Jane Artemis Valentine was born 18 November 1865 in her family’s ancestral home of Tulip Hill Hall, on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. Her mother, a true gentlewoman of the Antebellum South, had been widowed during the late War of Southern Secession, and so growing up young Jane never knew her father. Her mother’s parents both passed away before her fifth birthday, and she had little memory of them beyond a sort of faded gray sense of kindness… and sadness.
But while she may have had no father, Jane did have a doting mother in Katherine Valentine… and surrogate grandparents in Old Toby and Miss Cassie, the family’s long time retainers. As she grew older Jane came to understand, to her discomfort, that Toby and Cassie had once been slaves on the Valentine estate, although they were free now, of course. They had elected to stay on with the family as paid help, while most of the other former slaves had taken off for what had seemed like greener pastures once the war was over.
Old Toby had had no heart for sharecropping, and the Valentines had always been kind enough to him and his – they had also freed their slaves the instant it became practical, unlike most of their neighbors, and with no complaint. In fact, George Valentine had given each of his former slaves the equivalent of two months wages for the type of work they had done on the estate, before they left Tulip Hill Hall. Toby and Cassie’s son Tom had died fighting for the North, and they were raising his son, Young Toby (whose mother had died in childbirth in ’63), so it just seemed best to stay on where they knew the folk, and were themselves known.
Old Toby continued on as the major domo of the house, overseeing the new hired staff, while Miss Cassie acted as cook, as well as nursemaid and teacher to the two youngsters. They were raised practically as brother and sister, and as they grew, Jane and Young Toby got into plenty of mischief on the grounds of Tulip Hill, generally to their guardians’ amusement – except when they left the property. Then the wrath of parent and grandparents fell on them harshly. In fact, it was the only time corporal punishment was meted out, to impress upon the children that the outside world would not look kindly on a colored boy playing with a white girl. Given the sheltered life they led, this confused and upset both children, but they learned to obey.
In fact, aside from the hired help, the adult denizens of the Hall seldom left the grounds themselves. In her younger years Jane never questioned this, it was simply a fact of life, but as she got older she began to notice things… despite their obvious wealth and social rank, Katherine Valentine was never received by the other ladies of Savannah, nor did they ever pay calls on her; when she was in town on her own and attempted to engage girls her own age, she was usually shunned – and if not, the girls were all too soon dragged away by their scowling mothers, muttering unfamiliar words under their breath. Eventually Jane learned the meaning of those words: tramp, whore… and bastard.
The crisis came when she was 12, after a particularly harsh rebuffing by a clique of older society girls. Jane had stormed home and demanded that her mother tell her why they were shunned and called such horrible names. Always before Katherine and been able to deflect, redirect or simply ignore her daughter’s questions on such matters… but she had known the day would come when those tactics would fail her, and a more honest approach would become necessary. It seemed that day had arrived.
She sat her daughter down in the Rose Parlor and told her the truth, or at least as much of it as seemed appropriate. The roots of the local antipathy to Katherine Valentine, and by extension Jane, were several, and varied. To begin with, she had married young, to a man considered well below her station. Jefferson Able Fortenberry had no land of his own, nor any great prospects. That was strike one. Then, when he went off to war under the banner of the Confederacy, she somehow managed to become pregnant, well over a year after her husband had departed… and months after word of his death had come. That was strike two, and really that was more than enough for the busybodies and bluebloods of Savannah. The fact that she resumed her maiden name before her bastard was born was just icing on the cake!
Combined with the fact of George and Elizabeth Valentine’s outspoken opposition to secession before the War (a brave and principled stance, perhaps, but highly unpopular with almost all their peers), and rumors that it was a Union spy given shelter at Tulip Hill Hall who had impregnated their obviously wanton daughter, the Valentines became social pariahs. The alacrity with which the Valentines freed their slaves was considered very unseemly, as was the apparent good will with which they did it. The family’s social fate was sealed.
Now this might seem frank talk for 12-year-old ears, but Katherine and Miss Cassie had already given the girl “the talk” about the facts of life earlier in the year, when she and 14-year-old Toby had been found in the pantry kissing. Old Toby had grabbed his grandson by the ear and hauled him off for his own talk (and a trip to the wood shed), while the women had a friendlier but no less serious talk with Jane. Besides explaining the facts of sex, reproduction and childbirth, they also made it clear that miscegenation was viewed… dimly, in the Reconstruction Era South. Jane had sniffed that she didn’t give two figs for her “reputation” or what a bunch of snooty old harpies thought.
