Iron Tide Rising

by Carrie Ryan

  “I’ve long suspected,” the Dawn Wizard said, “that he is a spirit of elemental orneriness. But he would never cooperate with my tests.” He let out a good-natured hmph. “The nature of the beast, I suppose.”

  The little creature then looked them up and down, inspecting them with care. “More ghosts from a gray future, are you?” He straightened his cloak and nodded approvingly when he came to Karnelius. When he reached Fin, he cocked his head to one side. “Here to follow the last, I expect? Stop him, maybe?”

  Marrill was relieved that he seemed to already understand. “Yes, exactly. He was our friend,” she gushed, “but now he’s started a tide of iron that’s turning everything to metal, and we have to—”

  Serth cleared this throat, interrupting her. “Marrill,” he said slowly. “Recall that our friend here just helped our quarry escape.”

  Marrill froze. Her spine straightened. Right, of course. She’d forgotten that the Dawn Wizard wasn’t exactly trustworthy. She’d been talking to one of the most powerful beings who ever existed, one who was known for his tricks and riddles. She couldn’t assume he’d be friendly to their cause.

  The Dawn Wizard waved a tiny clawed hand. “Oh, whale-skates, don’t let that bother you.” He raised a finger to his chin. “Hmm, I think I just invented roller whales. Do they have those in the future?”

  As one, the crew of the Kraken shook their heads.

  The Dawn Wizard shrugged. “Guess they don’t take off. Well, I’m going to invent them anyway, so there.”

  “You didn’t explain why you helped the Master escape,” Marrill pointed out, trying to get the conversation back on track.

  The Dawn Wizard peered at her. She could practically feel the power radiating from him like an electrical field. There was a hardness in his eyes that made her want to turn and run, but she forced herself to hold her ground. “You didn’t ask,” he said.

  She let out an exaggerated huff. Why did wizards have to be so persnickety? “Fine. Why did you help the Master escape and where did he go?”

  His whiskers twitched. “The Lost Sun of Dzannin just stripped the Dzane of our immortality. I’d been able to die for all of five minutes when your friend showed up. Think I was ready to try it out?”

  “He’s not our friend,” Fin cut in. Marrill scowled at him. “Not anymore,” he amended.

  “Regardless,” the Dawn Wizard continued. “He demanded I open the Gate to the Mirrorweb and allow him into the heart of the Pirate Stream. So I did.”

  Fin frowned. “So all we have to do is threaten you, and you’ll help us the same way you helped him?”

  Kaleidoscopic patterns danced in the Dawn Wizard’s eyes as he looked Fin over. “You could try,” he said pointedly.

  Marrill suddenly felt like a million bees were pressing their stingers, gently, against her skin. Fin stiffened next to her, clearly feeling it, too. Apparently, the Dawn Wizard was not pleased with his tone.

  “Maybe we should just ask?” Marrill suggested through clenched teeth.

  Fin nodded tightly. “That sounds good,” he squeaked. Carefully, he turned toward the Dawn Wizard. “Will you help us?” he asked with exaggerated politeness. “Please?”

  The Dawn Wizard winked, and the awful feeling vanished. Marrill and Fin relaxed as one. “Maybe.” He started back toward the center of the spire, waving them after him. “Come on, then,” he said. “All of you. Have a seat. Let’s chat.”

  Serth hesitated. “We would love to stay,” he said. “I’m sure there’s much we could learn here. But as my young friend mentioned, we are on a mission to stop the man who just left. We’ve come from many eons in the future to track him down, and we must do so before it’s too late.”

  The Dawn Wizard bobbed his head. “Oh, absolutely,” he said. “But in the Mirrorweb, time has no meaning. Follow him now, follow him tomorrow…” He shrugged. “If you come from many eons in the future and it wasn’t ‘too late’ then, I expect we have time for a bit of sit-and-chat before the world ends, hmmm?”

  He held out a little blue-skinned hand to Marrill. Tufts of fur stuck out at odd angles between the fingers. For a long moment, she considered what to do. The Dawn Wizard was mischievous and unpredictable, after all. For all she knew, this could have been his plan from the beginning.

