Then again, there was a reason no one came to the archives, wasn't there? She had to fight against the muffling quiet just to keep herself alert, and with no windows there was also no way of marking the passage of time.
She stared down at the list of the names againthe last members of the New Moon Pact. More than anything else in the great white book, those names called to her. Not that there was much else in it that had more than the faintest ring of truth. The pact had been tried by people who disdained them. Great deeds, hallowed traditions… those hadn't been important in the face of charges of foul heresy.
Selune's priests and priestesses and done more than suppress the New Moon Pact six hundred years ago. They had killed its history. Their own history. Feena clenched her teeth. There had to be something, some additional scrap of legend. She turned a page and bent back to the book.
Something shifted in the shadows.
She froze, watching the darkness, but nothing moved.
But there had been something. Feena rose slowly, her heart beating faster. Her lips pulled back from her teeth One hand sought the paperweight she had cast her light onto. She lifted it and waited.
When the shadows shifted again, she hurled it.
Illumination streaked across bookshelves and scroll racks, sliced through shadowsbut revealed nothing. The glowing paperweight arced across empty space until it hit a wall and bounced to the floor. Crack. Clatter. Rrrollll…
For a moment, the archives were silent again. Then sound tickled Feena's ear, a sound that grew and condensed like mist on leaves. Whispers. She could almost make out wordsalmost, but not quite. And behind the words was some forcesomething dark and alive-something ancient. The hair on her neck rose.
I know this, Feena realized. Moonmaiden's grace, this is Dhauna's dream!
The light of the paperweight vanished like a torch plunged into water. She hurled herself to the side out of instinct and felt a cold breeze as the sound of whispers rushed past. She gasped, shaken. If it was a dream, it was like nothing she'd ever felt before.
"Wake up, Feena," she told herself. "Wake up!"
Nothing happened.
In the darkness, whispers surged like waves on the sea. Dhauna had described feeling as if the whispers were going to overcome her, that whatever ancient force lurked behind them would consume her. The whispers shivered through Feena, tugging on her body and her spirit. Fear wrenched her heart.
The shadows shifted again. Feena dodged once more.
Whispers whirled and tore at her. If the force behind them expected her to flee as Dhauna had, though, it was wrong.
Feena came to her feet howling with a wolfs voice.
It had to be a dream. Her human form flowed into her hybrid wolf-woman shape with barely a thought. She leaped into the darkness, tearing at it ferociously. Her claws shredded through the shadow. Feena tumbled free and snarled triumphantly. For a moment, the whispers stretched thin, like strained voicesthen rushed back in a thunderous roar.
Feena's snarl died. She threw herself away but the dark thunder slammed into a bookcase behind her. The shelf exploded into splinters and tatters of paper. Flying wood pierced her like a tiny arrows, spattering pain against her hide. Feena yelped in sudden alarm. The forcewhatever it might have beenwas too powerful. She couldn't fight it face to face. She needed to get away.
A growl answered her unspoken need: Here!
She twisted. A long gray tail was just vanishing into the archive's maze of shelves. A wolfs tail!
Feena hesitated for a heartbeat, then scrambled after it. Behind her, the roaring darkness lashed at the floor where she had stood, gouging long strips out of it.
The moment she plunged in among the stacks, though, the roar seemed to sweep away into the distance. A glance over her shoulder showed what seemed like a corridor of books stretching out behind her until it twisted around a corner. How had she moved so far? She looked back around. The tail she had glimpsed was gone again and not even her wolfs nose could sniff out anything more than dust and crumbling parchment. Had she imagined the other wolf? The whispers were building again, growing in volume as if the dark force had plunged into the maze after her. If it caught her…
She whined desperately, Help!
Here!
She moved forward. Growls guided her through turns and at intersection with other book-lined corridors.
Here! Here!
She followed, though she saw nothing. She had to run to keep upat least until the same flowing transformation as before caught her a second time. Suddenly she was a wolf, loping along easily on four legs.
But as she dashed past one intersection, the whispers surged and shadows boiled out. The darkness had found her. Feena half-turned, ready to meet it, but before she could, a form flashed past heranother wolf, but one as black as the night itself.
It vanished down the cross-corridor. The wolf-voice guiding her gave a short, commanding bark: Keep moving!
Feena moved on. The whispers faded again and after a moment Feena realized that even if she couldn't see or smell the wolf guiding her, she could hear it. Nails clicked in rapid rhythm ahead of herand behind her! Two sets behind her, in fact. Feena twisted her neck to look past her flanks. Two wolves were pacing after her, one light gray and lean, the other white and heavier, with the bright eyes of a young animal.
Her racing heart stuttered. She had never seen these wolves before, yet she knew their names:
Niree Swifthands.
Brant Hallower.
The black wolf that had defended her: Rade.
The voice that called her, the gray tail she'd first glimpsed, was Tyver the Peacemaker.
It was the last of the New Moon Pact, She stumbled, and Niree darted forward and nipped at her legs. Feena jumped forward. The corridor gave one last twist and opened up.
She was back at the reading table. The moon glow of the paperweight had returned, though, and the paperweight itself was sitting on the table once more. The gouged floor and the shattered bookshelf had been restored. Everything was exactly the way it had been.
Except that two womenEnshu Venerun and Qualise Domo, she knew intuitivelyand a man stood waiting for her by the table. Feena slid to a sharp stop, her paws scrabbling against the floor. The man, Tyver in his human form, crouched down to face her. He took her handabruptly she was human againand helped her stand. His grip was cold but firm.
"Have faith and be strong, Feena Archwood," he said, "for Selune is with you."
Feena gasped with sudden certainty. "Dhauna's dreamsthey were real! They were warnings!"
"They are real," said Qualise. "They're your dreams now, High Moonmistress."
"I'm not" Feena began to protest, but her voice froze. The rite had been performed. Dhauna had named her successorand with her death, the mantle of leadership passed on.
Feena swallowed and said, "Moonmaiden grant me strength."
"The strength is in you," said Qualise. "Understand that and you understand much."
She stepped aside so that Feena could see the table. The great white book that detailed the pact's trial was gone. In its place was another, slim and elegant instead of bloated and thick. Feena stared at it in wonder. The new book was bound in fine black leather with Selune's phases set in silver down the center of the cover. Where other representations of the phases began with a crescent and grew through half and gibbous to the full moon's bright disk before returning to a crescent, the black book turned that order inside out. On its cover, the full moon shone at the top, shrinking to gibbous, then to the half moon, then to a crescent. In the center of the cover, a hair-thin ring of silver made an empty circlethe new moon.