At which point the women had looked at each other and things had gotten downright chilly. They explained, in perhaps more forceful language than was strictly necessary, that it wasn’t her goddamn reputation they were concerned about, but about Young Toby’s life. While the Ku Klux Klan had been generally suppressed for several years now, erasing the sentiments they embodied from the populace at large had not been quite so successful. Lynchings were hardly unknown, and while Jane might escape with no more than a sullied reputation, Toby would almost certainly be killed, horribly and painfully, should it be known they had any kind of romantic relationship.
That got through to the girl, and a similar talk from his grandfather must have impressed Young Toby, for the two had been painfully circumspect toward one another in the months that followed, as far as the adults could tell. If any further “experimenting” was going on sub rosa, the children had been very careful about concealing it… Katherine considered asking her daughter frankly, but decided it was not the time. The girl obviously had questions of her own right now.
Indeed she did! If Jefferson Fortenberry wasn’t her father, who was? Why were there no pictures of either man around the house? Had she cheated on her husband? What did her father look like? Was he really a Union spy? Why hadn’t she been told all this earlier? Why –
Her mother cut Jane off before the stream of questions could drown them both. She answered her daughter as best she could, with thought for the girl’s age and maturity. To start, no, she didn’t know Jane’s father’s name, not his true name, any way – when she had known him he had simply gone by the name “Spartan.”
There were no pictures of Jefferson, because it was a new technology, and practitioners of the art were rather thin on the ground before the war; besides, there’d scarcely been time to arrange for one after the wedding, before Jeff was called to war. Spartan had had no interest in having his picture taken, although she had wanted one, knowing from the beginning that he wouldn’t, couldn’t, stay with her forever. He had been adamant for all the time they were together, but the day before he was to leave, he surprised her with a photographer, summoned to the Hall.
By this time Sherman had occupied Savannah, and apparently the photographer was traveling with the Union Army… he took the picture of the couple right there in the Rose Parlor, where Katherine and Jane were now talking. As she spoke, Katherine opened the small diary she often carried and pulled out a photo, gazing at it sadly while she continued. Spartan had promised to bring the developed photo to her before he departed the city with Sherman’s army the next afternoon –
Yes, he was a Union spy, a forward scout for Sherman’s army. He had been injured infiltrating Savannah, and had made his escape only as far as Tulip Hill before collapsing. She had taken him in, with the full approval of her parents, and nursed him back to health… although he had not been as badly wounded as it had first seemed, for he was hale and hearty again within two days.
And no, she hadn’t cheated on poor, doomed Jefferson. For the first few weeks that the Valentines hid the Union spy, despite his magnetic charms, she had remained aloof and proper… perhaps not entirely so, within her own mind, but certainly to all outward appearances. She had truly loved Jeff, and when news of his death had come three weeks later, she had been devastated. They had had so little time, between the wedding and his being called up… she had hoped that he had left her with child, but it hadn’t been so.
And Spartan was there, supporting and kind, gentle and warm… he had never pushed, never put himself forward… but one rainy, blustery day in late fall, it had happened…
Katherine blushed at this point, and though Jane was clearly hungry for the details, her mother switched gears. At the end of December Sherman had marched out of Savannah, and Spartan had gone with him – without returning to bring Katherine the photograph he’d promised her. For over six weeks she had pined, and nothing that her parents or Old Toby or Miss Cassie could do seemed to relieve her gray mood.
And then, on 14 February of 1865, Old Toby had knocked on bedroom door, and grinning like a jack-o-lantern had told her she had a visitor. She had been disinclined to get up from her couch, with little interest in whoever it might be, unusual though visitors to Tulip Hill were these days. Then Spartan had stepped into the room, gently moving Old Toby aside. The major domo smiled serenely and closed the door quietly as he left the two alone.
Spartan explained that he had been forced, by circumstance he didn’t control, to leave without redeeming his word to her back in December, but he was here now to do as he had promised. From his breast pocket he had pulled the photograph taken in the Rose Parlor, and handed it to her with a flourish. She had taken the photo, and then he had taken her…
By sunrise the next morning Spartan was gone again, almost as if he’d never been… Katherine would’ve thought it a dream, if he hadn’t left the photograph behind. And the photo was not all that he left behind… a month later, she knew he had left her a child, as well.
