Sinner

by Sara Douglass

  Further up the tunnel the red doe also slunk against the wall as she heard PaleStar approach. She, too, watched in disbelief as the Enchanter walked straight by her.

  Once Palestar SnapWing left him, Orr stood before the Star Gate and stared. He had taken the watch upon the Gate entirely upon himself. There was something very, very wrong. Something beyond WolfStar’s story of the murdered, whispering children, but Orr did not know what it was. Unlike any Icarii or even human guard, Orr did not need rest or sustenance. So here he stood, as he had for weeks now, wrapped in his ruby cloak, staring into the depths of the Star Gate, listening to the poor, dead children whispering for vengeance.

  WolfStar? WolfStar? We’re coming… we’re coming to hunt you…

  And yet, something else, beyond that, and Orr wished desperately that he understood what it was.

  There was a movement, and then a scuffle of feet, and Orr whirled about. A dishevelled man had stepped into the chamber from beneath one of the archways. His eyes were wide, staring about the chamber.

  “Where is it?” the man asked.

  “Begone!” Orr said. “You have no right to be here!”

  “Is this not the Star Gate chamber?”

  “You have no right –”

  The man ignored him, sidling around Orr and striding to the very centre of the chamber.

  Then he halted, transfixed by what he at first thought was a small pool in the centre of the chamber.

  Not a pool at all, but the universe. Beyond the rim of this circular wall wheeled galaxies and solar systems. Comets and asteroids chased each other through clouds of gas and vivid interstellar wastes. Colours, every imaginable colour, swirled and shaded one into the next. It was frighteningly beautiful…and absolutely irresistible. The sack grew heavy and warm in his hands.

  Outraged at this invasion, Orr reached out –

  – and Drago spun around. “Don’t stop me now!” he snapped.

  “What are you doing?” Orr grabbed at Drago’s arm, missed, and seized the sack instead.

  He let go immediately and stepped back, appalled, his eyes round and staring at the sack. “What are you doing with the Rainbow Sceptre?”

  In desperation, thinking the Ferryman was going to lunge at him again, Drago drew the Sceptre out of the sack and waved it at Orr. “Stay back!”

  He was torn between watching Orr, and looking back into the Star Gate. He felt that it called to him…Come to me! Come! Dance with me! Be my lover!… and he was overwhelmed by an all-consuming need to step through.

  Drago looked back at the Gate.

  The instant he did so, Orr darted forward and grabbed the Sceptre.

  Something happened once Orr felt his hands touch the smooth wood of the rod.

  Visions flooded his head.

  A labyrinth. Darkness. He was trapped. No way out.

  Hunting, hunters, questors.

  Questors through the universe, hunting…hunting…

  And something in the Maze. Something that watched for him. Something malevolent. Something that writhed and twisted through the Maze, coming for him!

  Orr screamed and sank to his knees, although his hands remained tight about the rod of the Sceptre. Drago tried desperately to pull it from his grasp, but the Ferryman’s hands were unnaturally locked about the Sceptre.

  Qeteb.

  The word, or name, Orr did not know or care which, filled his mind. It so intensified his terror that he flung back his head and screamed, Qeteb!

  But Orr screamed with his power only, not his voice, and Drago did not hear him.

  Although someone else did. Far above, Orr’s apprentice, SpikeFeather, paused in his stroll about the roof of Sigholt and whispered, “Qeteb!”

  Grail! the Sceptre screamed at Orr, and this Orr also screamed in his mind.

  Grail King!

  And SpikeFeather repeated the words.

  The red doe, crouched behind one of the pillars of the chamber, shuddered as a presence seeped through her.

  And yet something more reached out to her, reached out via the Sceptre although it emanated from somewhere else. Reached out and touched her. Spoke softly to her.

  She shuddered again, and felt power seep through her.

  Drago and Orr rocked back and forth, each struggling for control of the Sceptre, back and forth, and both the Sceptre and Orr continued to scream.

