by Linda McNabb
A shiver of terror flooded through him as he saw it wasn’t Guyan following him. Instead a dozen sets of yellow eyes shone out from the shadowy depths of the forest, and a low growl told him that he had dreamt up a pack of wolves.
“Typical,” he muttered to himself, trying desperately to imagine that they were gone, but failing miserably. He forced himself not to look at the hungry eyes but hurried on through the forest.
“Zaine!” A shout up ahead made him run even faster. It wasn’t a worried shout, though, and as he broke through the trees he saw that Guyan had already reached Maata and Tercel. She was helping Maata down from a tree while Tercel was throwing rocks at birds that were swooping in to attack them.
Zaine hurried over to them, breathing hard and wondering how the rune-marked girl had got there so fast. Guyan didn’t even look out of breath.
“You took your time. Did you get lost?” Guyan asked, looking slightly amused. Then her gaze drifted off behind Zaine and her eyebrows rose. “And you brought visitors.”
CHAPTER SIX - ZHAN
Zaine had forgotten about the pack of wolves for a second, but as he turned he saw that they were still following him. They had slowed to a stalking pace now that their prey had stopped. They were spreading out, and Zaine could see that soon they would surround the group of humans.
“The most important thing with a good imagination is to use it properly,” Guyan said, batting away a bird that had managed to get through Tercel’s onslaught of stones. As she grinned at Zaine, he felt a stab of frustration. Why was she so calm when there were birds and wolves attacking them?
The bird Guyan had struck turned into a shower of leaves that fluttered away on the breeze. Then she bent down and picked up a rock big enough to need both of her hands. She threw it straight at the closest wolf, but as it flew through the air it changed into a rabbit, and then bounded straight past the wolf. She threw another rock, and then another, until a dozen rabbits were dashing through the forest. The wolves, seeing the rabbits as far easier prey, instantly turned and ran after them.
Zaine felt his cheeks colour with embarrassment and was pleased that the shadowy forest would hide his face. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
“How did we end up in here?” Maata asked, a wobble in her voice showing that Zaine wasn’t the only one worried.
“I thought it was broken.” Tercel was looking nervously around the forest. “Is it safe in here?”
“Only if you think it is,” Zaine said drily, with a sideways glance at Guyan. “Time doesn’t seem slow in here, so why is it taking so long to reach Zhan?”
“Remember this is a dreamlink,” Guyan warned. “If you expect time to slow down, then it will and we’ll never reach Zhan.”
Zaine couldn’t help it – now that he had the thought in his mind, it just wouldn’t go away. He looked helplessly at Guyan. “How do I stop thinking about it now?”
“Do you remember what the field back at the valley looked like?” Guyan asked, looking around at them all as she spoke. She waited for them all to nod. Zaine could clearly remember the green grass, dotted with small white flowers. “Picture it in your minds and start walking as if you are heading for it.”
Zaine thought of the field. He even had the small white flowers looking as if they were real, then a movement under his foot made him open his eyes. A huge mountain was rising from the forest floor and toppling trees towards them as it rose.
“Maata!” he yelled, grabbing the white-robed princess and shaking her arm. “Think of the field – not mountains!”
Maata looked at him with a terrified wide-eyed stare that said her fear of mountains was far more real than a field of grass. As the ground rose, Zaine felt his feet slip and Maata tumbled towards him. They both fell to the ground with a thud, and for a second Zaine lay there trying to think of a way to get rid of the mountain. The time before, his efforts using runes had been of very little use, and it seemed that imagining things had far more effect.
The mountain was shrinking away, but a huge hole was opening up just beyond the princess and she was slipping into it. Zaine grabbed hold of Maata’s hand, but he knew that the sweat on his palm meant big trouble. Even though he was gripping as tightly as he could, he could feel the princess slipping away.
“No!” he yelled as he lunged forward, ready to throw himself down the gaping pit if he had too.
