Read Online The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

and involved joke.
    He had laughed himself awake—though now that he had his eyes open, he could not remember what she had said.
    The next moment her voice came through the window he had left slightly open. She was outside, talking to Cooper. Her exact words were blurred by the wind and the surf, but it was enough to know that she was nearby, not only safe but in high spirits.
    He sat up, and his hand pressed into something hard on the bed—the book she had left behind. A small, ornate clock on the windowsill caught his attention: fourteen minutes after two o’clock.
    Interesting. It was the exact time mentioned in his mother’s vision that saw him witnessing the feat of elemental magic that would change the lives of everyone involved. Because of that vision, whenever he was at the castle, he used to lie down after lunch and have Dalbert call him at precisely fourteen past two, so everything would be, to the letter, what had already been ordained.
    He stepped onto the balcony, to a bracing breeze from the sea. On the horizon, a storm gathered, but here everything was still sunny and mild—or as mild as it could be for the beginning of autumn on the North Sea. Below, Cooper and Fairfax played a game of croquet on a patch of lawn. They both waved as they saw him. He nodded very regally.
    â€œWill you join us, Your Highness?” called Cooper.
    Titus was about to answer when his wand suddenly warmed. The warming was rhythmical, one moment hot, one moment normal—the wand was relaying a distress signal. And not just any distress signal, a nautical one, specific to seafaring vessels.
    There was a mage ship nearby?
    â€œGive me a few minutes,” he told Cooper.
    He scanned the sea, but there were no vessels out and about. Fairfax, too, was searching. She would have felt the distress signal in his spare wand that she now carried in her boot.
    He set a far-seeing spell—and reeled. Five miles out, in the middle of the North Sea, sailed an Atlantean vessel. It was not a warship by any means, but looked much bigger than a patrol boat. A skimmer—meant for pursuit at sea.
    What was it chasing?
    Several seconds passed before he located the dinghy fleeing from the skimmer.
    He reeled again as he recognized the only passenger in the dinghy: Wintervale.

CHAPTER 7
    The Sahara Desert
    WHATEVER THE CONTRAPTION COMING UP behind, it was big and moving fast.
    Titus turned to the girl. “Can you break through stone?”
    Doubt crossed her face, but she only said, as she extinguished the mage light that lit their way, “Let’s see. Hold on to me.”
    He wrapped his arms about her. They descended through several feet of sand, and then, more slowly, into solid bedrock, which fractured underfoot, the debris flowing up and out to allow them passage.
    Just in time for the contraption to sweep overhead, scraping the bedrock like a giant metal comb. The teeth of the comb were only an inch and a half apart—no way for them to slip through.
    â€œHow fast do you think it is moving?” asked the girl.
    She brought back the mage light. Belatedly he realized that he still had his arms around her. He let go. “Ten miles an hour, or thereabouts.”
    But the well she had made was so narrow they still stood nearly nose to nose. Her skin was blue-tinged in the mage light; a smear of rock dust across the ridge of her nose looked like tiny specks of lapis lazuli.
    â€œThe search area is one mile in radius,” she said. “The dragnet would need six minutes to go from center to periphery, and six minutes to return to center. Depending on how far we are from the center, we can go for five or six minutes before we meet it again.”
    He shook his head. “The brigadier said there is an outbound dragnet as well as an inbound one. They will likely meet at the halfway point and switch directions. So it will be only two to three minutes, if that, before the sweeper comes back.”
    She