It was before you came to Moonshadow Hall, I know that, but your mother must have told you about the fear and uncertainty that came with the casting down of the gods. Heresy is worse. It's insidious. It isn't a test of faith, it's torture, chaos that divides temples and turns sister against sister. Even in a faith so tolerant as Selune's, when heresy rises, all of us feel the upheaval.'
'Mother Dhauna…' said Julith in soothing tones, but Dhauna brushed her away.
'What must be stirring now,' she asked Feena, 'that the Moonmaiden herself moves to warn us about it? Feena, believe me, whatever heresy grows in Moonshadow Hall, we have to stop it. We have to…'
She sighed and seemed to sink in on herself.
'Dhauna?' Feena gasped in alarm.
The High Moonmistress shook her head and replied, 'I'm just… tired. Selune's warnings take their toll.' She cast her eyes over the books in front of her, then turned a tired gaze on Feena. 'I need to get back to work. A tenday, Feena. I'm sure of it. You'll stay?'
Feena nodded, numb.
'Good. Tell no one about the dreams, Feena. Even if you're defending me.'
'I won't, Mother Dhauna,' Feena promised, but the old woman was already turning back to her books.
A soft touch on her shoulder drew Feena's attention. Julith stood beside her. The dark-haired priestess shook her head and silently gestured for Feena to follow her.
'That's the best she's been in two days,' she said as she led Feena back to the archive door. Julith glanced back over her shoulder at the pool of light that surrounded Dhauna. The High Moonmistress was gingerly unrolling a scroll that seemed ready to crumble at any sudden movement. 'I'm worried, Feena. She's becoming obsessed with heresy. What if there is no heresy?'
'You mean, what if she's truly going mad?'
Julith held out her hands, helpless, and replied, 'I don't know what to think. Sometimes I would say yes, but the books and scrolls that she asks me to fetch, the notes that she makesthere's a method to them, I'd swear it.'
'There are things to be seen by moonlight that sunlight cannot reveal,' murmured Feena. It was a favorite saying among the followers of Selune. Sometimes the
Moonmaiden's insights could be more than a mortal mind was capable of dealing with.
But sometimes the saying was just an excuse.
Feena gripped Julith's hand and said, 'Let me know if it gets worse.'
'I will,' Julith replied. She returned Feena's gripand drew her into a close embrace. 'And you come to me if you need to. I'll help you however I can.'
Startled, Feena stiffened, but then relaxed. There was a genuine warmth in Julith's voice and embrace.
'I will,' she said.
'If you need to be alone,' Julith added, 'I can tell you how to get rid of Velsinore and Mifano.'
A smile spread across Feena's face and she stepped back.
'No, that's all right,' she said. 'I think they're done with me for today. But you're right. Some time alone is what I need.'
When silence finally fell over Moonshadow Hall that night, Feena, wearing her own blouse and homespun skirt once more, slipped out of the chamber that Velsinore had reluctantly assigned her and down to the temple's kitchen. At the back of the big room there was a stout door. Feena murmured a prayer to Selune that nothing had changed substantially since her days as an acolyte at the temple, and drew back the door's heavy bolt.
The door swung open on a small kitchen herb garden built onto the side of Moonshadow Hall. Feena closed the door behind herself and stepped through the dew-damp beds to the wall that surrounded the garden. A squat, weathered pillar that might once have been a statue was right where she remembered it, if a little mossier and a little more deeply sunk in the ground. She stepped carefully on top of it and reached up.
As an acolyte, she had just barely been able to reach the top of the wall with her fingertips. Now she could wrap her hands securely over it. With a quick hop and a little straining, she was up on top of it then slithering down into the shadows on the other side. An alley nearby formed a conveniently private niche. Feena slipped out of her clothes and tucked them into a bundle in a corner. Then she closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened herself to the wild power within her spirit.
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
