THE city of Elantris glowed brilliantly. The very stones shone, as if each one held a fire within. The shattered domes had been restored, their smooth, egglike surfaces blossoming across the landscape. Thin spires stabbed the air like streaks of light. The wall was no longer a barrier, for its gates were left permanently open—it existed not to protect, but for cohesion. The wall was part of the city somehow, an essential element of the whole, without which Elantris would not be complete.
And amid the beauty and the glory were the Elantrians. Their bodies shone with the same inner light as the city, their skin a luminous pale silver. Not metallic, just … pure. Their hair was white, but not the worn-out dull grey or yellow of the aged. It was the blazing white of steel heated to an extreme temperature—a color free of impurities, a powerful, focused white.
Their bearings were equally striking. The Elantrians moved through their city with an air of complete control. The men were handsome and tall—even the short ones—and the women were undeniably beautiful—even the homely ones. They were unhurried; they strolled rather than walked, and they greeted those they met with ready smiles. But there was a power in them. It radiated from their eyes and underlay their motions. It was easy to understand why these beings were worshipped as gods.
Equally unmistakable were the Aons. The ancient glyphs covered the city; they were etched into walls, painted on doors, and written on signs. Most of them were inert—simple markings, rather than runes with an arcane purpose. Others, however, obviously held energy. Throughout the city stood large metal plates carved with Aon Tia, and occasionally an Elantrian would approach and place his or her hand in the center of the character. The Elantrian’s body would flash, and then disappear in a circular burst of light, his body instantly transported to another section of the city.
Amid the glory was a small family of Kae townspeople. Their clothing was rich and fine, their words were educated, but their skin did not glow. There were other ordinary people in the city—not as many as the Elantrians, but a fair number nonetheless. This comforted the boy, giving him a familiar reference.
The father carried his young son tightly, looking around with distrust. Not everyone adored the Elantrians; some were suspicious. The boy’s mother gripped her husband’s arm with tense fingers. She had never been inside Elantris, though she had lived in Kae for over a decade. Unlike the boy’s father, she was more nervous than distrustful. She was worried about her son’s wound, anxious as any mother whose child was near death.
Suddenly, the boy felt the pain in his leg. It was blinding and intense, stemming from the festering wound and shattered bone in his thigh. He had fallen from someplace high, and his leg had snapped so soundly the shattered bone had torn through the skin to jut into the air.
His father had hired the best surgeons and doctors, but they had been unable to stop the infection. The bone had been set as well as possible, considering that it had fractured in at least a dozen places. Even without the infection, the boy would walk with a limp the rest of his days. With the infection … amputation seemed the only recourse. Secretly the doctors feared it was too late for even that solution; the wound had occurred high on the leg, and the infection had probably spread to the torso. The father had demanded the truth. He knew his son was dying. And so he had come to Elantris, despite his lifelong distrust of its gods.
They took the boy to a domed building. He nearly forgot his pain as the door opened on its own, sliding inward without a sound. His father stopped abruptly before the door, as if reconsidering his actions, but his mother tugged insistently on the man’s arm. His father nodded, bowing his head and entering the building.
Light shone from glowing Aons on the walls. A woman approached, her white hair long and full, her silvery face smiling encouragingly. She ignored his father’s distrust, her eyes sympathetic as she took the boy from hesitant arms. She laid him carefully on a soft mat, then brought her hand into the air above him, her long, thin index finger pointing at nothing.
The Elantrian moved her hand slowly, and the air began to glow. A trail of light followed her finger. It was a rupture in the air, a line that radiated with deep intensity. It was as if a river of light were trying to force its way through the small crack. The boy could feel the power; he could sense it raging to be free, but only this little was allowed to escape. Even that much was so bright that he could barely see.
The woman traced carefully, completing Aon Ien—but it wasn’t just Aon Ien, it was more complex. The core was the familiar Aon of healing, but there were dozens of lines and curves at the sides. The boy’s brow wrinkled—he had been taught the Aons by his tutors, and it seemed odd that the woman should change this one so drastically.
The beautiful Elantrian made one final mark at the side of her complex construction, and the Aon began to glow even more intensely. The boy felt a burning in his leg, then a burning up through his torso. He began to yell, but the light suddenly vanished. The boy opened his eyes with surprise, the afterimage of Aon Ien still seared into his vision. He blinked, looking down. The wound was gone. Not even a scar remained.
But he could still feel the pain. It charred him, cut him, caused his soul to tremble. It should have been gone, but it was not.
“Rest now, little one,” the Elantrian said in a warm voice, pushing him back.
His mother was weeping with joy, and even his father looked satisfied. The boy wanted to yell at them, to scream that something was wrong. His leg hadn’t been healed. The pain still remained.
No! Something is wrong! he tried to say, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t speak.…
* * *
“NO!” RAODEN YELLED, lurching upright. He blinked a few times, disoriented in the darkness. Finally he took a deep breath and put his hand to his head. The pain remained; it was growing so strong that it even corrupted his dreams. He had dozens of tiny wounds and bruises now, even though he had been in Elantris for only three weeks. He could feel each one distinctly, and together they formed a unified frontal assault on sanity.
Raoden groaned, leaning forward and grabbing his legs as he fought the pain. His body could no longer sweat, but he could feel it trembling. He clamped his teeth shut, gritting them against the surge of agony. Slowly, laboriously, he reasserted control. He rebuffed the pain, soothing his tortured body until finally he released his legs and stood.
It was growing worse. He knew it shouldn’t be so bad yet. He also knew that the pain was supposed to be steady, or so everyone said, but for him it seemed to come in waves. It was always there—always ready to pounce on him in a moment of weakness.