“He was a god, Jane…” Katherine sighed then, slowly handing her daughter the cherished photograph. ” A god of war, perhaps, but a god nonetheless. And for awhile he was mine.” She smiled then, a wry, sad smile, and a slight blush colored her cheeks again.
Jane fairly snatched the photo from her mother’s hand, and stared hungrily at it. The man standing next to her mother– yes, clearly in front of the fireplace and mantel in this very room – was tall, a full head taller than Katherine, and strikingly handsome. Light hair, and pale eyes, the color of either impossible to tell in the sepia tones of the photograph… high cheekbones and a strong, if narrow, chin… a confident, almost arrogant smile… why did she think it seemed almost… defiant?
Watching Jane devour the image, her mother smiled, and told her that her father’s eyes had been a startling emerald green – “Just like your own. His hair was as fiery red as yours as well, and you’re already showing promise of his height. Heavens, you’re 12 and already almost as tall as your mother! And his strength…” her mother had paused then, then took back the picture, tucking it into its place in her diary once more.
Katherine would say no more about the matter after that afternoon, again returning to her tactics of deflection, redirection and selective deafness. Jane tried to pry information from the old servants, but Toby and Cassie were as tight lipped as her mother, and had the plausible advantage of claiming ignorance of most of the things she most wanted to know. In the absence of more information, Jane began to speculate on her own…
One thing that the Hall’s library had always contained much of were books on Greek and Roman history and mythology, with the emphasis on the mythology. Jane had devoured them all, and after the revelations about her mysterious parentage she had fixated on an idea… her mother had said her father was a god, a god of war… her own middle name was that of a warrior goddess… what if her father had been an actual god… perhaps Ares, or Mars, the Greek/Roman God of War?
The idea grew in her mind, becoming almost an obsession, until she confronted her mother with the idea and challenged her to deny it. Katherine had just stared at her daughter, then shook her head and sighed. The next day she informed Jane that a new tutor would be arriving within a fortnight. In response, her daughter informed her that from now on she would only be answering to her middle name – Artemis! As events would transpire, it would be many years before she would use her given name again.
Miss Cassie had been teacher to both Jane – Artemis – and Young Toby for much of their childhood. Having been taught her own letters by Mistress Elizabeth, back in the old slave days, she had been an avid reader ever since, consuming every book in Tulip Hill Hall’s substantial library, and passing it on to the the children. But for some things, more specialized teaching was required, and special tutors (from Atlanta or even New York or New Atlantis) began to be brought in as the children grew older, to teach them history, calculus, literature and more. Now the educational pace accelerated… and almost all the books on Greek and Roman mythology vanished from the library.
Over the next several years Artemis was too busy with her education and physical training to think too much about her mysterious father, and over time the obsession faded somewhat. Her education was first class, of course, but her mother also insisted that she and Toby be trained in not only the skills needed in Society, but in more physical areas such as fencing and horseback riding, including the hunt. Toby never enjoyed the hunting, or killing, but Artemis took to it with relish that sometimes concerned her mother.
And it seemed to Artemis then that there was no reason this idyllic life should not go on forever. But on 12 May 1881 the ugly reality of the world shattered the bubble of her illusions, and changed her forever. The household was preparing for Young Toby’s 18th birthday in three days time, and his grandfather had made a rare trip into town to purchase a special gift for the young man. He returned early, however, empty handed and grim faced. He would say nothing to anyone, shoving past Artemis and heading for the library where Katherine was going over the estate’s books.
Despite her best efforts at eavesdropping, Artemis could make out nothing of what was said between the two, only sensing that the tone was serious and intense. Dinner that night was a quiet and depressing affair. As usual, except on special occasions, the five of them ate in the kitchen together; but whereas laughter and good humor were usually the rule, tonight Old Toby was morose and silent, Katherine seemed distracted and worried, and Miss Cassie was uncharacteristically subdued. Young Toby and Artemis were both puzzled by the adult’s mood, but neither could get anything from them, aside from false smiles and assurances that everything was fine, just fine. The youngsters left the table early, retiring to their rooms, Artemis with her meal leaden in her stomach.