  On the other hand, he looked like a raccoon that had nearly drowned in a vat of grape Kool-Aid, and Marrill was a total sucker for sad animals. She reached out and took the little paw, allowing the Dawn Wizard to lead her off the Kraken.

  “Hold up,” Remy called after her. “I’m not so sure about this.” She warily eyed the Dawn Wizard and the rest of the Dzane scattered around the spire.

  Serth stepped forward. “No harm shall come to them while I am with them. I give you my word.” His voice held no trace of jest or irony.

  Marrill tripped over her feet and stumbled to a stop. No way she’d heard that right. No way had Serth—the former madman who’d tried to kill them on multiple occasions—just vowed to protect them. She glanced toward Fin, who seemed to share her confusion.

  A flash of surprise crossed Remy’s face, but it didn’t last long. “Great!” she chirped, shrugging. “Have fun!” She’d already turned to a hammock strung between two masts. “Don’t wander too far, be back before dark, don’t get into any cars with strangers, et cetera, et cetera.…” Her warning trailed out into a yawn as she stretched and then flopped into the hammock. “Best babysitter ever,” she mumbled, thrusting a fist into the air. She then let out an oof as Karny jumped on top of her and curled into a ball on her stomach.

  “Did Remy just appoint Serth as our babysitter?” Fin asked under his breath.

  Marrill shrugged. Maybe they’d misjudged the wizard. She glanced toward Serth, who already strode across the platform, back straight and robes flowing around his feet. The usual fear that twisted her stomach didn’t come. “Weird.”

  Fin laughed. “I think that sums up everything about this.”

  He was right—everything was weird. All around them, the Dzane were recovering from their fight against the Lost Sun. The three-faced woman straightened, stitching herself up with a wave of her fingers. The pieces of the clockwork griffin jumped toward each other and reassembled. The golem remained half-melted, but he moved more easily now, as though he was supposed to be that way.

  Marrill felt an odd sense of déjà vu as she looked at them. She’d seen them before, she realized, as echoes—ghostlike apparitions—in Meres. The power of the battle with the Lost Sun, recent here, had left an impression that would still survive in her time.

  A shiver traveled down her back. Her eyes turned to the swirling magic above and below them and filling every horizon. In her time, the Pirate Stream was ancient and full of secrets so old that they’d been lost to the ages; here, it hadn’t even been born yet. But sometime in the very, very far future, she would be back in this place, walking across this same stone floor, trying to defeat the same all-consuming evil.

  “You okay?” Fin asked under his breath. She nodded and forced a smile, turning her attention to the now that was now now.

  Ahead of them, the Dawn Wizard slowed. With a nod of his head, a table unfurled like a flower from the floor. They settled themselves on soft, tufted lily stools while delicacies they’d never heard of nor scarcely could have imagined appeared before them.

  As they ate, Fin and Marrill did their best to explain what had happened, including everything they knew of the Master and the Iron Tide—give or take a few key details. Like the fact that it was the Dawn Wizard himself who would one day create the Wish Machine that, in turn, would create the wish that ultimately turned Ardent into the Master. It seemed rude, Marrill thought, to tell someone about his own future like that.

  “I just don’t understand,” Marrill said when she finished the story. She looked at her hands, thinking about Ardent. “Why would he try to destroy the Stream? Ardent is kind and good.”

  The Dawn Wizard cocked his head, his orange-fire e
yes turning to platinum flecked with jade as he considered her question. “Not always, it seems.”

  “Ardent the Cold,” Fin said, nodding.

  “Indeed,” the Dawn Wizard said.

  Marrill opened her mouth to defend Ardent, but Serth held up a hand to stop her. “Ardent was kind and good,” he said. “We fought great evils together, saved lives, achieved things that, before us, were impossible.” His lips twitched into a smile—a real one. Like most creatures born into an inhospitable environment, it died quickly. “But there is a darkness to him, too,” he said. “You’ve felt it. An unquenchable thirst for knowledge, a need to control the uncontrollable. It burns in him, and though he may have learned how to push it down, it never vanished.”

  Marrill hated hearing these things about Ardent. But she also couldn’t deny them. She’d never forget watching her friend reach out and take the wish orb, knowing what would happen if he used it. He’d become the enemy, and he’d done so willingly.