Sighing, Raoden pushed open the door to his chambers. He still found it odd that Elantrians should sleep. Their hearts no longer beat, they no longer needed breath. Why did they need sleep? The others, however, could give him no answers. The only true experts had died ten years previously.
So Raoden slept, and with that sleep came dreams. He had been eight when he broke his leg. His father had been loath to bring him into the city; even before the Reod, Iadon had been suspicious of Elantris. Raoden’s mother, dead some twelve years now, had insisted.
The child Raoden hadn’t understood how close he’d come to death. He had felt the pain, however, and the blissful peace of its removal. He remembered the beauty of both the city and its occupants. Iadon had spoken harshly of Elantris as they left, and Raoden had contradicted the words with vehemence. It was the first time Raoden could remember taking a position against his father. After that, there had been many others.
As Raoden entered the main chapel, Saolin left his attendant position beside Raoden’s chamber, falling into place beside him. Over the last week, the soldier had gathered a group of willing men and formed them into a squad of guards.
“You know I am flattered by your attentiveness, Saolin,” Raoden said. “But is it really necessary?”
“A lord requires an honor guard, Lord Spirit,” Saolin said. “It wouldn’t be proper for you to go about alone.”
“I’m not a lord, Saolin,” Raoden said. “I’m just a leader—there is to be no nobility in Elantris.”
“I understand, my lord.” Saolin nodded, obviously not seeing the paradox within his own words. “However, the city is still a dangerous place.”
“As you wish, Saolin,” Raoden said. “How goes the planting?”
“Galladon has finished his plowing,” Saolin said. “He has already organized the planting teams.”
“I shouldn’t have slept so long,” Raoden said, looking out the chapel window to notice how high the sun had risen. He left the building, Saolin close behind, and walked around a neat stone path to the gardens. Kahar and his crew had cleaned off the stones, and then Dahad—one of Taan’s followers—had used his skills with stoneworking to reset them.
The planting was already well underway. Galladon oversaw the work with a careful eye, his gruff tongue quick to point out any errors. However, there was a peace about the Dula. Some men were farmers because they had no other choice, but Galladon seemed to find true enjoyment in the activity.
Raoden remembered clearly that first day, when he had tempted Galladon with the bit of dried meat. His friend’s pain had barely been under control back then—Raoden had been scared of the Dula several times during those first days. Now none of that remained. Raoden could see it in Galladon’s eyes and in his bearing: He had found the “secret,” as Kahar had put it. Galladon was in control again. Now the only one Raoden had to fear was himself.
His theories were working better than even he had expected—but only on everyone else. He had brought peace and purpose to the dozens who followed him, but he couldn’t do the same for himself. The pain still burned him. It threatened him every morning when he awoke and stayed with him every moment he was conscious. He was more purposeful than any of the others, and was the most determined to see Elantris succeed. He filled his days, leaving no empty moments to contemplate his suffering. Nothing worked. The pain continued to build.
“My lord, watch out!” Saolin yelled.
Raoden jumped, turning as a growling, bare-chested Elantrian charged from a darkened hallway, running toward Raoden. Raoden barely had time to step backward as the wildman lifted a rusted iron bar and swung it directly at Raoden’s face.
Bare steel flashed out of nowhere, and Saolin’s blade parried the blow. The bestial newcomer halted, reorienting himself to a new foe. He moved too slowly. Saolin’s practiced hand delivered a thrust directly through the madman’s abdomen. Then, knowing that such a blow wouldn’t stop an Elantrian, Saolin swung a mighty backhand, separating the madman’s head from his body. There was no blood.
The corpse tumbled to the ground, and Saolin saluted Raoden with his blade, shooting him a gap-toothed smile of reassurance. Then he spun around to face a group of wildmen charging down a nearby street toward them.
Stunned, Raoden stumbled backward. “Saolin, no! There are too many of them!”
Fortunately, Saolin’s men had heard the commotion. Within seconds, there were five of them—Saolin, Dashe, and three other soldiers—standing against the attack. They fought in an efficient line, blocking their enemy’s path to the rest of the gardens, working with the coordination of trained soldiers.
Shaor’s men were more numerous, but their rage was no match for martial efficiency. They attacked solitarily, and their fervor made them stupid. In moments the battle was over, the few remaining attackers dashing away in retreat.
Saolin cleaned his blade efficiently, then turned with the others. They saluted Raoden in coordination.
The entire battle had happened almost more quickly than Raoden could follow. “Good work,” he finally managed to say.
A grunt came from his side, where Galladon knelt beside the decapitated body of the first attacker. “They must have heard we had corn in here,” the Dula mumbled. “Poor rulos.”
Raoden nodded solemnly, regarding the fallen madmen. Four of them lay on the ground, clutching various wounds—all of which would have been fatal had they not been Elantrians. As it was, they could only moan in torment. Raoden felt a stab of familiarity. He knew what that pain felt like.
“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. “Karata 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, but 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, his stomach clenching. Many of Taan’s followers had come to join Raoden, but the larger part had not. It was whispered that many of them 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. Ien 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!”
“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 paving stones. 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 stone.
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.
She cursed. “I should have been here.” 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 that 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 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 bloodlust.
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’ll 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 chapel, 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 want 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 said 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 seemed 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!” Raoden said, excited. “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 grey?” Galladon asked, unconvinced.
“Because it’s barely enough,” Raoden said. “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 Teos, 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 Arelenes, 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 Duladel?”
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 Fjordells are right—maybe Arelon is cursed.”
“Hypothesize away, sule,” Galladon said, turning back to his work. “I don’t see much empirical good to it though.”
“All right. Well, I’ll stop theorizing as soon as you tell me where a simple farmer learned the word ‘empirical.’”
Galladon didn’t respond, but Raoden thought he could hear the Dula chuckling softly.