The Alcazar

by Amy Ewing

  Sky Gardens, she thought. That is what I shall call this place.

  Her feet carried her without thinking to the main pool, weaving her way through the circles where Cerulean rested beneath. The tether seemed dim today, fragile, as if some of the pure light had gone out of it. Leela turned her eyes to the heart of the moonstone. It pulsed weakly in its cone, more orange than red, and she knew this was the High Priestess’s doing. She looked up at the vines crawling around it, heavy with fruit, and wondered how she was ever going to reach one. They were far too high and there was nothing for her to climb.

  Plop.

  She whirled around. A fruit lay on the ground, only a few feet away, on top of the circle with Estelle’s name. Leela approached it cautiously. She was afraid to consume anything the High Priestess had touched, especially after she had seen the effect it had had on her. But Mother Sun had told her to—and while she didn’t trust the High Priestess one bit, she knew the symbols were not leading her astray. She crouched down to examine it, like a peach but smaller and without a hint of pink. When she picked it up, it was hot to the touch.

  “Mother Sun,” she prayed. “Do not fail me now.”

  And before she could think about it another second, she plunged her teeth into the fruit’s flesh.

  The taste was everything Leela loved most in the world—toasted pine nuts and lavender tea and dates stuffed with cheese . . . it was her green mother’s smile and her purple mother’s laugh and her orange mother’s embrace . . . it was the singing of minstrel flowers and the pale light of dawn and the crook of the old willow tree in the Day Gardens.

  And it was Sera’s heartbeat, most of all.

  She did not realize she had eaten the entire thing until she held its small glowing pit in her hand. She stood and walked to the pool, dropping the pit through the water as she had seen the High Priestess do. And when it flashed in a light so bright and warm and strange and scary and perfect, the water began to churn around the tether, frothing in a foam of sea green and blushing pink and heliotrope. Leela felt her magic sing inside her, a song of heartbreak and joy, a song like the blazing colors of sunset and a night without stars, and her blood crackled and snapped, and her skin felt as if it was searing itself to her bones.

  She threw her head back and laughed though she did not know why, only that it felt good, it felt right—hot tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of Sera, racing with her along the banks of the Estuary or watching her climb the temple spire or chasing each other through the moonflower fields. Sera filled her mind and her heart, Sera expanded inside her, Sera Sera Sera . . . and when Leela looked at the pond again, the water had become thick and pliable, like newly crafted sunglass, and a shape was emerging from it, a shape that she knew, oh so very well.

  When Sera’s slender frame had finished forming out of the water, the pond rippled and she became more than sunglass. She became Sera, the Sera Leela had known and loved, the Sera she had shared her heart with and would share it with until the end of her days.

  Leela let out a wild cry, like a trapped animal finally freed.

  “Sera?” The name was no more than a fragile whisper on her lips, though she had meant to shout it.

  Sera blinked and said, “Leela?”

  Through her tears, Leela smiled a smile so wide and full, she thought she might split in two.

  “It’s me,” Leela said, and the triumph rang through her louder than the bells of the temple. “It’s me, Sera. I found you.”

  Part Three

  Ithilia, the Island of Cairan, Pelago

  13

  Sera

  SERA DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO SAY OR WHERE TO BEGIN.

  She couldn’t believe her eyes. Leela was here, talking to her. Real, true, perfect, sweet Leela. Sera’s heart swelled up so big she feared she would choke on it.

  She hadn’t understood what was happening when the moonstone had flamed in her hand, like a miniature sunflare, a heat stronger than anything she had ever felt—one second, she and Leo were in Rahel’s golden room of desserts and the next she was being pulled upward, flying so fast her vision blurred. She’d emerged through a pool of clear water, except it wasn’t water—it was something in her magic that was shifting and shimmering, making her form mutable. The moonstone felt heavy around her neck, almost like an anchor keeping her from dissolving. She had an awareness of being in the pool and also of being on the ship below in Pelago. She was a vision here, albeit a solid one. She could not move her feet or turn her head or run to Leela and throw her arms around her. She existed only within this pool.

