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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.
“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.”
A look of pride spread over Dom’s face, and he straightened up a little, his tunic hanging loosely on his thin body. “I’ve been a finder for six months now.”
“What’s a finder?” Maata asked.
“We tend the worlds,” Dom replied and then paused. “Well, we used to. In payment for keeping their time running as it should, we go to their world and find things we want.”
“You steal things?” Tercel asked bluntly.
“No, it’s finding. We help them survive, and they do the same for us. They just don’t know it,” Dom said a little defensively. “The only world that finders don’t go to is the one that Guyan was sent to. That’s why she was sent there, because we can’t move easily back and forth to it to do our finding. Father didn’t want her coming back.”
Zaine didn’t see the difference between Dom’s finding and what he considered stealing, but there seemed little point in saying so. Soon there wouldn’t be anywhere to find things from anyway.
“The world I went to was just about to break free when Choo and I came back,” Dom added. “We’d only been there for a day and hadn’t found much at all.”
“Why was Choo with you?” Jelena asked, hugging the fluffy cat so tightly that it started to squirm.
“She’s followed me ever since you went away, Cousin,” Dom replied. “She’s a good finder. She lets me know if anyone is around, and I’ve never been seen yet.”
“So what is it that you have ... found?” Zaine enquired, looking at the dirty blue object a little closer. It had two wheels and pipes that joined them together. They looked like the wheels of a carriage, but they were not made of wood. Weeds and dirt were caked onto most of it, and it smelt as if it had been in animal dung.
“I don’t know,” Dom admitted. “But I could feel the vibrations of the starlink and I knew I didn’t have much time. I saw this lying in a creek, and for some reason I just had to have it. Then I only just had time to get back before the link failed. Old Mex will know what it is.”
“Hadn’t we better be moving on?” Maata asked as she rubbed her arms in the cold tunnel and looked nervously over the bridge they were standing on. It was swaying gently with all of them on it, and Zaine had to admit he didn’t feel safe there.
“I thought you wanted to be a timeweaver,” Guyan said as they all went back the way Dom had come and then turned down another tunnel. The wheels of Dom’s ‘find’ clicked as he pushed it.
They came closer to a clear patch of rock, and in the light it cast he held up his arm to show Guyan. Only three runes marked his left arm. “Sy convinced father that I should not learn any more runes. He said that it would be cruel to raise my hopes when I had no chance of succeeding. I think Sy’s worried that I might end up being a timeweaver or a starweaver and be more important than him.”
“That’s right, he failed all the tests when he was thirteen,” Guyan recalled. “That was about a year before I left.”
“Just like father failed them as a child, too,” Dom added. “They both couldn’t bear it if my runes were stronger than theirs.”
Silence fell as they walked for a little while down the tunnels.
“Father isn’t going to be pleased to see you back here,” Dom warned. “You should keep out of his way.”
“I’m just here to find out what’s wrong with time. But first I’m going to see the king. I hear he is sick.” Guyan answered.
“Father didn’t waste any time claiming the throne,” Dom said quietly. He sounded ashamed. “It was only three days ago, and he’s already banned the weavers from tending the circles.”
“Why?” asked Zaine.
“He thinks the dragons should be doing it and that they are treating us badly,” Dom answered.
They passed many more forks and passages, but Dom led them confidently on through the tunnels. They went around a tight bend and came out in what seemed to be a forest. Zaine blinked, making sure that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, but the trees were still there.
How could trees survive in the harsh sands of Zhan? Then he realised that they were actually standing in an enormous cavern. The rock on the roof of the cave was completely transparent, allowing a full view of the rushing sands that swept across like waves of an ocean.
“Welcome to Royal Heights,” Guyan said. “This is one of the caverns where my people live.”
The trees rustled slightly in an unfelt wind, and Zaine looked for the sand that surely must accompany the wind. It was much warmer in the cavern, so he brushed his cloak back across his shoulders. Maata had gone up to the first tree and was touching the trunk and looking up into the branches.
“They’re real,” the princess said, looking back at Guyan for confirmation.
