Sinner by Sara Douglass. Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

She held out her hand, and she smiled. “StarDrifter.” Her voice came from very far away. “StarDrifter, I have need of you as you once had need of me. Will you aid me?”

“Gladly,” StarDrifter said without hesitation, and stepped into the spiralling tunnel.

He spread his wings to the power, letting it carry him towards the two women. He felt earth and stars rush by him, knowing it carried him a great distance, and when it finally let him go and he stepped into Niah’s Grove, he was not truly surprised.

There waited before him a doe and a peasant woman. Like Drago before him, StarDrifter knew instantly who these two represented. But his eyes were caught by the twisting, moaning figure between them.

“Zenith!” And with one great flap of his wings he was at their side, falling to his knees beside Zenith. “What’s wrong? What’s happened to her?”

“Drago,” the Goodwife began, and StarDrifter’s head snapped up at the name of his grandson, “told us her body and mind is tormented by Niah’s reborn soul. Zenith fights it.”

The Goodwife shrugged. “But m’Lady and I can do nothing for the poor sweet girl. The Niah-soul wins.”

Niah’s reborn soul? Azhure had once shown Niah’s letter to StarDrifter, and he knew what the Goodwife alluded to. Niah? In Zenith?

He looked again at his granddaughter. She appeared unconscious, but was obviously in anguish. Her skin was pale and sweating, her muscles twitching, her breath jerking in her breast.

And why was she naked under this cloak, and with the marks of some assault upon her?

“The poor sweeting,” the Goodwife said. “Not only does she battle the dead soul within her, but her body and spirit were raped by WolfStar -”

StarDrifter gave a great cry and leapt to his feet. WolfStar! He had known that malevolent criminal would reappear some day. But to so harm Zenith? StarDrifter looked back at his granddaughter, and his stomach curdled in revulsion at the crime that had been visited upon her.

“Zenith,” he whispered, dropping to his knees before her again.

We cannot reach her…

“How did she come to be here?” StarDrifter asked harshly. “You said Drago was with her?”

“Her brother came with her, but has run off -”

What was going on here?

Drago was running from something. Something wrong at Sigholt.

“Drago was running from a misdeed, no doubt,” the Goodwife put in, folding her hands over her belly and pursing her mouth, but the doe continued.

Zenith was with him – we do not know why – and Drago left her with us, hoping we could help her.

“And was he a party to her rape?” StarDrifter asked.

“No, good sir, we do not think so,” the Goodwife answered. “But neither did he help her.”

Stars, but he should never have left those children alone for so long! Why hadn’t he visited?

They are not children any more, StarDrifter. All capable of choosing their own paths.

“Or fated,” StarDrifter, his thoughts returning to what fought for control of Zenith’s body and mind. Why Zenith? She had such a sweet and trusting nature -was that why she’d been chosen as a vessel for Niah’s rebirth?

Who was this on the ground before him? Had it always been Niah? Or was Zenith a separate entity? A different personality?

StarDrifter shook his head slightly, hoping to clear it. “Why call me? What can I do?”

Drago said that she wanted to go to you.

StarDrifter frowned. “Why?”

Because you once told Zenith that you would always be there to catch her.

Except I wasn’t, was I? StarDrifter thought. Should he take her? The island might be the worst place for Zenith if she was battling the reborn Niah.

But he had little choice, and, more importantly, neither did Zenith.

StarDrifter squatted down by his granddaughter and took her into his arms.

Strangely, she quietened a little as soon as he had gathered her against his breast.

“I’m here, Zenith,” he whispered, and stroked her hair.

Suddenly she stilled, her breathing eased, and her entire body relaxed.

And yet her stillness did not ease StarDrifter’s mind. Someone had won – but who?

“I will take her to the Island of Mist and Memory,” he said. “Pray to both earth and stars that I am doing the right thing.”

N:

othing?” Caelum said. “Nothing?” Crest-Leader FeatherFlight BrightWing’s expression did not change. “StarSon, we have sent scouts out to the feet of the Icescarp Alps, to the River Ichtar, and south as far as the Minaret Peaks. Nothing.”

