by Linda McNabb
He glanced at Guyan, and saw her frown slightly in confusion. The storm dragons had returned to Guyan’s world a year ago. They had been her friends and companions for her whole life – could some of them have returned? Zaine could see the spark of hope in her eyes as she looked around for the dragons.
Then Zaine realised that the singing noise came from a group of weavers off to the side of the dais. They fell silent as Guyan’s searching gaze reached them; the disappointment in her eyes was crushing. She turned and fled the room with tears in her eyes.
Zaine and Tercel followed her, no longer interested in what was going on in the meeting. It didn’t look like they weren’t going to find a way to fix time in there. They found Guyan sitting on the front steps of the castle, looking out across her valley. She had wiped away the tears, but the memories of long-past events muddied her eyes as she looked up.
“We have to find the starlink,” she said simply. “I want to go home.”
Zaine didn’t know how to answer. She had said herself that the storm dragons had searched for a hundred years. How was he supposed to find it if the dragons couldn’t? Instead, he found himself saying. “Don’t worry. We’ll find it.”
A dozen or more weavers streamed outside. The weavers’ meeting appeared to be over. Some got into their carriages and drove away. Others stormed off towards the gardens, talking loudly about the shocking events of the meeting. Almost everyone seemed dissatisfied with the outcome, but Zaine barely even noticed them. He was staring at the horizon, filtering the sun’s light through gaps in his fingers. Surely the sun should have risen higher by now?
“One of the first things I am going to do as king is to take over this castle,” a voice said from behind Zaine. He turned to see Theodane leaning against the doorway, holding a silver goblet of wine. The golden crown was perched lopsidedly on his head, and he was grinning like a cat that had got the cream.
“You can’t take Maata’s home,” Zaine said, stepping forward to push past the gloating man. He wanted to find Maata and see how she was.
“I … can … do … anything … I … want,” Theodane said slowly. “Just … you … watch … me …”
Zaine watched with a growing sense of unease as the white-robed royal leaned over to block the doorway. Theodane seemed to be moving in slow motion, and his speech sounded odd, low and hard to understand. As Zaine went to duck under Theodane’s arm, it seemed to take much longer than it should.
“Za … ain … ne.”
He turned, feeling like he was twisting in treacle. His limbs were heavy and it seemed harder to suck in each breath. Finally, he saw Guyan’s face. She was pointing to the runes on her skin and her mouth was open as if she were shouting – but there was no sound.
Time! Zaine suddenly realised what she was trying to tell him; time was slowing down much more than before! He started to speak the runes to speed up time. His brain formed them quickly, but it took much longer to speak them. By the time he had spoken the six runes to speed up time, he was exhausted. He fell against the stone wall with a thud as time leapt back to its normal pace, leaving him with a graze on his cheek.
“What happened?” the newly self-appointed king asked. His face was as white as his tunic, and even his lips were pale.
“Time almost stopped,” Guyan answered simply. “Zaine is the only reason we all still draw breath.”
Theodane looked sceptical, but did not ask any further questions. His hands were shaking as he lifted his goblet to take a drink. Several drops of red wine spilled onto his white tunic, but he took no notice.
“We need to find the missing Circle of Dreams,” Maata added. “Time will stop again if we cannot find a way to reach Guyan’s world.”
Theodane looked at them with a hint of doubt and fear that Zaine had never seen in the prince before. He went to speak, looked lost for words, then took another long drink and turned to walk off down the hall.
“Is there any way we can fix the circle down in the valley?” Tercel asked, looking back out the door to the waterfall which tumbled down into the valley.
“The starlink that brought me to your world was simply a copy of the real one,” Guyan told Tercel. “It vanished shortly after the runes were damaged. This is all that is left.”
Guyan held out the small piece of polished glass to show Tercel. Tercel watched the images in the stone, then handed it back. “I’m glad your sister got home.”
