"This cannot continue," he said quietly.
"I don't see how you can stop it, sule," Galladon replied at his side. "These are Shaor's men; not even he has much control over them."
Raoden shook his head. "I will not save the people of Elantris and leave them to fight all the days of their lives. I will not build a society on death. Shaor's followers might have forgotten that they are men, but I have not."
Galladon frowned. "Ka' rata and Aanden, they were possibilities-if distant ones. Shaor is another story, sule. There isn't a smear of humanity left in these men-you can't reason with them."
"Then I'll have to give them their reason back," Raoden said.
"And how. sule, do you intend to do that?"
"I will find a way."
Raoden knelt by the fallen madman. A tickle in the back of his mind warned him that he recognized this man from recent experience. Raoden couldn't be certain. bur he thought that the man had been one of Taan's followers, one of the men Raoden had confronted during Dashe's attempted raid.
So, it's true, Raoden thought with a crimp in his stomach. Many of Taan's followers had come to join Raoden, but the larger part had not. It was whispered that many of these had found their way to the merchant sector of Elantris, joining with Shaor's wildmen. It wasn't all that unlikely, Raoden supposed-the men had been willing to follow the obviously unbalanced Aanden, after all. Shaor's band was only a short step away from that.
"Lord Spirit?" Saolin asked hesitantly. "What should we do with them?" Raoden turned pitying eyes on the fallen. "They are of no danger to us now, Saolin. Let's put them with the others."
SOON after his success with Aanden's gang, and the subsequent swell in his band's numbers, Raoden had done something he'd wanted to from the beginning. He started gathering the fallen of Elantris.
He took them off the streets and out of the gutters, searched through buildings both destroyed and standing, trying to find every man, woman, and child in Elantris who had given in to their pain. The city was large, and Raoden's manpower was limited, but so far they had collected hundreds of people. He ordered them placed in the second building Kahar had cleaned, a large open structure he had originally intended to use as a meeting place. The Hoed would still suffer, but at least they could do it with a little decency.
And they wouldn't have to do it alone. Raoden had asked the people in his band to visit the Hoed. There were usually a couple of Elantrians walking among them, talking soothingly and trying to make them as comfortable as possible considering the circumstances. It wasn't much-and no one could stomach much time among the Hoed-but Raoden had convinced himself that it helped. He followed his own counsel. visiting the Hall of the Fallen at least once a day. and it seemed to him that they were improving. The Hoed still groaned, mumbled, or stared blankly, but the more vocal ones seemed quieter. Where the Hall had once been a place of fearful screams and echoes, it was now a subdued realm of quiet mumblings and despair.
Raoden moved among them gravely, helping carry one of the fallen wildmen. There were only four to deposit; he had ordered the fifth man, the one Saolin had beheaded, buried. As far as anyone could tell, an Elantrian died when he was completely beheaded-at least, their eyes didn't move, nor did their lips try to speak, if the head was completely separated from the body.
As he walked through the Hoed, Raoden listened to their quiet murmurings. "Beautiful, once so very beautiful…"
'Life, life, life, life, life…"
"Oh Domi, where are you? When will it end? Oh Domi…"
He usually had to block the words out after a time, lest they drive him insane-or worse. reawaken the pain within his own body. ten was there, floating around sightless heads and weaving between fallen bodies. The Seon spent a lot of time in the room. It was strangely fitting.
They left the Hall a solemn group, quiet and content to keep to their own thoughts. Raoden only spoke when he noticed the tear in Saolin's robes. "You're wounded!" Raoden said with surprise.
"It is nothing, my lord," Saolin said indifferently.
"That kind of modesty is fine on the outside, Saolin, but not here. You must accept my apology."
"My lord," Saolin said seriously. "Being an Elantrian only makes me more proud to wear this wound. I received it protecting our people."
Raoden turned a tormented look back at the Hall. "It only brings you one step closer…"
"No, my lord, I don't think it does. Those people gave in to their pain because
they couldn't find purpose-their torture was meaningless, and when you can't find reason in life, you tend to give up on it. This wound will hurt, but each stab of pain will remind me that I earned it with honor. That is not such a bad thing. I think."
