“The truth?” Sera asked.
“About the Great Sadness. About what really happened on that planet so many centuries ago.”
Leela and Sera looked at each other and Leela felt a sinking dread creep all the way down to her toes. Perhaps the biggest of all the High Priestess’s lies was about to be revealed.
Wyllin extended a hand to Sera. “I will need my moonstone. My magic is too weak. The moonstone contains my heart, my memories, faint remnants of my magic. As it will contain yours now.”
Sera quickly removed the necklace and gave it to her.
“What’s going on?” Leo asked.
“I am going to show these Cerulean a piece of their history,” Wyllin said.
“Is that like the memory sharing?” Agnes asked.
“I have blood bonded with both of these humans,” Sera explained. “They have my magic in their veins.”
Wyllin’s lips parted in surprise, but Leela already knew this. “Blood bonded with humans?” Wyllin gasped. Sera nodded, unashamed.
“They see what I see,” she said.
Wyllin hesitated.
“You are very brave,” she said. She looked first at Agnes, then at Leo, as if silently commanding them to respect what they were about to witness.
Leo gave a serious nod and Agnes straightened her shoulders.
Wyllin’s mouth twitched, then she gripped the moonstone and bent over it with closed eyes. Leela thought she saw her lips move as if speaking to the stone, and when Wyllin looked up, her pale irises had turned brilliant blue like a light had been switched on inside her. Leela felt the same disorienting sensation she had experienced when she put the High Priestess’s circlet on, as if she was being pulled very quickly through a narrow tunnel.
The courtyard they were in blurred and disappeared, and then Leela was in the Sky Gardens, but they were bright and cheery, with vibrant flowers and verdant trees growing overhead, not the dead, withered bramble she was used to. The vines that surrounded the moonstone were sea green and rose-gold and no fruit grew among them. The air was cool, but not cold, and the columns glowed pleasantly blue, the paths like ribbons of pure white. There was nothing eerie about the place at all.
“I want to go back,” a young woman was saying. “Just one last time, before we leave. I want to see him again, to say goodbye.”
Leela’s shock at seeing the young High Priestess registered somewhere, but her mouth was moving, words unbidden coming out, and she knew she was Wyllin in this memory, as she had been the High Priestess in the circlet before.
“There are so many already down on the planet,” Wyllin said. “To replenish it before we leave.”
“Exactly,” the High Priestess said, though in Wyllin’s mind she was Elysse, and only Elysse. She was not the High Priestess yet, though Leela knew (because Wyllin did) that she had already been chosen to succeed Luille, the current High Priestess. “No one will notice a few more additions.”
The fragment of Leela’s mind registered with shock that she was seeing a memory from over nine hundred years ago.
Elysse’s face turned pleading, making sad eyes that Wyllin knew would win her the argument. They always did.
“You are certain it is just to say goodbye?” Wyllin asked. “You could stay with him, if you wished, as others have done before. Remember Ebereen, who stayed behind on the planet of roses and ice?”
“I am not a planet-keeper,” Elysse insisted, though Wyllin felt skeptical.
“But you care for this male,” she said.
“I do,” Elysse admitted. She looked forlorn as she stared through the large, clear pool, down to the planet below. “But I care for my City more. And I have been chosen. I must accept the role Mother Sun has assigned for me.”
Wyllin put her hand on Elysse’s arm. “It is such a weight for one so young,” she said. “Mother Sun must see greatness in you.”
Elysse smiled at her, but there was doubt in her eyes. “I am glad I have you to keep my counsel,” she said.
“Always,” Wyllin promised. Then she sighed. “Very well. Go. Say your goodbye.”
Their moonstones were almost identical, perfect circles of pure white, except Elysse’s was larger than Wyllin’s. They had both had them fashioned into rings—Elysse wore hers on the middle finger of her right hand, Wyllin on the ring finger of her left. They chose pools that were next to each other, and Wyllin gazed down at the planet, at the familiar sprawling brown-green continent. Then they both jumped.
The scene dissolved and suddenly Wyllin was watching from afar as Elysse embraced a male with alabaster skin and hair the color of moss. She was whispering something to him and he shook his head, and then she was crying, and he talked softly in her ear. She nodded. He asked her something else and she nodded again. When he held her close against his chest, Wyllin saw a gleam she did not like in his fire-red eyes. She had always found the eyes of the people who inhabited this planet to be unnerving, but this was different.
“The others are in the forest,” Wyllin said, when Elysse left the male behind and joined her. “I spoke to Gailen through my moonstone while I was waiting for you. We have almost finished giving back what we took from this planet. It is time to go. Let’s join them and return with the rest, and no one will ever know why you and I came.”
She didn’t like that Elysse kept this male a secret. But her friend had always been so reserved in her feelings. At first Wyllin had just been happy to see Elysse in love. But something had changed in her over the course of the City’s time attached to this planet. Orial, it was called, and while some of its people were dangerous and fierce, there were others who were kind and curious. Not everyone on the planet was the same. Elysse had spent more and more time on its surface, and yet still insisted she did not want to stay behind when the City moved on. Wyllin sensed her friend was torn. She wanted both, her male and her City, and that was simply not possible.
The scene dissolved again, and Wyllin was in a grove of enormous trees with thorny trunks and dark purple leaves. Cerulean wandered through them, leaving behind wispy trails of magic that caused flowers to spring up in their wake, and the grass to grow thicker, and the air to become more fragrant. Wyllin loved this part, when they would come to the planet in large numbers to give back what they had taken using the gift of their magic. The City did not steal—it only borrowed from the planets. There were so many Cerulean this time, easily two hundred. Elysse was not the only one who had enjoyed being attached to Orial. Its weather was pleasant, its people fascinating, its waters and woods teeming with life. Wyllin’s favorite were the fish that had appeared in the Estuary once they had tethered here, one of the planetary gifts from Orial. The fish had fine filaments that hung over their eyes and they would light up in spectacular colors.
She wondered where Luille was among the Cerulean gathered—it was tradition for the High Priestess to be present for the replenishing. Then she caught sight of her, several yards away, her magic like a cloak streaming out behind her.
Wyllin spread her palms and called on her magic and it flowed through her like a river, faint trails emanating out from her as she walked, blessing the ground with fertile richness. She passed an elderly Cerulean named Meranne, who called out a greeting, the orange ribbon around her neck shining against her skin.