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“The hell if I know,” Herald said. He craned his neck back, searching the sky for – something. And then there it was.
The full moon peered out from behind the clouds, and like a searchlight it cast a massive shaft of light right onto the plateau, drowning the cairn and the copse of trees in cold, purifying silver. I looked down at my fingers, marveling as they disintegrated before my very eyes, as they began the journey of crossing over from our world to whatever domicile the gods of night called their meeting place.
But Herald was still there. His body wasn’t dissolving the way mine was. Wait. Had we done something wrong? What if I wasn’t being transported? What if I –
“Dust,” he shouted, sprinting towards me and reaching for my hand.
But Herald vanished, or perhaps I did, taken by the light of the full moon to a different place, a different world. I shook my head, clearing the fatigue of interdimensional travel from my body, and looked around myself.
My eyes went wide as saucers. Oh, our communion worked all right, even if Herald got left behind for whatever reason. I just wasn’t expecting the venue of the Midnight Convocation to be quite so – well, familiar.
It was the moon. I was standing on the moon.
Chapter 20
I was in one of the moon’s craters, specifically, or a place that looked like it. Its surface was stark and silvery, the atmosphere above me pitch black and flecked with distant stars. I whirled in place, my heart thumping as I searched for any signs of the earth, of familiarity. Nothing.
But I did see the palace. Holy shit, did I see the palace, all its towers reaching up into the darkness, twisting minarets that seemed to grow out of the rock itself, like impossibly tall fingers of pure alabaster. And amidst the forest of silver-white spines and turrets, this nest of fangs and teeth, was a huge, squarish hall with an enormous silver door.
“Wow,” I muttered to myself, only then remembering that this wasn’t how sound was meant to work in space.
I mean, was I actually even in space? I should have frozen to death already. Maybe there was a magical barrier in place somewhere, a rare instance of the entities being considerate to us insignificant, tiny humans.
The physics weren’t right, either. I could walk normally, just as if I was moving around in Heinsite Park, or anywhere on earth. But don’t think of logic, I told myself. Whatever you do, don’t think about physics, science, the laws of the universe. The entities had strange ways about them, being lovers of riddles and mystery, of bizarre games to play on humans. Cruel ones, too. I didn’t want something even more terrifying to happen – for the moon to begin crumbling away under my feet, for example.
I also didn’t question why I could breathe on the moon, somehow fearing in the back of my mind that simply wondering would trip something magical in the system and cause me to suffocate instantly. Any second my eyeballs might explode. Gravity could reverse, and my feet would lift off the surface of the moon-thing I was standing on, letting me drift off to become hopelessly lost in the deep vacuum of space.
What a shame, my obituary would say, for Dustin Nathaniel Graves to vanish into the uncaring maelstrom of the void, lost, alone, with nothing but his pretty face to accompany him. He was so young, so handsome, and so totally ripped. But kidding aside – I was terrified. What’s it called when your blood vessels all pop? Explosive decompression? Wasn’t that how it worked in space? Hell if I know, I’m not a rocket surgeon.
I only noticed the woman standing in front of the hall when I was a few dozen feet away. At first I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d missed her, looking so conspicuous against the pure white of the moon with her light armor crafted from the hides of sleek, brown animals, or the verdant vines and leaves that adorned the hunting bow and the quiver of arrows slung across her back. Ah, but that was exactly why she was so hard to spot, wasn’t it? Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, was also the goddess of the hunt, and therefore a grandmaster of camouflage, even when standing in plain sight.
“Well?” she said, tapping her sandaled foot impertinently against the marble steps of the silver hall. “You’re late. Hecate said you’d be here sooner.”
“She did?” I blinked, stopping just short of the great flight of steps. “Funny, she wouldn’t even talk to me about this.”
“Well did you slit a black ewe’s throat? Give her honey?” Artemis rotated her hand at the wrist, like she was trying to conjure up a memory. “And something about a dead puppy.”
“No!” I blurted. “No way I could do any of that. Except for the honey.”
“Then how do you expect her to show up if you don’t prepare the correct sacrifices?” Artemis pushed her hands into her hips, taking one step down the stairs. “It’s bad enough with you coming here with just drops of blood. Pssh. I’ve had enough blood over the centuries. Give me something fun, you know?”
I shrugged. “Listen. If this works out for everyone, I get the Crown of Stars, and you guys get my soul. You still win.”
“Fair point.” She leaned to her side, peering over my shoulder. “I see your friend didn’t make it.”
“He’s – he’s safe, isn’t he?” I said. “It was just a glitch in the system? Like he didn’t have enough to pay for a ticket, so he got left behind?”
Artemis shrugged, an annoyingly accurate and possibly mocking mirror of my own. “Sure. Why not. Don’t worry, the sorcerer is safe. Assuming he doesn’t get eaten by a bear while he waits for you.”
Seriously, with the bears. I raised my finger, about to protest, but before I could even speak Artemis had soundlessly drawn an arrow from her quiver and fired it straight into the sky. It burst in the air, like a firework, only instead of sparks and light, the arrow exploded into a shower of shimmering silver petals.
“To let the others know you’re here,” she said, slinging her bow across her back once more. “Come on. Let’s head inside.”
And inside we went, past the balustrades that supported great swathes of heavy crimson drapes, past massive columns that reached into the heights of the vast, vaulted ceiling, all hewn from the same unpolished white stone that made up the hall’s exterior. Nothing about the architecture pointed to origins in any single culture or style, as if explicitly designed to be as neutral and as generic as possible.
As we approached the grand table where the entities of night were seated, I quickly understood why. The Midnight Convocation was formed of beings drawn from every pantheon and place that had a deity devoted to the energies of darkness, of shadow, of the night. Yet even with those commonalities we found them leaned over the great table, pounding their fists on its surface as they bickered and bellowed. Typical entities.
Artemis scoffed, speaking to me out of the corner of her mouth. “It’s like doing Christmas or Thanksgiving with the worst parts of your extended family, only it happens on a full moon.” She shook her head. “Immortality is nice, but having to show up to witness all of this so often genuinely makes me want to die.”