Raoden regarded the old soldier with a look of respect. On the outside he probably would have been close to retirement. In Elantris, with the Shaod as an equalizer, he looked about the same as anyone else. One couldn't tell age by looks, but perhaps one could tell it through wisdom.
"You speak discerningly, my friend." Raoden said. "I accept your sacrifice with humility."
The conversation was interrupted by the slap of feet against cobblestones. A moment later Karata dashed into view, her feet coated with fresh sludge from outside the chapel area. Kahar would be furious: she had forgotten to wipe down her feet, and now she was tracking slime over his clean cobblestones.
Karata obviously didn't care about slime at the moment. She surveyed the group quickly, making sure no one was missing. "I heard Shaor attacked. Were there any casualties?"
"Five. All on their side." Raoden said.
"I should have been here," she said with a curse. During the last few days, the determined woman had been overseeing the relocation of her people to the chapel area: she agreed that a central, unified group would be more effective, and the chapel area was cleaner. Oddly enough, the idea of cleaning the palace had never occurred to her. To most Elantrians, the sludge was accepted as an irrevocable part of life.
"You have important things to do," Raoden said. "You couldn't have anticipated Shaor would attack."
Karata didn't like the answer, but she fell into line beside him without further complaint.
"Look at him, sule," Galladon said. smiling slightly beside him. "I would never have thought it possible."
Raoden looked up, following the Dula's gaze. Taan knelt beside the road, inspecting the carvings on a short wall with childlike wonder. The squat-bodied former baron had spent the entire week cataloguing each carving, sculpture, or relief in the chapel area. He had already discovered, in his words, "at least a dozen new techniques." The changes in Taan were remarkable. as was his sudden lack of interest in leadership. Karata still maintained a measure of influence in the group, accepting Raoden as the ultimate voice but retaining most of her authority. Taan, however. didn't bother to give orders; he was too busy with his studies.
His people-the ones who had decided to join with Raoden-didn't seem to mind. Taan now estimated that about thirty percent of his "court" had found its way to Raoden's band, trickling in as small groups. Raoden hoped that most of
the others had chosen solitude instead: he found the idea of seventy percent of Taan's large band joining with Shaor very disturbing. Raoden had all of Karata's people, but her gang had always been the smallest-if most efficient-of the three. Shaor's had always been the largest: its members had just lacked the cohesion and the motivation to attack the other gangs. The occasional newcomers Shaor's men had been given had sated their bIoodlust.
No longer. Raoden would accept no quarter with the madmen, would not allow them to torment innocent newcomers. Karata and Saolin now retrieved everyone thrown into the city, bringing them safely to Raoden's band. So far. the reaction from Shaor's men had not been good-and Raoden feared that it would only grow worse.
I'II have to do something about them, he thought. That, however, was a problem for another day. He had studies he needed to get to for the moment.
Once they reached the chap
el, Galladon went back to his planting, Saolin's men dispersed to their patrols, and Karata decided-despite her earlier protests-that she should return to the palace. Soon only Raoden and Saolin were left.
After the battle and sleeping so late, over half the day's light had already been wasted, and Raoden attacked his studies with determination. While Galladon planted and Karata evacuated the palace, it was Raoden's self-appointed duty to decipher as much as he could about AonDor. He was becoming increasingly convinced that the ancient magic of the characters held the secret of Elantris's fall.
He reached through one of the chapel windows and pulled out the thick AonDor tome sitting on a table inside. So far, it hadn't been as helpful as he had hoped. It was not an instruction manual, but a series of case studies explaining odd or interesting events surrounding AonDor. Unfortunately, it was extremely advanced. Most of the book gave examples of what wasn't supposed to happen, and so Raoden needed to use reverse reasoning to decipher the logic of AonDor.