In later years, Artemis would never have a very clear memory of the rest of that night. Only shattered, but all too vivid images remained… the sound of breaking glass awakening her from an already troubled sleep… the sound of angry voices braying in the night… stumbling sleepily downstairs to see a crowd of men in white robes and hoods on horseback on the curved carriageway in front of the house… torches flaring, the old oak behind them casting twisted shadows… her mother confronting the men… the two Toby’s and Miss Cassie huddled together behind her in the flickering shadows of the great vestibule, looking variously resigned, terrified and angry… she remembers stepping up beside her mother, both of them in nightgowns and robes… a man suddenly slamming his pistol into Katherine’s face… her mother dropping like a puppet with the stings cut… her own cry of rage, the leap at the man… and the shock of a rifle butt against her own head… then a dizzy, hazy, semi-darkness, punctuated with screams, laughter… a terrible sound like a green stick breaking…
She remembers more clearly, although she often wishes she couldn’t, coming out of her swoon… seeing her three friends hanging from the old oak in front of their home, eyes bulging, tongues swollen between purpled lips… and the 18 men laughing and whirling torches and rifles around as if they were at a party… and she remembers all too well the red film that covered her vision then, tinting the world crimson, but not obscuring what came next… how she took the first man from behind, leaping on his horse and slitting his throat in one swift motion… where the knife came from she’s never been able to remember… then the next man, and the next… the others turning in shock… then she has a rifle, a type she’s never fired before, yet she seems to understand it perfectly… three more men die before they pull her down… but they can’t keep her down… she throws them off like they were rag dolls… flickering torch light, twisting shadows, breaking necks… panicked screams now, men trying to flee… but not a single one of them would leave that place alive…
She can never be sure, of course, but her sense is that less than five minutes passed between her regaining consciousness and her being the only living soul at Tulip Hill Hall, standing with her nightgown soaked in blood… mother laying dead under the portico, her neck broken… lifting her body as if she were no more than a babe and caryring her to her bedroom… then she’s cutting down Toby… then his grandfather… then Miss Cassie… carrying them each up to the master bedroom… laying them out, smoothing distorted features, straightening twisted limbs…
Payday for the servants was the 15th, she thinks, same day as Toby’s birthday… strange, none of the other servants were around that night… a great deal of gold lay in the safe… she takes it… finds her mother’s diary and the photograph… she considers leaving it with her mother, but it’s the only image she has of her… she can’t leave it, but does leave the diary, laying it on her mother’s breast… plenty of torches outside… she notes with detached amusement that some of the murderers are burning, robes afire… the smell is nauseatingly appetizing… she vomits then… the house is ablaze as she sits astride a stolen horse, dressed for the road… she turns her back on her past and rides into the night…
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For the next few year Artemis haunted the Deep South, honing her skills and seeking out the KKK wherever they lurked. As an organization they may have been suppressed, but the stink of their hate still lingered, and she learned to track it. Where they met in secret, in the dark of the night, she was there – and come the morning’s light several upstanding pillars of society were nevermore to be seen. In that year she put such a fear of God (or maybe the Devil) into the would-be Klansmen that no one was willing to join the group, however clandestinely.
At the time Artemis thought she had killed the Klan for good, but history would prove her wrong. Although it wouldn’t rise again until the early 20th Century, rise again it would. But in the summer of 1882 she’d felt her burden lift, if only a little, and considered her job in the South done… now she never wanted to see it again. She had dyed her hair black shortly after… that night… but it was time for a bigger change… so she listened to Horace Greeley, and after one last visit to the burned out shell of Tulip Hill Hall, Artemis headed West.
For the next six years Artemis travelled the western reaches of North America, experiencing history as it happened. She met many of the icons of the Old West, adventured with some of them, and learned valuable skills from all of them. Scirocco, the Quick Draw Kid, el Gaucho, Lady Remington, they all showed her new weapons, from the bow and arrow to the bull whip to the six-shooter. As soon as she picked up a weapon it was as if she’d used it her whole life. One fight with a person, and she could mimic every move he or she made. In time she herself became one of the legends of the West, spoken of as the Midnight Rider by those who encountered, or were saved by, her justice.
In Los Angles she learned sword play from Zorro, great-grandson of the original hero; at the Lost Pueblo she learned something of the mystic realms from the shaman Shilah Atsa; and more than once she encountered the Lone Ranger and Tonto, who taught her the value of a secret identity, among other things. At what turned out to be their last meeting the Ranger gave her one of his domino masks, and it is one of the few possessions she has retained over the years.
In 1888 Artemis traveled from San Francisco, a city she found over-crowded, stench-filled and lacking in almost all redeeming features, to the boom town of Astoria, Oregon. Astoria was a more pleasing city to her mind… while certainly raw and still growing it had a joie de vive and optimistic spirit that called to her, quelling the darkness in her own soul.
