by Carrie Ryan
A murmuring rippled through the ranks of the Fade. The Rise soldiers all looked to their sides, nerves playing across their faces. Everyone, Rise and Fade, seemed to be having the same revelation all at once.
Fin pressed his advantage, talking as much to Fig and the Fade as to Vell. “Or is it…” he said, drawing out the argument like the show that it was. This was how he lived in the Khaznot Quay. Playing out the game. Running the con to its perfect effect. Only this was no con. This was definitely, indisputably, the truth. “All this time you’ve convinced the Fade they aren’t real. That we aren’t real. When all along, it’s the Fade who hold the power.”
Vell nearly trembled with rage. “You hold nothing because you are nothing,” he spat.
Fin shook his head, refusing to believe that any longer. “Nothing but the key to your mortality.”
“And what value do you have beyond that?” Vell barked. “What value do you have on your own, without me? Who are you, Brother Fade, other than a phantom haunting the shadows of my glory?”
There was a beat of silence. A cold smile of victory split Vell’s face.
Maybe he was right. Now that Fin had the answers to all the questions he’d spent his life asking, it changed nothing. He was still Fin. He was still forgettable.
He forced the feeling down. Because the truth was, there was nothing wrong with him. Being forgettable was part of who he was. It had its drawbacks, sure, but it had its advantages as well. If he hadn’t been forgettable, he’d never have met Marrill. He’d never have recovered the Map. He’d never have beaten back Serth on the deck of the Black Dragon, or stopped the Iron Tide in Monerva, or locked away the Salt Sand King, the very burning fire that his cruel Rise wanted more than anything to free.
And that was what it all came down to. Vell wanted Fin to believe he was worthless, with no will of his own. And yet, Fin chose his own path, while Vell existed to serve the king he’d never met.
Vell wanted Fin to believe he was nothing because if he did, then Vell had all the power. But that trick only worked if Fin believed him.
And he didn’t.
“Who am I?” Fin drew himself tall, lifting his chin. “I am Fin U. Lanu. The son of the Crest of the Rise. I’m the Ghost of Gutterleak Way. I am the Master Thief of the Khaznot Quay and a crew member on the Enterprising Kraken. I’m Marrill Aesterwest’s friend, Fig’s comrade, and Remy’s Plus One. I’m the one who stole ink from the great Sheshefesh, and I’m the one who kept your king locked away in his prison.”
He stepped forward, reveling in Vell’s shocked expression. “I may be Fade to your Rise, but that also makes you Rise to my Fade. Bow before me, or cut me down and become me.”
Vell’s eyes clouded with rage. “Rise,” he pronounced, “please restrain my Fade.”
All around them, harsh faces stepped forward, headed for Fin. “Blisterwinds,” Fin muttered. Well, at least he’d tried.
“NO!”
Fin, Vell, and the Rise all paused as one. Fin turned to see Fig with her legs splayed, the wish orb clutched in a death grip in her hand. Her expression was strained, her teeth gritted.
“No?” Vell said.
“No?” Fin echoed.
“No,” she pronounced. She waved her hand through the air in a circling motion. “Brothers and Sisters Fade,” she called. “Protect our Brother Fin.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the Fade moved forward. They shoved their way out from the ranks of the Rise as the soldiers stood stunned. One by one, they created a ring around Fin.
Fin tried not to show his surprise as warmth spread through his chest. It had worked. The Fade understood now. Fig understood now. She was on his side after all.
She was his friend.
He had to bite his cheek to keep from grinning.
Vell sputtered, but Fig held up a hand, cutting him off. She stepped forward, next to Fin. “Any Rise makes a move, they have to cut us all down. And then feel what it’s like to be weak. Each Fade who falls, a Rise becomes mortal. Every blow you strike, you strike yourselves.”
Fin smirked at Vell. “Seems the Fade know when to rise to the occasion.” Vell groaned. Fin shrugged. “Guess a sense of humor is a weakness.”
