Elantris (Elantris 1)

Raoden laughed. “Well, I’m sure we can find something to do with them.” Fortunately, Eonic the blacksmith had been one of the few Elantrians to remain true to Raoden.

Galladon dropped the nails back into their box with a skeptical shrug. The rest of the supplies weren’t quite as bad. The food was stale, but Karata had stipulated that it had to be edible. The oil gave off a pungent smell when it was burned—Raoden had no idea where the princess had found that particular item—and the knives were sharp, but they had no handles.

“At least she hasn’t figured out why we demand wooden boxes,” Raoden said, inspecting the vessels themselves. The grain was good and strong. They would be able to pry the boxes apart and use the wood for a multitude of purposes.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she left them unsanded just to give us splinters,” Galladon said, sorting through a pile of rope, looking for an end to begin unraveling the mess. “If that woman was your fate, sule, then your Domi blessed you by sending you to this place.”

“She’s not that bad,” Raoden said, standing as Mareshe began to catalogue the acquisitions.

“I think it’s odd, my lord,” Mareshe said. “Why is she going to such lengths to aggravate us? Isn’t she afraid of spoiling our deal?”

“I think she suspects how powerless we really are, Mareshe,” Raoden said with a shake of his head. “She fulfills our demands because she doesn’t want to back out of her promise, but she doesn’t feel the need to keep us happy. She knows we can’t stop the people from accepting her food.”

Mareshe nodded, turning back to his list.

“Come on, Galladon,” Raoden said, picking up the bags of food for the Hoed. “Let’s find Karata.”

New Elantris seemed hollow now. Once, right before Sarene’s arrival, they had collected over a hundred people. Now barely twenty remained, not counting children and Hoed. Most of those who had stayed were newcomers to Elantris, people like Saolin and Mareshe that Raoden had “rescued.” They didn’t know any other life beyond New Elantris, and were hesitant to leave it behind. The others—those who had wandered into New Elantris on their own—had felt only faintly loyalty to Raoden’s cause. They had left as soon as Sarene offered them something “better”; most now lined the streets surrounding the gate, waiting for their next handout.

“Sad. Kolo?” Galladon regarded the now clean, but empty, houses.

“Yes,” Raoden said. “It had potential, if only for a week.”

“We’ll get there again, sule,” Galladon said.

“We worked so hard to help them become human again, and now they’ve abandoned what they learned. They wait with open mouths—I wonder if Sarene realizes that her three-meal bags usually last only a few minutes. The princess is trying to stop hunger, but the people devour her food so fast that they end up feeling sick for a few hours, then starve for the rest of the day. An Elantrian’s body doesn’t work the same way as a regular person’s.”

“You were the one who said it, sule,” Galladon said. “The hunger is psychological. Our bodies don’t need food; the Dor sustains us.”

Raoden nodded. “Well, at least it doesn’t make them explode.” He had worried that eating too much would cause the Elantrians’ stomachs to burst. Fortunately, once an Elantrian’s belly was filled, the digestive system started to work. Like Elantrian muscles, it still responded to stimulus.

They continued to walk, eventually passing Kahar scrubbing complacently at a wall with a brush they had gotten him in the last shipment. His face was peaceful and unperturbed; he hardly seemed to have noticed that his assistants had left. He did, however, look up at Raoden and Galladon with critical eyes.

“Why hasn’t my lord changed?” he asked pointedly.

Raoden looked down at his Elantris rags. “I haven’t had time yet, Kahar.”

“After all the work Mistress Maare went to sew you a proper outfit, my lord?” Kahar asked critically.

“All right,” Raoden said, smiling. “Have you seen Karata?”

“She’s in the Hall of the Fallen, my lord, with the Hoed.”

Following the elderly cleaner’s direction, Raoden and Galladon changed before continuing on to find Karata. Raoden was instantly glad that they had done so. He had nearly forgotten what it was like to put on fresh, clean clothing—cloth that didn’t smell of muck and refuse, and that wasn’t coated in a layer of brown slime. Of course, the colors left something to be desired—Sarene was rather clever with her selections.

