Sinner by Sara Douglass. Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

Their leader, a rough-whiskered middle-aged man, pulled his horse up and stared at her.

Faraday felt no fear, and she merely returned his regard, a small smile on her face.

“Who are you?” the man asked roughly.

“My name is Faraday,” she said.

“You are a long way from any village,” said another man, pulling his horse up beside that of his leader.

Faraday nodded, but said nothing.

The men, three now, sat their horses and stared at her. The possibilities in the barren plain were endless. Rape, and then a murder to silence her. Perhaps rape, and then a quick sale in the unquestioning markets of Nor.

Faraday looked at them, trusting.

One of the men slid from his horse, handed the reins to his companion, and walked over until he stood less than a pace from Faraday.

“You’re a very beautiful woman,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Here,” he said, and handed her his purse. “Take what you want.”

“Thank you very much,” Faraday said, and graced him with her warm, lovely smile. She slid several coins out, then handed it back to the man.

As he took it she said, “Your wife has lost most of her youth, hasn’t she?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

Faraday shrugged away the question. “She is unhappy, because along with her youth she feels she is losing you.”

The man shifted uncomfortably.

Faraday placed her hand lightly on the man’s chest. “Your wife’s youth lies in your heart.” She patted his chest gently. “Only you have the power to give it back to her.”

He stared at her, then nodded, understanding. “You are very wise.”

Faraday laughed. “No, good sir, I am merely repaying the debt I owe you.”

And with that she slipped the coins into a pocket, and walked away.

The three men sat their horses for a very long time, watching her.

South, south, ever south. A week after she’d met the horse-traders Faraday veered south-west, heading for the province of Nor. With the coin the horse-trader had given her she purchased food from the isolated homesteads she occasionally passed, but otherwise Faraday kept away from habitation. She enjoyed her solitude. At night she wrapped herself in the ruby cloak and slept dreamlessly, a small smile on her face.

Once in Nor Faraday met many more people. Nor was the most populous of Tencendor’s provinces and, in many ways, the most intense. Its vividness showed in the characters of the Nors people themselves, in their clothes, the way they decorated their homes, and in virtually every aspect of their lives. Convention was anathema to the Nors people, they lived and loved at a pace and with a fervour the other Acharites often had trouble accepting.

Faraday loved it. These people were alive, and she revelled in them.

In upper Nor she decided she’d had enough of walking, her boot soles were growing ever thinner, and so she decided to find passage south on a merchant’s cart.

She waited for a day by the side of a road, watching trading traffic going by, waiting for the right merchant. Finally, towards evening, she spotted a man walking beside a cart loaded with pottery and pulled by four sturdy horses.

“Good sir,” she cried as the cart came level with her.

“Aye?” the man said carefully, looking her up and down. He was thin and brown-haired, still young, but with the hunched shoulders of one far older.

“Good sir, I wonder if you travel to Ysbadd. I would go there.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. He wondered how she would pay. He had no taste for whores, and she did not look as if she could pay him the coin such a journey deserved.

“You have lost trade recently,” Faraday said. “I can tell you how to find it again. That should be worth the cost of my journey.”

“What -”

“It is your brother’s doing. He was jealous at your initial success at carting these pots,” and Faraday waved her hand at the cart, “and has spread the tale that you trade only in weak and defective vessels.”

The man regarded her steadily. It would not be past Holt to do such a thing. “And how do I regain this trade, fine lady?”

“Guarantee your produce. Offer to replace every faulty vessel that you sell – or have sold – with a sound one.”

“But that would cost me -”

Faraday grinned. “Only if you have been trading in faulty vessels, Jarl.”

Jarl wondered how she knew his name. But he thought on what she’d said, then smiled himself. “You have a sharp mind, lady. What should I call you? It is many days travel south to Ysbadd.”

Faraday let him help her climb into a spare space on the cart. “My name is Faraday, Jarl. Have I earned my journey?”

“You have indeed, Faraday, you have indeed.”

Ysbadd left Faraday breathless. If she had been any younger she thought she might have clapped her hands in glee. She nodded goodbye to Jarl in the main square, where he was loudly proclaiming his new idea of guarantee, and she wandered the streets for hours. The city was a riotous mixture of gaudy spires and fat domes, intermixed with cool shaded walks and parks. People thronged the streets and markets, colourful in scarves and beads, and waved from windows, shouting greetings to strangers and family alike.

As a girl Faraday had always been warned to be careful of Nors people by her thin-mouthed mother. Nors morals were not what the staid northerners agreed with. Yet wandering through the streets, Faraday decided that for all their fun-loving and indulgent lives, the Nors people were basically good-hearted.

By dusk she felt hungry, and so picked a food stall where, in return for her fill of beef stew and fresh bread, she told its proprietor where he could find the gold tooth he’d lost during a drunken party several weeks ago.

Having eaten, Faraday asked directions to the port and, once on the wharf, she walked slowly to and fro, eyeing the ships, until she finally climbed aboard a vessel with dusky pink sails and black eyes painted in the centre of each canvas. A deckhand asked her what she wanted, and she said she wanted to see the Master.

“For passage?” the deckhand asked.

“Yes. I have heard you provision for a voyage to the Island of Mist and Memory.”

“Oh aye,” the deckhand muttered. “We provision, alright, but I doubt we’ll be voyaging anywhere in the near future.”

“Nevertheless, I would like to see the Master of the vessel.”

“Very well,” the deckhand said, and led her below.

“Go away!” a voice shouted when Faraday knocked politely on the cabin door.

“I believe,” Faraday said clearly, “that you’ve lost your nerve.”

There was utter silence on the other side of the door.

“I have come to help you find it again,” Faraday said, and folded her hands and waited.

After a moment the door opened.

s end someone else to watch the Star Gate,” SpikeFeather told Caelum, “for Orr has gone.”

That is all he said, for since his apprenticeship to the Ferryman SpikeFeather had developed a secrecy about him that had not been there previously. SpikeFeather knew there was something wrong, and he knew Orr had disappeared, but until he knew exactly what had happened he was not going to waste Caelum’s time with speculations.

Once SpikeFeather had been an ordinary Icarü, not even an Enchanter. Just a birdman who did his best at whatever he’d been assigned to. More by accident than design, SpikeFeather had found himself commanding the Strike Force during the last months of Axis’ campaign against Gorgrael, but he had not truly felt comfortable in the position, and once peace had settled over Tencendor, he’d handed the position of Strike Leader to DareWing FullHeart.

Besides, he owed a life to the Ferryman.

SpikeFeather had spent many years in the Overworld after his pact with the Ferryman in return for Orr transporting the children to safety, but fifteen years ago Orr had summoned SpikeFeather to the waterways.

There, Orr had begun to teach the birdman.

SpikeFeather was never quite sure what the Ferryman taught him.

It was not magic, for SpikeFeather remembered no spells and had no power to wield them in any case.

It was not the explanations to great mysteries, for SpikeFeather never remembered feeling very enlightened.

Orr had mostly just talked, generally about what he had seen and heard over the past millennia – and over fifteen years he had barely managed to scratch the surface of his experiences.

SpikeFeather only spent a few months of each year in the waterways. Orr often told him that he needed to spend as much time reflecting as he did absorbing, so in those months he spent in the Overworld, SpikeFeather wandered about Sigholt, sometimes talking with one or two of the SunSoars, mostly just thinking.

SpikeFeather had been standing atop Sigholt when Orr’s terror struck him. Apart from a few disjointed words, nothing had reached him but that terror.