“Yes, our ancestors nurtured them and helped them grow with runes,” Guyan agreed with a small smile. “The wind is created totally with runes, though. It gives us the feeling of what it must have been like back on our own world.”
Zaine felt his feet sink slightly into the ground, and the loamy, moss-covered surface bounced back as he stepped onto a paved path. Then Zaine noticed the stairs that wound around the base of every single tree. They looked exactly like the steps around Guyan’s tree in the valley in his own world.
“You said you weren’t originally from Zhan?” Tercel commented, eyeing several people warily as they watched from deep in the trees. Their skin had some markings like Guyan and Jelena’s, but only a few.
“No, the storm dragons rescued us from our world and brought us here. We were the first world that the dragons created a link to. Time had all but stopped, and the link lasted only long enough for the dragons to get all our people here. Then the link was lost and we have never found it again.”
“In return for saving us and allowing us to remain in their world, we agreed to help the storm dragons to link to other worlds and fix time in them – so that nobody else ever had to suffer as we did.”
“For generations, our people have helped the dragons – all the time wishing that one day our own world would be the one our starlink picks up. But it has never been found.”
Guyan didn’t look very upset, but Zaine assumed she had probably never known the world her ancestors had come from.
“I’ll take this to Mex,” Dom said, pushing the wheeled pipes away. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Father you’re here.”
Dom headed off to the side of the cavern where caves had been dug into the walls. Each one was filled with piles of items – most of which Zaine could not even begin to identify. As Dom approached, an elderly man came out of one of the caves and looked delighted at Dom’s find.
“There are a lot of people here,” Maata said. The small group that had been watching them had grown to a large crowd, gathered in the shadows cast by the trees. They all wore clothes in similar colours to those worn by Guyan and Dom – greens, browns and oranges that made them seem part of the forest in which they lived.
“This is only a small number of our people,” Guyan told them. “We are so overcrowded that several families live in every home. We need more space, but you’ve seen what the land is like outside. This and two other caverns are all we have. There are several smaller caves beyond here, but we grow our food there. We use finders to get most of our food from other worlds, but we do grow as much as we can. Some people have even taken to living in caves deep down the tunnels as there is nowhere else to live.” Guyan shuddered as she spoke; it was clearly something that she saw as a desperate measure.
“Come and see the king,” Jelena said, tugging at her big sister’s sleeve.
A shadow of worry passed over Guyan’s face as she was reminded that her father was ill.
Guyan led them around the crowd and up a larger, wider set of steps than most of those that led into the trees.
“These are the main public stairs,” she explained. The stairs led them up to a wide wooden platform from which a dozen suspended bridges led in as many directions. Branching off from these were smaller wooden bridges that led to individual trees. The homes built into the branches of the trees looked very similar to the ones back at Guyan’s valley near Summer Castle.
Jelena skipped ahead of them, following the main bridge, looking back every now and then to make sure they were following. Her cat jumped down and ran straight up the trunk of the nearest tree. A movement caught the corner of Zaine’s eyes and he turned to see what it was. A blur of ginger shot up the tree next to him and he jumped back in surprise. It was followed quickly by a white-and-ginger fluffy blur.
“Cats,” Zaine said, laughing at the fright they had given him.
“Yes, cats. We have hundreds of them here,” Guyan muttered, not very enthusiastically. She rubbed her nose and then sneezed loudly. “I’m allergic to them.”
“That’s why I called my cat Choo,” Jelena said with a grin.
“The castle is up ahead.” Guyan was pointing to a large house perched slightly higher than the other houses surrounding it.
Familiarly carved wooden doors announced their arrival at the castle. The doors were carved with a picture that was so detailed that it drew the eye and held it captive. These doors showed a different scene to the ones back at Guyan’s valley castle, but Zaine knew it represented the past of those who lived inside the castle.
The scene on these doors was of a land covered in trees, with large lakes and mountains in the distance. Near the bottom, many people were carved into the wood and they appeared to be having some sort of a gathering. Musicians played while people danced.