Caelum sat down heavily at the table in the map-room.

“Askam?” He did not even look at the prince, for he knew in his bones what the man would report.

“Nothing, Caelum.” Askam spread his hands helplessly. “The patrols could not have scoured the Urqhart Hills more thoroughly if they’d done it on their hands and knees.”

Caelum sifted through a pile of loose papers on the table. “And these… reports from Jervois Landing, Severin, most of the smaller hamlets between here and Carlon – even Gorkenfort! Nothing! No-one has seen him.” Nor Zenith. Had WolfStar found her? Or was she hiding from their grandfather in some enchanted bolt-hole?

“Curse it!” Caelum sent the papers scattering across the table. “Where is he? Where could he have gone?”

Askam glanced at FeatherFlight. Caelum’s nerves were strung as tight as a fishing line with a whale on its hook -and no wonder. Drago had disappeared completely. How? And how was it he’d managed to evade searchers that ranged from the strongest Enchanters to the ablest trackers?

By rights Drago should not have been able to escape more than a league or two… if he had left Sigholt! Was someone aiding him? Who? Why?

“He could have managed to get to Minstrelsea,” Askam said slowly. “If he’s in there…”

Caelum looked up sharply. “Stars, Askam! I should have you as a full-time adviser. FeatherFlight! Send word to Isfrael that Drago may well be within his domain.”

FeatherFlight nodded, saluted, and left.

Caelum settled back in his chair. “Drago will never escape the eyes and ears Isfrael can call to his command. Askam, I thank you again… will you stay a week or two longer? I have need of a sharp mind about me at the moment.”

“As you will, StarSon.”

Caelum grinned at him. “And yet you fidget as if the most practised whore awaited you in your bed… what is it?”

Askam returned the smile. “Master Horrald has been waiting for me at weapons practice this past half an hour. By the time I get there he will have broiled up a nice temper.”

Caelum managed a laugh. Master Horrald was senior among the weapons masters at Sigholt – and not known for his sweet disposition. “Begone then, Askam, and ask Master Horrald not to cut you to ribbons, if only for my sake.”

Left alone in the map-room, Caelum leaned his head into his hand and sighed. This last week had been distressful, and his nights had been filled with unsettling dreams of hunts that ran through forest and stars alike, and of huntsmen who ran down men, not animals.

It made him think for a moment… hunt. Could his mother’s hounds…? No, Azhure had told him a long time ago that the hounds could never be set to hunt mortals.

Caelum looked at his hands, twisting about the red-gold, diamond-encrusted ring on his right hand. It was not his father’s ring – Axis still wore that – but an exact duplicate.

And Axis had taught him how to use it properly.

Enchanters wielded power by manipulating threads of the Star Dance, the music the stars made as they danced through the universe. For each purpose, a Song. For countless generations Icarü Enchanters had painstakingly discovered perhaps a thousand Songs they could weave from the Star Dance, but Orr the Ferryman had shown Axis that all an Enchanter needed to do was think of the purpose, and the diamonds on his ring would rearrange themselves to show him the particular Song to sing.

“Show me a Song for scrying,” he whispered, and after an instant’s hesitation, the diamonds on his ring rearranged themselves into a new pattern.

Caelum thought about the music his ring showed him. It would be a powerful Song, requiring him to manipulate a dangerous amount of the Star Dance, but he was powerful himself, and he could manage it.

He ran the Song through his head, absorbing the power of the Star Dance that flooded him, and directed that power to his purpose.

Instantly the room before him faded, and Caelum saw the plains of Ichtar stretching away to the west of Sigholt.

“Find me Drago,” he whispered, and the view altered.

His vision swept north until it danced among the peaks of the Icescarp Alps, then east and south, skimming over the grey-green tops of the Avarinheim and Minstrelsea.

Caelum felt giddy and nauseated with the amount of power he was being forced to wield, but was determined to see it through.