The Alcazar

by Amy Ewing

  “The moonstone?” he asked. He knew she’d been consumed with it, hoping to see more of her City. She’d had visions here and there—one of the gardens that surrounded the temple at night, one of the houses where all the purple mothers were waiting to get pregnant, and one in that spooky underground place but with no Leela this time. The visions felt scrambled, she’d told him, blurry. Leo thought the moonstone was acting like a radio with a busted antenna. It was trying to connect Sera and her City to the same frequency but static kept getting in the way.

  “No,” she said, her hand moving to caress the pendant. “The moonstone is the same. I do wish I could speak to Leela again, though.” She turned her eyes toward the clouds. “I hope she’s all right.”

  Leo did too, but Leela’s dangers were far away and theirs were very much real and, apparently, chasing after them. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the Renalt and her warships caught up with Ambrosine’s galleon. Even if they made it to Culinnon, was the island’s magic strong enough to protect them? Leo still wasn’t even entirely sure what magic Culinnon possessed. It just sounded like a very pretty place so far, and that wouldn’t help withstand cannons or gunfire.

  “I was thinking about Rahel,” Sera said.

  “Really?”

  “Well, not about her but about her memory. I think the memories can serve a purpose. This power of my people may have been lost for a time, but I am on the planet now and my magic is stronger than I have ever felt it before. In the City Above the Sky, we blood bond with each other to read hearts. It is sacred because we share ourselves, open our minds to each other the way you and I did when we bonded.”

  Even now, when Leo recalled that night in the theater, he could still see the memories they’d shared as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

  “But with this self blood bond, it is not the same,” she continued. “Rahel did not see into my mind. And I was able to make her feel something.”

  “Yeah, she was pretty freaked out,” he agreed.

  Sera was shaking her head. “No, Leo,” she said. “I made her feel shame.”

  “Oh.” Leo hadn’t thought about it like that.

  “I’ve been wondering,” Sera said, and she turned her back on the ocean and looked out across the deck. “If perhaps I can use it to instigate other emotions. Good ones. Or . . . I don’t know, meaningful ones. Perhaps this was a way the Cerulean were able to spend time on planets. Sensing emotions, calming the occupants or making connections with them using their own memories.”

  “I can feel a plan being formed,” Leo said, and Sera flashed him a mischievous grin that sent his heart tripping over itself.

  “I am not trying to take this power lightly,” she said. “But I was just hoping I could test out this theory, this ability, and at the same time, give a gift to someone I think deserves one very much.”

  Leo followed her gaze to where Bellamy was standing at the prow of the ship, still as stone, her frizzy hair caught up in the wind. His chest grew tight.

  “You’re a very good person, Sera Lighthaven,” he said.

  “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “No,” he said, offering her his arm. “But you will.”

  They walked over to Bellamy, who started when she heard them coming.

  “Good morning,” she said politely.

  “Good morning, Bellamy,” Sera said. “We were . . .” She looked to Leo, uncertain, and he gave her an encouraging nod. Sera cleared her throat. “I was hoping I might . . . I was wondering . . .”

  Leo had never seen her so flustered. But then Bellamy looked away, back out over the prow.

  “We are almost to Culinnon,” she said. “Ambrosine always knows when we are close.” Her fingers tightened on the rail. That small movement seemed to loosen something within Sera.

  “You miss your husband very much, don’t you,” she said.

  Bellamy tensed, then nodded.

  “I can help you see him,” Sera said. “Right here, right now.”

  Bellamy whirled around, eyes wide. “You can?”

  “But it would have to be our secret,” Leo said quickly, foreseeing the danger. “My grandmother can’t know.”

  “A secret?” Bellamy said, tempted but uncertain.

  “Ambrosine has plenty of secrets of her own,” Leo said. “It only seems fair that we have some ourselves.”

  A slow smile crept across Bellamy’s face. “A secret,” she said. “All right.”

