Sinner by Sara Douglass. Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

“Is that for you to know, WolfStar?”

“Tell me!” WolfStar stepped forward.

Caelum stiffened, but held his ground. “The Rainbow Sceptre is none of your -”

“Confound your objections, boy! I oversaw its birth!”

“But the Sceptre was my father’s, and through him, mine, and I would know why it is you want to see it.”

WolfStar breathed deeply, tendons standing out on his neck. “Yes, you are correct – the Rainbow Sceptre is yours by right and, by the Stars! I hope you will have the chance to use it!”

Caelum frowned, but WolfStar went on.

“I want to see it, Caelum StarSon, because I have every reason to believe it is no longer here.”

“What?”

“I think Drago has stolen it. I am sure of it.”

“No,” Caelum whispered. “No. It cannot be!”

Zared’s treachery had pushed Drago from Caelum’s mind over the past few days. He’d had patrols out looking for his brother, and had sent word throughout Tencendor for everyone to be on the watch for him, but no-one had heard or seen anything.

Now his nightmare came rushing back, and for an instant Caelum felt himself impaled at the end of DragonStar’s sword. Had he seized the Rainbow Sceptre?

Was that the cry of the hunt he could hear?

How would Drago manage to seize the Sceptre?

Was that the thunder of the black horseman in the distance?

If Drago had it, what could he do with it?

“Caelum!” WolfStar said, and seized Caelum by the elbow, shaking him. “Where is it hidden?”

Caelum struggled with, and then mastered, his unreasoning fear. “Come with me,” he said, and led WolfStar into the corridor. They moved down until they reached a smaller hallway branching off to the left. It had several doors either side, but Caelum ignored them.

He walked to the end of the hall, and stopped at a wall of grey stone.

“Where?” WolfStar said.

Caelum did not answer, but instead hummed a snatch of music. He waited, frowning, then hummed it again.

“What -?” he began, but before he could say any more the wall shimmered, then dissolved, revealing a small chamber.

WolfStar glanced sharply at Caelum, but for the moment he walked silently into the chamber. It was bare, save for red-plastered walls and a small window high in one wall. The oakwood floor revealed no trapdoors.

“Where?” he repeated.

Again Caelum did not answer, but again hummed a melody. This time he did not have to repeat it.

A shelf appeared on the back wall, and on that shelf was a beautifully worked silver casket.

“My father had this made to house the Sceptre,” Caelum said. “He meant to study it, explore it, but it always reminded him so much of Faraday’s death he never did.”

He paused, the casket in his arms, and looked at WolfStar. “Drago could never have stolen the Sceptre,” he said. “The enchantments that hide this casket are powerful indeed.”

Enough for you to falter over, thought WolfStar. Or is there something else wrong, Caelum? Why stumble so badly?

“Open it,” he said.

“No-one knew of these enchantments save my father and myself,” Caelum said, delaying the inevitable. “No-one knew where the Sceptre -”

“Open it!”

Caelum’s eyes dropped. He took a deep breath, then the fingers of his right hand pressed into a secret catch on the side of the casket.

The lid sprung open.

Revealing nothing but the scarlet, silk-lined interior.

The Sceptre was gone.-

“Stars!” Caelum cried, and for an instant he could almost feel the tip of the sword slicing through his chest, feel the taste of Drago’s bloody malevolence in his mouth.

“WolfStar… WolfStar, there is no way that Drago could have stolen this! No way! He can’t —”

“Nevertheless, the fact is he has!”

WolfStar stood thinking, shifting a little from foot to foot, then faced Caelum with such a look of dread that Caelum’s stomach clenched.

“My boy,” WolfStar said very softly. “Over the past weeks, has your power remained untainted? At full strength? You needed to try that enchantment twice to enter this chamber…”

“There has been a minor disturbance. But I thought it only because I have been so concerned with my cares that I-”

“By all the stars in heaven,” WolfStar whispered, his face blanching, “it has begun!”

And then he vanished.

Caelum stood, alternatively looking helplessly at the spot where WolfStar had vanished and at the empty cache.