“I hope time stays stable for a while.” Zaine’s voice was slurred – the runes for speeding up time were taking their toll even after reciting them only twice. He was barely able to keep his eyes open as he leaned against the wall. “I can’t keep this up much longer.”
“It will be okay for today,” Guyan told him, but that assurance was belied by the uncertainty in her eyes. “We should see how Maata is.”
“Let’s go to the inner courtyard,” Tercel suggested. “If Maata goes anywhere to think, it will be there.”
Zaine nodded. Blinking furiously to make himself wake up, he followed Tercel and Guyan into the castle. As they reached the inner courtyard, they saw that Maata was busy ripping out weeds and throwing them onto the stone cobbles. She looked angry, and Zaine couldn’t blame her. He sat down on the stone bench and leant against the tree trunk.
“I felt time almost stop,” Maata said, with a nervous look at them all. She began to pace around the circular courtyard, ripping out larger bushes with one pull when normally it would have needed a spade to remove them. “How can we fix it?”
“We don’t know,” Tercel answered when the others remained silent.
“There must be something …” Maata said, grabbing at a huge wall of vines and tugging on one of the vine ropes in her anger. A whole section of the vine came free from the wall and Maata fell backwards with a thud.
“Zaine! Guyan! Tercel!” Maata yelled.
Zaine woke from his slumber in an instant. Was the princess hurt? He jumped up from the stone bench and hurried over to her. She lay, half-sitting and pointing at the wall of the courtyard.
As Zaine’s focus was drawn up to the stone walls, he sucked in a sharp breath. Standing at the edge of the courtyard, partially covered by vines, was a tall stone. It was built into the high wall that surrounded most of the courtyard, and if he had not seen such a stone before he would have assumed it was simply decoration. Instead, he saw the runes that ran up one side of the stone. It was a dragon stone. They had found Guyan’s circle!
CHAPTER FIVE - THE MISSING LINK
It took almost an hour for them to rip down the masses of vines that covered the courtyard walls. They scraped dirt away to reveal runes that had been covered for hundreds of years. Soon, enough runes were uncovered to show a complete circle – exactly like the one that had been down in Guyan’s valley.
“So why couldn’t the storm dragons find this?” Tercel asked. He looked up to the sky where the courtyard would easily be seen from the air.
“It used to be covered in,” Zaine told him. “Perhaps they didn’t look inside buildings?”
“The castle must have been built around it many years before I arrived here,” Guyan guessed with a slight shrug, as if it didn’t really matter anymore. She was following the runes around the courtyard, and she stopped suddenly as she reached the main door into the courtyard. “Here. This is why the circle isn’t working.”
It didn’t take Zaine long to realise what Guyan meant. His eyes followed the familiar runes as they ran down the stones and along the ground. They stopped abruptly at the edge of the marble path that led to the tree.
“Have they been destroyed?” Maata asked.
“I don’t think so.” Tercel knelt down and pointed to the edge of the path. “It’s slightly higher here than the rest of the courtyard, as if it’s resting on something.”
Guyan ignored them all as they discussed the path. She looked quickly around the courtyard. Clearly she could not see what she was looking for and she stepped back into the castle. She emer
ged a few seconds later with a solid silver candelabra. She stood on the edge of the circle and swung the candelabra at the marble with a strength that did not seem to match her small stature. The blow only cracked the edge of the marble, and Guyan raised the silver candelabra to strike it again.
“If they had destroyed the runes, it would have set your world free from Zhan and time would have wandered freely,” Guyan said as she struck the marble a second time.
“Like it is now?” Tercel asked. “Maybe that is what has caused time to slow down?”
Zaine quickly fetched a candlestick, tossing the candle aside as he hurried back to the courtyard. He joined Guyan in her attack of the marble, and it was a dozen strokes later that the marble broke apart enough to lift it.
“Stay outside the circle of runes,” Guyan warned them. She pulled up a chunk of marble, and a small smile twitched at the edges of her mouth as a line of runes was uncovered. Relief softened her eyes and a tear slipped unchecked down her cheek.