In her travels Artemis had found that beside her amazing strength and ability to heal, her incredible senses and astounding reflexes, she also held a darkness within… a darkness she found difficult to control when faced with injustice or cruelty. When she failed to control that darkness, and the red rage filled her vision, people died. However deserving of death her victims might be, she came to despise the loss of control in herself.
It was in Astoria, in early 1890, that Artemis met the famous English consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, and his friend and biographer Dr. John Watson. The pair were on an around-the-world journey, in pursuit of a terrible killer, and she ended up joining them on the cross-continental part of their journey. She was fascinated by the brilliant mind and inductive reasoning powers of the irascible detective, and he in turn was intrigued by her astounding physical abilities. The two learned much from one another, and in New Atlantis they brought their respective gifts together to finally take down the vicious serial killer Jack the Ripper. She could never have located the monster herself, and Holmes and Watson would have been next to helpless against the killer’s preternatural strength and speed. But together they put an end to his predations.
Artemis spent the next several years in New Atlantis, traveling throughout New England and the Midwest, as the mood took her. By this time she was beginning to notice that she didn’t seem to be aging… although thirty years old now, she didn’t think she looked significantly older than she had that on that terrible night in 1881, and certainly didn’t feel it. But perhaps she just wasn’t remembering properly… so much of her past remained a dim blur to her…
When the Spanish American War broke out in 1898, Artemis headed to the Philippines, where two seminal events would occur. The first was her initial exposure to Eastern mysticism in the form of a Kali master, and her discovery of escrima sticks, along with their related fighting styles, both of which would play an important part in her future. The second, and more deeply profound event, was seeing her father.
Walking through a crowded market in Manila shortly after the American victory over Spain, she rounded a corner and came face to face with the man whose image she had memorized over the decades. Although in living color rather than sepia tones, she had no doubt as to his identity – and if she had felt any doubt, the brilliant green eyes would have removed it. But before Artemis could do more than stand and gape, the man was past her, not having even glanced her way.
She turned and shoved her way through the crowd to follow him, calling out the only name she knew for him – Spartan. But if he heard her he gave no sign, and in a moment he was lost in the crowd. How? He stood at least a foot taller than almost everyone around them, and she almost matched that herself – yet there was no sign of him. And he had been wearing an American military uniform, how much more conspicuous could he be?! Yet there was no sign of him… it was as if he’d vanished into thin air.
That brief encountered shifted Artemis‘ whole world around. Over the years she had set aside thoughts of her mysterious father save as an occasional idle fancy, one with no teeth. Now, suddenly, the teeth were back, and with a vengeance. The man had looked no older than he had in the photo, and that revived her old fantasies of him being a god… perhaps not fantasy after all? And here he was in another war zone…
She scoured Luzon for a week, haunted the American military areas for months, the other islands for a year… and in the end found nothing. But the fire had reawakened in her, and she was determined to find her father, whatever the cost, however long it took. And so she began to travel to every war zone she could reach, and she let the darkness within herself flow, so that nothing could stand in her way.
From the Boxer Rebellion in China and the Boer War in South Africa to the Russo-Japenese War in eastern Asia, she became an underground legend on the world’s battlefields in those early years of the new century. Rumors of a dark “Angel of Death” spread amongst the soldiers of the world as Artemis honed her combat skills and weapons mastery, as well as her detective skills.
More than once Artemis thought she had caught up to her father, had sensed his shape in events in this or that conflict… but always he eluded her. She pursued her quest relentlessly, but after a decade and more the fire was again dying down to embers… and her soul sickness had reached almost unbearable levels. She was tired of war and of killing and the seemingly endless tide of injustices in the world that she could never wholly stem. No matter how many evil men she killed, it seemed a dozen more rose to take their place.
Having spent a year stalking the battlefields of the Italo-Turkish War in eastern Lybia, with not even a hint of “Spartan,” she found herself in the spring of 1912 in Cairo, depressed and wondering what to do next… she had become a keen observer and saw that Europe was headed for a massive conflict. All sides claimed to want peace, but in reality they were chomping at the bit to go to war. She was tired, and she wanted off this endless wheel.
It was then that she met Col. John Jacob Astor and his wife Madeline, and struck up an unlikely friendship – not so much with the Astors (Madeline was fine, but the Colonel was a bit stuffy – put off by a woman traveling alone, but nonetheless doing all he could to “protect” her), but rather with Madeline’s old nurse, Caroline Endres. She had raised the young heiress practically since birth, and was a veritable fount of knowledge about every obscure corner of the world. It was from Caroline that Artemis first learned of the mystical realm of Shambhala… and a possible route for her out of the troubles of this broken world.