  And that broke her heart. “But he loves the Pirate Stream.”

  “Perhaps, then, there is something he loves more than the Pirate Stream,” suggested the Dawn Wizard, the fur above one eye tufted in an arch.

  “Annalessa,” she breathed. Of course. She remembered the moment Ardent had taken the wish orb from the Master.

  He’d just watched Annalessa sacrifice herself to save the Stream. He’d blamed himself, believing that he’d failed her. I will save her, he’d said, holding aloft the orb. If I must undo all of the Stream to make it happen.

  And at his words the Iron Tide had flowed forth.

  He’d done it for Annalessa. He was trying to save the woman he loved.

  “He did it for her,” she said.

  The catlike creature grinned and nodded.

  Fin didn’t seem convinced. “That’s just crazy.”

  Marrill shrugged. “I think it’s romantic.”

  He pursed his lips. “Destroying the world is not romantic, Marrill.”

  She didn’t argue. He had a point.

  Fin turned back to the little Dzane. “So how does the Iron Tide have anything to do with Annalessa?”

  The Dawn Wizard reached behind him, seemingly into a place that only he could see. Carefully, he unrolled the freshly minted Map to Everywhere. His eyes flitted over it, as new places bubbled into existence on its surface.

  “This Map and the Pirate Stream are one and the same,” he said. “By merging with the Compass Rose, Annalessa has become a part of the Map itself. That means she has become part of the Pirate Stream. Irrevocably intertwined in its existence.”

  He touched the Map’s surface lovingly, a father stroking the cheek of a newborn child. “The Pirate Stream is all possibility. But the Iron Tide turns everything the same. And when all your possibilities are the same, well… there’s really only one possibility, isn’t there?”

  All around, strange shapes gathered. The Dzane had drawn closer to listen. Marrill could feel the power of them vibrating in her teeth. It was the rich odor of ancient, the round flavor of wise. It felt like the sound of the wind coming down off old mountains.

  When she looked up, the Dawn Wizard’s eyes were deep purple crowned with carnelian, the color of clouds at sunrise. “If there is no possibility, there is no Pirate Stream. Your friend seems to believe that if there is no Pirate Stream, Annalessa will be released.”

  Marrill’s heart roared in her ears as she struggled to understand. “So he’s destroying the Stream with the Iron Tide—he’s erasing all possibility—because he thinks it will save Annalessa.”

  The Dawn Wizard nodded.

  “Will it work?” she asked, her voice barely more than a breath. “Will he be able to save her?”

  “I don’t imagine it matters,” the Dawn Wizard said simply. “Do you?”

  Marrill’s eyes dropped. She felt tears clutching at the back of her throat. A hollowness seemed to open up inside her. She shuddered, thinking of everything turned into iron. Of a world without life, without color. Everything hard, nothing giving comfort. Even if Ardent was right, even if that would save Annalessa, what would be left of the world that would be worth living in?

  The Dawn Wizard didn’t exactly have lips that could smile. But his eyes turned a reassuring shade of blue, like the sky returning after a storm. “It’s not all gloom. So long as there is one last possibility, there is hope. So long as one shard of potential remains, the iron can be thawed. The Stream can be re-formed.”

  Marrill perked up. Beside her, Fin straightened. “Thawed?” she asked. “As in, everything already turned to iron will be returned to normal?”

  The Dawn Wizard nodded.

  “So if we stop him now, the Stream and everyone the Tide has taken are saved,” Fin said.

  “Indeed,” the little Dzane cheeped. “But when there are no more possibilities, when every last one is iron?” His voice grew softer. “Well, that’s it.”

  Fin nodded. He leaned back on his tufted lily stool, his hand drifting to the hilt of the Evershear on his hip.

  Marrill shuddered, torn between her love of Ardent and her horror at what he’d done and what he was trying to do now. At what they would have to do to stop him. She played with the edge of the table. “Is there any way to stop the Iron Tide without hurting Ardent?”

  Fin pressed his lips together. His eyes were cold, determined. She understood why. He’d already lost so much to the Iron Tide: the Khaznot Quay, the Parsnickles, Fig. He was angry and upset—so was she. But that wasn’t a reason to abandon Ardent.

