High Moon Festival
The High Moon Festival is the yearly festival of Eslura, held at Galecrest when the two moons align and the golden moon eclipses the violet one.[1] The floating city sinks into the earth for the alignment and rises again once the moons have passed each other.[2] Every Sacred Ruler attends, so The Council meets while they are gathered.[3]
Timing
The Festival falls at the moons eclipsing.[3] Reagan Hideaway, watching from the Avonbourn the night before, sees the violet moon, half the size of the golden one, hanging just above it, and knows they will be due at the Festival when the two align.[1] On the day itself the golden moon has covered over three quarters of the purple one.[4] The moons themselves are covered at The Two Moons.
Mountain country reckons the same period as high moon season. Vendalis, a troll living on the slopes of Alakyer, calls crossing the mountains during high moon season a fool's errand.[5]
The city
Galecrest floats above the Meadow of Aezaros, held down by giant chains, and has to be reached from the air while it is up. At the alignment it settles into the ground, so travellers walk in around the lake and enter on foot. Alistair Archibald counted it luck that the city was down the year the dragons lost their fire, since there would otherwise have been no way to fly up to it on the back of a dragon.[4][2]
Gold is the colour of the day. Gold balloons hang from every lamppost with matching banners strung between them, fireworks scatter golden light over the rooftops, and the cafes fill with people and animals in gold silks drinking golden-coloured drinks. Crowds sit out in chairs with baked goods to watch the display.[2]
The main street runs into a vast red brick plaza where a gold dragon statue stands as tall as a four-storey building, its mouth open in a roar and its wings spread over the people releasing floating lanterns beneath it. The Eslurian Opera House stands on one side of the plaza and the Galecrest Library on the other, at the top of a flight of marble stairs. A line of festival-goers forms up the hill toward Millennium Loftwind's lit castle.[2]
The Opera House is the draw. It brings hundreds of Eslurians to Galecrest each year for the Festival, and it is where Barnaby Britto's parents met.[6]
The Council
The Festival is when the Council convenes, because every Ruler is in the city for it regardless.[3] Tabitha Glowdish planned her whole route around it, intending to hand the Eyearke Stone to the Rulers at the Festival so that the Council could decide what became of it.[7] Alistair Archibald refused to plan the release of the Olphins until he could put Seely's research to the whole council in Galecrest.[2]
First Flames
Zybersia held a festival of its own, almost like the High Moon Festival, called First Flames. Eslurians came from all over the land for it. Aero Ellisvat remembers marketplace stalls selling fire-forged weapons, glowing gemstones dug out of the Kella Desert and spices that could be smelled across the city, with drums and horns playing while dancers twirled banners and streamers set alight.[8]
The centrepiece was Elmryn. When he stepped onto the main festival stage the city fell silent, then he raised his hands and turned the pyres into dragons, havarraks, sea monsters and more creatures than Aero could count. Aero was a child at the time and says he knew even then that it was more than a fire show.[8] He speaks of the festival only in the past tense, and Zybersia has had no Sacred Ruler since Elmryn's murder.[9]
Notable events
The Festival that Beatrice Tidal reached ended badly. Alistair Archibald and Millennium Loftwind were there and Lumikki Otsby was not, having gone missing from Ovallia several days earlier, while Zybersia's seat had stood empty since Elmryn's murder.[9][2] While Millennium was explaining her absence on the library steps the ground shook, the roof of the Galecrest Library came down into the square, and a shard of roof tile opened a finger-length gash down Bea's arm. Seely suspected an earthquake.[2]
That same night the Nelazgians set fires on the east side of the city. The Festival ended all at once, the gold that had decorated the streets going dark under the smoke, and Millennium sent the Sacred Guard to clear the people out of the area.[10]