  Beware the Grail King in the Maze!

  “The Maze! The Maze!” Orr whispered. He let go the Sceptre in horror.

  Attend the Maze!

  Drago heard nothing. No words whispered through his mind. All Drago knew was that Orr had finally released his grip on the Sceptre. He spun it about and the cloth that had protected the head, which had been loosened in the struggle, flew off, and rainbow light flooded the chamber.

  It pulsed about, searching, humming with intense power and, as it hit an archway on the far side of the chamber, it enveloped the small red doe.

  The doe started, round-eyed but not scared, and fell to the ground. Her legs kicked, her entire body convulsed, and then she exploded. Blood, tissue, and bone fragments erupted about the chamber, but neither of the two combatants noticed, because Drago, in trying to correct his balance and stop Orr from seizing the Sceptre again, unintentionally brought the Sceptre down on Orr’s head with a sharp crack.

  The Ferryman fell to the floor, his wounded head smacking against the marble so hard it cracked open yet further, smearing blood and brain tissue across the floor.

  Atop Sigholt, SpikeFeather started, and wondered what had happened that his contact with Orr was so abruptly broken.

  Drago managed to regain his balance without falling into the Star Gate. Terrified by the pulsing light washing about the chamber, not knowing what he had unleashed, he slipped the sack back over the Sceptre.

  The light died instantly, and Drago took a deep breath. He stared, appalled, at Orr’s body. As he watched, it suddenly glowed and then, stunningly, vanished, leaving only the ruby cloak puddled on the floor as any indication that Orr had ever existed.

  Drago swallowed, then looked across the chamber.

  There was blood everywhere. Fragments of fur, and bone.

  And, in the middle of all this gore, lay a naked woman. She lay sprawled on her belly, her raised head towards Drago, and her green eyes were wide, and full of some emotion that Drago could not discern.

  She stretched out a hand, then let it drop. “You are Axis’ son,” she said, and pushed herself into a sitting position. “He couldn’t save me. He couldn’t – or wouldn’t. And yet you…look what you have done.”

  Then her eyes dropped. “And look at all this blood,” she whispered. “Look, everywhere…that is my blood.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you!” Drago said, thinking she was blaming him.

  He grabbed Orr’s cloak and threw it about the woman’s shoulders. “There…you’ll be warm now. Please, tell no-one I was here –”

  Even as he said it, Drago knew she would tell. She had to. She was Faraday, and she was tied to his parents with bonds of love and suffering. She would tell.

  “– please,” he finished lamely.

  Faraday raised her eyes and stared at him, and then said something that made no sense.

  “I have to take WolfStar’s place,” she said. “And you must come with me.”

  “No! I cannot! I must –”

  “You must come with me,” she said more firmly, and clasped the cloak about her with one hand as if she were about to rise.

  “No!” Drago shouted. “I am going through the Star Gate. I must! I –”

  “Then if you do that,” Faraday said, apparently unperturbed, “you must come with me when you get back.”

  “If I come back,” Drago said, each word harsh with emotion, “it will only be to reclaim my heritage and to take my rightful place in Tencendor.”

  “Of course,” she said, and smiled with extraordinary loveliness. “I would not have it any other way.”

  Drago
opened his mouth to shout, but could find no response to her ambiguities.

  Damn her! Why did she speak in such riddles?

  He reached out a trembling hand, then snatched it back.

  Then, before he forgot himself completely, Drago tucked the sack firmly under his arm, averted his eyes from the strange expectation and – curse her! – confidence in Faraday’s face, and ran towards the Star Gate.

  He stepped onto the wall with one foot, then cast himself into the universe.

  31

  New Existences

  There was pain, terrible pain, and a sensation as if every last breath and drop of blood were being squeezed out of him. He felt his chest explode. Then…then there was a nothingness for what seemed like a very long time.