  Leo was nowhere to be seen but Sera could feel his presence, could sense his heart beating alongside hers. It must be her magic in him that connected them, that held his consciousness here with her but unable to take form. She hoped he was not too frightened—this was all strange and new for her; she couldn’t imagine what it must be like for him.

  As she took in her surroundings, she realized she was below the City. She thought back to her sacrifice, when she had fallen wheeling through space and seen the underbelly of the City Above the Sky with its long stalactites protruding out like icicles. She had never considered there was a whole world contained within, one that glowed ice-blue and ghostly green.

  “How am I here?” Sera asked, the words tumbling out clumsily.

  “I think . . .” Leela turned her gaze up to where heavy golden fruit hung from white vines. “I ate the fruit and then I called to you and you came.”

  “The moonstone,” Sera said, wishing she could touch it, hold it out, show it to her friend. “It went hot in my hand.” She frowned. “What fruit? What is this place?”

  “The moonstone,” Leela muttered, as if answering a question Sera had not asked. Then she brightened. “I call it the Sky Gardens. This is a secret place beneath the City that until now, only the High Priestess has been to.”

  “Is she here?” Sera asked, hopeful that someone might be able to explain what was happening. She was surprised to see Leela’s face cloud over.

  “No,” she said. “She is not who she pretends to be. This City is in turmoil, Sera. So much has changed since you fell.”

  Sera listened, thunderstruck, as Leela told her tale. When she got to the part about Cerulean trapped inside the stalactites, Sera let out cry of shock and disgust, and by the time she learned of Leela’s penance, Sera wished she could sit down, but the pool held her still and steady.

  When Leela had finished, Sera was quiet for a while, her head spinning with all these revelations. She did not know what to say or how to feel. Leela seemed to understand.

  “It was hard for me too,” she said. “To accept it. We have trusted in the High Priestess for so long.”

  “But why pick me?” Sera wondered aloud. “I was no threat to her. I was a nuisance.”

  “Kandra thought perhaps you had been chosen by Mother Sun to be the next High Priestess,” Leela said. It was so odd to hear Leela call Sera’s purple mother by her given name.

  “That cannot be true,” Sera said. “I would make a terrible High Priestess. No one in the City would accept me.”

  But she remembered the words she had seen on the bowl, the day of the choosing ceremony. Heal them, the symbols had said.

  She had never told Leela about the symbols, but she did now. Leela gasped.

  “So Mother Sun has spoken to you as well?” she said.

  “I . . . I never thought of it like that,” Sera said.

  “I have begun to be able to read the symbols on the temple doors,” Leela confessed. “They speak to me, they change for me so that I can understand them, but no one else sees.”

  “But Leela,” Sera yelped. “If you can read the symbols, does that not mean you are chosen as the next High Priestess?”

  Leela shook her head. “I would be just as wrong a choice as you,” she said. “I think this has been another of the High Priestess’s lies. I do not think she herself has been able to read the symbols for quite some time. And I fear she h
as done something, made it so that no one else can either. But you were always so different, Sera. Maybe that’s why you could read the symbols. Or maybe Mother Sun somehow sensed that the choosing ceremony was wrong or being manipulated. Perhaps she was trying to send you a message, though you could not understand it at the time.”

  Sera did not know what to think of that. She felt a twinge of confusion that was not her own and wondered what Leo must be making of all this.

  “We do not have much time,” Leela said. “I am meant to be bringing sweetnectar to the Day Gardens, to celebrate Plenna’s pregnancy. I have seen visions of you in the moonstone, Sera, but I do not understand them. Tell me what happened after you fell. I have seen you with two different girls, one with brown skin and hair, and another with curls and turquoise eyes. Who are they? Are they helping you?”