  Sera squeezed Leo’s arm, then released him. “This might be a little startling,” she said. “But I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  Bellamy was only allowed a moment of shock before Sera’s eyes began to glow, brighter and brighter until they burned, and Leo once again felt a gentle wind ripple over his body, freezing him in place as she drew up their veils of memory, of life. He couldn’t see them—Sera had told him that they were colorful and that his was a patchwork of grays and greens. He wondered what colors Bellamy’s veil was, and what thread Sera was plucking from it now. And then he saw, as clearly as he’d seen Sera’s memories in the theater and Rahel’s on the ship.

  Bellamy was much younger, lounging in a rowboat with a man with dark blue eyes and handsome, hawkish features. One of her hands dangled in the water amid lily pads and lotus blossoms while the man rummaged through a picnic basket.

  “Will you read me another poem, Hektor?” she asked.

  “In a moment, my love,” Hektor replied. “I’m just looking for . . . ah! Found it.”

  Bellamy giggled. “What on earth has kept your nose in that basket for so long?”

  Hektor’s cheeks flushed. “I seem to have misplaced my heart,” he said, holding out his hand. “It appears to be yours now.” In his palm was a small silver ring with a tiny snail shell in its setting in place of a jewel. “Would you do me the privilege of spending the rest of your life with me?”

  Bellamy clapped her hands over her mouth, tears filling her eyes. For a long moment, she did not speak. “Hektor,” she finally choked out.

  “Is that a yes?”

  Her eyes shone, then turned wary. “But what about your mother?”

  “I’m not frightened of her.”

  Bellamy gave Hektor a look that plainly said, Liar.

  “Fine, maybe I am a little, but it’s my life, isn’t it? Alethea got to marry who she wanted; why shouldn’t I?”

  “Oh, darling, you know it’s not the same,” Bellamy said, cupping his face in her palm.

  “Is that a no?” Hektor asked, real fear in his voice.

  Bellamy leaned forward so she could kiss him. “It is a yes. A thousand times yes.”

  He took her in his arms and she cried against his chest. “I have never loved anyone in my life but you,” he murmured into her hair.

  And then they were kissing again and the memory dissolved.

  Leo could still feel the tingles in his stomach, the yearning for physical affection, a side effect of the memory share. He’d felt what Bellamy had felt, yet it was also mixing with his own feelings, the ones he fought against every night after he’d left Sera and closed the door to his room. Bellamy was frozen in shock but Sera was looking at him, and the expression on her face was . . . strange. Almost like she was seeing a different version of him.

  Then she reached out very slowly and ran her fingers down the back of his hand. “Leo,” she said, and his insides shivered.

  “By the goddesses,” Bellamy gasped, coming alive at precisely the worst moment. She gulped at the air. “What . . . what . . .”

  Sera turned to her and the spell was broken. Leo felt himself shaking. He wanted her eyes back on him, wanted her fingers back on his skin.

  “It was like I was there again,” Bellamy was saying. “On that very day.”

  “Yes,” Sera said. “I wanted to give you something to hold on to. A gift. Of love. You love him very much.”

  A tear fell on Bellamy’s cheek. “I do. I . . .” She gazed out over the ocean again.
“You know, she didn’t let us marry for six years after that day. Six years and three other engagements, all made without his consent, all broken. You’d think after Alethea, Ambrosine might have figured out the sort of people her children are. But they aren’t really people to her. They are pieces on a game board.”

  It was the most Leo had ever heard Bellamy say.

  She turned to Sera, her face fearful. “You can never let her know about this. This power you possess. She will try and take it from you. She will never let you go.”

  Suddenly, a bell rang out from the mainmast and the water around the ship began to churn, waves frothing and raging against the hull.

  “What’s happening?” Leo asked. Bellamy seemed remarkably calm as a dark strip of land appeared in the distance.

  “Leo, look!” Sera gasped. “There’s so many of them.”

  “So many of what?” he asked.

  And then he saw.

  The ocean was filled with the colorful lights of hundreds and hundreds of mertags.

  Bellamy turned to them. “Welcome to Culinnon.”

