A legend was ending in front of them.
Quinlan stood still.
He watched without prayer or gesture, and he kept watching until the last of the robes had folded into the seat and the throne held nothing but a high mound of grey where the Archduke had been.
Then he raised his palm.
He called the earth.
A pulse of mana left his fingers and reached down through the black marble, through the foundations of the tomb, deep into the bedrock where the oldest material sat undisturbed by epochs of weight from above. He drew the finest grain upward. He went deeper, past the layered sediment of the upper strata, and pulled up the dark ore that had been pressed into existence by the world's own gravity over eons. A single fistful of it answered his call and rose to hover above his palm.
He took a full minute over what could have been a heartbeat's work.
