Sinner by Sara Douglass. Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

“Lift them out for balance, as I have,” StarDrifter said, and Niah glanced at his white wings extended part-way out behind him.

“I wish they would go away,” she said. “I hate them. I cannot adjust to them.”

And no doubt Zenith also finds it hard to adjust to whatever torment she has been subjected to, StarDrifter thought.

Without thinking he took one of Niah’s wings in his hand, intending to lift it into position for her.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” she hissed and spun away, almost overbalancing with the weight of her wings.

“I was only trying to help,” StarDrifter said, keeping his voice even.

“I am sorry,” Niah said stiffly. “It was concern for my baby only that made me speak so.”

Her hands rested on her belly, and StarDrifter involuntarily glanced down at them. And curse that baby that had been got on Zenith’s unwilling body.

StarDrifter knew Niah encouraged WolfStar back into her bed night after night. A feeling, a presentiment whenever the renegade Enchanter was with her, the expression on Niah’s face in the morning, all told him that WolfStar visited her whenever he could.

StarDrifter felt sickened by it, but there was little he could do. He was powerless in the face of WolfStar’s own ability, and he could hardly lock Niah up for taking a lover to her bed.

“I dreamed last night,” Niah said unexpectedly after a few minutes’ silence. She was staring out to sea, the wind whipping her black hair to tangle in the upper feathers of her wings.

“Yes?”

“I dreamed that I was trapped in a small chamber underground, so restricted I could not stretch my wings, could not fly. I called and screamed for help, but no-one heard.”

She shivered. “No-one heard.”

Niah turned her head and smiled at StarDrifter. “I must have been remembering when I was locked in death, don’t you think? Awaiting rebirth. I was pleased when I awoke.”

No, StarDrifter thought, that was Zenith calling for help, and you woke and trapped her into yet more darkness.

“Ah.” Niah wrapped her arms about herself. “This breeze has grown cool. I shall go back to my quarters, I think, and perhaps find one of the priestesses to talk to.”

“Do you resent not being First any longer?” StarDrifter asked suddenly.

Niah tipped her head back and laughed. “Oh no! I shall use this life for other purposes, methinks.”

And then she was gone, and StarDrifter was left to watch her walk towards the Temple with eyes and heart smouldering with loss and resentment.

He flew, for Zenith’s sake as much as his own. He lifted off the cliffs and soared sunward on the thermal rising from the combined heat of island and temple beacon.

It was only there, high in the sky with just the seagulls and the sun to observe, that he let himself cry. He had lost a granddaughter, yet still her body was paraded before him, used, to remind him every moment of his loss. She had been stolen, and abused in that stealing.

He soared higher and higher, until the island became only a speck far below him. Perhaps it was time to leave the island, find a different purpose in life. He could not bear staying to watch Niah give birth (and to what’? An Enchanter? Surely, if WolfStar fathered it, and if Zenith’s Enchanter powers were latent in her body), or to watch WolfStar himself croon over the baby.

No, he should leave. Perhaps stay with FreeFall and EvenSong for a while in the Minaret Peaks. But that would be a useless life, and here at least he had some use.

I have failed her, he thought. I have failed Zenith. I should have been able to help her.

Slowly he spiralled downwards, thinking only to secrete himself in his room for reflection, when he swept over the northern cliff face of the Mount. A cart had dropped off a visitor at the foot of the steps and she was now climbing upwards.

Impelled by curiosity more than anything else, StarDrifter made another pass over the steps – and almost fell out of the sky in surprise.

Faraday stood there waving at him.

She climbed to the top and StarDrifter alighted before her, sweeping her into a great hug.

“StarDrifter!” Faraday laughed breathlessly, and pulled herself out of his grasp. “Whatever is it?”

She sobered as she saw the expression on StarDrifter’s face. “What’s wrong?”

He took a great, sobbing breath. “I’ve lost my granddaughter.”

They shared tales in StarDrifter’s quarters, Faraday sitting close to the Enchanter, holding his hand, comforting him.

“Is she lost or is she gone?” she asked eventually.

StarDrifter told her of Niah’s dream. “I have to believe she is still there, Faraday.”

Faraday smiled and patted StarDrifter’s hand. “Well, if Zenith is lost we shall just have to find her again.”

The Maze SpikeFeather moored his boat to the dusty grey rock and studied the city before him. WingRidge had drawn a plan of the waterways, directing him to this cavern.

“Find a way down,” WingRidge had said, and then remained obstinately silent.

What is it about the Icarü race, SpikeFeather thought irritably, that so predisposes us to mysteries? No doubt WingRidge thought there was value in making SpikeFeather toil in finding his way to this forgotten Maze, but SpikeFeather thought WingRidge could just as easily have told him directly.

He stood in one of the largest caverns in the waterways. It soared high above his head, so high SpikeFeather could not see its roof in this dimness, and extended so far back that SpikeFeather was sure he could fly for an entire day and not reach its limits. Most of the cavern was taken up with an ancient city so old that the stone of walls and pavement had bleached into a colourless grey. Cracks webbed their way through wall and road alike, and rock dust lay thick over every flat surface and clung in damp draperies to the walls.

The buildings were massive, fourteen, fifteen levels high, SpikeFeather guessed, and each level spacious enough to plant a field of grain in. Doors of petrified wood hung at odd angles, shutters lay in piles beneath windows and littered the roadways.

It was a place, not of death, but of nothingness. People (who?) had once lived, loved, laughed and died here. But there was nothing left. Nothing to remember them by save these memory-less buildings. The entire purpose of their existence had been lost forever.

SpikeFeather shook himself out of his maudlin thoughts. He reached into the boat and drew out a dry brand – Orr had insisted he always carry a torch with him in case he found the need to explore the caverns. Well, now SpikeFeather had the need. He lit the brand and, carrying it high, walked into the city.

Down, WingRidge had said, so SpikeFeather walked slowly through the streets, looking for an entrance to a cellar, or steps leading down… something. But no matter how hard he looked, and how many buildings he explored, he found no trapdoors or stairwells.

Down. But how? Only the need to find Orr and to explain his terror kept SpikeFeather looking even when tiredness began to slow his steps. He did not know how far he’d wandered through the city, or how much time had passed, when he came upon a curious symbol scratched into the pavement.

It was a diagram of a knot – a maze.

It was the same symbol that the Lake Guard wore on their tunics.

SpikeFeather squatted down and studied the symbol. It showed a stylised maze, a walled circular centre space with twists of corridors about it, eventually leading, once the dead ends had been negotiated, to an exit. SpikeFeather looked at the exit, then looked to where it pointed. There was an alleyway leading away from the main street.

SpikeFeather stood and walked down the alleyway. Some seventy paces down he found another symbol scratched into the pavement, and this time the exit from the maze pointed down a wide avenue.

SpikeFeather followed the sign until he found another symbol, and another, and then another.

He paused, and looked about. He was back in a street that he knew he’d been down hours ago – and yet there had not been a symbol here then. And look! The next indicated street was another that he’d previously explored. He realised he was retracing his steps, and the maze symbols also criss-crossed each other, so he was partly retracing the original pathway the symbols had told him to take.

SpikeFeather stood and thought. Lost? Misled? Or something else?

He remembered something Orr had taught him. The waterways formed patterns in the same way that sung music did. Were the symbols leading him in a complicated dance? Were the patterns he formed with his steps a kind of magical dance – an enchantment?

Yes, yes, that was it. The symbols were forcing him to form a pattern, and when that pattern was completed…