The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(117)
The silence around her was unnerving, as was the crumbling foliage above. The farther out she traveled, the worse it became, until the ceiling was nothing but ash and mold.
Swish, plop. Swish, plop.
The sound was so faint, she could hardly hear it over her pounding heart. But then it came again.
Swish, plop.
It sounded like it was coming from near the stairs. She hurried back along the path, avoiding the clear pools—something told her they were dangerous, that they were not to be touched. Had Sera somehow fallen into this vast underbelly she’d never known existed? Was Estelle here, too?
She had passed the staircase, the swishing and plopping growing louder, when she heard a voice that made her blood run cold and her knees lock.
“Eat up, my beauties,” the High Priestess said. “I need you to be strong for me now.”
It took all of Leela’s willpower to find the courage to move. She crept forward, trying to keep out of sight behind the glowing blue columns without stepping off the path into one of the pools. She came to a wide, circular space, and it seemed like it was the exact size and shape of the temple. They must be right beneath it. The pools vanished, replaced by icy circles with markings carved onto them. Instead of dead trees and bushes, frost-covered vines hung in great boughs, heavy with a strange fruit Leela had never seen before—round, plump orbs of pure gold. She peered around one of the columns, wondering where the High Priestess was among these vines, when she had to clap her hands over her mouth to keep from crying out at what she saw.
The tether was slicing up through the open space, glowing brighter than the columns around her. It burst through the largest pool of water Leela had seen in this place and was planted firmly in a cone of moonstone protruding from the tangle of ice-white vines above. There was a red-orange light in the moonstone’s center, and it pulsed like a heartbeat. The High Priestess was circling the pool, muttering to herself. Then she stopped, crouched down, and passed her hand over something on the floor Leela could not see. Swish. She held out her other hand and one of the golden fruits fell into her palm. She dropped it into whatever she was crouching over. Plop. Then she passed her hand over the ground again.
She repeated this pattern several more times, crouching in various places that made no rhyme or reason to Leela, dropping fruit and then making the same gesture.
“That should do for now,” she said, standing and rubbing her hands together. Then she sighed. “For now.”
She shook her head and her posture shifted; for a moment she looked old and bent, showing her years in a way Leela had never seen before. “This was not how I meant it to be,” she whispered, like she was explaining herself to the floor. “But it is up to me and me alone. As it has been for so many long years. I am doing the best I can.”
She held out her hands toward the tether like she was warming her palms over a fire. Leela watched in horror as pure white light began to glow from beneath her, from the circles where she had dropped the fruit. The ground started to shake and the High Priestess’s face contorted in agony, yet she made no sound or cry of pain. The tether shone brighter and brighter and Leela was reminded of the light in the clay bowl, the one that had been used to choose Sera for the sacrifice. It grew so bright it was painful to look at, and Leela squeezed her eyes shut and pressed herself against the column’s cold surface.
Then the light was gone and the ground went still, and she heard the High Priestess’s footsteps. She passed within a few feet of where Leela was hiding, and Leela held her breath so as not to make a single sound.
She counted to one hundred before she allowed herself to move. Her knees were stiff as she walked toward the tether. It was more beautiful than she could have imagined, sometimes blue, sometimes gold, its interlocking links so fine and fragile that no Cerulean jeweler would ever be able to replicate it. She could see the magic running across its surface, tiny bursts of sparkling light. She stopped at the edge of the pool. Some instinct told her this place was sacred but forgotten, and she felt as if she stood before a giant beast with a stick, steeling herself to prod it and wake it up.
There was a circle of ice at her feet and Leela crouched down to inspect it. What had the High Priestess been doing? The markings carved into its surface were not the same as the ones on the obelisk or the statue, though they vaguely reminded Leela of the ones on the temple doors. But as she stared at them, they seemed to form a word—a word Leela could read.
Estelle.
She gasped. Tiny shavings of ice were scattered about the name and she brushed her palm over the letters to wipe them away. Instantly, the ice turned from opaque to as clear as one of the pools. Leela cried aloud and fell, landing sharply on her backside.
There was a Cerulean inside the ice.
Estelle was naked, her body curled into the fetal position, her face tormented, as if trapped in a terrible dream. But her chest rose and fell. She appeared to be inside a stalactite—Leela could see the edges and point of its cone below Estelle’s curled feet. She reached out to touch her, to wake her, to ask her how she came to be here, to bring her back to the City above, but the ice was cold and unyielding. Her hand could not penetrate it.
Then something to the left caught her eye.
Another stalactite.
Quickly, she stood and moved to the next circle. Another name: Inora. Brushing her hand across its surface, she saw a different Cerulean, slighter than Estelle, in the same fetal position, bearing the same tormented expression. Leela pressed her face so close to the ice that her nose grew tight and numb. She looked left. Then she looked right.