Meri pointed to the floor. “Look.”

  Faint footprints had scuffed through the dust that powdered the carpet, leading a trail along the hallway.

  “Let’s go.” Alex was already moving.

  The footprints guided them back to the stairs and down to the ground floor of the house. Another explosion forced them to stop and brace against the walls. Dust drifted heavily from the ceiling, threatening to cover the trail like fresh fallen snow.

  The footprints led to another cramped hallway. Moisture dripped from the ceiling and oozed down the walls. The cloying smell of damp was so thick it felt like wading through a bog.

  Alex was following the trail so intently that he almost ran head first into a dead end.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  The trail of footprints ended abruptly at the wall, where the carpet was wet and mouldy, the dust churned to paste.

  “Secret wall,” Zoey and Meri said at the same time.

  “Houses don’t actually have secret walls.”

  Zoey huffed. “They don’t usually have magic traps and trick chairs either.”

  “Good point.” Alex peered at the wall. “How do we open it?”

  “Ask it nicely?” suggested Anil.

  Zoey reached for a black iron candle sconce fixed to the wall. It folded down in her hand with a heavy clunk and the wall swung open like a door.

  “It’s always the candlestick,” said Zoey smugly.

  Now Anil huffed. “Name a single other time in your life when a candlestick has done this.”

  She answered by shoving Alex through the secret entrance. Roughly hewn stone steps coiled tightly downwards on the other side. Cold air blustered up from below. The tunnel appeared to have been carved directly into the cliffs.

  Moving in single file, they hurried down the steps, feet slapping against the slick stone. There was no time to be sneaky. Erasmus was ahead of them and it wouldn’t be much longer before the pirates smashed a hole through the cliff face.

  The bottom of the stairwell opened onto a long, low cavern. Thin stalactites clung to a ceiling of craggy cliff, bristling the length of the chamber like thorns. Fetid water dripped onto two rows of coffin-shaped stone boxes that lined the cavern with a narrow aisle between them. The sarcophagi had been chiselled from the rock so the walls appeared to be slowly absorbing them.

  “Definitely a crypt,” said Anil.

  Zoey pointed ahead. “It might need one more coffin.”

  A little way along the central aisle, Erasmus Argosy was sprawled on the floor. When they reached him, he was unconscious but breathing, a heavy rock lying beside his head.

  “It must have fallen during one of the explosions and knocked him out,” said Meri.

  Anil hurried over and adjusted Argosy’s arms, before lifting one of his knees to roll him onto his side. “Recovery position. I think he’ll be okay.”

  The next blast shook the whole cavern as if it might collapse. One side of the crypt – the side Alex guessed faced the ocean – was crumbling away, rocks tumbling to bury the sarcophagi there.

  “They’re so stupid!” Meri bunched her fists. “They could bring the whole place down!”

  “Remember what Erasmus said?” Zoey slapped a hand on the nearest sarcophagus. “That his ancestor took the secret to his grave? Maybe he meant it literally.”

  Alex quickly scanned the crypt. “The clue must be inside Emmett Argosy’s coffin.”

  Grudgingly, Grandpa offered to stay with Erasmus. The rest of them hurried along the rows of sarcophagi, checking the names and dates engraved on the stone lids. Generations of Argosys were buried here, the first few graves dating back only twenty or thirty years. So many of Erasmus’s relatives were gone.

  The names grew increasingly old-fashioned as they traced the family back through time. Lichen covered the sarcophagi, the engravings eroded to shallow dimples.

  “Here!” Zoey called from the opposite row.

  Alex crossed the aisle and read the name.

  They gathered around the sarcophagus and each took a corner of the lid.

  Anil chewed his lip. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  Another explosion rocked the cavern. Rubble tumbled from the wall and a dusty beam of daylight broke through.

  Alex began to push, followed eagerly by Zoey.

  “There’s no choice,” she said.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” Anil whispered, before lending his strength.

  The stone lid weighed a ton, their muscles straining to the limit before it grated even slightly out of place. After that it moved more easily, allowing them to tip it clear.

