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“Of course he did,” another agreed. “Look what he did to Willow Castle! It used to be a magnificent castle, and now it’s just a pile of stones and rubble.”
Zaine would have liked to have argued that he hadn’t actually caused the destruction of the castle, but he knew they would not listen. The storm dragons had been angry at him – the castle had just got in the way!
“Didn’t his life-reading say he would destroy the world?” a third weaver’s voice shouted above the rest.
“It did.” Trianna’s quiet voice cut through the hub-bub; she paused until they fell silent. “He has brought this upon us.”
Davyn stepped forward and strode to his wife’s side. His face showed he was barely controlling his anger.
“It says nothing about damaging time,” he pointed out. “He has already fulfilled all of the predictions of his life-reading.”
“Are you sure of that?” Calard came forward to join his fellow weavers.
Davyn took a deep breath to regain his composure, and then faced the gathered weavers.
And this boy will not age past his twelfth year.
Let this child know the runes and he will come to great power.
He will shatter a world with one finger.
His anger will bring down the sky and his feet will split the ground.
The royal line will hang in the balance ... and Zaine will decide its fate.
Within him rests the power to free the masters of the books.
Zaine’s hand went instinctively to the slim silver book that he carried inside his faded purple robe. It foretold his life and was the reason his mother despised him so much. What had been a favour for a royal weaver – a reading of a new-born child’s life – had turned out to be his sentence to a life of misery and rejection.
Silence fell on the crowd as they all tried to work out if Zaine had indeed done all he had been predicted to do. Davyn let them consider this for a minute, and then continued.
“He has learnt more runes than most of us will ever know. He will never age again because of this,” he held up a finger as if to tick this off the list. “And he is of great power. He destroyed the world inside the Circle of Dreams at Willow Castle. He saved Maata from certain death, and he freed the masters from their paper prisons when he released them from the runebooks they were trapped in. Many of you were in those books. There is nothing left for him to do. This problem is not caused by him.”
Davyn held up his hand, four fingers and thumb extended, to show that all of the predictions had come to pass already. He looked around at the crowd as if daring anyone to argue with him. A few weavers shuffled uncomfortably, and Zaine was grateful that at least his father was standing up for him.
Trianna looked annoyed at having her prime candidate dismissed so quickly. She lifted her chin and turned away from Davyn; “That doesn’t mean he didn’t cause it.”
“Is it because we don’t have a crown?” a weaver asked.
“Perhaps. It has been written that when a crowning does not take place, then all of the runes will fail,” Trianna agreed reluctantly, unwilling to find an alternative cause for the problem. Then, with a sudden tilt of the head, she declared, “We should crown Maata and see if it fixes time.”
With a flourish, Trianna reached into her robes and pulled out a golden crown. Zaine leaned forward to peer at it. He was at the far end of the room, but from what he could see it looked just like the one that had melted in the Circle of Dreams. It even had the forms of dragons intertwined around the outside.
“But the runes have not failed,” Davyn pointed out. “And we are not here to decide the crown.”
All around the room, weavers began to mutter runes. Some vanished from sight; others had bright spheres of light appear above them. Several changed the colour of the robes. Everyone’s runes seemed to be working perfectly.
“Enough!” Theodane leapt from his chair and strode forward, pushing Trianna and Davyn out of the way. The expression on the faces of everyone present showed that they knew what he was going to say; he hadn’t changed his mind on how the next royal should be chosen. “The people have had their time to choose, and they have not done so. We shall have a contest.”
Maata joined her cousin and raised one hand to silence the mutterings that had risen from the crowd of weavers.
“There is no time for contests,” she said simply. “Soon there may be no time at all.”
“Very well. We will not wait for a contest,” Prince Theodane said with the merest shrug, as if it didn’t really matter.
Calard reached into the folds of his red robes and produced another golden crown.
“If the people will not choose – and if we don’t have time for a contest – then I claim the throne!” Prince Theodane announced as he dropped to one knee and bent his head slightly to receive the crown. “Someone has to step forward and take charge. Time will be repaired and everything will be as it should have been a year ago.”
Calard quickly stepped closer and placed the crown on the prince’s brown hair. A sound made Zaine draw in a sharp breath. Singing. The true royal is known when the crown sings the song of the dragons.
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!