Chapter Twenty-Four. Gin
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GIN
The people of the Drowned City emerge from the buildings, cautious at first, taking small, curious steps toward us.
More follow, men and women and children, dressed in colorful tunics and dresses made from some kind of silky fabric I don’t recognize, until there’s a large crowd gathered in what appears to be the city’s common area.
Shimmering water flows from a wide marble fountain, set in the middle of a great square, paved in glistening white stone and flanked by crystalline towers that soar upward; how high, I can’t tell.
Around the square there are houses made of crystal, and others with wavy, sparkling walls that seem to be made of flowing water, somehow suspended in the air.
There are flags waving from posts, and their patterns are familiar, then I realize I’ve seen them before in the Lashing.
We watch as a figure leaves one of the tall iridescent buildings and walks right onto a cloud. My chest seizes, except the person doesn’t fall. Then more follow. It isn’t a cloud, but a bridge. Or both. I look around—there are more cloud bridges connecting all the towers.
Neither of us move, except to gaze over the unbelievable sight, our mouths agape.
“Maybe we are dead?” Eban manages to whisper.
I shake my head, though, to be honest, I’m not convinced we aren’t. It’s all surreal. I even pinch my arm just to be sure.
There’s a commotion in the back of the crowd.
People move aside. A woman wearing a floor-length, sleeveless white sheath gown walks through the makeshift aisle.
She’s barefoot, and her hair is piled up in a mound of elaborate curls and braids.
There are strings of the largest pearls I’ve ever seen around her neck and more around her wrists.
Next to her is some kind of sea animal; it looks like a small dragon.
It emits a braying sound like the one we heard before our boat capsized.
“Welcome to Ophir,” she says. “We’ve been waiting for you.” She turns to pet the small water dragon. “Thanks, Bastian, for bringing them.”
“Is that a bakuwana?” Eban asks. “My mother told me about them. That Ophir warriors used to ride water dragons in battle.”
“Indeed.” The woman smiles.
“Is this real?” I ask. “Are we dead?”
“This is a memory. The memory of our people that is kept alive in your bloodlines,” she replies.
“But where are we really?” I ask. “We were drowning. We should be dead.”
“You are safe above. Do not worry. But your minds are here in the Drowned City. In the Kingdom of Ophir, which lives on in the blood of its people.”
“Are you dead, then?”
The woman smiles. “What is death when we live on in memory and in the lives of our children and our children’s children?”
“So this isn’t real. It’s just in our minds.”
She sighs. “Gineth Strong, just because it is only in your mind doesn’t mean it is not real.”
I stop arguing and Eban is silent, too.
Ophir is real. It lives in us. Then I notice something else—that Eban and I aren’t wearing the clothes we donned this morning.
Instead I’m wearing a clean linen sheath with a multicolored shawl folded above my right shoulder.
My hair is clean and washed and, like the woman’s, held up by a string of pearls and jewels.
Next to me, the street thief is gone, replaced by a man who could easily pass for a prince.
Eban’s dark hair falls gracefully around his ears—no longer slicked back, or secured with a thin piece of tied leather.
He stands taller, and more assured. I realize for the first time how handsome he is and I wonder why I didn’t notice before, maybe because he doesn’t look Laconian—we’ve been told that only Laconians are beautiful and we came to see ourselves as ugly in comparison.
No one would mistake Eban for a Laconian lord, but he is handsome all the same.
Then I realize with a start that I don’t have the thing that’s most precious to me. The relic. It’s gone. It’s not in my pocket. It’s not anywhere. I look up, alarmed.
“You are looking for Tadhana,” she says.
“She’s gone. I lost her!” She must have fallen out when I was drowning.
“Do not fear. She is here. You will see her in time,” the woman says. “As she is part of the reason I’ve brought you here.”
“Because we have the relics,” Eban says.
“Correct.” The woman smiles again. “We have much to discuss. Come, walk with me.”
We follow her into the dazzling white city.
It’s far more beautiful than Lacon City, even more glorious than House Eternal.
I nearly laugh aloud, imagining Lady Ariadne’s jealousy if she were to see it.
The entire place shimmers, as if there are crushed gems embedded in the stone—and for all I know, there are.
We stop at a dome-shaped building with a tall, arched, open doorway.