Fig jabbed him sharply in the ribs. “That actually wasn’t very funny,” she said. She shoved the wish orb into his hands. “Seriously, though,” she whispered, “you better take this and go. The Rise have never met a problem they couldn’t stab. Eventually they’re going to turn on us out of habit.”
“What about you?” he asked. He touched her hand, genuinely concerned.
“Don’t worry about me, blood,” she said, adopting his word. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded. A pat on the arm didn’t seem to be enough to show his gratitude, so he gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks, friend.”
She rolled her eyes and gagged. “Oh, come on, gross!” But she squeezed his arm, and he could see by the shine of tears in her eyes just how much she meant it when she said, “Stay safe, Fin.”
“No trub!” He laughed. Then he raced between the lines of the Fade, past the stumbling Rise, toward the front of the ship.
Just as he climbed onto the forecastle, the Naysayer burst out of the main hatch. A tricorn hat perched on his head, a cutlass waving in each hand. “En garde, scum munchers!” he shouted.
Fin looked back at him quizzically.
The Naysayer snorted, surveying the deck. “Am I late again? I’m late again.” He tossed down his swords and pointed around with all four arms. “I hate each and every one of you. Equally,” he grunted. Then he turned and stormed back down belowdecks.
“Classic Naysayer,” Fin said. He grabbed a rope and swung to shore. He glanced back once, watching the soldiers on the bow slowly backing down from the nondescript forms of their own weakness. Then he turned and headed into the forest, leaving the Rise and Fade far behind.
CHAPTER 28
Things Get a Bit Sketchy
As Marrill watched, echoes evaporated before the Lost Sun. The chamber filled with his searing light. The shadows of the Dzane poured their power out against him, but the memories couldn’t touch the very real form now entering the room. The Lost Sun of Dzannin strode forward into the heart of Meres, his footsteps keeping pace with his own echo, cloaking him in a shimmering veil of light and darkness.
The voice of a Dzane sounded, like daybreak and thunder, speaking from the depths of history. “Prepare yourselves. The Star of Destruction is upon us!”
“How fitting you are here to greet me.” The Lost Sun spoke through the wizard Serth’s lips, but he wasn’t talking to Marrill, or even Ardent. His words were directed at the echoes of the Dzane, the memories of his last battle.
As he moved through the crowded chamber, every shadow his robes touched flickered and dulled out of existence. As if his very presence overwrote the remnants of whatever magic had kept the memories bound here.
Marrill swallowed, her breathing tight in her chest as the Lost Sun’s eyes swept the room. “The Font of Meres,” he said as his cold gaze fell on the dais. “At the point of my first defeat, I will have my final victory.”
Behind her, the echo of Serth as a young man babbled out the lines of the Meressian Prophecy. “…And as in the beginning, so it will end…”
“Ardent!” Marrill cried. “What do we do?”
But the wizard was oddly quiet. She looked back to see him pouring ink onto the Map, which he’d rolled into a tube and wrapped in dream ribbon. Little squiggles of ink burst forth, as if someone had scribbled on the air, then flickered and died.
Ardent shook his head, tossed the used ribbon aside, and pulled out a fresh length. His eyes were completely focused on the task at hand. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
He can’t hear anything, Marrill realized. Her brilliant plan had backfired horribly. And worse, Ardent didn’t seem to be making any headway on repairing the Map.
She turned back to the Lost Sun. From where she s
tood, Marrill felt the energy pouring from him. Fissures cracked the floor at his feet, reaching back to become yawning crevices that spread up the far wall. Inside them, the void grew. She had no doubt that with a simple touch, the Lost Sun could destroy anything he wanted to. Including Ardent. Including her.
She had to buy Ardent more time. And she could think of only one way to do it.
Trying hard to still her shaking hands, Marrill pulled over the half roll of dream ribbon Ardent had given her. She perched herself on the edge of the dais, balancing the ink beside her, forcing herself to be calm and focus. Carefully, she dipped her brush into the ink.
Around her, the echoes of the Dzane fought so furiously she could almost feel the power of their attacks across the millennia. The Lost Sun swatted away the blasts, moving in time with his own shadow as if the battle were happening even now.
