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“We should get them all up in the castle,” Guyan said with a frown at the speed at which the sky was darkening. “It is the safest place to be.”
Zaine wasn’t sure he agreed with that. He didn’t think being up a tree during a lightning storm would be safe at all. Still, this wasn’t any normal storm and Guyan was the one who knew the storm dragons the best. He followed Guyan down the stairs to talk to the newest arrivals, and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach made him want to start running when he reached the ground. He wanted to run from the storm dragons and keep running forever.
He recalled the last time the dragons had caught up with him, and he doubted they would like him for the trick he had played on them.
“You need to come up to Guyan’s home to shelter from the storm,” Zaine told them.
“I do not need to shelter from it. I will be harnessing it,” Trianna said with a shake of her head. “Calard will help me if Davyn won’t.”
“As will I,” Tercel added, a little indignant at being left out. Trianna did not even acknowledge his offer.
“We don’t want your help, though, Zaine,” Calard snarled. “This mess is all your fault in the first place. You would just make it worse.”
Zaine shook his head slightly in disbelief – it was only a few days since he had freed Calard from the runebook in which the storm dragons had trapped him.
“I think we should try to bind them to the crown again,” Trianna declared. She had to speak loudly to be heard, as the wind had begun to howl around the valley, whipping the leaves up around them and beating the long grass at their ankles. “Child, give me the crown!”
Guyan simply stared, not replying, but her eyes narrowed a little. It was the closest Zaine had seen her come to anger so far, and he knew how she felt. His mother seemed to bring out the worst in people without any effort at all.
“We should draw them away from the trees,” Davyn said, walking away from them and out into open space. Zaine did not follow. He was looking back over towards the cliff. The sky was almost black and the darkness spread towards them like a huge ink stain.
“What will you try first?” Guyan asked as she took Zaine’s arm and pulled him out towards his father. Zaine let himself be dragged out into the open as his mind went blank. He had no idea what he was going to do. All of a sudden he couldn’t remember even the simplest of runes. Without his purple cloak he didn’t even feel like a runeweaver – he was a fraud and everyone was going to suffer because of it.
He stared at the sky and thought he could even make out the shape of an angry dragon diving towards him at great speed. It would all be over in a matter of seconds. He was going to spend eternity as a book of runes.
“Zaine,” Davyn was shaking his son’s arm to get his attention, “focus. This is not the time to have doubts.”
Zaine felt a sting on his cheek, and he jumped back a step as he realised that Maata had followed them and had slapped him.
“Are you just going to give up?” she said sharply and glared at him. “That’s fine, just let the storm destroy the entire world. I bet you couldn’t stop the storm dragons anyway. After all, you’re just a simple farm boy who shouldn’t have even seen a runebook and was bought for a jar of silver. It’s a shame we don’t have someone who can actually do what we need!”
Zaine felt the anger rise in him as Maata drew in a breath and prepared to launch into another verbal attack.
“I am not just a farm boy! I have destroyed a world and I’ve freed masters from books that nobody else had ever been able to do. If anyone can stop the storm dragons, it will be me!” The wind was blowing so strongly now that he had trouble standing upright as he yelled. He was about to continue when he realised she was grinning at him.
“That’s better,” she said with an apologetic, lopsided smile. “Anger is much more useful than fear.”
Zaine felt some of the anger slip away as he realised what she had been doing. No doubt her teacher had done a similar thing to her when she had been in training for the contest for the crown. Now that the anger was subsiding, he could think clearly and several possible ways to overcome the dragons came instantly to mind.
“Thanks, Maata,” he said, turning to face the oncoming storm with more confidence. His mind ran through the runes he could use, but one by one he discarded them. Each of them involved trapping the storm dragons and forcing them to obedience, and he knew in his heart that such a spell would not work. He felt his confidence faltering slightly as the storm came directly overhead.
The storm dragons did not descend, though; they remained high above them, seeming to swirl around in uncertainty.
