by Linda McNabb
When the next circle opened a new link and it wasn’t his home, his hopes began to fall again. There were only two circles left.
“This has to be it,” Guyan said confidently as they approached the second to last circle. They quickly created the runes around the circle, and Guyan did the last rune as Zaine seemed unwilling. Zaine blinked as he stared at the single tree that appeared in the circle. Was that really the tree in the courtyard of Summer Castle?
“Yes!” Guyan yelled, confirming what Zaine’s eyes were telling him. They had found it! He stood staring at it until Guyan tapped him on the shoulder. “Should we stop now?”
Zaine looked over at the final empty circle. “No, we’ll do one more. If we’ve got to find a way to maintain this many circles, we might as well do the last one. Who knows what world has been sitting frozen in time, waiting for someone to come and help? We can’t just leave a circle empty.”
They completed the final starlink and stared at the landscape that came into view. In the distance they could see signs of houses with smoke above the chimneys, and Zaine was pleased that they had done the last one.
“Now we go back and restart time,” Zaine said, looking around. “I’m lost.”
“I’m not,” Guyan said, leading him down into the tunnels. “It’s actually quicker to go by the tunnels, and warmer. I know a few shortcuts.”
Even with the shortcuts, it was still a long way back to the cavern of trees and the basin full of people frozen in time.
“I’m getting tired,” Zaine admitted as they walked wearily back to where they had been standing when time had stopped for the rest of Zhan.
Guyan suddenly frowned and Zaine asked what was wrong.
“How do we restart time?” she asked.
Zaine felt the joy from their efforts seep out of him. He hadn’t thought of that. They both stood, thinking, for ages. Zaine’s head hurt and he could barely keep his eyes open. He ran through all the runes he knew, searching for a combination that would do what they needed. Eventually, they both sat down on the padded thrones, mentally and physically exhausted. Without meaning to, they began to drift off to sleep. Guyan suddenly sat up straighter and nudged Zaine.
“My crown nearly fell off then,” Guyan said, holding the golden crown on as if it might topple at any second.
“That’s it!” Zaine said. “Time stopped when we put the crowns on. If we take them off, it should start again.”
“Really?” Guyan looked doubtful. “Do we risk it?”
Zaine shrugged. “Do you have another idea?”
They sat in silence for a while, staring at the odd scene of frozen people. Finally, Guyan sighed deeply. “It’s the only thing we can do. If we’re wrong, we’ll join everyone else, frozen in time.”
Zaine didn’t feel so confident about his idea now that they were actually about to do it. It was a big gamble, and all their hard work fixing the circles might be for nothing.
“We should do it together,” Zaine suggested. “On the count of three.”
Zaine counted, and they lifted off the crowns and put them gently on the ground before letting go. Then they looked at each other and grinned.
“Well, we’re not frozen,” Guyan said.
Zaine didn’t dare to turn to see if anyone was moving – but he didn’t have to. Suddenly the basin erupted into a chaos of bodies and noise, all rushing around and yelling.
Sands above them rushed past, throwing a gentle red hue on the basin.
Zaine and Guyan burst out laughing. It was more from relief than anything funny, but Zaine felt tears running down his cheeks as he closed his eyes and tried to control his outburst.
“Zaine, are you okay?” a voice said, and he felt someone grab his arm and shake him. He took a deep breath to try to control his laughter and opened his eyes. His father was standing in front of him, puzzled as to what they thought was so funny.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - FREEING THE DRAGONS
“It’s okay, Davyn,” Zaine said, managing to fight down the laughter to reassure his father.
“Time is fixed,” Guyan added with a grin, as she relaxed into the wide throne and tucked her legs up onto it.
“And we found the link home,” Zaine told his father.
“My family!” Guyan cried, sitting up and looking at Zaine with wide eyes. “They’re all still frozen in that runecircle.”
