Hackle volunteered to take the first watch. Murky was already asleep, snoring softly, air bubbling out—puttering—from between his green fish-lips.

With no fire, this summer night on the Feralas–Thousand Needles border was chilly and getting chillier. Aram pulled on another birthday present: the grey woolen cable sweater his mother had knit to honor his eleventh year. Their travels and adventures had left it quite filthy, but it was still warm. Next, he pulled his father’s worn leather coat up to his chin like it was a blanket from his bed back home in faraway Lakeshire. The coat still smelled of the sea, or at least Aram imagined it did. It was the second-to-last gift his father gave him before they parted. Aram reached up to check that Greydon Thorne’s final gift—the compass—was still secure on the chain around his neck.

It was.

He lay back on grassy turf, already a bit wet with dew. He glanced over at Makasa, who seemed reluctant to leave the waking world (with its marauding ogres, murderous compass-seekers, and poisonous snakes) in Hackle’s yellow, spotted paws. Aram knew she didn’t much like trusting in anyone save herself. (Aram not excepted.) He watched the internal conflict gnaw at her. She sucked on her lower lip, then bit it between her white teeth, as Hackle stood at the alert, gripping and re-gripping the stolen ogre war club he now claimed as his own. Something about the gnoll’s anxious hold on the weapon seemed to reassure her—that, and the valor he had shown during their escape from Dire Maul. She nodded once at Aram, and then laid her head back against her shield, which was propped up against a large rock. She would sleep in this position. Barely reclining. Ready for action at a moment’s notice, with her right hand resting on her cutlass. Her left hand flinched, unconsciously reaching for the iron harpoon she had been forced to abandon some days ago. Aram knew she felt nearly naked without it. Or not naked—but amputated—like a piece of herself was missing.

But it wouldn’t keep her awake. She would sleep like she did everything, lightly but efficiently. She’d wake herself before Hackle could, and take the next watch.

Aram turned over. His hunger, easily ignored before, was gnawing at his gut now. He felt fairly certain it would keep him awake. But he hadn’t reckoned with the fact that it had been forty-plus hours since he had slept at all. In no time, he drifted off …

“Aram,” the Voice said. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes. Clearer now than before.”

“Do you know who I am? What I am?”

“You’re the Light. The Voice of the Light. And I’m to … ‘save you’ somehow. That’s all I know. Can you tell me more? I want to know—need to know—more.”

“Turn to me. Look upon me, Aramar Thorne, and much will be revealed.”

Aram turned toward the Light. He had seen it many times before in his dreams—even prior to all his strange new troubles—and every one of those times, it had nearly blinded him. Now, it was brighter still, and yet Aram steeled himself and did not turn away. Did not blink.

“The answers you seek,” the Voice said, “are in the Light. Approach.”

Aram walked forward. It wasn’t easy. The Light seemed to have substance, and moving through it was like swimming through molasses. But a determined Aram persisted. “I have so many questions,” Aram said.

“The answers you seek,” the Voice repeated, “are in the Light.”

“No,” a new voice said grimly. “Only death lives in that Light.” A looming silhouette interposed itself between Aram and the Light, blocking Aram’s way. “You will receive no answers, learn no secrets here,” the silhouette said in a dark, angry baritone. “You will surrender the compass and give up this quest—or you will die.”

“No!” Aram shouted defiantly. “My father gave me that compass!”

Striking like a cobra, the silhouette grabbed Aram by his torn shirtfront and pulled him in close enough so that the boy could make out the features of this obstacle, this opponent. They were nearly as familiar as those of his father. The bushy black eyebrows, the wide forehead and square jaw, the nearly black eyes, glaring at him with a look of pure fury. It was Captain Malus. The man who had killed Greydon Thorne. “Boy,” Malus croaked, “if you miss your father that much, I can easily arrange for you to join him.” His free hand wrapped around the compass and snapped it off its chain.

Aram woke with a start and a gasp that made Hackle wheel about in place and snapped Makasa out of her light slumber. (Murky, however, bravely bubbled on.)

“What is it?” Makasa asked as Aram threw off his father’s coat and frantically reached under his sweater and shirt until he could feel the cold metal of the compass in his grip. And even that wasn’t enough. He pulled it out from under his clothes so he could confirm it still remained in his possession.

To all appearances, it was nothing all that special. The compass, which hung from a gold chain around his neck, had a white face in a brass setting. Gold initials—N, E, S, W—labeled its four points. The only thing at all unusual about it was the crystal needle, which pointed not north but to the southeast. So mostly, it appeared broken.

But appearances can be deceiving.

How had Thalyss described it?v

“It is a shard of pure starlight from the heavens,” the druid had said, “imbued with the celestial spark … Simply put, the crystal needle is not of this world. There is an enchantment of some kind upon it.”

And that had proven itself true, a hundredfold. Aram’s father had given him the compass in the most desperate of circumstances, as practically his last act on this world. He had charged Aram to protect it at all costs, and had promised it would “lead you where you need to go!”

Aram had thought that meant it would lead him home to Lakeshire. Then, as now, he desperately missed his mother, Ceya, his stepfather, Robb, his half siblings, Robertson and Selya, and his dog, Soot. Aram missed their old, uneventful life in the cottage beside the forge, where Robb Glade had been teaching him to be a simple town blacksmith—not a sailor, and certainly not some kind of unwilling traveler across the blasted wilderness. He missed his mother’s cooking and her gentle embrace. He missed roughhousing with Robertson and cuddling with Selya and rambling along the shores of Lake Everstill with Soot.

But the compass was not a ticket home. Its needle had eventually led Aram to another crystal shard, a slightly larger sibling of its own. In fact, the closer the compass had come to the new shard, the more, well … alive the device had seemed. The needle had begun to glow, and when Aram was very close, the compass literally moved of its own volition, snapping off its chain and flying through the air to meet its kin or kind.

These shards, Aram knew, were part of the Light. The Light he had seen and heard in his dreams and visions. The Light he was somehow meant to save.

“Another dream?” Makasa asked.

Aram nodded, not yet able to speak, not yet able to do much more than turn the compass over and over in his hands.

“Of this Light?” she prompted again.

Aram swallowed and found his voice. “Yeah,” he said. “But not just the Light. He was there, too.”

“Who? Your father?”

“No. Malus.”

Fury flooded over her face at the mere mention of the name. But she said nothing.

“I know why he wants the compass now,” Aram said. “He wants to stop me—stop anyone—from saving the Light.”

And that, as far as it went, was true. But when it came to Malus, it wasn’t going nearly far enough.