His fingers clutched at the sleeve of her tunic and he dragged her upwards with a strength he hadn’t known he had. They collapsed onto the rocky ground, and Zaine lay with his eyes closed to catch his breath. Something tickled his face and he turned away, trying not to let any thoughts of what it might be enter his head. Instead he opened his eyes to see exactly what it was.
Grass! He stared at the blades of grass as he looked out across a large field, dotted with white flowers. It looked real and the grass even felt real. He focused hard, trying to keep the image in his head.
“Zaine!” Maata’s voice broke his concentration. He frowned – he was only just holding the picture steady.
An unusual noise finally drew Zaine from his prone state. He was still gasping for breath, as if suddenly there was less air to breathe. Guyan lay next to him with her eyes closed and Zaine pushed himself up on one arm to look around them. Maata and Tercel lay a short distance away.
He kept his mind as empty as he could, while searching for the source of the noise. If he pictured something terrible heading for them, it would be self-fulfilling in this Circle of Dreams.
The sky was lighter and tinged with red. He tried to locate the source of the light, but all around him appeared red, not just the sky. The howling sound reminded him of the storm dragons, but this was definitely only the sound of wind.
Softness under his hand made him look down. Instead of the barren rocky ground, they were resting on soft green grass, dotted with white flowers. The grass waved gently in a light breeze, but Zaine looked around suspiciously, almost expecting something bad to happen.
“Guyan.” He reached over to shake the young weaver by the arm.
Guyan opened one eye, and then sighed, seeming relieved despite her previously calm manner when they had been in the circle. “We made it.”
Zaine looked again, instantly recognising the field he had once seen through the circle of dragon stones at Land’s End. How could he have mistaken it for something dangerous?
He could see the six stone pillars around the edge of the circle, and there was a small stone hut at the edge as well. They were lying just outside the circle of runes, only a few paces from the stone hut. The ground was cold and his breath came out in a mist. He was glad of his cloak, which he pulled close to keep in some warmth.
Maata and Tercel lay on the soft grass, looking like they had just tumbled down a cliff. Both were covered in rock dust, and Maata’s arms were scraped and bleeding.
“I never really worked out how to avoid those mountains,” Maata said in a shaky, but relieved voice as she looked around and saw where they were. “We don’t have to go back through that way, do we?”
“Not until we have fixed time,” Guyan said, finally getting to her feet and testing each part of her body to make sure it was undamaged. “The first thing we have to do is find out why the timeweavers aren’t maintaining your world’s time. We need to ask the king.”
“Your father?” Zaine asked, slightly confused as to why she had referred to him as ‘the king’.
“Everyone in Zhan calls him the king,” Guyan explained. “Even Jelena and I.”
Silence fell for a dozen heartbeats. Silence, except for the howling wind that drew Zaine’s attention again. He had finally worked out that the red sky and all around the edges of the Circle of Dreams was moving. It seemed to be thousands of small dots of red swirling around, but none of it came into the circle or near the stone cottage where they stood.
As he stared at the swirling red, he saw a shape taking form very quickly. In the space of a heartbeat, the shape of a dragon had forme
d in the red sky and burst through by the stone hut. At first it was no more than swirling mists with a bundle of gold perched upon it, and then it solidified into a gleaming golden dragon with an unusual hump in the middle of its back.
The dragon landed just outside the circle, barely bending the grass, and the lump appeared to slide sideways and fall to the ground. The golden scales of the lump rippled and then lifted, to show a very dishevelled and frightened blonde-haired little girl. Her skin, like Guyan’s, was covered in runes, but she had far fewer of them.
“Guyan, the king is sick,” she said, tripping on the golden fabric, which had covered her.
“Jelena!” Guyan exclaimed, torn between the joy of seeing her sister and the pain of the news she had just heard.
Zaine hurried over to help the small golden-haired girl up, whereupon Jelena ran to her sister, sobbing.
The golden dragon dipped its head, and a misty voice drifted from it. The king is sick with a fever that he may not recover from. Our oldest dragon is also sick. A dragon has never been sick before.