It took her another two years, searching out every sage, mystic, guru, shaman, martial arts master and reputed spiritualist that she could find, piecing together the whispered clues, and following numerous dead ends — but at last, on 28 June 1914, Artemis found herself standing before the thundering cascade known as the Falls of Heaven, somewhere in the Himalayas… and when she stepped behind that wall of roaring water and into the narrow cleft it concealed, she vanished from the world for 25 years.
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During her time in that mystical, time-lost land of ancient power, Artemis learned much, from a variety of teachers. For many seekers of Shambhala life in the hidden valley was hard at first; although it was held that only the worthy could even find the secret way, it was up to each seeker thereafter to prove to a particular teacher that she or he was worthy enough for that teacher’s time and effort. But with Artemis the masters of the valley quickly sensed the power, and the darkness, within this new sojourner. Many vied to guide her along their particular path to enlightenment.
Artemis learned much of both her body and mind in those early years, from many masters, but it was the learned and venerable L’hen Wah who became her principal mentor and spiritual guide. She taught Artemis to control the rage within, to make it her servant, not her master, and to shape the darkness to the higher purposes of the light. But the one lesson that seemed impossible for Artemis to accept was that she would never truly shed the darkness within, that it was a part of her, indeed, the very core of who she was. L’hen Wah insisted that she would have to learn to embrace it in order to achieve true spiritual balance – and that, however difficult, it was possible.
L’hen Wah laughed indulgently and shook her head when Artemis once said she just wanted to be happy. “Happiness is a transitory emotion,” she said, “not a perpetual state of being. It can be nothing else, my child, or it is not happiness… say rather that you seek contentment, for that is the highest achievement any may aspire to in this life.”
In time Artemis did reach a certain equilibrium within, but she rarely reached that goal of of true contentment. Eventually she realized that it was Shambhala itself that was holding her back… that she was meant for the world. In what way she did not yet know, true, but the years away from the world had shown her that a quiet life of contemplation and introspection was not her destiny. She determined then to speak to her master and seek leave to depart, but was surprised when L’hen Wah appeared on her doorstep in that very hour, bearing the Cup of Departure.
“I have waited for years for you to realize your place was not here, my student,” the teacher had said, pouring the plum wine she so loved into the cup and handing it to her student. “It has taken longer than I had awaited… but no longer than was needful.” Artemis drank from the chalice and handed it back to her mentor, who finished it off, smiling serenely.
The time of parting had come, but before she left L’hen Wah took Artemis to the Great Temple and the Chamber of Artifacts. This was a secure room deep within the structure, where the most powerful artifacts the denizens of the valley had created or collected over the millennia were kept safe. When great need arose, champions of Shambhala might select one or more of the artifacts, and though they might wield them in the Outer World for many years, in the end they always returned to the Chamber. And on rare occasions an artifact might choose its own champion…
So it was on that day, as Artemis and L’hen Wah strolled down the aisles and open spaces of the Chamber, speaking idly of gossip of the valley and what might await in the Outer World. As they passed a stand holding a hooded cloak of the deepest black, the garment… fluttered. As they paused to look at it, the cloak suddenly flowed off its stand and rose up like a black mist to enshroud a very surprised Artemis. L’hen Wah smiled broadly and nodded her head. “I suspected something here called to you, Artemis, but I had not known what… Na’hala Zin, the Cloak of Night! I suppose I might have guessed it.”
Her mentor stopped her rush of exclamations and protests with a gesture, and assured her that if the cloak had chosen her, then she was the one to bear it and in time it would teach her what she need to know to wield it to full effect. Then she led her former pupil out of the Chamber and the Temple and to the foot of the trail that led up into the mountains and the passage back to the Outer World. They said their final goodbyes there, and Artemis strode up the narrow path, never looking back.
[NOTE: The infamous Dr. Fu Manchu, under his birth name of Zhao Xiw`ang, enters Shambhala in 1933, spends three years learning much, including the location of that which he seeks – a method or artifact to grant immortality. Maybe he presents as a roman a clef of Stephen Strange, a wounded doctor seeking enlightenment? In 1936 he betrays his mentor(s?) and steals the secret, despite all the warnings of its danger; he flees back to the Outer World. Somehow he and Artemis come into conflict in this period… perhaps she befriends him, and she is one of the ones he betrays? Does she confront him as he seeks to escape, but fails to stop him? Is this what triggers her slow realization that she doesn’t really belong in a life of contemplation and peace… it takes three years to fully manifest, if so.]
