“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.
“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.
“They always said that Elantris was the most blessed of cities, but my father was never happy here. I guess even in paradise there are those who don’t fit in. He became a scholar—the study I showed you was his. However, Duladel never left his mind—he studied farming and agriculture, though both were useless in Elantris. Why farm when you can turn garbage into food?”
Galladon sighed, reaching out to pinch a piece of dirt between his fingers. He rubbed them together for a moment, letting the soil fall back to the ground.
“He wished he had studied healing when he found my mother dying beside him in bed one morning. Some diseases strike so quickly even Elantris can’t stop them. My father became the only depressed Elantrian I ever knew. That’s when I finally understood that they weren’t gods, for a god could never feel such agony. He couldn’t return home—the Elantrians of old were as exiled as we are today, no matter how beautiful they might have been. People don’t want to live with something so superior to themselves—they can’t stand such a visible sign of their own inferiority.
“He was happy when I returned to Duladen. He told me to be a farmer. I left him a poor, lonely god in a divine city, wishing for nothing so much as the freedom to be a simple man again. He died about a year after I left. Did you know that Elantrians could die of simple things, such as heart-death? They lived much longer
than regular people, but they could still die. Especially if they wanted to. My father knew the signs of heart-death; he could have gone in to be healed, but he chose to stay in his study and disappear. Just like those Aons you spend so much time drawing.”
“So you hate Elantris?” Raoden asked, slipping quietly through the open window to approach his friend. He sat as well, looking across the small plant at Galladon.
“Hate?” Galladon asked. “No, I don’t hate—that isn’t the Dula way. Of course, growing up in Elantris with a bitter father made me a poor Dula. You’ve realized that—I can’t take things as lightly as my people would. I see a taint on everything. Like the sludge of Elantris. My people avoided me because of my demeanor, and I was almost glad when the Shaod took me—I didn’t fit Duladel, no matter how much I enjoyed my farming. I deserve this city, and it deserves me. Kolo?”
Raoden wasn’t certain how to respond. “I suppose an optimistic comment wouldn’t do much good right now.”
Galladon smiled slightly. “Definitely not—you optimists just can’t understand that a depressed person doesn’t want you to try and cheer them up. It makes us sick.”
“Then just let me say something true, my friend,” Raoden said. “I appreciate you. I don’t know if you fit in here; I doubt any of us do. But I value your help. If New Elantris succeeds, then it will be because you were there to keep me from throwing myself off a building.”
Galladon took a deep breath. His face was hardly joyful—yet, his gratitude was plain. He nodded slightly, then stood and offered Raoden a hand to help him up.
Raoden turned fitfully. He didn’t have much of a bed, just a collection of blankets in the chapel’s back room. However, discomfort wasn’t what kept him up. There was another problem—a worry in the back of his mind. He was missing something important. He had been close to it earlier, and his subconscious harried him, demanding that he make the connection.
But, what was it? What clue, barely registered, haunted him? After his discussion with Galladon, Raoden had returned to his Aon practice. Then he had gone for a short look around the city. All had been quiet—Shaor’s men had stopped attacking New Elantris, instead focusing on the more promising potential presented by Sarene’s visits.