“They are reluctant to destroy what they knew as their home for a long time,” Guyan said, craning her neck up to look at the storm. “Perhaps they can be reasoned with if they calm down enough?”
Zaine didn’t think that that was likely, but he didn’t comment. Slowly the storm began to descend, and a wispy black cloud, in the perfect form of a dragon’s head, suddenly dived down from the mass of blackness and wound its way among them.
It circled Guyan several times, seeming both angry and happy, if the alternate screeching and crooning was anything to go by. Her long blonde hair was flung up in the wild wind that the storm dragon caused, but she did not attempt to step out of the wind. She reached out a hand to touch it, and the black form briefly caressed her hand before swirling up and out of reach.
The storm dragon moved past Maata and Davyn, seemingly uninterested in the princess or the weaver. When it came to Zaine, it stopped suddenly, stilling the wind to an eerie silence. The smoky cloud-like head stared at the young weaver and then opened its mouth and howled. The resulting wind blew Zaine off his feet, and he lay on his back, watching the storm dragon racing back up to the black clouds above.
“I don’t know why they’re so angry at me,” Zaine muttered as he got up and brushed dirt from his elbows. “I was the one who freed them from the Circle of Dreams.”
“And you attempted to bind them to the crown again – without their permission,” Davyn reminded his son.
“So I’m guessing that binding them to anything, or demanding their obedience, would have the same effect,” Zaine said to nobody in particular. A lightning bolt struck the ground a few feet away from them and they all jumped in surprise. A second one flashed down from the sky, and Zaine had just enough time to grab Guyan and drag her backwards before it struck the ground where she had been standing.
“Now would be a good time to try something,” Guyan said a little nervously. “They’re angry.”
Zaine hesitated again. He wasn’t frozen with fear this time, though. He was just unsure how to solve this situation without angering the storm dragons even more.
When lightning struck close to Zaine, he realised that standing still to think things through was not a good idea. He began to back away and so did the others. The storm continued to follow them, and they turned and began to run.
“Where are we running to?” Maata asked as she scanned the area. “I don’t see anywhere that would be safe from them.”
“I have no idea,” Zaine replied. He was too busy trying to think of a way to stop the dragons to concentrate on where he was running – and he ran straight into the invisible barrier to Guyan’s homeland.
The force of the contact threw him backwards and he lay for a second, right on the runes, next to one of the tall grey stones. Instinct told him it was time to move, and to move quickly. He rolled away from the runes and dived around the other side of the stone. Lightning seemed to follow him and it struck the stone, narrowly missing him.
His heart was beating so fast that each beat seemed to blend into the next. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The next lightning bolt was sure to get him. He knew he should get up, but he felt rooted to the ground.
“She has the crown!” A weak voice freed Zaine from his terror, and he turned to see Aldren struggling to reach them in the fierce winds. He was pointing over at the small group of weavers where Trianna stood. She was holding the mangled crown and grinning triumphantly as she held it up to show them all.
“I think she will try to bind them back to the crown!” Davyn shouted as Aldren collapsed on the ground next to them. The old weaver had used all his strength to come to warn them, and he lay motionless on the ground. Zaine checked that the old weaver was still breathing, and then turned his attention to his mother.
“Do you think she can?” Maata called out loudly, looking concerned.
“It’s possible. I don’t know who wove it when I was born, but the runes are simple ones,” Guyan told them. “If she does bind them, they will have to obey her every command.”
“Don’t do it!” Zaine yelled though the wind. Trianna turned and looked coldly at her son.
“I will crown Maata. Isn’t that what you want?” she bellowed angrily.
“It is Guyan’s crown,” Maata answered.
The red-robed runeweaver turned her back on them and returned her attention to the mangled gold crown. She was looking at the runes carved on the inside of the circlet and her intention was clear. Three shafts of lightning struck the ground in quick succession and they all jumped back again.
“We have to stop the dragons.” Maata spoke right into Zaine’s ear so that he could hear her above the howl of the wind.
