Iron Tide Rising

by Carrie Ryan

  And Marrill let her tears fall, because she knew it was a lie. Reality rippled again, ripping her from the scene, and she was grateful for the reprieve.

  The memories continued, dizzying and overwhelming as the Kraken was dragged backward through Ardent’s life.

  Now they stood on the deck of the Kraken, the Stream a stretch of golden water, smooth as glass for as far as she could see. Overhead the sails hung limp, the ship so dead in the water that not even the smallest hint of a ripple lapped against her hull.

  Ardent sat with his feet propped against a table, leaning his chair so far back that it was a wonder it hadn’t fallen over. He studied a handful of cards and shrugged, tossing two onto the table.

  Coll sat across from him, and Marrill felt her heart lurch to see him again.

  But it was Remy who gasped. Remy who yelped “Coll!” as she raced toward him.

  Ardent’s chair fell forward, slamming against the deck. He peered around the ship. “Did you hear that?”

  Brightness lit Remy’s eyes. “Yes! Coll! Can you hear me?”

  “Maybe it’s the wind playing tricks,” Coll said dryly. “Oh, wait, there is no wind.”

  Ardent sighed, kicking his chair back into its improbable lean. “The wind can’t stay mad at me forever,” he said, waving a hand. “Trust me. In a battle of obstinacy, I shall always prevail.”

  Coll sighed. “If only you hadn’t—”

  His words were cut short by another ripple. Another jolt to Marrill’s gut as she was dragged from the memory and thrust into another.

  They were on a balcony now, in what looked like a library. The walls were made of stone, and the windows were narrow. Glowing orbs filled the air, dancing and shifting to light the path of the wizards browsing through the towering shelves of books that spread in every direction.

  Three college-aged wizards, Ardent, Annalessa, and Serth, sat at a table in the corner. They shook and twitched, and for a moment Marrill thought something was terribly wrong. But then she realized… they were laughing. All three of them. Annalessa had her head thrown back, and Serth’s eyes were squeezed shut. Ardent snorted, which only caused the three to laugh harder.

  “Oh, Ardent,” Annalessa gasped. “Your stories…”

  Behind her, Marrill heard a soft chuckle and she turned to see Serth watching the trio. “He could always make us laugh,” he said, a smile ghosting his lips. But his eyes glistened with pain and regret, and when he drew in a breath, it hitched in his throat, almost as if he was holding back a sob. Marrill’s heart twisted at the sight, but before she could say anything there was…

  Another ripple. This time she was standing in the middle of a crowded market. Ardent crouched nearby, now a gangly teen. His fingers leapt, dancing a makeshift puppet before a child with tear-streaked cheeks, turning his cries into laughter.

  Ripples. Memories. Ripples.

  Then they were in a forest, and Ardent was even younger, his magic apparently fresh and new as he concentrated, straining to unbend the branches of a tree and release a brilliant blue-stained bird trapped within. His face lit with wonder as the bird soared free.

  Marrill’s eyes closed. A deep anxiety swirled in her belly. For everything awful the Master had done, he was still this goofy, wonderful, passionate, lovestruck boy. He was still the gangly, awkward, grandfatherly old man.

  He was still Ardent.

  If they used the Evershear to cut through his iron armor, what would happen to him? She couldn’t bear the thought of actually hurting Ardent. Of maybe even killing him.

  The ripples came faster now. Ardent aged in reverse, shrinking to an infant, then was gone.

  Faster.

  Trees shrank into sprouts and slithered back into the ground.

  Faster.

  Rivers sucked away and poured upward as rain.

  Faster.

  Old mountains roared upward, then leapt back down again.

  Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster

  Everything swirled together into a blur.

  Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster Faster Fast

  Then the blur seemed to tear open,

  erFasterFasterFasterFasterFasterFasterFasterFasterFasterFaster

  and the Enterprising Kraken emerged

  into a world

  of light.

  CHAPTER 10

  At Dawn, the Light Is Peculiar

  It’s like sailing on the Pirate Stream, Fin thought.

  It was like that, but it wasn’t that.