Raoden regarded himself in a small piece of polished steel. His shirt was yellow dyed with blue stripes, his trousers were bright red, and his vest a sickly green. Over all, he looked like some kind of confused tropical bird. His only consolation was that as silly he looked, Galladon was much worse.

The large, dark-skinned Dula looked down at his pink and light green clothing with a resigned expression.

“Don’t look so sour, Galladon,” Raoden said with a laugh. “Aren’t you Dulas supposed to be fond of garish clothing?”

“That’s the aristocracy—the citizens and republicans. I’m a farmer; pink isn’t exactly what I consider a flattering color. Kolo?” Then he looked up at Raoden with narrow eyes. “If you make even one comment about my resembling a kathari fruit, I will take off this tunic and hang you with it.”

Raoden chuckled. “Someday I’m going to find that scholar who told me all Dulas were even-tempered, then force him to spend a week locked in a room with you, my friend.”

Galladon grunted, declining to respond.

“Come on,” Raoden said, leading the way out of the chapel’s back room. They found Karata sitting outside of the Hall of the Fallen, a length of string and a needle held in her hand. Saolin sat in front of her, his sleeve pulled back, exposing a long, deep gash running along his entire arm. There was no flowing blood, but the flesh was dark and slick. Karata was efficiently sewing the gash back together.

“Saolin!” Raoden exclaimed. “What happened?”

The soldier looked down with embarrassment. He didn’t seem pained, though the cut was so deep a normal man would have fainted long before from pain and blood loss. “I slipped, my lord, and one of them got to me.”

Raoden regarded the wound with dissatisfaction. Saolin’s soldiers had not thinned as badly as the rest of Elantris; they were a stern group, not so quick to abandon newfound responsibility. However, their numbers had never been that great, and they barely had enough men to watch the streets leading from Shaor’s territory to the courtyard. Each day while the rest of Elantris glutted themselves on Sarene’s offerings, Saolin and his men fought a bitter struggle to keep Shaor’s beasts from overrunning the courtyard. Sometimes, howling could be heard in the distance.

“I am sorry, Saolin,” Raoden said as Karata stitched.

“No mind, my lord,” the soldier said bravely. However, this wound was different from previous ones. It was on his sword arm.

“My lord …” he began, looking away from Raoden’s eyes.

“What is it?”

“We lost another man today. We barely kept them back. Now, without me … well, we’ll have a very difficult time of it, my lord. My lads are good fighters, and they are well equipped, but we won’t be able to hold out for much longer.”

Raoden nodded. “I’ll think of something.” The man nodded hopefully, and Raoden, feeling guilty, spoke on. “Saolin, how did you get a cut like that? I’ve never seen Shaor’s men wield anything other than sticks and rocks.”

“They’ve changed, my lord,” Saolin said. “Some of them have swords now, and whenever one of my men falls they drag his weapons away from him.”

Raoden raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

“Yes, my lord. Is that important?”

“Very. It means that Shaor’s men aren’t quite as bestial as they would have us believe. There’s room enough in their minds to adapt. Some of their wildness, at least, is an act.”

“Doloken of an act,” Galladon said with a snort.

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“Well, perhaps not an act,” Raoden said. “They behave like they do because it’s easier than dealing with the pain. However, if we can give them another option, they might take it.”

“We could just let them though to the courtyard, my lord,” Saolin suggested hesitantly, grunting slightly as Karata finished her stitching. The woman was proficient; she had met her husband while serving as a nurse for a small mercenary group.

“No,” Raoden said. “Even if they didn’t kill some of the nobles, the Elantris City Guards would slaughter them.”

“Isn’t that what we want, sule?” Galladon asked with an evil twinkle in his eyes.

“Definitely not,” Raoden said. “I think Princess Sarene has a secondary purpose behind this Trial of hers. She brings different nobles with her every day, as if she wanted to acclimatize them to Elantris.”

