A/N: Thank you for the reviews, everyone! I do plan to continue writing Nightstone’s story, and I’ve changed the title of the piece accordingly.

BbHtrYoink: To answer your questions: Nightstone is still very young, and hasn’t yet developed the perception of killing as not the best answer that she will later. Also, Aneron was Nightstone’s grandmother, rather than her mother.

(As a final warning, this is somewhat episodic; it’s a series of connected short stories instead of chapters).

"If I had known before I became a priestess of Elle that the job involved quite so much kneeling, I would have bought a thicker robe."

-First entry in The Not-Quite-Blasphemous Sayings of the Priestesses of Elle.

"Come along."

Nightstone jerked herself up, shivering. It had been a ride of hundreds of miles, most of them through the high air hundreds of feet up and blowing snow. They had halted only so the pegasus could make kills and offer some of the steaming meat to her. Her belly ached with hunger still, her throat felt flayed from the sting of the snow, and her bladder was full to bursting. She was aware that the pegasus had landed only because the steady beating of the wings had at last stopped. They had approached ice towers, she thought, but-

Someone jerked on her arm hard enough to spill her from the winged horse’s back and onto the ground, which felt like gravel mixed into ice. The same harsh voice as before repeated, "Come along, I said."

Nightstone looked up, and recoiled. The thing before her looked like an animate tree trunk, with its head in the center of the chest. One slender, root-like arm uncurled and tapped her on the shoulder. "The Dark wants to see you."

Nightstone forced her way to her feet, acutely conscious of the rips in her dress along with everything else. "I should change-"

"The Dark is accustomed to soldiers dirtier than you." The tree trunk’s voice was scornful. "Did you think that the sight of you would really be anything it hasn’t seen before?"

It grabbed her, knocking her down again, and scraped her over the gravel. Nightstone felt the rocks open long tears in her knees before she could stand once more. Then she shivered as the blood seemed to drain vital warmth from her.

"The Dark is waiting," said the tree trunk, in the same tone that Kyern had used to talk about her father.

Nightstone gritted her teeth and walked on.

Her sight was widening as the cold stung her awake, and she was able to see that they were on a battlement of some kind, which did indeed seem to be made of ice and snow. The stone mixed into the ice probably provided some kind of traction for the pegasi to land. More out of having eyes than because she wanted to, Nightstone noted the neatly arched doorway through which they walked and the artistry of the statues framing the spiral stairs. Most of them were depictions of black unicorns and pegasi in flight. There seemed to be no tapestries anywhere. Since there were no doors or shutters on the windows either, perhaps there was no point.

"Waiting," said the tree trunk threateningly, and hurried her so fast that Nightstone was sure she was going to trip and fall into the hollow center of the tower. Dread alone made her keep her feet.

Faster and faster they went, and still the stairs didn’t seem to end. Only once did Nightstone catch a glimpse of a room in which a fire burned, and then the heat passed away like a dream.

However, they reached the bottom at last, and the tree trunk shoved her roughly through a doorway into a wide chamber. Nightstone fell to her knees, hearing a roaring in her ears.

You would not kneel willingly before the power you have chosen to serve?

Nightstone managed to look up, though the voice was like the ocean in her head, powerful and demanding and full of hatred. She saw a black pool before her. For a moment, she thought it was dark water—of course it was dark, there were no lamps here—or spilled oil.

Then she realized the pool was alive, now and then extending heads and limbs and pulling them back. She wasn’t kneeling before darkness. She was kneeling before the Dark.

Answer me!

It took some concentration to remember what the question had been. Nightstone licked her lips and said, "I didn’t mean to offend you. But I’m cold and tired and hungry from the journey, and there’s war because of me, and I want to sleep, and-" Her voice faltered, and she found herself crying like a child.

Why should that matter to me? the Dark asked with sublime indifference. Yes, there is war because of you. I risked it. Why should your weakness prevent me from getting what I want, some acknowledgment from you of my power?

"I’m sorry," Nightstone babbled, feeling warmth dribble down her face. Unfortunately, it was only the warmth of her own mucus, and so couldn’t be comforting, the same way that the wetness down her gown was only the warmth of her bladder letting go at last. "I’m so sorry."

Not good enough. I should send you back to Orlath.

Everything swirled up around those words—hunger, pain, cold, humiliation, and most of all the thought of what her brother would say, seeing her like this.

Nightstone fell limply forward and fainted.

******

She woke to warmth that wasn’t that of trickling liquids from her own body. She opened her eyes slowly and blinked, then blinked again.

She lay in a room that might have come from Orlath itself, if Orlath didn’t follow her grandmother’s prescriptions of austerity so closely. The walls were soft, gleaming bronze wood, at least where they peered through tapestries more delicately woven than even elves could manage. Fires burned in large hearths at either end of the room, and flickered most prominently on the large bed where she lay buried under just enough blankets to make her comfortably warm. When Nightstone drew out one leg from the blankets, she saw that her wounds were tended, covered with bandages softer than linen. Her face had never felt so clean, and her skin glowed with scrubbing rather than the flaying of cold. Her stomach was full, her bladder empty, and the terrible thirst in her throat eased.

She looked up alertly as the door opened. A woman stepped into the room, glanced around as though to make sure the fires were sufficiently built up, and then turned and smiled at her.

Nightstone couldn’t help smiling back. The woman had a mobile face that affected Nightstone like the sight of starlight; her joy seemed complete and infectious. Her eyes shone a deep green, so green they were on the edge of blackness, and her steps were light and dancing, barely stirring the long dark hair that hung to her waist as she moved across the room. Nightstone found herself wanting to touch that hair. It was what she had once dreamed her own could be, before she acknowledged that her curls were never going to go away.

