held the medallions of the flights, gifted us in times long lost to ancient history. Kavallac now asks if he can relinquish the one responsibility that has defined him to the Dragons.”
“Okay, yes, I got that part—but why?”
Emmerian’s smile was slight and informed in every motion of lip and eye by melancholy. “Do you think that he could command the Arbiters to remain without reason? Do you think that he could do so only because he carries those books?”
“...Yes?”
“Yes, perhaps. Perhaps that might be true of you, had you continued to carry them. Understand what this place is.”
“It’s a library.”
“It is the library, Lord Kaylin. Corporal Neya, if you prefer. It is the library of his youth; it is the library that existed before war all but devoured us all over the passage of centuries. This, then, is the place that he was forced to leave to go to war. This is the place that was lost—forever, he thought—when the Towers rose.
“And he stands here, now, in a place that was not destroyed. Lost, yes—but it has been found. He has returned.” Emmerian hesitated. “You understand—you understood—that the Arkon’s hoard was the library and the things it contained.”
She nodded.
“He built it in both sorrow and rage, in regret and, yes, desire. What could be saved, he would save. What could be learned, he would learn. What could be taught, he would teach—or failing that, allow others to teach. He could not build this place—none but the Ancients could, and when the Towers rose, the Ancients faded. Had he been offered the chance to become what Killianas was—and perhaps will be—he would have taken it in an instant.
“No such offer was made. No such campus was built. He understood—as all must—why the Towers were created; what use was knowledge if there are none to learn it, none to question it?”
“And he can’t be both Arkon and chancellor?”
“No. He cannot be Arkon and chancellor both—and yes, I believe that is what he has been offered.”
“So...who would be Arkon?”
“That is a question that I cannot answer. So few of my kin survive, and of those, half sleep the long sleep, while the ages pass around them. You do not ask who might be chancellor in his stead.”
She shook her head. “I think... I think I’ve seen this before.”
“Ah—you were present when Barren became Tiamaris.”
She swallowed and nodded. “But—it’s different. I don’t...” The words faded. Tiamaris had found the heart of Tara, and Tiamaris had—at that moment—desired to possess it, to protect it, to know it.
This was not the same.
“He was always, of all of us, the most quietly responsible. Irascible, yes, and opinionated. But in his fashion, indulgent and even, for a Dragon, gentle. But this is what he wants. This. It is the thing that he will willingly devote the entirety of his remaining life to, the thing he would die to protect.”
“The thing,” Bellusdeo said, speaking for the first time, “that he would kill to protect.” Her eyes were copper and gold. “And they know it. All of them understand—the Arbiters, Killianas. Us.”
None so well as the Arkon. Kaylin saw him and thought he had never looked young to her. She’d never been able to conceive of an Arkon in youth. But he hadn’t been the Arkon in his youth. Hadn’t been a soldier, a warrior. There had been no Empire, the Aeries of the Dragons still existed in the heights, and the wars themselves were a distant, distant storm on a horizon that had already been darkened by Shadow.
It was Emmerian who shook his head. “This is his hoard,” he said softly. “I think it always has been. If the city were under attack, the Emperor would call up every man and woman at his disposal to defend it, yes?”
Kaylin nodded.
“Where the attack was surgical, he would send in the ground forces; Dragons in flight do much damage, and only in cases where necessity dictates the risk of that damage be taken will we fly.”
She thought of the attack on the High Halls.
“But were he to lose half the city, and yet emerge triumphant, the city would survive. It would be no less his, no less the heart of his hoard. He would rebuild. His hoard is larger, grander, and less physical than it first appears.
“So, too, the Arkon. How does one own knowledge? How does one own the thoughts of others? What does such knowledge become if it is not shared, if like minds are not invited to discover