CHAPTER 30

The Compass, Rose

Marrill stared at the crumpled body. “Did you just…” She tried to untangle her thoughts. “Did that just…”

She let the unconscious Ardent down gently and pushed to her feet. Together, she and Fin approached the Font and the lifeless body beside it. Outside, the wail of the void died. The cracks in the walls stopped growing. The deep nothingness within them dissipated, turning into just empty air.

Marrill shook her head. “Did we just save the Pirate Stream?”

Fin shrugged. “Yes?”

A tide of giggles erupted from Marrill’s mouth. It felt amazing to laugh after everything they’d just been through. “We won!” she said, letting the excitement and relief overcome her. “We saved the Stream!”

They grabbed each other by the arms, bouncing up and down with glee.

“Again,” Fin pointed out.

Marrill let out a high laugh. “Again,” she said. But a moment later, her jubilance dimmed, remembering Ardent. The wizard may have been shockingly tough for his frail frame, but the Lost Sun had hit him pretty hard. “We better get Ardent out of here and back to the Kraken.”

“Uh,” Fin said. He pointed. Ardent was no longer collapsed in a heap. He’d risen to his feet and moved to the center of the chamber, where he stood wordless, staring at the entrance to the Great Hall.

As one, they rushed to him. “Ardent?” Marrill asked. “Ardent, are you okay?” She leaned forward, trying to catch his eyes. “You might have a concussion,” she tried to tell him.

“No,” the old man said. “No, Marrill, I’m fine.”

She sighed in relief. “Well, in that case, you totally missed it! It was end-of-the-world time, and the Lost Sun was all WAHMP-wahmpwahmp-WAHMP.” She held out her hand, mimicking the sound of the Lost Sun gathering its energy to pour into the Font. “And then Fin was all like, ‘Hey, catch!’ and then…”

But Ardent didn’t seem to be paying attention. He didn’t even glance her way. Instead, his eyes remained locked on the entrance. “Annalessa,” he breathed.

Marrill spun. At the far end of the room, a new figure swept into the chamber. Annalessa looked exactly as Marrill remembered her from Monerva: long black hair, elegant gown, gentle but prominent cheekbones.

Marrill’s heart jumped with joy. They’d found her! “Annalessa!”

But Annalessa didn’t seem to hear. Indeed, she looked hurried, harried even, as though she were in a great rush. She moved quickly across the room, as if she didn’t see them there watching her.

And that’s when Marrill realized. “She’s an echo,” she said aloud.

All the other echoes had vanished, burned away by the light of the Lost Sun. But Annalessa’s was here, as clear and vivid as though she were in the room in real life.

“Someone must be here who remembers this,” Marrill said aloud, thinking back to what Ardent had told her when they’d first arrived. “Which means maybe Annalessa is here in real life?”

Ardent nodded curtly, but his eyes never left Annalessa’s image, which mounted the dais and moved to position herself behind the Font of Meres.

“I know you’re here,” Annalessa whispered. Her eyes swept the chamber. Her chin lifted. “Nothing will sway me from this course.”

Marrill’s breath caught. She sounded so severe. But there was no one else in the room. Who could Annalessa have been talking to?

Beside her, Ardent shifted, moving to stand at the base of the dais. He positioned himself directly before Annalessa’s echo, as if she were talking to him, as if she might see him. The pain written on his face brought tears to Marrill’s eyes.

Perhaps, she thought, this was a message to Ardent. Perhaps Annalessa had known that one day he would be here, listening, watching what she was about to do. Perhaps this was her way of bringing them together in the same time and place, to speak to him directly even though she couldn’t be here in the flesh.

“Marrill,” Fin hissed. He gestured toward the entrance.

The figure waiting there blew away Marrill’s theory in the space of a heartbeat. He was tall, expressionless, wreathed head to toe in cold metal. From one of his hands, an empty cage dangled.

The Master of the Iron Ship.

Panic spiked through Marrill’s system. She tripped backward, scrambling to put distance between herself and the terrible figure. Fin shot out an arm, steadying her. “It’s not real,” he murmured. “Just another echo.”

Marrill gulped, nodding. She could see that now: the way the light wavered around the Master, the distance of time making his body vaguely insubstantial. She was thankful Ardent had been wrong about him showing up for their final confrontation with the Lost Sun. But what was his echo doing here with Annalessa?

