Sara Douglass - Sinner

SARA DOUGLASS

Sinner

Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

Cover

Title Page SARA DOUGLASS Sinner Book One of The Wayfarer Redemption

Fire-Night Fire-Night The four craft crashed through the barriers between the outer universe and the planet, exploding in raging flames, creating the portal that later races would call the Star Gate. The creatures inside fought for control of the craft, fought even knowing it was a lost cause – the craft had ceased to listen to them hundreds of years previously. But even when death was only moments away, their hands clung to navigation mechanisms, hoping to somehow save their cargo … and maybe even save the world to which they plummeted from their cargo. It was useless. Most of them were drifting ashes by the time their flaming craft smashed deep into the surface of the planet. Most of them. One, like the four craft, survived. Within days the craft had shifted comfortably into the pits created by their violent arrival, accepting the waters that closed over their surface. For three thousand years they dreamed. Then they woke and began to grow, spreading their tentacles deep beneath the land, reaching out, each to the other. Their metalled surfaces and walkways and panels and compartments hummed with the music they had learned in the millennia they’d travelled the universe. But this music the craft kept to themselves, not letting it mix with the sound of the Star Dance that filtered through the Star Gate. The Survivor occasionally woke from his own deep sleep, wandering the corridors of the craft and those hallways that extended between each craft, looking, looking, looking, but never finding. “Katie!” he would cry, “Katie! I don’t know where it is!” His searching always left him physically and emotionally exhausted, and within days of waking he would wander disconsolately back to his chamber, and there lie down to sleep yet again. His dreams were disturbed, wondering why he’d survived, and yet not his comrades. Wondering what the craft needed him to do. Wondering whether the cargo was safe. Wondering whether it would ever be claimed. Wondering. Aeons passed.

Prologue

1 West and North

2 Master Goldman’s Soiree

3 StarSon Caelum

4 Beggars on the Floor, Travellers O’er the Bridge

5 Speaking Treason

6 The SunSoars at Home

7 Disturbing Arrivals

8 Maze Gate

9 WolfStar’s Explanation

10 Pastry Magics

11 Niah’s Legacy

12 Council of the Five Families

13 The Throne of Achar

14 A Moot Point

15 Murder!

16 SunSoar Justice

17 The Lake Guard on Duty

18 Hunting Drago

19 The Fugitive

20 Icebear Coast Camp

21 Travelling Home

22 Impatient Love

23 Minstrelsea

24 StarDrifter

25 DragonStar

26 The Sack (1)

27 Niah Triumphant

28 River Crossing

29 The Ancient Barrows

30 The Rainbow Sceptre

31 New Existences

32 The Questors

33 StarLaughter

34 Of What Is Lost

35 SpikeFeather’s Search

36 Kastaleon

37 The Leap

38 Zenith Lost

39 The Maze

40 The Maze Gate’s Message

41 A Town Gained, a Sceptre Lost

42 ForestFlight’s Betrayal

43 Faraday’s Lie

44 … And Sixty-Nine Fat Pigs

45 The Enemy

46 The TimeKeepers

47 Niah’s Grove

48 Carlon’s Welcome

49 Caelum Amid the Ruins

50 The Shadow-Lands

51 The King of Achar

52 Voices in the Night

53 An Army for the Asking

54 Journeying through the Night

55 The Blighted Beacon

56 Discussing Salvation

57 While WolfStar Lay Sleeping

58 As Clear as a Temple Bell

59 Zenith

60 Old Friends

61 An Army of Norsmen

62 The Warding of the Star Gate

63 Leagh’s Loyalties Divided

64 A Dagger from Behind

65 A Brother to Die For

66 In Caelum’s Camp

67 Caelum’s Judgment

68 Towards the Star Gate

69 The Fading of the Dance

70 Leap to the Edge

71 The Sack (2)

Epilogue: The Wasteland

Glossary

About the Author

By Sara Douglass

Copyright

About the Publisher

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree

Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,

If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?

Why should intent or reason, born in me,

Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?

John Donne, Holy Sonnet no. V

The four craft crashed through the barriers between the outer universe and the planet, exploding in raging flames, creating the portal that later races would call the Star Gate.

The creatures inside fought for control of the craft, fought even knowing it was a lost cause – the craft had ceased to listen to them hundreds of years previously. But even when death was only moments away, their hands clung to navigation mechanisms, hoping to somehow save their cargo … and maybe even save the world to which they plummeted from their cargo.

It was useless. Most of them were drifting ashes by the time their flaming craft smashed deep into the surface of the planet.

Most of them. One, like the four craft, survived.

Within days the craft had shifted comfortably into the pits created by their violent arrival, accepting the waters that closed over their surface. For three thousand years they dreamed. Then they woke and began to grow, spreading their tentacles deep beneath the land, reaching out, each to the other. Their metalled surfaces and walkways and panels and compartments hummed with the music they had learned in the millennia they’d travelled the universe. But this music the craft kept to themselves, not letting it mix with the sound of the Star Dance that filtered through the Star Gate.

The Survivor occasionally woke from his own deep sleep, wandering the corridors of the craft and those hallways that extended between each craft, looking, looking, looking, but never finding.

“Katie!” he would cry, “Katie! I don’t know where it is!”

His searching always left him physically and emotionally exhausted, and within days of waking he would wander disconsolately back to his chamber, and there lie down to sleep yet again.

His dreams were disturbed, wondering why he’d survived, and yet not his comrades.

Wondering what the craft needed him to do.

Wondering whether the cargo was safe.

Wondering whether it would ever be claimed.

Wondering.

Aeons passed.

Enchanter-Talon WolfStar SunSoar wrapped his wings tighter about his body and slipped deeper into the madness that consumed him. He stood at the very lip of the Star Gate itself, his body swaying gently to the sounds of the Star Dance that pounded through the Gate.

Come to me, come to me, join me, dance with me! Come!

Oh! How WolfStar wanted to! How he wanted to fling himself through the Gate, discover the mysteries and adventures of the universe, immerse himself completely in the loveliness of the Star Dance.

Yet WolfStar also wanted the pleasures of this life. The power he wielded as Talon over all Tencendor, the awe of the masses of Icarii, Avar and Acharite, and the firmness of StarLaughter’s body in his bed at night. He was not yet ready to give all that up. He had come young to the Talon throne, and wanted to enjoy it for as long as he could. But how the Star Gate tempted him …