“Hold him,” croaked the thin voice of the Dawn Wizard. “The Map is nearly complete!”
Marrill closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to draw. With each stroke of the brush, ink splashed across the ribbon, unspooling into images as though pulled from her mind. First she drew the harsh outline of a cage. Then she began to fill it in, taking care to make the bars extra thick and strong.
At the edge of her vision, the cage burst to life, even as a Dzane in the shape of a clockwork griffin pounced at the Lost Sun. The shadow-Sun reeled backward before the assault, separating himself from his contemporary counterpart, who jarred to a halt before her. The drawn cage continued to form around him, as though some magical hand had sculpted the ink into three dimensions and made it real.
It was mesmerizing, watching each sweep of ink materialize in front of her. But Marrill didn’t have time to stare. Scribbling quickly, she added more bars, weaving them tighter and tighter together until the Lost Sun was completely contained inside an inky prison. Outside the cage, the shadow of him struggled with Dzane, wrapped in a serpent made of ice and flame.
Inside the cage, the present-day Lost Sun swept an arm at the bars as though they were nothing. He was met with a resounding clang as his body struck metal. He staggered back. At the same time, the shadow Lost Sun staggered, the coils of the serpent squeezing him, the griffin clawing at his arms and legs.
Marrill smiled. He hadn’t been expecting that! Triumph surged in her chest.
But it was short-lived. The Lost Sun gripped two of the bars. With a flick of his wrists, they bent and snapped apart. The ribbon in Marrill’s lap tore clean through, just as the Lost Sun shredded the cage she’d drawn.
At the same time, the shadow-Sun freed one arm and waved it. The clockwork griffin blew away like sand on a beach. With his other hand, he grabbed the serpent by the throat, squeezing until it dissolved into smoke.
“Before me, all was chaos,” past and present announced in unison. “I gave shape and definition to the primal maelstrom.”
“Keep going!” the Dawn Wizard cried. “Stop him from pouring his essence into the wellspring until the Map is finished!”
Marrill knew that the Dawn Wizard was just a memory, calling out to the other memories around him. But it felt as though he were talking to her, urging her to keep drawing until Ardent could complete his task.
She unspooled another length of ribbon and bent over the fresh page. This time she sketched a wall, stacking the bricks one atop the other. “It doesn’t have to be pretty,” she told herself. “It just has to be strong.”
Marrill drew sketch after sketch, just as Dzane after Dzane threw their power at the Lost Sun. But as fast as she drew, he ripped her sketches to pieces. Walls, cages, fences, ramparts, barricades—anything she could think of—he shredded them all. In echo and in substance, the Star of Destruction tore through his opposition, slowed but unstopped.
“Almost there!” the Dawn Wizard called at last.
“I alone am order,” the Lost Suns intoned in unison. “I alone am finality. And when my essence pours into the wellspring of magic, I shall bring that finality to all of the River of Creation.” The shadow of the Lost Sun’s past held his hand high, dark-light gathering on his fingertips.
Marrill looked back, hoping. In the echo, the Dawn Wizard raced to where the Font now stood, waving the Map like a cape before him. “Come, then, bright star,” he cried, unfurling the Map as the shadow-Sun’s light poured forth toward him. “Shine yourself into this!”
But here and now, there was no such victory. Instead, Ardent still stooped over the Font, stained scraps of dream ribbon littering the dais at his feet without any sign of progress.
Marrill tried not to give in to the panic eating away at her. The fate of the Stream lay heavy on her shoulders. They needed more time.
Ignoring the cramping in her hand, Marrill grabbed at the dream ribbon, slashing her brush across it with a fury born from desperation. This time, she drew a series of metal chains crisscrossing the chamber, bound together with massive locks. Then she drew more chains on top of the locks, and even more locks on those chains, then drew thorns on the locks on the chains on the locks on the chains.
All around, the Dzane chanted in unison as the Map swallowed the shadow-Sun’s light. In real life, the silver-clad figure of Serth fell back a step, encircled in chains as his own past defeat played out before him.