  She looked to Serth, waiting for him to say something—to back her up and defend his oldest friend. But he’d turned away, seemingly lost to his own thoughts and memories. Without a word, he stood and wandered across the spire, leaving Marrill to defend Ardent on her own. She clenched her hands into fists.

  “Ardent’s not a monster, Fin,” she said to her friend angrily. He dropped his attention to his plate, where he’d been pushing around a bite of broiled chaos, which kept changing from solid to liquid to gas as he played with it.

  “He’s trying to save someone he loves,” she added. Her voice cracked, and she looked away, her eyes misting. She bit her lip, memories of her mom coming unbidden to mind.

  The Dawn Wizard came around the table and took her hand between his. He flicked at her fingers playfully. “We all love things, tomorrow’s child. Sometimes, we define ourselves by them. Sometimes, when we decide that someone else makes us who we are, it seems like there is no point in going on without them.”

  He looked at her expectantly, like he was waiting for her to figure something out. She frowned, thinking back through what he’d said. Then it hit her: He wasn’t just talking about Ardent and Annalessa. He was talking about her. And her mom.

  Marrill swallowed, trying hard not to get emotional as thoughts of her mother surged inside her. That was different, she told herself. All she needed to save her mom was a little Stream magic. It wasn’t like she was the one about to destroy the world.

  She could—she would—make her mom healthy again, and no one would get hurt in the process.

  She drew a deep breath. “I just want to know if it’s possible to save Ardent.”

  The Dawn Wizard cackled and spread his arms wide. “Of course it’s possible. Everything is possible on the Pirate Stream.” He tapped one claw against needle-sharp, black-tinged teeth. “Until it isn’t, of course.”

  Marrill sat forward eagerly. “Then how do we save him?”

  “You reach the man underneath the metal,” the Dawn Wizard said, his gaze locked on hers. Again she could feel the energy dancing around him, buzzing against her skin.

  “Cut through the metal and reach the man.” Fin tightened his grip on the hilt of the Evershear. “That we already knew.”

  The Dawn Wizard’s eyes drifted to the weapon. “Cut through the metal and reach the man,” he repeated to himself. He twisted his lips. “A bit literal for my tastes, but it should do the trick.”

  Fru
stration bloomed within Marrill. They seemed to be missing the point. The question wasn’t how to reach Ardent. It was how to do it without destroying him in the process. “Yes, but how do we use the Evershear without killing Ardent?”

  “Hmm,” the Dawn Wizard said. “That could be more tricky. But saving Ardent while stopping the Tide is a possibility. And in the Mirrorweb, where you’re going, every possibility is a mirror. So I would suggest finding the mirror where you save your friend.”

  Marrill blinked, waiting for him to say more. “And then what?”

  The Dzane rolled his paw in the air as though her question was unimportant. “Turn it into a reality. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”

  Marrill gritted her teeth. She didn’t quite understand how the creature could be both so helpful and yet so unhelpful at the same time. “So… how do we find the right mirror?”

  The catlike Dzane stood tall, seeming to grow in size. The tips of his fur blazed, reflecting the shimmer of molten gold pouring in from the ocean that was below and above. For a moment it felt as though Marrill and the creature were the only two beings in the world.

  Then he shrugged. “How should I know? I’m just an old trickster.” His voiced buzzed like electricity in her thoughts, blocking out everything but the creature standing before her. “Find a guide or something.”

  “But…” Marrill started to protest, but the wizard’s eyes began to swirl a darker ochre, and she remembered she was dealing with an insanely powerful creature. It would probably be best not to anger him too much. So instead she tried to give him her most pitiful “please help” look. The same look she gave her parents when she wanted extra dessert.

  “Fine,” he huffed. “It will be the final mirror.” He held up a paw. “And before you ask, I know it will be the final one because once it’s gone, the possibility of saving both Ardent and the Stream disappears. Ergo, up until that moment, that possibility will still exist.”

  Marrill tried to follow the logic, but her thoughts just ended in tangled knots. So she asked a simpler question. “How will we know which mirror is the final one?”