  Beneath them was molten gold. Not the golden water of the Stream, but thick, swirling gold. The sky above was another sea, stacked atop them like the bread of a sandwich. At every horizon, the two touched and blended. The Kraken was sailing inside a bubble in an ocean of pure, raw magic.

  In the middle of it all, a spire floated in midair. Directly beneath it, the sea plunged into a massive whirlpool. Overhead, a stream of molten gold poured down from the golden sea above, disappearing somewhere inside the spire. It was as though the water below was pouring through a hole and somehow coming out above to drain into the spire.

  Ahead, something moved through the air, soaring toward the spire. Fin blinked, trying to focus. He recognized the ship, and his heart began to thump. “It’s the Master!” he shouted, watching the Iron Ship fly through the sky, as though it was light as a cloud. As if it were a ghost ship.

  “Where?” Beside him, Marrill shook her head, clearly still recovering from what they’d just gone through. In her arms, Karnelius lashed his tentacle—tail, Fin corrected himself—furiously. Fin pointed, and she drew in a sharp breath.

  “Ardent,” she half whispered. There was a note of sadness in her voice. Fin ignored it. Nothing of Ardent remained in that ironclad creature.

  “After him!” Fin shouted as he raced to the prow. Serth stood there, tall and dark in the all-consuming light, staring up at the pinnacle in the sky. Beneath them, the Kraken groaned and shifted course. She inched forward, but the molten gold barely parted as she went. The ship’s motion came from the slow suction of the hole in the middle of the sea than from her own force.

  “It’s no good,” Remy called from the quarterdeck. “This is like sailing through honey.”

  “We would have to be able to fly, anyway,” Serth added quietly.

  Fin squinted up at the Iron Ship as it slid to dock against the top of the spire. They had to get to it somehow. That was what brought the Iron Tide. That was what had taken the Parsnickles and Fig.

  His heart squirmed, and he reached for the Evershear sheathed at his side. The bone handle bit into his palm, he gripped it so tightly.

  Marrill came to stand beside them. “It’s the Font of Meres,” she breathed, wonder threaded through her voice. “The source of the Pirate Stream.”

  Fin tilted his head as he studied the floating spire. Now that she pointed it out, the dark rock was familiar. As were the mouthlike arches on its sides. When he’d seen it before, water had poured from those—first the headwaters of the Pirate Stream, but after Ardent’s wish, the dark metal of the Iron Tide. Here, they were dry. But the shape of them was unmistakable.

  “Yes,” Serth said. “This is the birthplace of the Stream. This place—and this time—are where it branches off of the River of Creation.” He looked at Marrill and Fin. “Up there,” he said, “the Dzane will have just finished their battle with the Lost Sun of Dzannin. What we see around us must be the very last of the raw stuff of creation—the pure magic that will become the Pirate Stream.”

  “Let’s get up there before the Master gets away,” Fin growled. “After him!” he called to Remy.

  “You may not recall, but this ship doesn’t exactly have wings,” she pointed out from the quarterdeck.

  “Good thing we have a wizard with us, then,” Fin replied. “How about you magic us up there, Serth?”

  Serth merely lifted a scowling eyebrow. Fin clenched his jaw and wrung his hand around the hilt of the Evershear, impatient to
catch the Master and finally be done with the creature who’d destroyed those he held dear.

  Marrill glanced toward him, alarm in her eyes as her gaze fell on the knife clutched in his fist. Fin forced himself to release his grip, shifting his hands to the railing instead. The grain of the dullwood sent tingles through his palms. Even in this strange place, it felt normal—boring.

  Somehow that thought reassured him. Things would be normal again. They just had to catch the Master and find the moment to strike. No matter what it took, they’d come this far; something would happen. The sails would fill. The Kraken would lift out of the water. He could practically feel it already. They would find a way to get up to that spire, even if it meant sailing on air.

  And in that moment, he believed they could fly.

  “We’re lifting!” Remy shouted.

  Fin blinked, looked down over the railing. Sure enough, the prow of the Kraken had broken free of the molten waves. Liquid gold flowed off from all sides as the ship rose into the air.

  Fin’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe it.

  And just like that, the Kraken sloshed back down.