“We have to stop Trianna first,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. She had just raised the crown to eye-level and was opening her mouth to speak the first rune. A bolt of lightning struck just in front of her feet and she almost dropped the crown. She stepped back several paces and raised the crown to begin again.
Without even thinking about what he was doing, Zaine focused his whole mind on the small group of weavers and began to recite runes. He knew he was breaking an unspoken rule even as he did it. Weavers were not permitted to turn their runes on each other – ever.
That he was even doing it shocked him, but the spell he was weaving surprised him even more. Without thinking about it, he had begun to recite the runes from a circle he had seen only a short time ago, up in the wooden tree-top castle.
The runes were as clear in his mind as if he were standing in front of the small blonde child where she played with her blocks for eternity.
As he spoke the last rune of the time-loop, a blue haze formed around the three weavers.
“How did you do that?” Guyan asked, staring at the weavers, who were locked in a repeating moment, over and over.
“It will not last.” Zaine was not surprised that it had worked – he had known as soon as he started that it would. “I don’t know how long it will last, but it would be permanent only if I had drawn the runes.”
“I know,” Guyan said with a quiet sigh. “Why did you do it?”
“It was the only way to stop my mother from trying to bind the storm dragons to your crown,” Zaine replied. “Nobody should be forced to serve another, even the storm dragons.”
It was then that he realised that the storm wasn’t as loud as it had been. They all looked up at the swirling black clouds and Zaine saw that they were not as angry-looking as they had been. The winds had slowed to a gusting breeze, as if the storm dragons couldn’t quite decide whether to stay angry or not.
Several of the black dragon shapes spiralled down and paused just in front of Zaine and Guyan. They hovered for a full minute, just staring at them, and then one of them spoke.
Why did you try to protect us? The storm dragon’s voice was wispy and drifted off on the wind.
“I did not want you bound to a spell you did not consent to,” Zaine said, trying hard to keep his voice from showing his nervousness. The dragons, although they were just mist and air, were terrifying so close up.
Yet you tried to do the same thing a short time ago, the dragon hissed, covering Zaine’s face in a damp mist that caused him to squint to stop the stinging in his eyes. He wiped his face with his hand, but resisted the temptation to step back from the misty dragons.
“I didn’t know what it would do,” Zaine replied apologetically. “I should not have done it.”
We cannot be bound to the crown again if we do not wish to be. The weaver would not have succeeded, the second misty dragon told them. But we thank you for your actions.
The storm dragons fell silent, and stared for a long time before turning briefly to each other and then shooting straight up into the sky to rejoin the rest of their misty clan.
The clouds swirled and the air rumbled for a few minutes as the dragons argued amongst themselves. Zaine and the others stood waiting, wondering if they would soon be running for their lives again. Realising it was probably not going to be a short time before the dragons had finished their discussion, Zaine turned his attention to Aldren, who was sitting up but looking very tired.
“Will you be okay?” Zaine asked.
“Just give me a few minutes to rest,” Aldren reassured him. He looked up at the clouds and nodded in satisfaction. “They seem far less angry.”
“Let’s hope so,” Zaine agreed. “I doubt I could weave any spell that would have any effect on them at all.”
Davyn, Maata and Guyan had walked over to the blue haze that surrounded the other weavers.
“What’s going on over there?” Aldren asked, obviously having missed most of the last few minutes.
“I thought my mother was going to make things worse,” Zaine replied. “I had to stop her.”
Aldren pushed himself to his feet and started to shuffle over to take a closer look, with Zaine supporting him. Aldren walked slowly around the blue haze and then looked at Zaine and nodded briefly but firmly.
“Well done, it is a perfect weave. I did not realise you were a timeweaver, although I should have known when you learnt the runes so quickly.”
“Neither did I,” Zaine replied with complete honesty. He looked at the concentrating expression of his mother as she opened her mouth to speak the first rune on the crown and then stopped, repeating over and over. She was going to be very angry when the time-loop wore off.