"Dhauna, no," Feena said. She backed away from the old priestess. "Being, a werewolf isn't a blessing. Do you know what would happen if I were to bite you?"
"I wouldn't ask if I didn't." Dhauna lowered her hands from her collar and said, "On the night of next full moon, I will take the form of a wolf, with no more than an animal's wild instincts. I saw it happen to you as a girl. We had to lock you in one of the chambers in the infirmary until the night was over. But you learned to control it, didn't you?"
Feena gasped. "I learned to control it, yes, but I was born a werewolf. The wolf has always been inside me. In you…" She spread her hands. "Mother Dhauna, the beast would rage out of control. Believe me. I've seen it happen all too often."
"Control can be taught."
"I" Feena ground her teeth together, cutting off her own words. "No. I won't do it."
Dhauna hissed, "You have to." Her voice rose and broke. "You have to! Selune has guided us both to this moment."
"I won't!" Feena shouted.
Her refusal echoed in the sudden silence. Dhauna stared at her with hard, cold eyes. After a moment, she said softly, "I see."
"Mother Dhauna…" Feena began.
The high priestess just shook her head. "I feared this," she said. "You reject Our Silver Lady's call. I'm sorry, Feena." Her arm rose, fingers curled into a mystic sign. "By the Moonmaiden's light, let your hidden spirit be revealed!"
Silver light lanced out as if the full moon itself were captured in Dhauna's curled fingers. Feena gaspedthen shrieked. The sound of her dress ripping apart vanished in the pain that washed over her. Fur raced across her skin, burning like fire. Her joints and bones popped and rearranged themselves. Muscles1 shifted and broke. Her face tore as it grew into a muzzle. The forced change was harsher than anything she had ever endured. When her paws hit the floor, it was all she could do to stay on them.
"The New Moon Pact," snarled Dhauna, "will be reborn!"
The night above the terrace of the Sky's Mantle was black and featureless. No moon. No stars. It draped down to shroud Yhaunn in darkness, wrapping it in thick, still heat. The terrace was the only source of light and noise.
Keph sat at a long table, the center of attention. Jarull, Starne, Baret, and Talisk sat with him, all of them laughing, all of them drinking the wine that flowed freely from a pitcher in the middle of the table. Strangely, Variance was there as well, laughing and drinking right along with them. Even stranger, so was Bolan. The priest's weird, flawless face didn't move, even when he laughed.
And they were all laughing a lot at the stories Keph told. At least Keph thought they were stories. He couldn't actually hear himself. Whenever he spoke, the words just came out as an indistinct buzz, something like a fly in a hot room. Whatever he was saying, though, it was clever and funny. Confidence rolled through him and he wished he could hear the story himself. It must have been good, maybe the best tale ever told. Everyone was hanging on his words.
Not just his friends, either. When he turned his head to the side, he realized that the table was a lot longer than he'd thought. It stretched out like a banquet table. Crowded around it were all of Shar's cultists, some hooded, some boldly barefaced. There were other people, too. The denizens of the Cutter's Dip: Stag, Drik, Noyle, Lahumbra, Kor, and other men and women he couldn't name. He focused on a knot of them as they fawned over him.
I know you, he thought, but from where?
They were Lyraene's friendsthe cronies who backed her in the fight on the bridge.
"That's right, you bastard!" the half-elf shrieked. She leaned over the table, her face damp with sweat, her blond hair limp around her delicately tapered ears. "They're yours now. You wanted them, you got 'em. They didn't want to be around me anymore."
She thrust her right arm in front of his face. What shriveled flesh clung to her bones was red and oozing, flaked with tattered patches of black crust. Her hand and wrist were twisted, muscles and tendons drawn taut by Quick's lightning. Keph's stomach rose at the sight and he lurched back.
"You're not going to take that, are you?" asked Jarull.
Keph spun to look at his friend. Jarull sat close to Variancevery close. Their hands were entwined, the matching amethyst rings nestled together and winking at each other in the light. The purple gleam reflected in Jarull's eyes.
"Believe in the Lady of Loss," said Variance. "Your faith is strong, isn't it?"
Keph turned back to Lyraene and raised his hand. Shar's disk dangled from his fingers to lie like an eye in the center of his palm. Lyraene sneered at him and reached out with her burned hand.
"Shar take you!" Keph snarled.
Shadows welled up like smoke, billowing silently over the half-elf. Between one heartbeat and the next, she was gone.
Ecstasy blossomed in Keph as night's power swept through his soul. Drunk on it, he whirled and raised his hand to Lyraene's former friends.
"Shar take you!"
Darkness swallowed them as well. Their laughter disappeared. Keph spun to Stag, Drik, and the others from the Cutter's Dip.
"Shar take you!" he commanded, pointing at each of them in turn. "Shar take you! Shar take you!"
One by one, they vanished into the shadows. His friends and the cultists just laughed louder and cheered him.
"The Mistress of Night has chosen," roared Jarull. "And she has chosen Keph!"
Only one person was no longer laughing. Bolan glared at Keph, his eyes dark holes in his white face. Keph faced him and slowly raised his hand once more.
"Shar take you," he said.
The darkness that swallowed Bolan burst out of his eyes and swarmed across his faceShar took her priest from the inside out. Variance reached across the table and touched Keph's arm.
"The Mistress of the Night has a great destiny for you," she said. "You'll take his place."
"Oh, yes," said a bitter voice. "That's Kephalways taking someone else's place."
Feena thrashed desperately, trying to shake her trembling legs free of the tattered remains of her gown. Dhauna kept the light on her. Its radiance was maddeningshe could feel it pressing against her, glaring in her eyes and throbbing in her brain as if she had stared too long at reflections in water on a bright day. Feena tried to change back, but couldn't. The magic stirred the wolf in her even as it dazed the woman. A thin, helpless whimper forced its way out of her throat.
"Be silent!" Dhauna hissed. "You brought this on yourself." With her free hand she fumbled for the holy symbol at her neck. The chain snapped, and Dhauna held the symbol up. "Tremble before Selune for her gaze is upon you!"
Magic crushed down on Feena. Her whine rose as Selune's power shifted and changed like gathering storm clouds, the goddess's will tearing through her already shaken spirit.
No, some part of her thought, not Selune's will Dhauna's. The magic might descend from Night's Bright Lady, but spun out in the prayers of a mortal, it was nothing more than a blunt club wielded by Dhauna's madness.
Feena desperately clung to that thought in the face of the dark fear that flooded over her. Rage flared in Dhauna's eyes. The old priestess thrust Selune's symbol at her.
"By the Moonmaiden!" she cried. "By the Bright Lady of Night and Our Silver Lady!" She took a step forward.
"You"
She took another step. Feena scrambled back.
"Wim"
Another step. Feena cowered.