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When she stepped from behind the wall of water at the end of the narrow canyon Artemis was surprised to find that she was not in Tibet, as she had expected. Instead she was in a mountainous region of dark pines and gnarled oaks, near a much smaller waterfall than the Falls of Heaven by which she had entered the valley of Shambhala. There was a clear path down from the waterfall, and she followed it, arriving after a walk of less than a mile at a town named Meiringer. There she learned that the falls were the Reichenbach Falls, and that she was in Switzerland. It was 11 January 1939.
From Switzerland she travelled to Vienna, Austria, where she spent some time catching up on the 25 years she had missed while attempting to learn about her new cloak. Most obvious thing about Na’hala Zin was that when she was in any kind of shadow she appeared to be completely invisible while wearing it. Even in full light people often failed to notice her when she wore it, unless she brought attention to herself. But it was almost a month before she discovered its greatest power – when she wrapped the Cloak of Night around herself and concentrated, if she was in any kind of shadow she could teleport to another shadow within her line of sight!
She practiced this new ability with delight for over a week, discovering that she could also teleport to any place she and the cloak had previously been, as long as the destination had a nearby shadow within which she might appear. What range limit this ability had she hadn’t yet discovered, beyond the fact that it could take her from Vienna to Bern in an instant, and back again. The cloak never seemed to lose energy , no matter how often she used it.
Whether it was the constant testing that sent some sort of mystical signal to those who could sense it, or if she had just been careless in her testing and allowed someone to see and report on her, Artemis never knew. But she somehow attracted the attention of a German mystic and scientist named Dr. Gerhart von Richtor, who desired to possess her cloak, fascinated by Na’hala Zin’s power over shadows. Contemptuous at first of both the man and his silly Nazi party, of which she had been hearing all too much since her return, she came to at least respect his skill after several close calls evading his traps and henchmen.
During their last encounter, at high noon on a sunny day, she had barely escaped the man and his minions, using the small shadow of a large tree to teleport into the deeper shadows of a nearby cathedral… and very nearly interrupting a wedding ceremony. Fortunately it was a very small party, just the young couple, two witnesses and the priest, and no one was the wiser about their hidden guest. She smiled and applauded silently as the groom kissed his bride, and then she stepped back into the gloom between the pillars and vanished. That lucky escape was the last straw for Artemis, and that very night she left Vienna behind for safer pastures.
Over the next month, as she traveled to London, Artemis learned that she had entered Shambhala on the very day that the Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated, his death triggering what would come to be called the Great War. The very war she had seen coming in the years just prior, and she was grateful to have missed it. But the more she learned now, the more obvious it became to her that Europe was once again barreling down the road to all out war… and it was really just a continuation of that first great conflict, whose wounds still festered. It was time to go home.
After a brief visit with her old friend the consulting detective, now 85 years old and keeping bees on the Sussex downs, but with a mind as sharp as ever, she sailed for New Atlantis, leaving Europe and its wars behind her for good. She knew that her homeland was strongly isolationist, and it seemed unlikely they would again be drawn onto the world stage as they had in 1917.
She spend the next several years in New Atlantis and New York, fascinated by the phenomena of the mystery men and their newest incarnation, the “supermen” (and women) that had begun to spring up in 1938 with the appearance of the amazing hero Ultra. In those years she occasionally pulled out the Lone Ranger’s gift and contemplated donning the mask and joining the good fight… but when the Liberty Alliance was founded by President Roosevelt and send to Europe to counter the Axis supermen the Nazis were creating, she was glad she had held back. She no longer desired to wander the battlefields of the earth, and was content to bring justice from the shadows to evil-doers in a more personalized way.
During the war years New York and New Atlantis both enjoyed a relatively crime-free period, in no small part thanks to the mysterious “Angel of the Night” who many criminals claimed had subdued them, and to the fear her legend engendered in such men. But once the war was over and the heroes had all come home, with new ones popping up every other day it seemed, Artemis decided it was time to move on. Still having no stomach for the South, she again headed west, revisiting the scenes of her youth, from the Lost Pueblo to Astoria.