“What good would that do?” Karata asked, speaking for the first time as she put away her sewing utensils.

“I don’t know,” Raoden said. “But it is important to her. If Shaor’s men attacked the nobility, it would destroy whatever the princess is trying to accomplish. I’ve tried to warn her that not all Elantrians are as docile as the ones she’s seen, but I don’t think she believes me. We’ll just have to keep Shaor’s men away until Sarene is done.”

“Which will be?” Galladon asked.

“Domi only knows,” Raoden replied with a shake of his head. “She won’t tell me—she gets suspicious every time I try to probe her for information.”

“Well, sule,” Galladon said, regarding Saolin’s wounded arm, “you’d better find a way to make her stop soon—either that, or prepare her to deal with several dozen ravenous maniacs. Kolo?”

Raoden nodded.

A dot in the center, a line running a few inches above it, and another line running along its right side—Aon Aon, the starting point of every other Aon. Raoden continued to draw, his fingers moving delicately and quickly, leaving luminescent trails behind them. He completed the box around the center dot, then drew two larger circles around it. Aon Tia, the symbol for travel.

Raoden didn’t stop here either. He drew two long lines extending from the corners of the box—a proscription that the Aon was to affect only him—then four smaller Aons down the side to delineate the exact distance it was to send him. A series of lines crossing the top instructed the Aon to wait to take effect until he tapped its center, indicating that he was ready.

He made each line or dot precisely; length and size was very important to the calculations. It was still a relatively simple Aon, nothing like the incredibly complex healing Aons that the book described. Still, Raoden was proud of his increasing ability. It had taken him days to perfect the four-Aon series that instructed Tia to transport him precisely ten body lengths away.

He watched the glowing pattern with a smile of satisfaction until it flashed and disappeared, completely ineffective.

“You’re getting better, sule,” Galladon said, leaning on the windowsill, peering into the chapel.

Raoden shook his head. “I have a long way to go, Galladon.”

The Dula shrugged. Galladon had stopped trying to convince Raoden that practicing AonDor was pointless. No matter what else happened, Raoden always spent a few hours each day drawing his Aons. It comforted him—he felt the pain less when he was drawing Aons, and he felt more at peace during those few short hours than he had in a long time.

“How are the crops?” Raoden asked.

Galladon turned around, looking back at the garden. The cornstalks were still short, barely more than sprouts. Raoden could see their stems beginning to wilt. The last week had seen the disappearance of most of Galladon’s workers, and now only the Dula remained to labor on the diminutive farm. Every day he made several treks to the well to bring water to his plants, but he couldn’t carry much, and the bucket Sarene had given them leaked.

“They’ll live,” Galladon said. “Remember to have Karata send for some fertilizer in the next order.”

Raoden shook his head. “We can’t do that, my friend. The king mustn’t find out that we’re raising our own food.”

Galladon scowled. “Well, I suppose you could order some dung instead.”

“Too obvious.”

“Well, ask for some fish then,” he said. “Claim you’ve gotten a sudden craving for trike.”

Raoden sighed, nodding. He should have thought a little more before he put the garden behind his own home; the scent of rotting fish was not something he looked forward to.

“You learned that Aon from the book?” Galladon asked, leaning through the window with a leisurely posture. “What was it supposed to do?”

“Aon Tia?” Raoden asked. “It’s a transportation Aon. Before the Reod, that Aon could move a person from Elantris to the other side of the world. The book mentions it because it was one of the most dangerous Aons.”

“Dangerous?”

“You have to be very precise about the distance it is to send you. If you tell it to transport you exactly ten feet, it will do so—no matter what happens to be ten feet away. You could easily materialize in the middle of a stone wall.”

“You’re learning much from the book, then?”

Raoden shrugged. “Some things. Hints, mostly.” He flipped back in the book to a page he had marked. “Like this case. About ten years before the Reod, a man brought his wife to Elantris to receive treatment for her palsy. However, the Elantrian healer drew Aon Ien slightly wrong—and instead of just vanishing, the character flashed and bathed the poor woman in a reddish light. She was left with black splotches on her skin and limp hair that soon fell out. Sound familiar?”