  Part Four

  The City Above the Sky

  21

  SERA’S VOICE WAS STILL RINGING IN LEELA’S EARS AS SHE hurried to join the celebrations for Plenna’s pregnancy in the Day Gardens.

  “Where have you been?” Elorin hissed when she arrived. “Novice Loonir was looking for you. I told her you had just gone to the creamery for some cheese.”

  “Thank you,” Leela said, glancing left and right. Cerulean were laughing and dancing, fiddles and drums and pipes filling the sweet-scented night air, and everyone seemed more relaxed than they had in days. Once again, the High Priestess had managed to distract the City.

  Leela pulled Elorin behind a huge rhododendron bursting with magenta flowers. “I found Sera,” she said. “I spoke to her.”

  “What?” Elorin gasped. “Where?”

  Leela quickly explained how the doors to the temple had told her to eat the golden fruit, and how Sera’s form had appeared in the large pool beneath the cone of moonstone.

  “Leela,” Elorin said solemnly. “The doors to the temple can only be read by the High Priestess. If you are reading them . . .”

  Leela waved the thought away. “Sera said the same thing. But she told me that she was able to read the symbols on the choosing bowl! And I am certain the High Priestess can no longer read the markings on the door—at least, not the ones that spoke to me. So it has been a lie that only the High Priestess can read the doors. I think they actually used to speak to all Cerulean, just in different ways and at different times.” Elorin did not look convinced. “There’s more,” Leela continued. “She has discovered the location of the tether and is making her way to it now. And there are humans helping her. A male named Leo and a girl named Agnes. They are brother and sister.”

  She rubbed her temples, still not quite able to wrap her mind around Sera traveling the planet alongside humans, and befriending a male, no less.

  “A male,” Elorin echoed, her eyes wide. “Will the tether be able to bring Sera home?”

  Leela bit her lip. “I do not know.”

  She had wondered that herself when Sera had first mentioned it. But what other choice was there? The tether was the one connection to the City from the planet.

  “I wish we knew more about what the City was like before the Great Sadness,” Elorin said. “It seems like that would give us the information we need. Remember when I told you what Acolyte Endaria had told me, about the fountain of moonstone that used to be in the Night Gardens?”

  Leela nodded.

  “Well, what happened to it?” Elorin said. “We know that moonstone is powerfully magical—it can show visions and allowed you and Sera to speak. But I do not believe Acolyte Endaria’s story, that it was broken apart to protect from the sleeping sickness. Moonstone does not seem protective—it seems connective.”

  Leela had not thought of that.

  “Your green mother said that moonstone had been used to communicate between Cerulean when they were on the planet, isn’t that right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Elorin said. “Perhaps that was a snippet of truth that survived the centuries.”

  It all felt like it was beginning to make sense. At least, part of it. “Elorin, I think you might be right,” Leela said slowly. “The magic of moonstone is connective. It has connected this City to the planet—I can see visions of the planet, but only of what Sera sees or where she is, and that must be because of the moonstone. And it connects me and Sera to each other, like a blood bond. But instead of reading each other’s hearts, we are able to actually speak!” Her mind was racing as her magic bubbled in her veins. “How did I not think of it before? Cerulean had to have had a way to communicate with those on the planet. And after we stopped going down on the planets, moonstone stopped appearing in the City.”

  Elorin clapped her hand over her mouth. “Yes.”

  Suddenly, the air was filled with cries of, “Plenna! Plenna is here!”

  Leela and Elorin hurried to join the celebration. The Cerulean were gathering around a low plinth of stone, where the High Priestess stood with Plenna, looking radiant beside her.

  “My children, let us raise our glasses in celebration of new life!” the High Priestess said. “Plenna may now join her wives in their dwelling, until her time comes to bear her daughter. Oh, what a joyous day for our City, so long plagued with doubts. But Mother Sun sees us and loves us all. Praise her!”