“Our uncle has taken the throne,” Jelena said through shuddering sobs.
“Uncle Eldric?” Guyan said, one eyebrow rising in surprise.
“He claims he is next in line for the throne,” Jelena added.
“Why did you come through the sands?” Guyan asked, still comforting her little sister. “It’s risky to ride the sands and you know you’re not allowed to. We don’t have the same ability to dodge the sand as the dragons.”
Sand? Zaine looked out at the red landscape and realised that it was indeed sand. Red sand. It hammered at the edges of the circle with a relentless fury. It made his skin itch to think what sort of damage such a sandstorm could do to someone caught out in it.
“I used father’s dragon cloak,” Jelena replied quickly in her defence. She pointed to the golden cloth lying on the grass.
Zaine walked over and picked it up. It looked soft and felt as delicate as silk. How could something so flimsy protect you from sands that howled so fiercely? He folded the cloak up and carried it over to the young princess.
“It is made from the soft lining from inside the dragon’s egg,” Guyan explained, as if sensing his disbelief that it could protect from such a storm. She tucked the cloth under her belt. “It took three hundred years of eggs to make this one cloak.”
“How did you get here?” Jelena asked, tugging at her sister’s sleeve. “We were going to try to find a way to break through to fetch you.”
“We found the original circle,” Guyan told her little sister. “How long has the king been sick?”
Jelena shrugged. “He was sick when I got back yesterday morning. Mother is with him.”
Zaine knew that a day in this world was different to a day in his own land. Jelena had only been back a day in Zhan, and yet they had lived a whole year in their world.
Starlinks are failing, the dragon interrupted. It was looking out into the sands and its eye-ridges lowered in concern.
“I kept this one going as much as I could,” Zaine told the dragon. “But it is very tiring.”
The dragon turned to look at Zaine, then shot up into the sands. It swirled around and came back down to settle directly in front of Zaine. It seemed more mist than real, but the piercing gaze cut into Zaine and made him take a step back.
You sent us home. We are grateful. I will fix time in your world.
The dragon spun quickly towards the circle of runes and spoke the runes Zaine had used to speed up time.
It will last a short while only. The dragon turned to Guyan. Why do weavers not tend the circles?
Guyan shrugged.
“Uncle Eldric has banned the weavers from tending the starlinks,” Jelena explained.
“Why?” Zaine asked.
Jelena didn’t answer. She looked about to cry again, and Guyan hugged her close.
A high, discordant sound pierced the air, cutting through the drumming of the sand as it hammered the edges of the circle.
“What’s that noise?” Maata asked, putting her hands to her ears as she turned around looking for the source of the noise.
“I’m not sure.” Guyan, looking surprised, turned to the dragon. “Is it a dragon? I’ve never heard such a sound before.”
Our leader has died, the dragon said with a far-away expression, as it evaporated into mists and then returned to solid form.
“I’ve never heard of a dragon dying since we arrived here a long time ago,” Guyan said, looking very concerned. “What could cause a dragon to die?”
Never has a dragon died before, the dragon replied, looking away into the sands.
“Isn’t this your world, Guyan?” Tercel asked. He seemed to be having trouble taking in his new surroundings.
“No, we came here at the invitation of the dragons,” Guyan replied absently as she listened tearfully to the dragon’s death cry.
I will ride the sands back. We must take him to the mountains where we came from, the golden dragon said, lifting off and plunging headlong into the sands, vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye.
“We should go and see the king,” Guyan said, turning away from the sound but looking distraught.
“How do we get there?” Maata asked, not looking keen at the thought of going out into the sandstorm.
“Down through the tunnels,” Jelena replied. She hurried into the cottage, followed by Guyan. The others, seeing no other option, went in after them. Zaine blinked as his eyes adjusted to the slightly dimmer light inside the stone cottage. Its two small windows cast a soft red light on the sparsely furnished single room.
