completely wiped from his mind. The best response he could manage was a stunned smile and a slow nod. His heart was still racing. He clutched the disk of Shar, its edge hard against his palm.
Fuel was added to the smoldering braziers and they flared up with new light, pushing back the darkness just a bit more. With a start, Keph realized where they were the temple of Shar lay in the tunnels that laced the rocky cliffs surrounding Yhaunn. At an intersection of tunnels, most likely. Firelight glimmered on a number of irregular arches of rock, though it didn't penetrate the shadows beyond. There was still no sign of the ceiling overhead.
Nor was there any sign of Jarull.
Bolan had turned away from him. The other cultists were beginning to as well, breaking off into their own little groups like merchants at a party. One cultist, however, brought him a basin of water and a sponge. His eyes flickered distastefully over the torn remains of Keph's vomit-soaked, wine-stained shirt. The first emotion to penetrate Keph's fogged mind was embarrassment. The symbol of Shar was strung on a black cordhe looped it around his neck, took the basin, and retreated to wash himself.
The water was blessedly cool against his face. When he wiped it away, however, he realized just how badly he stank.