A Fading Sun (Sunpath, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 2: Sunpath

Leigh, Stephen

 
9780756411213: A Fading Sun (Sunpath, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0756411211 ISBN 13: 9780756411213
Verlag: Astra Publishing House, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

In this new paranormal fantasy series, a powerful woman who can see the dead must choose whether to forge a new path for herself and her family…. 

“The problem with ghosts is that they don’t quite realize that they’re dead.”
 
Voada Paorach can see the dead. It is a family trait, but one that has had to remain hidden since the Mundoan Empire conquered her people’s land three generations ago. But this ghost isn’t the same as the others she has glimpsed, the lost souls she has helped to find their way to the land beyond life.  This ghost demands that Voada follow a new path, one that will mean leaving behind everything and everyone she has known and loved.
 
Voada will come to understand the power that her people possess, but she will also learn the steep price that must be paid for such a gift.

Fast-moving and intense, A Fading Sun explores grief, sacrifice, ambition, and the forging of personality in the crucible of war.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Leigh is a Cincinnati-based, award-winning author with nineteen science fiction novels and over forty short stories published. He has been a frequent contributor to the Hugo-nominated shared world series Wild Cards, edited by George R. R. Martin. He teaches creative writing at Northern Kentucky University. Stephen Leigh has written Immortal Muse, The Crow of Connemara, and the fantasy trilogy Assassin's Dawn. He can be found at farrelworlds.com.

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1
The Wraith in the Shadows
 
The problem with ghosts is that they don’t quite realize they’re dead.
 
Voada entered the Temple of Pashtuk, glaring at the muddy tracks of feet on the stone flags, and it was then that she realized she wasn’t alone. The ceramic bust of Emperor Pashtuk was illu­minated by the sun slanting down from the open roof above the altar in the middle of the room. The pair of east-facing open win­dows also allowed in shafts of dust-speckled light, creating heavy shadows around the remainder of the circular room.
 
Once, the temple had been dedicated not to Emperor Pashtuk but to Elia.
 
Voada noticed the ghost—that her own people, the Cateni, would call a taibhse—as a shimmering, nearly transparent pres­ence in the shadows; when it passed through sunlight, the appari­tion vanished entirely. It paced the room’s perimeter, as if it could not bear to keep still. But this one...it was entirely unlike any taibhse Voada had ever seen before. Voada first thought the wraith a woman, though the face shifted and changed in the light and sometimes seemed male. All the ghosts she’d seen before had looked like the people whose bodies they’d inhabited before death. But this one...It seemed to be not one soul but many.
 
And before, Voada had always been able to hear the taibhse’s voice as well, but not with this one. Its eyes were always on Voada, and its mouth moved as if it were trying to speak to her. Voada almost imagined that she could hear sibilant words, but that might have been the wind that tossed the leaves outside the tem­ple. Voada set down the heavy wooden bucket of water and rags with a grateful sigh as water sloshed over the leather of her boots. She rubbed at her back to ease the kink there, the ache that had been present ever since the birth of her second child, her son, a decade ago now.
 
When the ghost passed near her, Voada reached out to it and felt a winter cold as her hand passed through its body. The ghost stared at her, its features dim and difficult to read. “Who are you?” Voada asked the ghost. “I’ve helped others trapped like you be­fore. How can I help you?”
 
The creature only gave a doleful shake of its head and contin­ued pacing the room.
 
The temple had been built by Cateni two centuries ago for Elia, the goddess whose visage was the sun. Voada’s great-grandparents and their family had served Elia as draoi: those who could wield the magic of Elia and the sun-paths that coalesced here in the building, if the old tales could be believed. They’d also been men­ach, the clerics of Elia. The sun-paths were still marked on the floor: pale tiles set against the darker marble in two diagonal lines that crossed where the altar sat and ended at the four great win­dows that framed the solstice suns at dawn and sunset.
 