A small bed lay on one side of the room, with a rough wooden table and a rusty old chair next to it. The bedding was rumpled as if it had been slept in recently, but there was no sign of anyone here now. Apart from that, the room was empty. Jelena was heading for the back of the small cottage where she lifted a wooden trap door in the stone floor. She dropped straight into the hole it revealed while Guyan held the trap door open.
“It’s okay, there are steps,” she reassured Zaine as he approached. He nodded, knowing that she would not be leading him anywhere unsafe, and stepped into the darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN - DOM
Zaine found himself on narrow stone steps which descended steeply, but a wooden rail on the wall gave him a small amount of comfort.
After several dozen steps, he felt the floor level out. He could just make out that he was in a low-roofed tunnel. Light was coming in from somewhere, but he couldn’t tell where. He felt a brief moment of uneasiness, knowing they must be a fair way under the ground, but tried not to think about it.
Jelena ran up the tunnel ahead of him with the ease of one who knew the darkened passages well. Every dozen steps, light filtered gently into the tunnel from somewhere, and Zaine finally stopped at one patch of light to see where it was coming from. The light was tinged pink and seemed to sparkle and shift as he looked at it.
Zaine looked up at the low roof, expecting to see some sort of torch or magical sphere of light, but all he saw was rock. The light seemed to be filtering right through the rock where one part of it was tinged with red. He stayed, staring up at it for a few seconds, and the red light shimmered to white and the rock above him became clear. He could see right up to the surface where light streaked down, making him shade his eyes and turn away. Just as he turned away, he noticed a circle of runes scratched on the rock around the light.
“It changes the structure of the rock to allow light to pass through it. Without it, we would wear ourselves out creating light to see by.” Guyan grinned as Zaine tried to readjust to the darkened tunnel after staring at the light. “It also allows us to see if it is night or day and set some rhythm to our day.”
The tunnels were slightly warmer than it had been out by the circle, but not by much. He wondered if it was winter here or if it was always this cold. A roaring sound was growing louder and everyone, except Guyan and Jelena looked a little worried.
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“The river runs through these tunnels,” Guyan told them. She led them onto a wooden bridge that crossed a chasm, and pointed down below. Through the darkness, Zaine could just make out water running far down below. “It supplies our people with water so that we can survive in this world.”
Guyan stopped suddenly and put out her arm to stop the others. She placed a finger to her lips. Zaine was wondering what was wrong, when he heard a voice echoing down the tunnel above the roaring of the water.
“… a bit close … almost stuck …” Snatches of a conversation floated through the tunnels.
“We need to be careful,” Guyan said quietly. “I’m not supposed to be back here.”
The tunnels remained silent except for the rushing of water, but something else made Zaine jump.
“What’s that?” he exclaimed far too loudly as he felt something soft and furry rub against his leg. He leapt back out of the way and almost fell off the bridge when he saw two yellow eyes in the darkness.
“Quiet,” Guyan hushed.
“Choo!” Jelena said, also far too loudly for Guyan’s liking. The small girl bent down in the tunnel and stood up, holding a black-and-white fluffy cat.
“What is she doing here?” Guyan said, stepping away from the harmless-looking cat.
“Who’s there?” a voice came from the other side of the bridge. Footsteps came closer, and a light-sphere hanging in the air lit up a young, blond, curly-haired boy with brown eyes. He wore a dark green tunic and trousers that looked a size too big for him, and he was looking at them with suspicion. He seemed to be about eleven years old, and he was pushing an odd object past the other end of the bridge.
“Dom!” Jelena cried out, running forward, still holding the cat and throwing herself at the boy.
“Jelena?” the boy said in surprise, coming onto the bridge and then seeing the rest of them. “Guyan! Cousin, I had not thought to see you ever again.”
“We’ve come back to find out what is wrong with time.” Guyan looked relieved that it was her cousin. Then her eyes moved down to the dirty blue object he was pushing. “I didn’t know you were a finder.”