  Alex expected to discover a skeleton grinning up at him, the clue clasped tightly in a death grip of yellowed finger bones.

  Instead, the grave was empty. There was nothing inside the stone coffin but a craggy hole stamped through the bottom. A rusty chain hung down inside it, fixed to a winch bolted into the end of the sarcophagus. Through the hole, they could see a ship’s anchor hanging from the other end of the chain.

  Zoey peered down into the dark. “Of course the clue is inside a terrifying hole.”

  “How many terrifying holes have you encountered?” asked Meri.

  “Recently? Too many.”

  More than cold, briny air drifted up from the hole. The same energy Alex had felt in the house reached up from inside, invisible fingers of magic searching hungrily for fresher air.

  It stilled the shake in his legs enough to climb inside the grave and begin squeezing himself through the hole. If there was magic, he had to trust it to keep him safe.

  Zoey tried to hold him back. “It doesn’t always have to be you.”

  Alex met her eye. “I think it does.” He wrapped his fingers around the chain. “I was the only one who could see the clue at the lighthouse. I think it might be the same here.”

  “At least let me go with you!”

  Alex was desperate to accept – to have the comfort of company – but he knew he couldn’t. “There needs to be enough people up here to lower me down safely and pull me back up. Anyway, I don’t think the chain will hold two people.”

  The metal felt brittle in his hands, coppery flakes of rust scraping loose and flittering into the darkness below. Still, it held his weight, and he lodged his feet on the anchor for extra support.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  The others gathered around the winch. “Tug the chain twice if you want to come back up,” said Anil.

  “Three times if something starts eating you,” added Zoey.

  “And four times if—”

  Meri cut to the chase and cranked the handle of the winch. The chain juddered, almost shaking Alex loose, and then he was descending into darkness.

  The craggy walls of stone pressed close around Alex, his knees scraping and jouncing, each impact causing the chain to twist and swing. His stomach lurched and he clenched his eyes shut to avoid looking down. Cold air draughted up from the blackness below, cooling the sweat on his skin and making him shiver. There was no way of telling how deep the shaft delved into the cliff. The chain continued to reel him down and he batted away the thought that he might be sinking into a bottomless grave.

  The hum of power rode the updraughts and tingled against Alex’s skin, its presence enough to keep him from panicking. When he opened his eyes, it was almost visible in the darkness, a faint green shimmer wavering on the air. What had Argosy called it?

  Sea magic.

  It had to be emanating from the clue that waited below. Alex needed to reach it and get away before the pirates finished breaking through the cliff.

  A lustrous green glow steadily blossomed in the depths of the shaft. The walls peeled back as Alex was lowered, until they opened into another chamber. Much smaller than the crypt above, it appeared to have been excavated by hand, leaving jagged shelves of rock at odd, leaning heights. The stone seemed to be covered in stars, scattered points of delicate light, phosphorescent algae blooming in random constellations.

  Its light gleamed on a treasure trove. The rocky shelves were bejewelled with a bounty of gold and silver coins, jewels in red and aqua and sapphire, goblets plated in filigree. Rotten wooden chests spilled myriad nautical knick-knacks: folding eyeglasses, ornate medals and buttons, bolts of cloth and cloudy bottles of syrupy liquid. Anil had always been convinced the cliffs were hiding secret stashes of treasure and had spent months on a luckless search.

  “Maybe I’ll tell him after we’ve saved the world,” Alex muttered to himself.

  The chain juddered to a halt. Alex stepped off the anchor and splashed to the floor. Seawater filled the chamber, deep enough to soak his shoes. He could feel the power of the ocean nearby, scarcely held at bay by the cliffs around him.

  Alex turned on the spot to browse the treasure. The lighthouse had pointed him here but given no hint as to what he should look for.

  “Why couldn’t it just be ready on a velvet pillow, with a ribbon tied around it, and a big label saying CLUE?” he asked himself.

  Another blast from above rumbled through the walls. Coins tinkled from their resting places and plopped into the water. There wasn’t much time. He would just have to work it out.