Galladon raised an eyebrow in interest.

“She died a short time later,” Raoden said. “She threw herself off a building, screaming that the pain was too much.”

Galladon frowned. “What did the healer do wrong?”

“It wasn’t an error so much as an omission,” Raoden said. “He left out one of the three basic lines. A foolish error, but it shouldn’t have had such a drastic effect.” Raoden paused, studying the page thoughtfully. “It’s almost like …”

“Like what, sule?”

“Well, the Aon wasn’t completed, right?”

“Kolo.”

“So, maybe the healing began, but couldn’t finish because its instructions weren’t complete,” Raoden said. “What if the mistake still created a viable Aon—one that could access the Dor, but couldn’t provide enough energy to finish what it started?”

“What are you implying, sule?”

Raoden’s eyes opened wide. “That we aren’t dead, my friend.”

“No heartbeat. No breathing. No blood. I couldn’t agree with you more.”

“No, really,” Raoden said, growing excited. “Don’t you see—our bodies are trapped in some kind of half transformation. The process began, but something blocked it—just like in that woman’s healing. The Dor is still within us, waiting for the direction and the energy to finish what it started.”

“I don’t know that I follow you, sule,” Galladon said hesitantly.

Raoden wasn’t listening. “That’s why our bodies never heal—it’s like they’re trapped in the same moment in time. Frozen, like a fish in a block of ice. The pain doesn’t go away because our bodies think time isn’t passing. They’re stuck, waiting for the end of their transformation. Our hair falls away and nothing new grows to replace it. Our skin turns black in the spots where the Shaod began, then halted as it ran out of strength.”

“It seems like a leap to me, sule,” Galladon said.

“It is,” Raoden agreed. “But I’m sure it’s true. Something is blocking the Dor—I can sense it through my Aons. The energy is trying to get through, but there’s something in the way—as if the Aon patterns are mismatched.”

Raoden looked up at his friend. “We’re not dead, Galladon, and we’re not damned. We’re just unfinished.”

“Great, sule,” Galladon said. ?

??Now you just have to find out why.”

Raoden nodded. They understood a little more, but the true mystery—the reason behind Elantris’s fall—remained.

“But,” the Dula continued, turning to tend to his plants again, “I’m glad the book was of help.”

Raoden cocked his head to the side as Galladon walked away. “Wait a minute, Galladon.”

The Dula turned with a quizzical look.

“You don’t really care about my studies, do you?” Raoden asked. “You just wanted to know if your book was useful.”

“Why would I care about that?” Galladon scoffed.

“I don’t know,” Raoden said. “But you’ve always been so protective of your study. You haven’t shown it to anyone, and you never even go there yourself. What is so sacred about that place and its books?”

“Nothing,” the Dula said with a shrug. “I just don’t want to see them ruined.”

“How did you find that place anyway?” Raoden asked, walking over to the window and leaning against the sill. “You say you’ve only been in Elantris a few months, but you seem to know your way through every road and alley. You led me straight to Shaor’s bank, and the market’s not exactly the kind of place you’d have casually explored.”

The Dula grew increasingly uncomfortable as Raoden spoke. Finally he muttered, “Can a man keep nothing to himself, Raoden? Must you drag everything out of me?”

Raoden leaned back, surprised by his friend’s sudden intensity. “I’m sorry,” he stammered, realizing how accusatory his words had sounded. Galladon had given him nothing but support since his arrival. Embarrassed, Raoden turned to leave the Dula alone.

“My father was an Elantrian,” Galladon said quietly.

Raoden paused. To the side, he could see his friend. The large Dula had taken a seat on the freshly watered soil and was staring at a small cornstalk in front of him.

“I lived with him until I was old enough to move away,” Galladon said. “I always thought it was wrong for a Dula to live in Arelon, away from his people and his family. I guess that’s why the Dor decided to give me the same curse.