  Finally Drago – if he was still anything that resembled Drago – became aware that he was hanging suspended in a cold, dark space. No light, no warmth, no laughter. A vacuum of nothingness about him. Then he felt and saw stars, before he caught just the faintest snatches of what he thought must be the Star Dance.

  Drago assumed this was the Star Dance, because none but Enchanters ever heard the Star Dance.

  But whatever it was, the snatches Drago heard were so beautiful, so haunting, so powerful, that he felt cold tears slide down his cheeks.

  How strange that he could cry when he was dead. Drago knew he was dead. He must be. The pain had been so terrible, and even now there were trails of it still running through his body.

  Now, no doubt, he was on his journey to the AfterLife. At that thought Drago was overwhelmed with sadness. He did not want to die. His life had indeed been a waste.

  For an unknowable time Drago wept in sorrow at such waste, and then, when his grief ended, he cast his eyes (or his awareness, Drago was not truly sure if he could still “see”) about him. He drifted among stars, powerless. He recognised none of them. Even though Drago had paid attention to his childhood lessons on the patterns of the heavens, none of the patterns presented to him now made any sense.

  But, of course, now he was drifting among them, not viewing them from the safety of the ground, and that made his perspective different.

  It made everything different.

  Drago wept anew. He clutched the sack to him, cuddling it, trying to let it comfort him, and suddenly realised that the Rainbow Sceptre had gone. Destroyed, probably, in his leap through the Star Gate. Or lost to drift about the heavens, waiting for some other hand to pick it up.

  What a waste his life was.

  But just as Drago thought this, the stars reformed, whirling through the sky, twisted and rewoven by some powerful hand or force that Drago could not understand. He was caught up in a maelstrom, whirled about until the pain returned.

  Who are you? Who are you?

  Whispers, all around him. He had been consumed by a black cloud. It choked him, prodded him, invaded his mind, demanded that he answer.

  Who are you? From where have you come?

  “Drago,” he whispered. “And I have come from Tencendor –”

  Tencendor!

  Triumph erupted about him, and in that instant Drago realised that he had succeeded. He had found those who would help him, and all his sadness dissipated in a heartbeat.

  “I am alive!” he screamed through the universe, and that cry was taken up two hundred times about him.

  Alive!

  And then a voice, a different voice. Calm, gentle, benevolent. “Would you like to join the quest?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Drago cried. “Yes!”

  Faraday sat on the floor of the Star Chamber, staring at the spot where Drago had thrown himself into the Gate, until she realised she was shivering with cold. She struggled to her feet, wrapping the Ferryman’s cloak tight about her, and remembered the vision that had consumed her when she’d been struck by the light of the Rainbow Sceptre.

  She stood in a strange room, so strange Faraday felt disorientated and unsure. The walls, ceiling, benches and even parts of the floor were covered with metal plates, and these plates were studded with knobs and bright, jewel-like lights. Before her were the high backs of several chairs, facing enormous windows that…that looked out upon the universe.

  One of the chairs before her swivelled, revealing a man in its depths. He was silver-haired, and his face was lined with care, but there was such youthful humour in his brown eyes that Faraday did not fear him. He wore a uniform made of a leathery black material, gold braid hung at his shoulders and encircled the cuffs of his sleeves, and Faraday saw a black peaked cap, also with gold braid about its brim, sitting on the bench behind him.

  He stood, and held out both hands.

  Without hesitation Faraday walked forward and took them.

  “You are Faraday,” the man said, his voice warm and lively, “and I have watched you for many years.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Like you, I am a survivor,” he said, and smiled. “But you may called me Noah. My friends…” his voice faltered, and his eyes glanced about the room, “…my friends once called me that, thinking to make me laugh. But it is an appropriate enough name, and I have made it my own.”

  “Where are we?”

  He sighed, and released her hands. “I no longer know quite what to call this old girl,” he said, and patted a wall almost affectionately. “She is a little different to what I once knew. This is…this is one of the Repositories.”