  “What just happened?” Marrill asked, clutching Karny with one hand and the railing with the other.

  Fin could only shake his head. “I don’t know. For a moment there, I really almost believed we could fly, but then…” He trailed off, thinking. All he’d done was believe the ship could fly… and it had. They were in the heart of magic, after all. Anything was possible.

  And just like that, the Kraken rose back up out of the water.

  “I don’t believe it,” Marrill gasped. The ship stopped, faltering in midair.

  Fin laughed. “It’s belief,” he cried with a clap. “I believe it can fly. Stop believing it can’t!”

  Marrill looked confused. But Serth nodded, catching on immediately. “Yes,” he said, “that’s it. The magic is young here; in legends, the Dzane shaped it with their will alone. We may not be as powerful as they are, but if we all believe in something, together we may be able to make it real.”

  Marrill looked at Fin. He grinned as big as he could, nodding to reassure her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I believe it. We can fly.”

  The Kraken rose higher and lurched forward, headed for the spire.

  “Guys,” Remy yelled from the ship’s wheel. “We’re actually flying! I’m steering us through the air!”

  “You better believe it!” Fin cried. Serth groaned. Marrill nudged him in the ribs playfully. “Sorry,” Fin said, but none of them believed that.

  Within moments, the Kraken floated up beside the spire that would one day be called the Font of Meres. She moved in as she went, rising past the dry culverts, toward the very top.

  As they neared the pinnacle, a curious, high-pitched little voice drifted down to them.

  “I can do nothing for you,” it said. “If she has become one with the Stream, then she was always one with the Stream and always will be, so long as the Stream exists.”

  Fin’s heart beat faster. He recognized that voice. It was the Dawn Wizard, the last and trickiest of the Dzane. He was the one who’d built the Syphon of Monerva, that great and powerful Wish Machine, and tricked the Salt Sand King into using it. His last will and testament, in the form of a talking Karnelius, had led them to try to repair the wizard’s greatest work, the Bintheyr Map to Everywhere, to stop the Lost Sun from destroying the Stream.

  Of course, all of that was in the future, Fin reminded himself.

  “Very well, but I warn you, you mustn’t do this,” the Dawn Wizard’s voice said desperately. “The Lost Sun is within you, I can feel it. It’s driving you—listen!”

  The Kraken rose, reaching the top at last.

  In the future, this would be a stone building, with walls and passageways and a giant counsel-room with windows. But here in the past, there were no walls. Only a wide-open platform. From the deck of the Kraken, Fin could clearly see the Stream water pouring down from above, an ever-running thread hanging from the golden heavens. It ended in the very center of the spire, disappearing into a deep bowl there.

  Next to the bowl, a stooped little shape hovered, two hands holding a square of parchment. Fin recognized it instantly: the Bintheyr Map to Everywhere.

  The casualties of the Dzane’s battle with the Lost Sun surrounded him: a golem of stone half-melted; a woman with three faces wincing painfully; a clockwork griffin smashed to pieces. Others lay nearby, in shapes and forms of all imagining, each one looking shocked, stunned, terrified.

  On the far side of the platform, the Iron Ship waited. Her Master stalked toward her, all cold metal and angles, a figure carved from jagged hate. From one hand dangled an iron cage with Rose, his prisoner, inside it. He was tall and cruel as ever, brutal and powerful with every step. And his back was completely exposed.

  He was vulnerable.

  Fin’s fingers slipped to the Evershear. Nerves fluttered against adrenaline in his belly. He unsheathed the knife, listening to the searing slip of it slicing through the air. He took a step forward, but Marrill’s hand fell on his, holding him back.

  “Wait,” she said.

  He shot her a confused look. This was what they’d come for. To use the Evershear against the Master and end the Iron Tide.

  Her eyes glimmered. “What if this kills Ardent?”

  The thought punched him in the gut. But he wouldn’t be deterred. “Marrill, it’s the only way to stop the Iron Tide.”

  He started to pull away, but she tightened her grip. “We can’t. Serth said we have to use the Evershear inside the Mirrorweb. It’s the only way to imprison the Lost Sun again.”