Maata and Tercel had come over to join them now and the basin was almost empty. None of the other Zhanians knew that time was fixed, and Zaine was too tired to run after them.
“We need to go and check that the links are all working,” Zaine said, pushing himself wearily up off the throne. Now that the laughter had subsided, he realised just how tired and hungry he was. He felt like he could eat a whole banquet by himself and then sleep for a week. He shivered, feeling cold all of a sudden.
“Will time stay stable now?” Maata asked, looking up at the constant rush of sand flowing over the top of the basin.
“I don’t know,” Guyan replied. “I guess we’ll find out. I don’t think I’ll be putting that crown on again, though.”
There was one other person left in the basin as they all headed for the tunnel to leave. Calard was sitting by the wall, with his knees pulled up to his chest, looking confused.
Tercel went up to him and put his hand out to help his master to his feet. Calard looked suspicious and pushed Tercel’s hand away. “What just happened here? Who’s in charge now?”
“Nobody,” Guyan replied. “I don’t think we will be having any more kings or queens in Zhan.”
Calard looked even more confused. Without a king or queen, the weaver had no idea what he was supposed to do.
“But we can take you back to Theodane,” Davyn suggested.
Calard did not reply, but he nodded as he got up and followed them. By the time they reached the cavern of trees, the inhabitants had realised that time had settled into a steady rhythm again, and they watched Guyan and the group of visitors pass through under the trees.
“We have restored all the starlinks and time will flow as it should,” Guyan called out. “I am going to fetch my family and bring them back to Zhan.”
People in the crowds began to talk among themselves, and one bold man stepped forward. “But we needed the land on the surface to live on.”
“We will have to find another way,” Guyan said. She led Zaine and the others out of the trees before the people could argue further. “Time will not exist without the starlinks.”
They soon reached the starlink to where the dragons and the royal family were trapped and came up inside the stone cottage.
Zaine breathed a sigh of relief and almost laughed again as he heard Guyan echo his sigh. Time in the world they could see was moving. The trees swayed in the gentle wind and birds flew across the sky.
There was no sign of Trianna or Eldric, but the circle that contained the dragons and Guyan’s family was still frozen in time.
“So how do we fix it from here?” Tercel asked.
“We don’t. We have to go in there to do it,” Zaine replied, looking at Guyan and seeing her nod of agreement. He knew he could not stop her going in, and he wanted to see what had become of his mother. “Just Guyan and I will go.”
Nobody argued as the small group stood to one side. Zaine took Guyan’s hand as she spoke the rune to unseal the starlink. The runes glowed briefly and they stepped over the runes together.
Zaine was prepared for the passage through the dreamlink this time, and he tensed slightly as he stepped into the circle. He blinked in surprise – the setting that greeted them was not the dreamlink at all. They had passed straight into the other world and were standing just outside the runecircle.
“Time is running perfectly,” Guyan explained when she saw his confused expression. “The dreamlink should only take less than a heartbeat.”
Ahead of them lay the runecircle and the frozen figures of dragons and people. A movement off in the trees caught Zaine’s attenti
on. He looked over, and a flash of red told him who it was.
Trianna stepped out of the trees and paused as she looked at them with disbelief. Zaine waited while his mother walked slowly over to them. Her expression said that she would rather not even talk to them.
“Were you sent here or did you come by choice?” she asked, in a voice sharp with dislike. Clearly the thought of being stuck in the forest with them did not appeal to her.
“We came to fetch you all,” Zaine replied, not taking any notice of her prickly mood. “You can go home.”
For the briefest of moments, he saw her mask of anger slip away. For the second time, he saw a hint of gratitude in her cold, green eyes. Then she seemed to look straight through him and her stony, angry expression returned.
“Eldric ran off into the trees as soon as he woke up. I haven’t seen him since,” Trianna said, turning to point at the forest. “I’m not hanging around to look for him.”
“We need to free my family and the storm dragons before we go back,” Guyan said, looking at the circle that held the frozen figures.