  “Ah! I know! The Repositories lie in the depths of the Sacred Lakes.” And then Faraday frowned. “But the power of the Repositories was what killed the Sentinels. They came down here, and were so corrupted their skin blistered, and their hair fell out, and –”

  “They visited the heart of the Repositories,” Noah said hastily, “where lies the corrupting power you mention. The Repositories are larger than you can imagine…and mostly not dangerous.”

  Mostly, Faraday thought a little cynically. “Why am I here?”

  “Because I want to ask something of you.”

  She did not speak, merely raised an eyebrow.

  “I know that others have asked much of you, Faraday, and that you have endured pain and loss for your troubles on their behalf. Faraday, I dare to ask you again to commit yourself to Tencendor, and for your troubles I can promise you one of two outcomes. Either complete and lasting happiness and peace, or…”

  “Or?”

  “Or annihilation.”

  Faraday startled him by pealing with laughter. “Then I win both ways, do I not?”

  Noah smiled gently. “I guess that you do, Faraday. I guess that you do.”

  “What must I do, Noah? Tell me and I will consider your request.”

  “Four things.”

  “Four? You ask a great deal, sir.”

  “You will not find them onerous, my dear.”

  “Then speak them, and I will make up my mind.”

  “First, be Drago’s friend.”

  Faraday’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Drago? But he…”

  “He is not what most believe, Faraday.” And then Noah leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

  “Him?” Faraday stuttered. “I find that difficult to believe –”

  “No, you do not.” Noah laid a warm hand over her heart. “In here, you do believe it.”

  Faraday stared at him, then nodded. “I will be Drago’s friend. That will not be an onerous task. What else?”

  “Second, I want you to be Drago’s trust.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My meaning will become clearer in time. Meanwhile, I ask only that you trust in me when I say that.”

  Faraday thought about it, then again nodded her head. “Very well, I will be his trust. What is third?”

  “Thirdly, I wish that you bring Drago to me. As soon as you can, although that may not be for many long months yet.”

  “How do I reach you?”

  “Go to the Silent Woman Keep. And trust.”

  Faraday grinned, but agreed. “And fourth?”

/>   “Fourth, I want you to find that which is lost.”

  “I do not know what you –”

  “Faraday,” Noah said gently, “as we speak you are being transformed. It is the power of the Rainbow Sceptre that transforms you, and the Sceptre uses as its power the combined intelligence of the Repositories. No, let me finish. The transformation will enrich you. It will give you the power to find that which is lost.”

  “And what must I find?”

  Noah shrugged. “Many things. Use the power as you see fit. But eventually, once Drago comes back, I will need you to find something that I mislaid. Something that Drago will need – my Katie’s Enchanted Song Book.”

  “Katie?”

  Immense sadness came over Noah’s face. “She was once my daughter, but that was long ago, and she and hers have turned to dust. Do this for me, please.”

  Faraday regarded him carefully. “You do not ask difficult things of me, Noah. I accept.”

  He leaned forward and briefly hugged her. “Faraday, I thank you! Once I meant to ask WolfStar these things, but he has misunderstood so many things and now I no longer trust him. I will hand Drago over to you instead. Oh Faraday, I do thank you!”

  And she knew no more of Noah or of the strange room in the Repository.

  So here she stood in the Star Gate chamber, committed again to someone else’s quest, but this one Faraday could accept. At the end of it lay peace, whether the peace of happiness or the peace of death. Those were terms she could live with.

  But she could do nothing for either Noah or Drago at the moment. Drago had gone through the Star Gate, and until he came back, her life was her own.

  Faraday stilled at that thought. What was she to do with herself?

  She did not particularly want to go back to the forests. She had not enjoyed treading the paths of Minstrelsea as a doe. The Mother had promised her peace in that form and, true, for a while she had found it. But she had also been trapped. She could not reach out to the ones she loved.