"So." The woman’s voice was soft, yet deeply musical as the call of a hunting horn. "You are feeling better?"

Nightstone nodded, knowing she looked foolish but unable to help it. "Who are you?"

The woman raised her eyebrows. "You don’t know me? I thought you did. You spoke my name several times while I tended you."

That made Nightstone more puzzled rather than less. She shook her head. "I would have remembered you if we had met, my lady. I’m certain of it."

The iron in her voice apparently convinced the woman, who moved forward and clasped her face lightly between her hands. "Then to prove that we are both right, look into my eyes and see who I am."

Obediently, Nightstone fixed her gaze on the other woman’s.

At once, she was rising, falling, flying. Joy surrounded her, and the kind of wildness that was in the voices of wolves as they called in the night. Compassion was everywhere, and fierce protectiveness that would guard the ones the woman cared about.

The woman-

No, she was not "the woman." Nightstone had indeed spoken her name several times while she lay in a faint. She was the Dark.

Joy sounded in her ears, and the Dark laughed and danced, and Nightstone’s attempt to reconcile this picture of wonder with the haughty power who had demanded her obedience was so intense and so futile that she fainted again.

******

This time, Nightstone came to herself in a pine forest. The air was crisp, but not so cool that she thought she was in winter. She dragged herself to her feet and looked around, though she gave an immediate glance at her legs. Nothing was there. She might never have fallen and scraped them open on the gravel.

Perhaps you didn’t, in this reality.

She began walking through the forest, in the direction she thought was north. If the Dark had put her a long way from its castle, then she intended to get back to it, and by the sight of this place, it had to be south of those high ice towers.

"You’re going the wrong way," said a voice behind her.

Nightstone turned. A slender creature was sitting on a rock and watching her, a silver flute at rest in its fingers. Nightstone shivered. The creature had the impossibly beautiful features and pointed ears of an elf, but it wasn’t golden in color like the elves Nightstone had seen all her life. It was pale, and the eyes a sharp silver, not the living green of the woods. It looked like the elves of the Hunt-tales, the elves who would chase down their victims and turn their flesh to wine so they could feast more easily.

"You’re going the wrong way," the creature repeated.

"Do you say anything else?" Nightstone demanded.

"Of course." The elf raised its flute and blew a few notes for emphasis, then lowered the instrument again. "Now tell me why you’re going the wrong way."

Nightstone glanced to the north. Everything there looked right. She could even see a blue that was probably the slopes of mountains and not the lower sky if she squinted. Snow gleamed. The air was colder in that direction. "I don’t think I am. The Dark’s stronghold lies there."

"And you’re so eager to get back to the Dark?"

"Of course." Nightstone glared at the elf. It might not look as if it were of the Light, but she had the feeling it was about to tell her something spectacularly stupid, of the kind that could have walked out of her brother’s mouth or her sister’s without trouble.

It did. "The Light is eager to welcome you. It is waiting. If you want to return to it, go north, towards the light. It’s brighter that way, haven’t you noticed? The darkest part of the wood is over there." It pointed over its shoulder.

Nightstone turned to look. Yes, the wood was darker, the pine branches coming down almost to the forest floor, in the south. Shadows hid and hissed there. Nightstone thought she saw the edge of a black form, the flicker of a long tongue, and remembered that the stories placed serpents among the Dark’s creatures. She could go that way and not feel the sting of doubt.

But she turned stubbornly back to the elf and shook her head. "No. The north was the direction we flew, and the direction most likely to hold ice towers."

"It’s wrong," the elf insisted.

"No." Nightstone shook her head again, the certainty growing. "I could be mistaken about how much light was in that place. I am not mistaken about the ice." She marched off north again.

Halfway towards leaving the elf out of sight, she fainted for no apparent reason.

*****

Nightstone opened her eyes. Once again, she stood in front of the dark pool, though this time she felt marginally better than before. The warmth was gone from her face and her legs, and her wounds were no longer bleeding. Her bladder and stomach and throat ached still, though.

But she had learned enough to lift her head and face the black pool, the power that beat at the edge of her mind and chilled her sanity, and smile.

Why are you smiling? demanded the haughty voice. After all, you have disappointed me, and gone wandering in mad dreams and visions.

"You sent me those visions," said Nightstone. "They were tests. And you were in each of them, as the pool and the woman and the elf."

The Dark’s pool apparently paused in its sloshing for a moment. Then it said, You do not say—as yourself, and the woman, and the elf.

"No," Nightstone agreed.

Why not? The Dark leaned towards her. Which of them is the true self of the Dark?

Nightstone drew a deep breath. She could be wrong, and then presumably she would suffer, but she didn’t think she was wrong. "They all are. You are haughty and cryptic and warm, infuriating and compassionate and probably six hundred thousand other things I haven’t seen yet. You are not a monolith, but many."

You are wrong.

Nightstone’s joy turned to sickening confusion in a moment. She braced her shoulders for a blow.

There are eight hundred thousand and one. And counting.

Nightstone laughed in spite of herself.

The Dark let her laugh, then said, You should be warm and have good food. But I can’t ignore all the proprieties-

"You could," said Nightstone. You just don’t want to."

Correct again. The Dark sounded pleased with her. I want you to kneel before me of your own free will.

Nightstone fell to her knees and bowed her head, her heart singing. "I swear to you of my own free will," she said. "I will serve you faithfully, and gladly."

Good, said the Dark. Now by all means go get something to eat, before you faint on me for a less acceptable reason.

Nightstone looked up at it. "Must I climb all those stairs?"

This is one test I am not willing to skimp on. Go!

Nightstone went, but in spite of the length of the stairs and the physical handicaps that attended her, she found the climb seemed shorter than any had in Orlath.