“We were wrong,” Annalessa said to the Master. Her voice came hollow, distorted and distant. “We should have tried harder to stop Serth back then. Say what you will, but the truth is, we didn’t try at all. The Wizards of Meres wanted the power of the Dzane. The power of creation. And look what we found instead: destruction. We are as responsible for this as he is, and you know it.”

Marrill swallowed. So it was true. Whatever had happened to make him what he was today—time travel, evil pact, or some kind of spell gone awry—the Master of the Iron Ship had once been a Wizard of Meres.

She dug her fingers through her hair, trying to make sense of it. “Everything comes back to the Master,” she whispered. “He was there when Serth first opened the Gate aboard the Black Dragon. He was the one who drove us into the whirlpool to Monerva.”

“He was the one who filled the wish orb at the Syphon,” Fin pointed out.

And of course, the Master had set free the Lost Sun at Margaham’s Game. And now here he was yet again—well, not now, but in the echo-now—with Annalessa. Marrill shook her head.

Why? What did he want?

As she pondered, the Master’s echo strode forward to the heart of the chamber.

The echo of Annalessa paused. “You can’t stop me,” she said. “You know you can’t.” From within her robes, she produced a stone cup. It was a perfect replica, Marrill realized, of the cup Serth drank from long ago.

“I made the original, remember?” Annalessa said with a halfhearted laugh. “You didn’t think I could craft another?” She stepped toward the Font, the cup clutched in her fingers.

Ardent, who up to this moment had watched in frozen silence, burst free of his trance. “Oh, Anna, no!” His cry seemed to suck the heat from the chamber; Marrill staggered back, shivering in the cold. The wizard’s emotions were out of control; they were bleeding out into the world around him!

It was impossible for Annalessa to have heard him—she was just a remnant from an event that had already taken place. But she raised her head all the same. Tears shimmered in her eyes.

Ardent took a step toward the dais. “Anna, please,” he begged.

But Annalessa, locked in another time, could not listen. Instead, she pulled something else from her robe. It was an odd little object, looking to Marrill like a cross between a spoon and a pitcher, rounded and empty like a bowl on one end, thin to a point at the other. As Annalessa held it balanced at the center of her hand, the strange device turned of its own power, swaying back and forth. It pointed to one side, then the next, then back again, finally coming to rest pointed straight at the Font in front of her.

Ardent sucked in a breath. “The lodestone… it’s the Compass Rose!”

Marrill didn’t understand. That wasn’t the Compass Rose. The Compass was Rose—the scribbled bird.

The echo Annalessa dropped the lodestone straight into the stone cup.

Ardent seemed to understand what was about to happen, though Marrill didn’t. “No, Annalessa!” he gasped, leaping onto the dais and rushing forward until his face was inches from hers. “No!”

Pain and panic radiated from him in physical form, spilling forth a torrent of jagged energy that whipped through the chamber. Marrill and Fin had to duck to hide their faces, for fear that it might scorch them.

“Ardent, calm down!” Marrill cried. But if the wizard heard her, he definitely didn’t show it. Just as Annalessa showed no sign of hearing him.

Annalessa smiled, a tear falling from her eye. “I do this to save us all.” She plunged the cup into the Font. Fin and Marrill gasped as her skin touched the naked Stream water. “See how the waters do not harm me,” she intoned.

Marrill knew those words. They were the same ones Serth had uttered, just before he drank from that very cup. The uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach morphed into fear.

Annalessa took a deep breath. “My love for you, Ardent, is as wide and deep and wild as the Stream.” She lifted the cup to her mouth and drank.

“Anna!” Ardent reached for her. But his fingers found only echoes and shadow.

Marrill pressed her face against Fin’s shoulder. She couldn’t stand to see whatever nightmare the Stream had inflicted on their friend. But at the same time, she kept one eye uncovered—she didn’t dare to truly look away, either.

Annalessa’s image flickered, dimming to almost nothing. Then it surged back to life, so vibrant she could have been in the room for real. Her eyes went wide. “I can’t—” She dropped the cup and staggered back, falling to her knees. “What have I—”

Ardent ran to her, his hands passing uselessly through the image as she doubled over. The echo of Annalessa shook her head violently. Her long black hair whipped the air, twisting around her. The strands of it seemed to thicken, lengthen.

“Ardent!” she cried. It came out strangled, almost a screech.

The echo faded—or had Annalessa herself faded? The very color drained away from her, leaving nothing but lines, like a drawing brought to life. Then even those lines twisted. Her body seemed to snap into scribbles. The scribbles reordered themselves, turning into wings. The wings stretched wide, flapping furiously.