Both Zaine and Guyan walked around the circle, and then stopped by the same circular rune. Zaine scratched at the ground with a stick and knelt down to study the runes.
“This is the beginning of the circle,” he said, and Guyan nodded her agreement.
“You seem to have the knack of destroying things,” Guyan said with a touch of mirth. “How about you do it one more time?”
“Can we undo it by tracing the runes?” Zaine asked, favouring his friend with a mock scowl. He was nervous about destroying a circle that contained all of the storm dragons and Guyan’s family, too! “Our rune markings are still as dark as before we created the starlinks.”
“No, it was created by dozens of weavers. It would be far too hard to reverse, even working together,” Guyan replied.
Zaine didn’t bother to protest anymore; destroying the circle was their only choice. He thought back to when he had destroyed the Circle of Dreams back at Willow Castle. He had been inside the circle that time and his anger had split the ground. The second circle he had destroyed had been when the storm dragons were chasing him with lightning. And the third had been just a day ago, when he had destroyed a rune on the stone pillar of his own world.
None of the previous ways would work here, and Zaine paced back and forth as he tried to work out how to break the circle. Perhaps he could call down lightning? He stopped suddenly and looked down at the ground. Back in the basin the runes had been carved in stone, but when it had been sent to this world the rock had not gone with it. The runes were marked in the hard-packed earth.
“The runes are just an imprint of what they were in Zhan,” he told the others. He picked up a branch that had fallen from a nearby tree and used it to scratch at the runes, but they did not smear or change. They seemed baked into the ground.
“Perhaps if we had something to reflect the runes away from each other,” Guyan suggested.
“A mirror,” Zaine agreed. He didn’t have a mirror, but he had something else that might work. He put his hand into the inside pocket of his robe and withdrew the slim silver book that was his life-reading. It shone in the bright sunlight, and he could just see the image of his face in its cover. Holding it vertically, he slid it towards the circle with one finger on top of it, fitting it in between the first and last runes.
A heartbeat passed before anything happened – then suddenly the air was full of dragons and hurrying footsteps. Zaine held the silver book steady until all of the dragons were free and Guyan’s family was clustered around her. Then he pulled the book out and dropped it on the ground.
King Reko did not look as ill as he had before, but Trianna rushed up to help Mya support him. A sudden onslaught of lightning bolts rained down from the sky, and Zaine jumped back two paces. The dragons were destroying the circle. A few seconds later, the circle was gone and only the smoking remains of the silver book showed that a circle had ever been there.
The dragons zoomed around the new land and then flew back.
Thank you, they hissed as they swirled around Zaine, Guyan and Trianna.
The stone pillars that marked the link back to Zhan stood a few paces away, but Zaine couldn’t see anything other than grass and shrubs inside it. The dragons flew straight at it. The runes glowed as they passed the first stone and the dragons vanished.
“Just step over the runes to return to Zhan,” Guyan coaxed. Her mother and Trianna were supporting her father, but Jelena was holding on tightly to her big sister. “The storm dragons are already back in Zhan. They opened the link back home. It will stay open for a dozen heartbeats.”
Zaine stepped over the runes and grinned; he was suddenly back in Zhan, looking at Davyn, Maata, Tercel and Calard.
“We see you freed the dragons,” a voice said from behind them all. Dom stepped from the stone cottage, followed by a dozen others.
King Reko, Queen Mya and Trianna came through the circle, closely followed by Guyan and Jelena.
“Is my father there?” Dom asked, looking out into the land beyond the stones.
“He’s there somewhere,” Trianna assured the blond-haired boy.
Zaine looked back at the other land and frowned. It looked familiar. Where had he seen trees like that before? They were tall and thin, yet held up a large canopy of branches and leaves.
“It’s like the door on your castle,” Zaine said to Guyan suddenly, causing her to look at him with concern. “And the tapestry in the throne room.”
“What is?” she asked.