It was obvious by then that she truly was immortal — she still looked no older than a women in her mid twenties, despite being over 80 years old. She was never ill, not even a cold, and was difficult to wound; and on the rare occasions when she was wounded, she healed in hours, sometimes in mere minutes, depending on the injury. Her senses and reflexes remained as preternaturally sharp as ever, as did her skill in combat, both armed and unarmed, and her strength was still superhuman, if not anything like Ultra’s.
For the next 30 years Artemis criss-crossed the country, with occasional forays abroad, bringing her dark justice to the predators of the world, yet keeping her own darkness in balance. The only opponents that ever threatened that balance, and risked bringing out her full rage, were three-fold: the racists of the world, the rapists, and those who harmed children. All bets were off then, however much she might regret of the loss of control afterward… a regret she had learned she could live with.
In the early 1980s Artemis learned of a resurgent effort by white supremacists to establish a “redoubt” in Astoria, and it infuriated her. If anyplace over the years of her wandering had seemed like home to her, it was that Pacific Northwest city. She had returned there often, if seldom lingering for more than a year or two at a time. Now she decided it was time to settle in, put down some roots, and once again show the Klan and their philosophical descendants that their darkness was still no match for hers…
By the early 1990s she had run the most blatant of the racist groups out of the city, and out of much of the state, and driven the more circumspect elements back underground where, as far as she was concerned, they could fester and live in fear… she would be there if and when they sought to rise again. By that time she had lived longer in Astoria than in any other place in her long life, aside from Shambhala, and it had truly become her home. She knew many of the city’s secrets, although certainly not all, and had made the Undercity a second home of sorts. The outcasts and renegades, for whom it was the only home, soon learned they could trust the mysterious woman in black.
During the years of her pursuit of the white supremacists, Artemis had begun to hear rumors of a shadowy group of criminals called the Cabal who allegedly ruled the city from the shadows. With the more pressing threat finally defanged, she now bent her considerable detective skills to rooting out this organization. They proved elusive and fluid, however, and while in time she had the shape of them, she found no real handle that would allow her to eliminate them. But she was immortal, after all, and she had nothing if not time. She settled in watch and wait – wait for the mistake that would allow her to break this new enemy.
In the meantime, she needed something to do, and the people needed a champion in the face of a threat few even knew existed. In 1997 she set up Valentine Investigations in a building she had long owned in Old Town, and Jane Valentine got her Private Investigator license. Jane helped the good people of Astoria by day – the poor, the middle class and occasionally even the deserving rich – while Artemis continued to mete out justice by night. She took every opportunity to spike the wheels of the Cabal in both identities.
When she adopted, or rather resumed, her Jane Valentine identity she allowed her hair to return to its natural brilliant red. She had discovered years ago that the Cloak of Night reacted with the power of her own chi to change her appearance as desired… so now when Artemis stalked the night her hair was as raven dark as ever and her eyes glowed green, like emerald sparks set in her black domino mask. During the day Na’hala Zin usually took on the appearance of a white duster, Jane Valentine’s signature garment — as different from Artemis‘ ink-black hooded cloak as could be.
By 2016 Valentine had a solid reputation in the city as a PI who would help anyone who needed it, regardless of ability to pay, if she liked their case; but who never took trash cases or anything on the shady side of the law. Artemis too was well known, but in an entirely different way and to a more underground element. When regular justice failed, Artemis could be trusted to step in and do her best to make it right, and so far the Cabal had been unable to stop her, although attempts were occasionally made. Unfortunately, she was fairly certain that, for all her efforts, she was little more than a minor annoyance to the criminal conspiracy… so far.
It was a beautiful spring day, and unseasonably warm, when Jane Valentine left her apartment above her office to pursue the case of a missing girl, whose frantic mother had come to her two days ago, with no money and a desperate story. It seems her second husband was not the stepfather she had hoped for for her daughter, and he… he had…
The story had been painful to pull from the woman, but it was sadly nothing new, and it seemed obvious why the girl had fled. While the husband had denied it all, the mother had booted him, but feared he might return, and in the meantime who knew what was happening to Cassandra… Cassie was only 15, so young…
Artemis had paid the stepfather a visit in his motel room last night… and while he wouldn’t be needing a shallow grave, as would have been the case had the encounter occurred a century earlier, he would be needing some serious reconstructive surgery. And (she smiled at the thought) a night light from now on…
Today Jane had tracked young Cassie’s debit card to a cafe on the Silver Mile, where it had been used not twenty minutes ago. Half an hour, tops, and she could probably close the books on this sad case and maybe enjoy the rest of this gorgeous day…