So far he had been able to determine very little. It was becoming obvious that the Aons were only starting points-the most basic figures one could draw to produce an effect. Just like the expanded healing Aon from his dream, advanced AonDor consisted of drawing a base Aon in the center, then proceeding to draw other figures-sometimes just dots and lines-around it. The dots and lines were stipulations, narrowing or broadening the power's focus. With careful drawing, for instance, a healer could specify which limb was to be healed, what exactly was to be done to it, and how an infection was to be cleansed.
The more Raoden read, the less he was beginning to see Aons as mystical symbols. They seemed more like mathematical computations. While most any Elantrian could draw the Aons-all it required was a steady hand and a basic knowledge of how to write the characters-the masters of AonDor were the ones who could swiftly and accurately delineate dozens of smaller modifications around the central Aon. Unfortunately, the book assumed that its reader had a comprehensive
knowledge of AonDor, and passed over most of the basic principles. The few illustrations included were so incredibly complex that Raoden usually couldn't even tell which character was the base Aon without referring to the text.
"If only he would explain what it means to 'channel the Dor'!" Raoden exclaimed, rereading a particularly annoying passage that kept using the phrase.
"Dor, sule?" Galladon asked, turning away from his planting. "That sounds like a Duladen term."
Raoden sat upright. The character used in the book to represent "Dor" was an uncommon one-not really an Aon at all, but simply a phonetic representation. As if the word had been transliterated from a different language.
"Galladon, you're right!" Raoden said. "It isn't Aonic at all."
"Of course not-it can't be an Aon, it only has one vowel in it." "That's a simplistic way of putting it. my friend."
— But it's true. Kolo?"
"Yes. I suppose it is," Raoden said. "That doesn't matter right now-what matters is Dor. Do you know what it means?"
"Well, if it's the same word, then it refers to something in Jesker."
"What do the Mysteries have to do with this?" Raoden asked suspiciously. "Doloken, sule!" Galladon swore. "I've told you, Jesker and the Mysteries are
not the same thing! What Opelon calls the 'Jeskeri Mysteries' is no more related to
Duladel's religion than it is to Shu-Keseg."
"Point taken." Raoden said. raising his hands. "Now, tell me about Dor."
"It's hard to explain, sule," Galladon said, leaning on a makeshift hoe he had crafted out of a pole and some rocks. "Dor is the unseen power-it is in everything, but cannot be touched. It affects nothing, yet it controls everything. Why do rivers flow?"
"Because the water is pulled downwards, just like everything else. The ice melts in the mountains, and it has to have a place to go."
"Correct," Galladon said. "Now, a different question. What makes the water want to flow?"
"I wasn't aware that it needed to."
"It does, and the Dor is its motivation," Galladon said. "Jesker teaches that only humans have the ability-or the curse-of being oblivious to the Dor. Did you know that if you take a bird away from its parents and raise it in your house, it will still learn to fly?"
Raoden shrugged.
"How did it learn, sule? Who taught it to fly?"
"The Dor?" Raoden asked hesitantly.
"That is correct."
Raoden smiled; the explanation sounded too religiously mysterious to be useful. But then he thought of his dream. his memories of what had happened so
long ago. When the Elantrian healer had drawn her Aon, it appeared as if a tear were appearing in the air behind her finger. Raoden could still feel the chaotic power raging behind that tear, the massive force trying to press its way through the Aon to get at him. It sought to overwhelm him. to break him down until he became part of it. However. the healer's carefully constructed Aon had funneled the power into a usable form, and it had healed Raoden's leg instead of destroying him.
That force, whatever it had been, was real. It was there behind the Aons he drew, weak though they were. "That must be it… Galladon, that's why we are still alive!"
"What are you babbling about, sule?" Galladon said, looking up from his work with tolerance.
"That is why we live on, even though our bodies don't work anymore!" Rao-den said with excitement. "Don't you see? We don't eat, yet we get the energy to keep moving. There must be some link between Elantrians and the Dor-it feeds our bodies, providing the energy we need to survive."
"Then why doesn't it give us enough to keep our hearts moving and our skin from turning gray?" Galladon asked, unconvinced.