Marrill’s heart pounded, sketching the final details of her masterpiece into place. But no sooner had she put the finishing touches on the last lock than the whole drawing began to tear, ripping to pieces just like all the others.
The echo of the Dawn Wizard snapped shut his Map. The shadow figure of the Lost Sun faded. Before her, the present-day Lost Sun stepped through the wisp of his own echo, shredded chains falling at his feet.
“This is where past and present come apart,” he pronounced.
Marrill gulped. She reached for another length of ribbon. But the roll beside her was gone—she’d used every last scrap.
She scrambled toward Ardent, slamming her fist against the soundproof wall she herself had drawn into existence. “I need more ribbon!” she cried, keeping one eye on the Lost Sun.
But Ardent wasn’t even moving. His arms hung at his sides. His head nodded sadly. Slowly, he lifted his eyes until they met hers. His lips moved, but no words came out.
“What are you saying?” Marrill mouthed.
The Lost Sun opened his arms wide. “No more barriers.”
And just like that, the inky walls surrounding the Font shattered like glass. The soundproof drawing tore to pieces. Marrill stumbled backward. Before her, Ardent stood alone over the tattered remains of the dream ribbon. The last of the Sheshefesh ink leaked out of its jar. The Map to Everywhere floated gently to the ground, the hole in it grown even larger.
Ardent let out a shuddering sigh. “I failed,” he breathed.
CHAPTER 29
…So It Will End.
Fin burst from the forest, its whispers still clinging to his brain like cobwebs. Across from him, far past the great spire, the other side of the chasm had rent open, the very ground yielding to the void that grew like a slow rip in the fabric of reality. Above the hum and roar of the waterfalls, lightning crashed and thunder boomed from the windows of the building perched at the tip of the spire.
A battle was raging.
Fin’s heart squeezed. The Lost Sun was up there with Marrill and Ardent—they needed his help, fast. Not that he knew how to help, but he had to try.
There was no sign of a bridge, and no time to try to find one. Acting before he had the chance to talk himself out of it, Fin leapt off the cliff edge, yanking the strings in his jacket sleeves to fan out his skysails. He plummeted into the mist roiling up from the depths. Magic danced across his skin, sometimes literally. The corners of his eyes felt like they wanted to trade places and the inside of his nose smelled. The air tasted like cardamom and longing.
Just as the magic reached dangerous levels, the force of the rising mist caught him, buoying him upward. Fin let out a shout of joy as he rode the updraft
around the spire. But any sense of relief was short-lived.
The higher he climbed, the more he realized just how close they were to utter destruction. A wedge of nothingness widened from the point of the Lost Sun’s path outward into the distance, as though the world was a cake and someone had taken out a massive slice.
Fin wheeled toward the highest windows of the towering building, snagging the sill of one with his fingertips. For a moment, he clung to the side of the spire, a thundering torrent of Stream water far beneath him, and beneath that, the seemingly endless drop of the chasm. He took a deep breath, steeling his resolve, then hauled himself up into the room.
He thought he’d been prepared for anything. But there was no way he could have anticipated the chaos that greeted him inside the great chamber. Before him, a sea of shadows seemed to be playing out a thousand different scenes from a thousand different times, all at once. Some of them were full and dark, like the ones he’d seen from the path in the forest, but others were half faded, as if bleached by the light of the Lost Sun. Still others spoke to partners who were no longer there at all.
Cautiously, Fin dropped from the window onto the stone floor by the base of a raised dais. At his feet, the shadow of a young man who looked suspiciously like Ardent crouched by a weeping younger Serth, jotting furiously as the Oracle spouted Prophecy. An equally young Annalessa hovered over them, trying to comfort the madman and shoo away Ardent all at once. A shredded pile of drawings lay nearby, edges already beginning to curl. Beyond that, in the center of the dais, a font bubbled Stream water, surrounded by ink-stained scraps of dream ribbon.
That’s where Marrill stood—beside the Font, her face white with terror. Next to Ardent, his chin sagging, looking broken. And past them, tall and sinister as he mounted the stairs, came Serth.
Not Serth, Fin reminded himself. The Lost Sun of Dzannin.
