Chapter 11 — What the Land Remembered

In the throne room, after a long time, Kael stood up.The halves of the Ashen Throne lay on either side of the dais. Without the resonance animating them they were just old stone — extraordinary old stone, worked with three centuries of Maker-craft, but inert. Historical."How do you feel?" Maren asked.He looked at his arms. Nothing. No marks, no warmth, no accumulated resonance. For the first time in sixteen years he felt — ordinary. Which was not the same as empty. Ordinary, he was discovering, was much lighter than he'd expected."Like myself," he said. "For the first time, I think."Ren was standing at the throne pieces, looking at them with the expression of someone completing a very long research project. "The archive will need to update considerably," she said."What do we tell the Council?" Deven asked."The truth," Kael said. "The throne is broken. The resonance is distributed. The empire as it was cannot be rebuilt because the mechanism that legitimized it doesn't exist anymore." He paused. "But the land hasn't stopped. The trade routes still work. The administrative infrastructure still works. The only thing that's changed is where the authority lives.""Which is everywhere," Maren said."Which is everywhere." He looked at the high windows, the afternoon light coming in long and level. "Which means every community has to decide how to govern itself. Which is harder. But it's theirs.""That's going to take years," Deven said."Yes," Kael said. "The prophecy didn't say it would be fast. It said it would be made unnecessary. The throne is unnecessary. Everything else is — what comes next."Keeper Thessaly had appeared in the doorway. She had walked from the archive; she was slightly out of breath but her expression was complete. She looked at the throne pieces. She looked at Kael's unmarked arms."The third thing," she said."Yes," Kael said.She nodded. The nod of someone who has been holding a hypothesis for years and just watched it confirmed."The archive will document it," she said. "Completely and accurately, without the parts removed for political convenience.""Good," said Kael. "That matters."She looked at him with something that was not quite pride and not quite awe — something between the two, the specific expression of someone recognizing that a thing they prepared for has arrived and is exactly what they prepared for."What will you do now?" she asked.He looked at Maren. She looked back."Go home first," he said. "Then figure out the rest."