“Are you sure it’s not damaged?” Maata asked, leaning closer to see the runes.
Guyan did not reply; her attention was on the circle of runes. She and Zaine were clearing all the marble from the runes. After they had swept some of the rubble from the circle, Guyan sat back on her heels, with her back by the door, and stared at the circle.
She turned to Zaine and pointed to a rune on her arm, indicating he should speak it.
It was the first rune Zaine had ever learnt and he said it loudly. Guyan’s joy seemed to be fading and a frown creased her forehead.
“It’s still broken,” she said in a voice close to tears.
“How can you tell?” Tercel asked.
“We should be able to see my world,” she replied. She walked around the circle a little way, then knelt down and brushed the runes clean. “Speaking the unsealing rune should have opened the gateway, even though it stays open for only a dozen heartbeats. If you drew the rune, the gateway should open and stay that way until it is closed with the same rune.”
She blew the rest of the runes clean. Zaine traced the matching rune slowly with one finger, speaking it at the same time. Then he looked into the circle, almost willing the vision of a field of long grass to appear – but the single tree remained.
“One of the runes must still be covered,” Zaine suggested as he began to walk along the edge of the circle, examining the runes.
“We need a broom to clear the rubble more,” Tercel said, heading for the door.
“I’ll show you where one is,” Maata offered, following him into the castle.
Zaine ran his hand along the string of runes – reciting them silently as he went. At first he could not see anything wrong, but as his hand slid up the base of one of the stone pillars he stopped. His hand had struck a rough patch where a chunk of stone was missing. He leaned in closer and saw that a rune was completely missing.
“It is where the lightning from the storm dragons struck,” Guyan said, making him jump. She was standing next to him, staring at the missing chunk of rock.
“They didn’t strike this one though,” Zaine said with a sinking feeling.
“Remember the one in the valley was just a copy of this one. When they struck that stone, it damaged this one as well,” Guyan explained. “Luckily it was not enough to destroy the link, just the copy.”
“When the dragons were trying to strike me down, I hid by the stone,” Zaine defended himself with a small gulp. Now that they had found the circle, it was his fault that it didn’t work.
“It can be fixed,” Guyan said, putting a hand into her pocket and taking out the polished pink glass that Zaine had given her. “Make sure you don’t step inside the circle.”
Zaine shuffled back so that he was as far back as he could go with his back pressed against the courtyard wall. His feet were half on the runes, but not over them.
Guyan stepped back as well. She looked briefly at the repeating image of her mother and little sister, and then pressed the glass onto the side of the stone.
Zaine heard a distinct click as the glass touched the stone and Guyan let go. The polished pink surface still shone, repeating the scene he had called up, but it was sealed to the stone once more. The rune was undamaged and completed the circle perfectly. The circle of runes glowed briefly.
Guyan was staring at the edge of the circle and so Zaine turned to face it. What he saw filled him with both relief and horror at the same time.
The tree was gone – and in its place was a vision of a land so familiar that he felt a chill run down his spine. Instead of the field of long grass he had expected to see, they were looking at a barren land filled with colourless light. Mountains rose next to deep canyons, and remnants of long dead forests lay scattered in deep shadows next to the mountains.
“It’s the same as the Circle of Dreams at Willow Castle,” Zaine said, his mouth suddenly dry. “I thought it was supposed to lead to your world.”
“It does.” Guyan was still smiling, and didn’t appear bothered by the grim sight. “Keep looking.”
Zaine stared, trying not to remember the last time he had stood before a circle with a scene such as this – when his mother had banished him to be cast into the circle where dreams became your worst enemy. Slowly the scene began to change, and for a brief second Zaine saw a field of grass before it faded back to the barren land.
“I don’t understand,” Zaine said, turning away from the view, unable to watch any longer.
