The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(79)

“She spoke of moonstone as well,” Leela continued, “as we stood before Aila’s statue. Did you know there was once a fountain made of moonstone in the Night Gardens?”

“I did not.” Kandra frowned. “Who told her that?”

“Acolyte Endaria. She said the Cerulean broke it into pieces during a bout of sleeping sickness, centuries ago, thinking perhaps it could protect them from the disease. But it didn’t.”

“Moonstone is a very powerful material—it possesses its own magic, or so my green mother told me.” Kandra gestured to the obelisk. “She thought it was related to the tether, somehow.” Her face was half-shrouded in darkness, but Leela was happy to see her eyes glowing faintly blue, her strength coming back to her. “I’ve discovered over the years that not every green mother tells exactly the same tales. I’m sure you must have noticed this too—they learn from their own green mothers, as we all do, and so the stories shift subtly from telling to telling. Seetha tried hard with Sera, because she had so many questions, to be as specific as possible. She even asked the High Priestess for advice and answers on occasion.” Kandra grimaced. “Now I cannot help but wonder if that was an influence on Sera being chosen. Had she asked the wrong question?”

Leela could not bear to think that Sera was somehow to blame for her own death.

“I was wondering . . . what if it is not the forest that holds the key to where Estelle is hidden,” she said. “What if it is the moonstone?”

Kandra looked the obelisk up and down. “You think she is inside it?”

“I am not sure what to think. Only that we cannot answer why she appeared here when she was supposed to be dead, but we know moonstone is sacred and possesses some kind of magic. So the two could be related.”

Kandra began to circle the obelisk, and Leela followed. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to find. It looked the same as it always had. Leela placed her lantern on the ground, thinking perhaps there was something that could not be seen but felt. As she brushed her fingertips across the base of the stone, she gasped—a faint breath of icy air was wafting up from the ground beneath it.

“Can you feel that?” she said, and Kandra reached out, her fingers skimming the grass.

“Where is that air coming from?”

“It’s like it’s coming up from the ground,” Leela said. “But that can’t be. . . .”

Kandra was already on her feet, pushing against the stone. “She might be underneath it,” she said, “not inside. Leela, help me.”

As soon as Leela placed her hands on the polished cold surface, she felt a crackle run through her fingers and up her wrists into her arms, her magic reacting in a way that she’d never felt before. Her knees buckled as a vision came upon her, an entirely unfamiliar place swimming before her eyes—it was a large, dark room, lit by flowers that glowed in purple and pink and orange. There was a tree with silvery white bark and turquoise leaves, and red curtains hung on either side of the flowers. She could not see the ceiling—above was only darkness. She pulled her hands away as if she’d been burned, and the vision faded.

“What is it?” Kandra asked. Leela did not know how to answer. She had no idea what or where that place was, but her magic was sizzling and pulsing as if begging for the vision to return. There was a faint blue glow in all ten of her fingers.

When she looked back up at the obelisk, markings had appeared in a narrow line down its trunk, markings that Leela could not read but felt she understood anyway—like a signpost, pointing the way to something.

Show me, she thought, or perhaps her magic thought it, for it spun and swirled around her heart.

With a faint groan, the obelisk slid to one side, and Kandra let out a shocked cry, her hands flying to her mouth. The next second she and Leela were peering down into a large square space carved into the earth, a chill emanating from its depths.

A set of sunglass stairs led down into the darkness. In the light of the lantern, Leela could see that the stairs had been sealed off four steps down, a smooth pane of sunglass blocking wherever they led to.

Kandra climbed down the steps and pressed her hands against the sunglass barrier. “Estelle?” she called softly. “Estelle, it’s Kandra.”

They waited for what felt like ages, but only the hum of insects and the scurrying of nocturnal creatures answered them.

“Where do you think it goes?” Leela whispered.

But Kandra had turned to stare at her with wonder in her pale blue eyes. “How did the obelisk move?”

“I . . . read the markings,” Leela said. “I asked it to show me.”

Kandra looked from Leela to the stone and back to Leela again. “What markings?”

Leela was about to point them out when she saw they had vanished. She sat back hard. “They were right there,” she said, bemused. “I saw them. They were right there.”

Kandra climbed back up the steps, shaking her head slowly. “Something is happening,” she said. “A change. Can you feel it?”

Leela did not know what to say—she was feeling altogether too many things to pinpoint any one in particular. “I saw something,” she said, and described the vision of that strange room to Kandra. “I don’t know what it means. I have never seen any place like it.”