What did WolfStar mean, “it has begun”? And what should he do?

For a very long time Caelum stood there, the empty casket in his arms, not knowing what to think or do next.

How had Drago managed to get in?

What could he do with the Sceptre?

“Gods,” Caelum eventually whispered, his face ashen. “It has begun again. Drago has set his sights on my murder, it seems. Where are you, Drago? What do you plan?”

Did he ever dare sleep again?

WolfStar strode through the archways surrounding the Star Gate chamber, startling the two Enchanters standing watch there into anxious exclamation.

“Oh, be quiet!” WolfStar snapped, “I am not here to eat you!”

He walked to the Star Gate and stood silently, wrapping his golden wings about him, cocooning himself against the terror he half expected to be rushing towards it from the other side.

But there was nothing.

Nothing save the whispers of the children.

We’re coming… we’re coming, WolfStar!

“They’re closer,” one of the Enchanters dared to say. Both of them had backed a safe distance away.

WolfStar shot her a furious look, but she was right. They were closer. Significantly closer.

But still far away, WolfStar tried to reassure himself. Besides, tt was not the children that so worried him.

Was there a hint of anything else approaching the Star Gate?

WolfStar bent his entire power and concentration to the task. Listening, feeling, probing.

But even WolfStar’s power, extensive as it was, was not enough to feel anything else.

Was it because there was nothing else?

Or was it because… they… were using the approach of the children to mask their own approach?

WolfStar shuddered. He didn’t know whether the slight diminution in his own power – and it was only slight – had any real connection with those who waited beyond the Star Gate. WolfStar didn’t even know if Drago had gone through the Star Gate. Had he murdered Orr, then fled back down one of the passageways in terror? Was he lurking in the waterways somewhere? Where was the Rainbow Sceptre?

The red doe. Faraday. She had been here. She would know.

WolfStar tried to concentrate, tried to think it through. If – and only if – Drago had gone through, then would he have survived? Unlikely. But even if he had snapped out of existence, that left the Rainbow Sceptre floating lost amid the stars… lost for any who cared to pick it up and make use of it.

“We need that Sceptre,” WolfStar murmured. “Caelum – Tencendor! – has no chance without it. None!”

Confound that piece of rotting carrion! What had happened? And what if… they… were approaching behind the children?

What should he do?

He needed far more power to scry them out than he commanded. “The power of the Circle,” he said to the puzzled Enchanters.

And he needed to know if Drago had gone through the Star Gate, or if the Rainbow Sceptre was still in Tencendor.

“Faraday,” WolfStar said, and vanished yet again.

The two Enchanters looked at each other, shaken beyond measure at the renegade Enchanter’s visit, and wondered what they should do.

ForestFlight’s Betrayal Zared narrowed his eyes against the late afternoon sun and stared into the sky. A stiff northerly breeze, redolent with frost, ruffled his black hair. He shivered and pulled his cloak closer. An Icarü approached from the north-west, his wings shuddering with the effort of coping with the wind.

“He is not armed,” Herme murmured by Zared’s side. They stood atop Kastaleon’s walls, awaiting Caelum’s reaction. Indecision? Action? Retreat? They knew not what, and the unknowing was driving all to short tempers.

“Even / could deal with a single armed Icarü,” Zared said.

“Of course,” Herme soothed. “I did not mean -”

“I know you did not,” Zared said, dropping his eyes from the Icarü momentarily. “I apologise for my tone, Herme.”

Herme nodded, accepting the apology. They had heard nothing for… what? It was over two weeks since they’d taken this isolated pile of stones. In that time Caelum could have done anything.

The Icarü circled lower and one of the guards called out a challenge.

The Icarü answered, his words lost in the wind for Zared and Herme, but the guard waved the Icarü towards where they stood.

“It’s one of the Lake Guard,” Zared said, every muscle in his body tensing as the Icarü dropped down towards him.

“Caelum’s answer,” Herme said, laying a hand on the hilt of his sword, even though the birdman was unarmed. “They wouldn’t fly about Tencendor for anyone else.”