"Because it's barely enough," Raoden explained. "AonDor no longer works-the power that once fueled the city has been reduced to a bare trickle. The important thing is, it's not gone. We can still draw Aons, even if they are weak and don't do anything. and our minds continue to live, even if our bodies have given up. We just need to find a way to restore it to full power."
"Oh, is that all?" Galladon asked. "You mean we need to fix what is broken?"
"I guess so," Raoden said. "The important thing is realizing there's a link between ourselves and the Dor. Galladon. Not only that-but there must be some sort of link between this land and the Dor."
Galladon frowned. "Why do you say that?"
"Because AonDor was developed in Arelon and nowhere else," Raoden said. "The text says that the farther one traveled from Elantris, the weaker the AonDor powers became. Besides-only people from Arelon are taken by the Shaod. It can take Teoish people, but only if they're living in Arelon at the time. Oh, and it takes the occasional Dula as well."
"I hadn't noticed."
"There's some link between this land, the Arelish people, and the Dor, Galladon," Raoden said. "I've never heard of a Fjordell getting taken by the Shaod, no matter how long he lives in Arelon. Dulas are a mixed people-half Jindo, half Aonic. Where was your farm in Duladen?"
Galladon frowned. "In the north, sule."
"The part that borders Arelon." Raoden said triumphantly. "It has something to do with the land, and with our Aonic bloodlines."
Galladon shrugged. "It sounds like it makes sense, sule, but I'm just a simple farmer-what know I of such things?"
Raoden snorted, not bothering to respond to the comment. "But why? What's the connection? Maybe the Fjordell are right-maybe Arelon is cursed."
"Hypothesize away, stiIe," Galladon said, turning back to his work. don't see much empirical good to it, though."
"All right. Well, I'll stop theorizing as soon as you telI me where a simple farmer learned the word 'empirical.' "
Galladon didn't respond. but Raoden thought he could hear the Dula chuckling softly.
CHAPTER 20
Let me see if I understand you, Princess dear," Ahan said, holding aloft a chubby finger. "You want us to help Iadon? How foolish I am-I thought we didn't like the fellow." "We don't." Sarene agreed.
"Helping the king financially doesn't have anything to do with our personal feelings."
"I'm afraid I have to agree with Ahan, Princess," Roial said with outspread hands. "Why the sudden change? What good will it do to aid the king now?"
Sarene gritted her teeth in annoyance. Then, however, she caught a twinkle in the elderly duke's eye. He knew. The duke reportedly had a spy network as extensive as most kings'-he had figured out what Hrathen was trying to do. He had asked the question not to provoke her, but to give her an opportunity to explain. Sarene exhaled slowly, grateful for the duke's tact.
"Someone is sinking the king's ships." Sarene said. "Common sense confirms what my father's spies say. Dreok Crushthroat's fleets couldn't be sinking the boats-most of Dreok's ships were destroyed fifteen years ago when he tried to take the throne of Teod, and any remnants have long since disappeared. Wyrn must be behind the sinkings."
"All right, we accept that much," Ahan said.
"Fjorden is also giving financial support to Duke Telrii." Sarene continued.
"You don't have any proof of that, Your Highness," Eondel pointed out.
"No, I don't," Sarene admitted, pacing between the men's chairs, the ground soft with new spring grass. They had eventually decided to hold this meeting in the gardens of Kae's Korathi chapel. and so there was no tabIe for her to circle. Sarene had managed to remain seated during the first parr of the meeting, but had eventually stood. She found it easier to address others when she was on her feet-something of a nervous habit, she realized, but she also knew that her height lent her an air of authority.
"I do, however, have logical conjecture," she said. Eondel wouId respond well to anything following the word "logical." "We all attended Telrii's party a week ago. He must have spent more on that ball than most men make in a year."
"Extravagance isn't always a sign of wealth." Shuden pointed out. "I've seen men poor as a peasant put on dazzling shows to maintain an illusion of security in the face of collapse." Shuden's words rang true-a man at their own meeting, Baron Edan. was doing just what Shuden described.
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