“Time is still running too slowly,” Guyan explained. She was smiling broadly now, despite her homeland being visible for only such a short time. “What you see there is the link between the two lands. It is a sort of holding space. We call it a dreamlink, because it binds the two places together. It is a place where the mind can create anything, even a link to hold a land in place that is as far away as the stars.”
“Or a mountain too steep to climb.” Zaine remembered when he had followed Maata into the Circle of Dreams and helped her battle a huge mountain. Anything she feared had become a reality, and mountains had been her biggest fear.
“Exactly,” Guyan said, nodding. “When Aldren created the circle back at Willow Castle, he managed to get to that link, but no further. Usually it takes only a heartbeat to pass through this link and it is almost impossible to see, but with time slowing down it can be seen clearly.”
Zaine was about to ask if she was going to go back to her homeland straight away when voices from behind him made him turn.
“We’ve got a broom,” Maata said as she hurried through the door, followed a step behind by Tercel.
“Wait!” Guyan said, flinging out her arm to stop them, but they were already stepping into the courtyard and jumping over the mess of marble rubble.
Zaine barely had time to draw breath as he watched his two friends vanish into the Circle of Dreams. One second they were in the castle, and the next they were shadowy shapes tumbling to the ground far away in the barren, wild landscape.
Zaine stared at the swirling winds and clouds in the uninviting world that was only a step away. He couldn’t help the nervous sweat that beaded on his forehead at the thought of anyone going into the circle. It took months of preparation to get into a mind-set that allowed enough control of thoughts to allow you to survive in such a place. Instead, Maata and Tercel had had no warning at all.
“If they appear unannounced in Zhan, there will be trouble,” Guyan said, looking quickly at Zaine.
“If they get that far,” Zaine said flatly. As he watched, his friends stood up and looked around. He knew they would not be able to see him or Guyan any longer, except perhaps as vague shapes. In an instant he knew he was going in after them. He turned to meet Guyan’s gaze and saw that she knew what he was thinking.
“They will need both our help,” Guyan said, turning her hand over once again to show the black cross that stopped her using her runes. “Even this cannot stop me helping in the dreamlink.”
“We should tell someone whe
re we’ve gone,” Zaine said.
“There isn’t time. Just jam the door shut so nobody else wanders into the circle.”
The broom Maata had fetched lay on the runes. Zaine slowly shuffled his way to the door. He pulled the green wooden door closed and jammed the broom through the handle and across the doorway. It seemed to take forever, and as he finished he realised that time was beginning to slow down again. He wanted to speak the runes to speed time up, but he felt Guyan grab his hand and pull him into the circle.
It was only one step across the runes, but the difference in surroundings was instant. The castle courtyard with the single, ancient tree was gone. In its place was the landscape that had haunted his dreams ever since he had gone into the first Circle of Dreams back at Willow Castle.
A seemingly never-ending land of barren, rocky ground, small forests and mountains was in a perpetual twilight that bled the colour from everything. He could feel Guyan’s hand in his, and he glanced to make sure she was okay. She looked strangely calm, and Zaine was instantly jealous, as his heart was racing with terror.
“We just need to wait until we cross into Zhan,” she said comfortingly. “It shouldn’t take too long.”
“I need to find the others,” Zaine said, pulling his hand free and scanning the surrounding land. Maata and Tercel were nowhere in sight, but then a sudden scream off to his left had him off running without waiting to see if Guyan was following.
It was definitely Maata’s voice, and it was coming from a small forest not far away. As he entered the trees, he heard footsteps behind him and hoped it was Guyan. He fought down the fear that it was something dangerous chasing him. If he let himself dream up some hungry creature, then he knew it would become real in this place.
He wasn’t sure exactly which direction to go in once he was in the trees, as Maata had only screamed once and he had lost his bearings since then. The grey trunks of the trees seemed to leap up before him, forcing him to change direction again and again. He knew he was lost, and he turned to see if Guyan was following. Perhaps she had a better idea of which way to go?