“The land through the starlink. It’s like the one carved on the door to your family’s castle,” Zaine explained.
“Our homeland?” Queen Mya said in disbelief as she, too, stared at the world they had just come from.
The dragons swirled back in from the sands and the clustered around the group. One came right up to Zaine’s face and slowly formed into a solid golden dragon. Its hot breath made Zaine’s eyes water. It was impossible to tell if the dragon was happy or sad – it just stared at him as if trying to read his mind.
Time is different, it said, looking directly at Zaine, and then turned to Guyan.
Different. How? Had they damaged it somehow? Zaine kept quiet. If the storm dragons were angry at how they had changed time, he had no plans to make it worse. Guyan spoke up. “What do you mean?”
All worlds run to same time now. No need to keep changing time in them. No need for timeweavers to tend them. So long as they are connected by the starlink, time will be steady.
Eventually, after a hundred seasons or more, they will break away on their own. Time will continue as it should.
The storm dragons swirled around them one more time, and then shot up into the air. Zaine was sure he heard them singing as they vanished into the red sands.
“We need to get the king somewhere to rest,” Mya said as the king leaned heavily against the stone cottage.
A sudden gust of sand swept down to them, and two storm dragons formed into solid golden creatures.
We will carry the king, one said. Mya helped the king onto the dragon’s back and then climbed on behind him to keep him steady.
“What about the sands?” Mya asked, looking concerned at the sweeping red sands that raced across the landscape.
Guyan stepped forward. She had the golden cloak still tucked under her belt, and she pulled it free and wrapped it around her parents. The dragon flew slowly off into the stormy sands.
By the time they had made their own way through the tunnels, the king was resting in his bed in the castle atop the trees. Several of the storm dragons were hovering on the balcony as they entered the castle. Their attention went immediately to both Zaine and Davyn. Their misty forms swirled around father and son, and then stopped. One of the dragon’s faces was almost touching Zaine’s.
You know what made the king ill? It asked in a tone that said Zaine’s answer was very important.
“He was poisoned,” Za
ine replied.
By who? the dragon hissed slowly.
Zaine remembered the queen saying that Eldric had mixed up the potion, but he saw Dom standing across the room and couldn’t bring himself to blame the poisoning on Dom’s father.
Davyn replied. “It was a potion, mixed up from herbs. That person knew their herbs well,” Davyn told the dragons.
A yellow potion? the second dragon enquired, suddenly tense.
Zaine nodded, realising they knew exactly who Davyn meant. It wouldn’t be hard to work out, as Zhan had only one healer capable of creating such a potion. Even Dom shifted uncomfortably, looking unsure if he should just leave.
The lake looked yellow a few days ago. Only one of us drank from it. He is dead.
Zaine didn’t comment. The dragons had drawn back, and a loud, harsh cry split the air. Such a noise seemed incapable of coming from such misty creatures. A second later the air was full of dragons. After a few brief words, spoken in a language that Zaine didn’t understand, all of the dragons became angry. They changed from their misty shapes to solid golden creatures, and all but one of them flew off across the trees.
The one remaining dragon hovered and turned to those gathered on the balcony. The fury in its eyes was so intense that every one of them took a step backwards.
We go in search of Eldric. He has killed one of our own.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - HOME
Zaine woke slowly. The sun on his face felt warm as he thought about the day ahead. It was his last morning in Zhan. His mind ran through the things he wanted to do before he left to go back to his own world. One morning didn’t seem long enough. He wanted to check the starlinks, tend the plants in the herb cave … and so much more.
The world of Zhan did not have a healer now, as Eldric had been very secretive about his potions and powders. Zaine and Davyn had been writing down as many cures for common ills as they could think of, but there were many they hadn’t had time for.
Zaine swung his legs out of bed and stood up, stretching in the warm, red-tinged light that shone in the window. It had been three days since he and Guyan had recreated the starlinks and he was still tired. Happy, but tired.