All right, he told her. I’ll still be back soon.
In a matter of minutes he had followed the current past the last of the islands and out to deep sea. Then he continued straight over deeper water.
Almost five miles out from the island, he felt a faint tickle of magic from below. He wheeled around the area.
A moment later, Pia spoke again. We’re back at the house, and Eva and Hugh have thoroughly searched the whole property. Everything is peaceful. Nothing is out of place, and there aren’t any strange scents.
Okay, good, he replied. I followed the current that wraps around the north shore, and I’m about five miles out from land. I found something. I’m going to dive.
That’s fantastic! Good luck!
He folded his wings and plunged headfirst into the waves. This far out, the water was quite cold. He found it pleasantly bracing. He burrowed down, past where the sunlight penetrated, into frigid darkness.
The pressure increased, and he knew he had dived deeper than most creatures could have survived without protection gear. Soon he had passed the limit of most manned submersibles.
Except for submarine canyons, most of Earth’s ocean floors were no deeper than six thousand meters. Still, that was almost 3.75 miles. Aside from the strange marina life that was bred to survive on the ocean floor, very few creatures could survive reaching such depths. The mysterious, powerful kraken could, and so could Dragos, but only for brief periods of time.
To conserve his energy, he swam in complete darkness, following the spark of magic blind, until he sensed that he had gotten close. Then he threw a simple spell and brought light to the dense water.
The light spell illuminated the area roughly twenty-five feet around him in a strange bluish green. The pressure was so intense, he felt like he was digging his way through the water, not swimming. He pushed farther downward, until the light touched on the greenish ocean floor. His lungs had started to burn. He wouldn’t be able to stay for much longer.
He kicked his way along the ocean floor, still searching mostly by his magic sense. A few crustaceans scuttled away from the light.
When the wreck came into view, it did so all at once. It sprawled along the ocean floor with the supporting planks of the hull exposed like the rib cage of a dead animal.
By now, Dragos’s lungs were on fire, but he was unable to pull away. This close, he could tell there were multiple sparks of magic coming from inside the hull. He kicked along the length of the wreck, searching as quickly as he could for some kind of identification. Going by the size and shape of the ruins, it had been a caravel ship, which placed it in the right historical era. The wreck was as long as he was if he included his tail, roughly forty feet in length.
He drew closer to the port side. The wreck had deteriorated a lot over the centuries, but enough remained that he could see a significant, jagged break toward the rear of the ship. Quite a bit of the hull had sheared away long ago, leaving only the ribs curving up from the base of the ship’s spine.
He plunged both front paws into the sediment along the floor, searching for pieces of the hull. As he found fragments of wood, he turned them over and discarded them until he unearthed one piece, roughly a yard and a half in length, that had letters inlaid in silver at one end.
ille.
Triumph surged, but he didn’t have time to savor it. He needed air too badly and couldn’t stay underwater any longer. Black spots danced in front of his eyes. Carrying the fragment of wood, he kicked to the surface to suck in huge draughts of air. As soon as he caught his breath, he launched out of the water and flew back toward land.
In order to have enough room to change, he had to land on the beach just outside the house. Still gripping the hull fragment, he strode up the terraced path.
Pia had been keeping an eye out for him, because he had barely stepped out of the tree line and onto the lawn when the door opened and she hurried out. Her eyes shone with excitement. “What is it? What did you find?”
He held up the piece of wood, letters facing outward, for her to see. “I think I found the Sebille.”
Chapter Eight
“Already? That’s amazing.” She touched the blackened letters on the wood wonderingly.
He grinned. “I would have found it eventually, but I got lucky. I used what you gave me and followed the current off the north shore. The wreck is quite a ways out and it’s deep. It’s no wonder nobody has found it before now. There’s only a few submersibles in the world that can dive down that far.”