  That caused Fin to hesitate. He gnawed his lip, his insides twisting as he watched the Master board his ship. With a sharp sigh he resheathed the blade and crossed his arms.

  As they watched, the Iron Ship pulled away from the spire. The shrieking of bending metal tore through the air. The ship rolled, twisted, and dropped out of the sky. It plummeted downward, then smashed into the golden sea below. In a moment, it seemed to melt, spreading all around. Turning, Fin realized, into the Iron Tide.

  Before Fin could even sound the alarm, the Tide swirled into the whirlpool below the spire and was gone.

  Fin gasped, confused. He didn’t understand.

  “Ardent!” Marrill choked. She spun toward Serth. “What happened to him? Where did he go?”

  The wizard didn’t answer. Instead, he kept his eyes fastened on the thread of molten gold pouring into the bowl in the middle of the spire from overhead. A dark stain appeared, tarnishing the edge of it. It grew thicker, darker as it swirled toward the bowl below.

  The Iron Tide, rising once again.

  As they watched, the Dawn Wizard pushed the Map to Everywhere, faceup, into the center of the flow. Its sides unfolded, transforming it. The Gate within it swung open. The water, dark and gold alike, flowed into it and vanished.

  Fin shook his head, disbelieving. “What—” But he didn’t have time to finish the thought.

  “Hey, little help down here!” came a gruff voice from below. Fin leaned over the railing and found a big purple form clutching the side of the ship.

  He cringed. The Naysayer. They’d totally forgotten about him!

  “Great grouper gravy, what kinda indecisive incompetents we got on this ship?” the Naysayer growled as they hauled him up. He smacked the deck with a thud and shook his greasy mane. Gobs of molten gold spattered off it. One droplet smacked against a bucket of crab shells, which got up and waltzed together down into the main hatch.

  That settled one thing—the water here was at least as deadly as it was on the Stream. But the big grumpy lizard seemed unharmed. “Naysayer,” Fin said, stunned. “You’re… still you?”

  Marrill gasped. “Wait—you really are immune to Stream water?”

  It must have been hard for a creature without lips to sneer, but as usual, the Naysayer managed. “Oh, right.” He patted himself down. “Good work,
kid detectives. I’ll give ya three points for statin’ the obvious, and take off five for not being sure.”

  “Well, well,” said a shrill voice from the spire beside them. “If it isn’t the Contrarian. Hardly expected to see you here.”

  Fin turned. The little creature that approached matched the Dawn Wizard’s voice perfectly, though he wasn’t exactly what one would expect an enormously powerful wizard to look like. Grayish fur barely covered a body an indiscriminate shade of blue. Golden-tinged whiskers sprouted around his nose like a cat, but his ears hung low on his head. His eyes were uneven, definitely different sizes, and they glowed a pale orange as he looked past Fin. Straight at the Naysayer.

  “Wait,” Marrill said, swiveling back and forth. “You… know each other?”

  “Me and Dawny go way back,” the big beast grunted. “Being older than the Pirate Stream and all. I’m one of the Dzane. Did I forget to mention that?”

  Fin’s mouth hung open. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re a Dzane?”

  “That’s right,” the Naysayer said. “Oh, and I could remember you this whole time, too.” He leaned in, right by Fin’s ear. “Acted like I couldn’t, though.” His breath reeked of prollycrabs. “’Cause it was funny.”

  CHAPTER 11

  A Genial Conversation at the Beginning of Time

  On the spire’s edge, the Dawn Wizard twitched his catlike nose, making his whiskers dance in a flickering rainbow. “The Contrarian is not now, nor ever will he be, one of the Dzane,” he assured them.

  Marrill shot the Naysayer a withering look. Unsurprisingly, he’d lied to them.

  The scaly monster heaved with laughter. “You shoulda seen the looks on you suckers’ faces. Swimmin’ back through time was totally worth the trip just for that.” He slapped his knees with his lower two arms. “But seriously, I am older than the Pirate Stream. And the thing about remembering the kid but pretending not to just to get my jollies—that was true, too.”

  The Naysayer laughed again, then lumbered off the ship, heading toward the center of the spire. Marrill stared after him, her mind stuck in a state of disbelief.