  “Praise her!” the crowds shouted back, but Leela and Elorin said nothing. As Plenna fell into the arms of Heena and Jaycin, the moonlight caught the stone in the High Priestess’s circlet. Leela felt her magic begin to burn within her blood, a startling heat that brought out the taste of the fruit in the back of her mouth. There was something special about that circlet, more than the obelisk or the statues or even Sera’s pendant. Leela was certain of it, felt it deep in her bones. If she could just have the chance to hold it, to touch it in some way, maybe she could see . . .

  Elorin let out a wistful sigh. “She looks so happy, doesn’t she?”

  Leela followed her gaze to where one of the acolytes was placing a wreath of flowers on Plenna’s head. She felt a pinch of envy at the simple joy of Plenna’s life.

  “Do you think I am doing the wrong thing?” she asked. “Should I just leave everything be? I do not wish to cause the people of this City more pain.”

  “You have not done anything wrong,” Elorin said firmly. “It is the High Priestess who is causing pain, even if the rest of the City does not know or see it yet. Kandra believes you—well, about the High Priestess, if not about Sera. I believe you about it all. We will find a way to bring Sera home and prove it to them.”

  “If only I could bring the whole City down to the Sky Gardens,” Leela said.

  Elorin bit her lower lip. “But you could not get them all down there at once, and it would not surprise me if the High Priestess had some plan in place, some way to discredit or deceive. She erased Kandra’s memory, did she not? And you would not be able to tell everyone at the same time, unless you called the City to the temple, and only the High Priestess can command to have the bells rung.”

  Elorin was right. There had to be another way. Leela’s eyes were drawn back to the High Priestess. “I think there may be answers in her circlet, Elorin,” she said.

  “Answers that the other moonstone cannot give you?”

  Leela nodded.

  “But if moonstone is connective, then what do you think the circlet connects to?”

  “I don’t know,” Leela said, her frustration returning. “It is just . . . a feeling.”

  “Well,” Elorin said. “I am not one to doubt your instincts, Leela. They have not led you astray thus far.”

  “I am grateful to have you,” Leela said, squeezing Elorin’s arm. “You are a good friend.”

  Elorin beamed. “Come, let us try for one evening to forget our troubles. I think we may be able to
sneak some sweetnectar from Novice Loonir if we are very cunning.”

  She wiggled her eyebrows, and Leela laughed and allowed herself to be led through the crowd to where Novice Loonir was filling glasses beneath the boughs of a poplar tree.

  She had spoken to Sera tonight, after all. Surely that was worthy of celebration. The circlet could wait.

  The next afternoon, Leela took a break from cleaning the doors. After the announcement of Plenna’s pregnancy, no one was watching her closely, so she meandered around the Moon Gardens, seeing the statues in a new light after her conversation with Elorin. Perhaps, in days past, Cerulean would gather around them to see visions of their friends or family on the planet. Maybe it was a way for them to know they were safe, so far from home. She touched the statue of Aila, taking comfort in the moonstone’s smoothness. For a moment, she had a glimpse of a room bedecked in pink and gold, and a table laid with all kinds of sweet foods. Then it was gone. Leela felt a surge of triumph.

  I am with you, Sera, she thought as she returned to the temple. Perhaps she could try to speak with her again tonight. Would she have to eat the fruit again? She wasn’t sure.

  She was searching for a new jar of polish in the closet where the prayer cushions were kept when Elorin burst in.

  “You scared me,” Leela said. Then she took in Elorin’s face. Her skin was pale and her eyes so wide Leela could see the whites all around clear blue irises. “What has happened?”

  For a moment Elorin seemed too overwhelmed to speak. Her lips trembled and she took a deep, steadying breath.

  “The doors,” she whispered. “They spoke to me. I was tasked with washing the acolyte and High Priestess robes. I was carrying a load out to wash in the Estuary and as I passed the doors, the markings on them moved. And I understood them, Leela. I could read what they were saying.”

  Leela felt her heart soar. Whatever spell the High Priestess had cast on the City, it was slowly receding, like a veil being lifted. “What did they tell you?”

  “The circlet,” Elorin whispered. “Over and over, they spelled out the circlet. And then my feet were carrying me to the dormitory, though that was not where I had intended to go, and then . . . oh, Leela, you must come quickly!”