  “Reveal yourself!” Alex demanded, waving his hands in the air. Nobody replied and nothing moved. He dropped his arms. “Worth a try.”

  The sea magic lapped against his skin and nudged at the back of his mind. If only he could tell exactly where it was coming from. Alex stepped to the nearest shelf and picked up a jewel-studded brooch. Nobody would make their secret clue so desirable. But it probably wouldn’t be the least desirable object, something easily lost, either.

  Next he picked up an admiral’s hat shaped like a taco, a bedraggled golden braid hanging from its side. Alex shoved it onto his head and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the hat might whisper its secret into his brain. After it remained silent, he completed the ensemble by shrugging on a moth-eaten officer’s jacket. A tin whistle hung from the pocket and Alex blew a note that sounded like a seagull burping into a traffic cone.

  None of the items revealed any power. Alex cast despairingly around the chamber.

  “I need help,” he said.

  Alex closed his eyes. If he listened hard enough, he was sure he could hear the sea pounding at the outside of the cliff, patiently gnawing at the rock. Alex needed to channel that same single-minded patience. Slowly, he lifted a hand to hover above the treasure.

  Every object bore a link to the ocean. They had all come from ships that once cut proudly through the waves, had all been dropped overboard by careless hands or lost in the tumult of storms and wrecks. Each item held a memory of the sea. But only one still thrummed with its magic.

  Seawater lapped around Alex’s ankles. He held his recurring dream in his mind and reached for the Water Dragon in the distant depths of the ocean. The thread between them flexed – it felt as if every drop of water in his body briefly fizzed. Kraken appeared in his head, a collection of arms gathered to point in a single direction. Alex turned to follow, hand drifting over the objects. Kraken kept pointing until she frantically waved all eight arms for him to stop.

  Sea magic pulsed under his hand like warm water rippling around his fingertips. Alex opened his eyes to find his fingers reaching for a tarnished brass compass, a spidery crack splintering its circular glass face.

  As soon as he touched the compass, a vision – no, a memory stored in the metal – flashed across his mind.

  A lightning bolt cleaving apart a black sky.

  A mighty ship thrown by a mightier wave, masts splintering and hull breaking.

  The Water Dragon surging towards it, mouth agape, the threads of the ocean singing a battle cry around it.

  The memory retreated and Alex gasped as if coming up for air. The compass was ice cold in his palm. It had to be one of the sea-magic artefacts Erasmus had told him about.

  He turned the compass over to find an engraving of a ship. Identical to the one he had seen wrecked in the memory.

  Eyes glued to the compass face, Alex turned back to the chain. What he saw made him frown. North was inland, away from the sea. But the compass insisted it lay in the opposite direction. Maybe a century or two in a musty cavern had left it broken.

  Or maybe the compass pointed towards something else.

  The walls shook with another explosion from above. Alex shoved the compass into his pocket, stepped onto the anchor and gave two sharp tugs on the chain. Immediately it began to reel up, lifting him away from the cavern and back into the shaft. Fleetingly, Alex wondered if he should have taken a souvenir for Anil.

  “It wouldn’t be the same if I found it for him,” he told himself.

  The chain might not have taken the extra weight anyway – as it creaked and swayed a link right by his face began to yawn open. Alex clamped a hand over it, hoping he could hold the metal together long enough to reach safety. He focused on the small circle of dim light above, growing closer every second.

  Suddenly, the chain wrenched sideways, dashing Alex against the wall. A grinding noise ricocheted off the sides of the shaft while stones and debris skittered past. He clung on tight and held his breath, waiting for the light above to be swallowed by a cave-in. The chain screeched to a halt and Alex was left suspended, the rusty links straining under his weight.

  It took a moment to recognize the heavy thudding in his ears as his heartbeat rather than another explosion. Sweat ran down his face and slicked his grip, as Alex imagined tumbling down the shaft, rock closing over to stopper him inside the cliff for ever.

  “What’s happening?” he called, the narrow shaft seeming to strangle his voice away to nothing. He wanted to shake the chain to get his friends’ attention but knew doing so would only seal his fate.