But those days were dust and legend since the arrival of the Mundoa, and the statue of Elia that had once graced the altar had been hidden by Voada’s grandparents because they knew that the Mundoa would simply smash the figure and melt down its golden crown. Voada knew where Elia’s statue was buried; her grandpar­ents had told her mother, and she had told Voada.
 
To Voada, this was still as much Elia’s temple as Pashtuk’s, de­spite Emperor Pashtuk’s dour and serious image replacing that of Elia. Voada had to admit that the Mundoan sculptors were supe­rior to those of the Cateni. One could almost imagine Pashtuk’s eyes blinking or his mouth opening, but for now he only stared blindly at Voada and the ghost.
 
“I can show you the sun-path,” Voada said to the taibhse, pitch­ing her voice so that it echoed in the round chamber, shimmering as the words rebounded from the curve of the roof. “You can still find it. I’ve shown others.”
 
The ghost seemed to wail silently at that, its mouth open in an “O” that mimicked the central opening in the temple’s roof, and Voada saw its head shake violently. It pointed emphatically north­ward, not to the solstice windows or the sun-paths that led to the plane of the Cateni gods when this had been Elia’s place of worship.
 
The absent gods, now. The forgotten gods, for most. The forbidden gods.
 
“I don’t know what you want if you won’t follow the sun-path,” Voada said. “I wish I could talk to you. I wish you could hear me. Perhaps my seanmhair Ailis could have done that. She knew the spells...”
 
In answer, the ghost pointed northward again, imperiously, then continued its pacing. Voada watched it, then sighed. She knelt down alongside the bucket of water and wrung out one of the rags. She began scrubbing the stone flags around the altar, marveling at the hollows worn into the golden-brown stones by generations of feet. The ghost watched her, still restless.
 
When Voada had finished her task a few candle-stripes later, she put the rags back in the twice-refilled bucket and stood, groaning and rubbing at her knees. The ghost had stopped and was standing directly in front of her. Voada could see the temple doors through its body, as if she were peering through a thin morning fog. The features hovering in front of her remained in­distinct and genderless. “I’m leaving now,” she told it. “I’m sorry. I wish you would let me help you.”
 
Once more, the ghost lifted a pale arm and pointed northward. Voada hefted the bucket; as she did so, she saw movement at the door, blurred by the ghost. “Voada?” a deep voice called.
 
“Meir,” she answered. “Sorry. I was just getting ready to leave.” She took a step toward her husband, shivering as she passed near the ghost’s frigid presence. Older than she was by decades, Meir’s hair was now largely silver-white with his scalp gleaming through the thin strands at the top and back of his head. His breathing after climbing the hill to the temple was harsh and loud, as it was too often lately whenever he exerted himself. Even a short walk seemed to exhaust him now.
 
Meir wore Mundoan clothing: loose pantaloons and a vest dyed the rich blue of an administrator, as befitted his role as the Hand of Pencraig, with a simple white linen tunic underneath. Voada noticed that the servants hadn’t properly polished his boots that morning—there were still traces of mud from yesterday’s rain. Voada was wearing clothing that her grandparents would have found familiar, in the style of the Cateni who were both her and Meir’s people—a chiton (which the Mundoa scoffingly called a “bog dress”) and a woolen wrap in brown-and-ivory plaid, em­broidered with elegant, brightly colored knot work around the neck and hem, belted and pinned around her body. Her long, reddish-brown hair was wound into intricate braids, the end of each held by a small gilded ball.
 
The thought of how they looked together, so vastly different, amused Voada suddenly. She gave Meir a smile, then peered back into the room toward the ghost.
 
“Thank you for cleaning the temple for tomorrow,” Meir said. He was still breathing heavily, leaning over and bracing himself against the railing around the altar. In the heavily shadowed tem­ple, his blue eyes seemed more gray to Voada. “I’ll send Orla up to the Voice’s estate. That way, Voice-wife Dilara will know she can have her slaves bring in...

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Verlag
Astra Publishing House
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0756411211
ISBN 13 
9780756411213
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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