“That was one of the last days in our land before my ancestors came here,” Guyan explained, letting them look a minute longer before pushing the door open. “It was the crowning of the king of that time.”
The inside of the castle was a lot plainer than Zaine had expected, and it was very quiet. Guyan led them through sparsely decorated rooms. Overstuffed, brightly-coloured cushions on the floor marked one large room as the living area. It looked a very similar layout to Guyan’s castle.
“Maybe we should wait down here,” Maata suggested as Guyan and Jelena headed quickly up a flight of narrow stairs.
Zaine nodded. It was a very personal time for Guyan, being reunited with her parents – and seeing her father very ill. Tercel also remained in the large living area. He walked over to the large open doorway out to the trees and called the others over.
“Look, you can see over the entire cavern,” he said without turning to face them.
Zaine and Maata joined him, and looked out over the canopy of leaves that hid most of the homes of Zhan. They stepped out onto the large decked area that extended from the doorway. The tree they were in rose to the roof of the cavern, and the clear rock ceiling was almost close enough to reach out and touch.
Off across the cavern, above most of the trees a set of steps had been cut into the rock wall, leading up to a narrow tunnel near the roof. A bridge led from the deck they were on and ran all the way to the tunnel.
The sound of feet hurrying down steps behind them told that Jelena and Guyan were returning. It had been only a short time since they had gone upstairs. Zaine turned, hoping that it wasn’t bad news.
“He’s very ill,” Guyan said, her eyes reflecting her concern.
Jelena’s cat wandered in, and the small girl picked it up and hugged it, needing the comfort.
“Have the healers of your world seen him?” Zaine asked.
“Uncle Eldric is the only healer we have,” Jelena told them. “He says there is nothing we can do and that the king will make us all sick if we go near him.”
“I’ll go and ask him to come and see the king again.” Guyan began walking towards the door.
Zaine hung behind, thinking back to his training in herbs and healing in Davyn’s round forest cottage. It seemed like such a long time ago when his only plan for the future had been to be a healer like Davyn.
“Can I see your father?” he asked.
Guyan paused at the doorway and looked back at him, hopefully. “Can you heal him?”
“I can try. I was training to be a healer up until a year ago. I had a very good teacher,” Zaine replied, suddenly feeling nervous. He hoped he hadn’t raised Guyan’s hopes for nothing as she led him up the stairs to the rooms above. Maata and Tercel remained downstairs, out on the deck with Jelena and Choo.
A large bed stood by the window in the bedroom upstairs, but the curtains were drawn, blocking out most of the red-tinged light. A rune-marked woman sat beside the bed, dressed in a deep green gown and a cloak that reminded Zaine of the red-gold leaves of autumn. Zaine recognised her instantly as Guyan’s mother, the woman who had been standing crying at the edge of the circle in the valley.
She looked tired, and her expression showed that she had given up hope. She brushed her golden-blonde hair off her face as she looked up. Lying in the bed was a thin man with sweat-soaked black hair and skin tinged a deathly grey.
There was a slightly sweet, sickly smell in the stale air, and Zaine wondered how long the king had been ill. He knew from Davyn’s teachings that fresh air was good for the sick.
“Zaine is from the land where I have been,” Guyan told her mother. “He might be able to help.”
Queen Mya stood up and moved away from the bed. She looked at Zaine with a mixture of doubt and hope. “Eldric says there is no cure.”
Zaine felt his palms go sweaty, and he didn’t think it was just because the room was stuffy and hot. He stepped forward and took a deep breath, regretting it instantly as the sweet air almost made him choke.
He cast his mind back to when Davyn, living the life of a humble herbmaster, had tended the sick. Check the temperature – Zaine put his hand on the king’s forehead. Yes, there was a fever. Check the breathing – Zaine leaned in closer. Shallow and short. He ran through the list of things Davyn had taught him. The king’s eyes were unfocused and glazed, the pupils much larger than they should be.
He caught a whiff of the king’s breath as he looked at his eyes. The sweet, almost tangy smell told him what he needed to know.