  After an agonizingly long pause, the chain resumed its creaking journey upwards, much more rapidly than before.

  “I thought that last explosion might have…” Alex began to say as he approached the lip of the shaft.

  The words trailed away as he saw who was waiting at the top. It was no longer his friends reeling in the chain.

  It was the pirates.

  Daylight poured inside from a ragged hole punched through the cliff face. Boulders and debris had spilled over to bury the sarcophagi on the seaward side of the crypt. The rockfall must have created a slope outside for the pirates to climb up from sea level.

  They filled the crypt now and had rounded up the whole group – Zoey, Anil, Meri, Grandpa and Erasmus Argosy (now awake with a lump on his head) – to trap them against part of the wall that was still intact.

  “They rushed us,” Zoey said, standing with her knees slightly bent, ready to spring at any opening.

  The huge, tattooed man – Inkbeard – who had tried to snatch Alex on the beach, now gripped the crank that controlled the chain. He offered his free hand.

  “Hand it over and I’ll pull you up,” he said.

  Alex hung too low in the shaft to reach the top. All he could do was cling to the chain as the rusty links continued to strain apart. Still, he couldn’t give up so easily.

  “Hand what over?” he said.

  Inkbeard jerked the chain to rock Alex side to side. The weak link stretched further out of shape. Alex’s arms and shoulders began to ache. He forced himself not to look down at the darkness of the shaft below, knowing it would only make him lose his nerve.

  “Look what you’ve done!” cried Argosy from across the chamber. “I was going to get it away from here, but now it’s too late!”

  Grandpa shoved him to be quiet, but the damage was done.

  “Whatever he’s bleating about, whatever you found down there, give it to me and I’ll pull you up,” Inkbeard said. “No tricks. No birds snatching it away or fish swimming off with it.”

  Dizzy terror made Alex feel like he was falling and he wrapped his arms around the chain, feet scrabbling on the anchor. “You’re making a mistake,” he said, voice shaking. “Meri, tell them! They might listen to you!”

  Inkbeard sneered at Meri over his shoulder. “Go on. Tell us what we’re doing is wrong.”

  Meri simply shrank away, unable to meet his gaze.

  “Brineblood is evil.” Anil shifted his gaze pleadingly between the pirates. “All the stories say so.”

  The rusty chain bit into Alex’s hands. The ache was almost unbearable now and his head was spinning with the fear of falling. What would give out first – the chain or his strength? He swallowed hard to try and keep his voice from wobbling.

  “Brineblood is lying to you,” he said.

  “He’s giving us a chance to actually make a difference,” said Inkbeard. “Now hand it over.”

  “It wasn’t there.”

  The pirate sighed. “Then you’re no use to us any more.”

  He picked up a chunk of broken stone and made to swing it at the rusted iron crank.

  “Wait!” shouted Alex. Carefully, he uncurled one hand from the chain and reached into his pocket. The compass seemed to vibrate with power inside his grip. He held it out above his head.

  “No!” shouted Argosy.

  Inkbeard snatched it eagerly, a greedy, gap-toothed smile lighting up his face. As the compass left his hand, Alex saw the needle spin aimlessly, no longer pointing in a single direction as before. The pirate stood up and stepped away from the shaft.

  “Pull him up!” shouted Grandpa.

  Zoey tried to fight her way through the pirates, but they caught her arms and held her back.

  The weak link would snap at any second and a grave full of treasure would not make for a soft landing.

  “This will show us the way to the egg,” Inkbeard said. “We don’t need you.”

  “Look at it,” Alex shouted desperately. “It won’t show anybody but me.”

  The pirate studied the endlessly spinning needle. Growling, he turned back to the hole and reached for the crank. He wrenched the handle and the chain jerked sharply upwards. The weak link finally broke and the chain unravelled.

  Alex kicked off the anchor and lunged for the lip of the shaft. His hands scrabbled at the rock, struggling to grip, his feet kicking helplessly. Just as he began to slip backwards, Inkbeard grabbed his wrists and hauled him to safety. The chain and anchor clattered away.

 

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