  “Yes,” Sera said, and had to suppress a laugh. Of course Leela thought Leo a girl. Hadn’t Sera thought the same thing that first night she had met him? Knowing that males existed and seeing one in person were two entirely different things. “There are two humans who are trying to help me get to the tether so that I can return home. But the one with the turquoise eyes is a male. His name is Leo and his sister, Agnes, is the girl you saw. They are my friends, along with a mertag, a sort of half-male half-fish, named Errol. He says he knows the location of the island where the tether is planted.”

  She took a breath and began to tell the whole story from the beginning. Leela’s face grew round and bright with awe.

  “They stole your blood?” she cried. “It is just like the humans from the planet of the Great Sadness!”

  “That is how I felt,” Sera said. “But Leo and Agnes are not like that. Not all humans are the same.”

  “It still sounds like a horrible place,” Leela said.

  Sera was surprised to feel a stab of defensiveness. Of course she had hated Xavier McLellan and his evil schemes, but the planet was not all bad. She had loved the days on the open sea learning how to sail. She loved not quite knowing what was going to happen when she woke up every morning. She had made friends who were just as different as she was and struggling to find where they belonged, all sorts of unusual friends.

  She would not see a male again once she returned to the City, she realized with a start. She hadn’t quite considered that. It made her sad to think she would never have the sort of romantic love she desired in her City—she would have to give that up completely. For a fraction of a second she wondered if there were others like her in the City Above the Sky, with longings and desires that didn’t fit with what was considered the traditional Cerulean mold. But she dismissed the thought before it had a chance to blossom. No one else in the City had ever seemed as different as her, and wouldn’t she have noticed if someone had?

  Besides, she would have her mothers and Leela back. Surely that would be enough.

  “How are we able to speak, though?” Sera asked.

  “The moonstone,” Leela replied. “I’m sure of it. It contains so much power that has been forgotten over the centuries. But Cerulean had to get down to the planet somehow, didn’t they? Before the Great Sadness, I mean. I think perhaps the pendant I gave you saved your life.”

  “But then, why can it not return me? Why not take me back now?”

  Leela frowned. “Well, I think it sort of has. You are here, but also not here. Perhaps this cone of moonstone is connected to all moonstone. Maybe this is the place where Cerulean would talk to those who were visiting the planets in the days of old.” She rubbed her temples. “I don’t know, Sera. I don’t have all the answers.”

  “No,” Sera said grimly. “But the High Priestess does.”

  “I do not think she will relinquish her secrets easily.”

  Sera agreed. How strange that her world had turned upside down and yet she accepted it without hesitation. But then, it was almost a relief, to think that there had been some reason that the ceremony had failed, some purpose to this no matter how dark.

  “How are you to prove her lies to the City?” Sera asked. “What is your plan to . . . to . . . overthrow her?”

  Leela’s eyebrows knit together. “I had not thought of it like that. I do not—I am not doing this to rule. My only goal is to set this City right. It is up to someone older and wiser than me to lead it.”

  But Sera was seeing the change in her friend, the girl she used to tease as a scaredy-cat, who she had to cajole into sneaking out at night. The way she carried herself now, the ferocity in her voice, the passion . . . Leela was growing up just as much as Sera was.

  “I must go,” Leela said suddenly. “I have stayed too long. The other novices will notice my absence. I will see you again. We are connected, you and I.”

  Sera’s throat grew too tight to speak. She drank in Leela’s face, memorizing every line, every strand of hair. Leela gave her one last smile before she turned and fled down the paths and through the columns until Sera could not see her any longer. She felt herself dissolving, the tether and the cone of moonstone and the vines swirling and melting in her vision, and for one panicked second, it was like she was falling again. But then she was back in the cabin on the ship with Leo beside her, and no place had ever felt smaller or stranger or less real.

  For a long moment, Leo and Sera just stared at each other. The expression on his face left Sera in no doubt that he had witnessed that entire exchange.

  “What . . . was . . .” Leo couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, his chest heaving.