“Here we are,” she says. Inside, there’s a circular table nearly the size of the room, which is considerable.
It’s slick, reflective, and faintly pink, made of pearl.
Tall-backed golden chairs, almost like individual thrones, are arranged around it. “Please, have a seat.”
As Eban takes the seat next to me, the woman speaks. “Gineth Strong—” She smiles. “And Eban Sadreal, is that right?” She stares at Eban.
“Yes,” Eban replies, chin tilted defiantly.
“My name is Luwalhati,” the woman continues. “I am the last archivist, the keeper of Ophir knowledge. But please, no Ophir welcome would be complete without a feast. Let’s eat first.”
Bowls are set on the table, filled with steaming fish soup, platters of roasted and grilled meat, as well as giant prawn, crab cooked in its own fat, and steaming curries filled with lobster and sea snails.
I do my best to resist scarfing it down, instead picking up my spoon and taking a polite taste of the soup.
But I can’t help closing my eyes and reveling in how amazing it is.
“This is like something my mother used to make,” Eban says. “It never tasted this good, but I think she tried with what she had.”
Luwalhati smiles and nods.
I stuff myself silly, giving in to the hunger I feel deep in my bones. I’ve never tasted such delights, not even when I lived with Rollo.
“How did it happen? The fall?” I ask. “I never thought Ophir actually even existed. I thought it was just a fantasy. A lie, honestly. How did you—did we—lose this?”
Luwalhati frowns. “You know nothing of our history?”
“Very little. Only what Lacon allows us to know.”
At the mention of Lacon, her face changes, darkens. “Lacon betrayed us.”
But before she can explain further, dessert is served. Golden plates piled high with a mélange of exotic fruit and exquisite date and coconut candies. I eat so many of the coconut creams I feel sick.
Luwalhati turns solemn. “You understand the power of our relics. Spirits of our ancestors that have a direct channel to the gods.”
We both nod.
“The spirits in the relics are the source of all our power. The gods speak to us through the relics, and that is what created Ophir. We are the first people of the gods. It is said that in the very beginning, the gods walked among us in Ophir. We were created in their likeness. But the gods are fickle and grow bored. The gods returned to their haven, but allowed spirits to be able to communicate with them. And so the relics were created. Only the few and the best of us are chosen to be ancestor spirits. Only those who bond with the spirits can wield the power of the relics. All Ophir children have the capacity to bond, but only those who are worthy and succeed in the trial are bonded. All of our magic, all of our strength, lies in the bonded Ophir’s ability to channel the power of their ancestor spirit, who then unleashes the power of its god. ”
Eban and I listen attentively.
“While it was not a secret that the source of our power lay in our relics, we never imagined this knowledge could be used against us,” she says grimly.
I look up from taking a sip of the sparkling melon juice. “By Lacon?”
“Yes. You asked how it happened. How we lost all this. During the fall of Ophir, the people of Lacon betrayed us. They struck without warning during a feast for our gods and killed all the bonded Ophir. It was a slaughter.”
I shudder. Eban’s eyes are stormy.
“The Laconians thought that if they killed the bonded and stole the relics and the spirits contained in them, they would be able to bond with those spirits and use the power of our gods for themselves.”
“But they couldn’t,” I say. That much I know.
“Of course not. It was a foolish notion from the beginning. Only an Ophir descendant can speak to an ancestor spirit. Once the bonded Ophir were dead, the relics were useless to the Lacon. They might as well be empty glass vessels.” She shook her head.
“But without the power of the bond, we had no way to communicate with the gods, so our magic failed, and our kingdom sank into the sea.”
We’re sitting in a graveyard, I think. A graveyard of memories, of past glory and grandeur. There is no Ophir. This is just in my mind, a memory, a dream.
Luwalhati sighs. “You know what happened next. We all drowned. Although a few Ophir survived. They fled on rafts and skiffs. Those who escaped had nowhere else to go but Lacon. We became a people without magic, without hope and with no knowledge of our past. A handful made it to the Lashing, our last free colony. But like the Ophir in Lacon, without the power of our relics, they, too, live without magic.” She turns to us now, her eyes flashing like diamonds.
“But now the relics are found. And two are in Ophir hands once more. In the hands of their descendants.”
She looks at us intently. “I brought you here for a reason. Now, let us fulfill it.”