  “I can talk to her,” Sera said, because she didn’t quite have an answer to his almost-asked question. “I can see her. Oh, Leo!”

  She threw her arms around his neck and let out a wild cry of joy. Leo’s arms wrapped around her waist. He was all biceps and forearms, a hard flat chest and broad hands with strong fingers. Sera felt an unexpected shiver run over her skin and a pinch in a place just below her stomach. He held her tight as if fearing she might dissolve.

  “That . . . was . . . insane,” Leo gasped, releasing her and stepping back, taking a quick physical inventory of himself, patting his thighs and his chest and running a hand through his curls.

  “Were you there?” Sera asked. “I thought I could feel your emotions sometimes but once I was in the City, you vanished.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was like I was a part of you, connected to you, seeing through your eyes. But I didn’t have a body. And I was somehow aware of myself here on the ship too. It was all . . . incredibly confusing.”

  “It was confusing to me too,” Sera said. “I have never experienced anything like that before. I didn’t know it was a thing to experience at all.” She looked down at the moonstone in awe. “I wonder what else this stone can do.”

  The door burst open then, Rahel entering triumphantly, carrying a platter that brought the scent of peaches and cream.

  “Peach cobbler!” she declared, her eyes fixed on Leo as if seeking some kind of reward. Rahel seemed mostly harmless, but something about how she looked at Leo irritated Sera in a way she could not quite explain. Her magic was bubbling, prickling and sharp, as if her talk with Leela had opened some sort of secret door inside her that had long been locked, the key only just discovered.

  “I’m afraid I’m feeling awfully tired, Rahel,” Leo said, and Sera was impressed at how normal he sounded after such an otherworldly experience. “Perhaps my friend and I could retire for the night?”

  Rahel frowned and her gaze flickered unwillingly to Sera. “Well, you can’t sleep in the same room together,” she said. “That’s not allowed. It’s my ship so I make the rules.”

  Tears of frustration pricked Sera’s eyes—she had not just visited with her best friend and discovered the woman she had trusted all her life was a liar only to be separated from her one companion by a silly girl who was used to getting everything she wanted.

  The moonstone was a bright sun against her chest, a connection between her City and this planet, like a tendon with synapses on either end
, and Rahel gave a little squeak of shock as Sera stepped toward her. Leo gasped too.

  Sera’s magic began to sing inside her, a song she felt she finally understood, though she could not explain how or why. Something had shifted within her, something that said this is how it is supposed to be, and a fire was lit in her heart, its heat spreading through her body. It felt like a blood bond except there was no one she was bonding with but herself. The heat began to climb, crawling up her chest, twining around her collarbone, curling into her throat, until it reached her eyes and a sudden clarity came upon her, a brilliant flash like a star being born, and she embraced the force of power coursing through her from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. The strength that had been building within her since they left Old Port was finally released and found it had purpose.

  “I am a Cerulean,” she said. Her voice rang and shimmered in the air and she felt as if the whole world stopped for a moment to listen and obey her. “My blood is magic. And you will not take my friend away from me.”

  Rahel’s mouth fell open. “You can speak Pelagan,” she said, but Sera had no time to acknowledge that she had finally cracked the secret to communicating on the planet because she could see Rahel, see her whole life laid out in a veil that draped over her body, shimmering threads of gold and pink intertwined with a dark meaty red. Her eyes burned in her skull as she turned to Leo—his veil was different, a patchwork of greens and blues laced with sad stormy grays. But she had seen Leo’s memories before and would not think to intrude upon them again without permission.

  It was Rahel she wanted to see. Without quite understanding how she was doing it, Sera plucked a thread from Rahel’s veil with her mind, one of the red ones, her fiery eyes locking the princess in place as the memory unfolded before her.

  Rahel was a little girl, playing with a jumping rope in a large opulent room. Another girl her age, a servant, stood watching her.

  “Be careful, Princess,” the girl said. “You’ll break something.”