THE woman screamed until she grew too tired, calling for help, for mercy, for Domi. She clawed at the broad gate, her fingernails leaving marks in the film of slime. Eventually she slumped to the ground in a quiet heap, shaking from occasional sobs. Seeing her agony reminded Raoden of his own pain—the sharp twinge of his toe, the loss of his life outside.
“They won’t wait much longer,” Galladon whispered, his hand firmly on Raoden’s arm, holding the prince back.
The woman finally stumbled to her feet, looking dazed, as if she had forgotten where she was. She took a single, uncertain step to her left, her palm resting on the wall, as if it were a comfort—a connection to the outside world, rather than the barrier separating her from it.
“It’s done,” Galladon said.
“Just like that?” Raoden asked.
Galladon nodded. “She picked well—or, as well as one could. Watch.”
Shadows stirred in an alleyway directly across the courtyard; Raoden and Galladon watched from inside a ramshackle stone building, one of many that lined Elantris’s entry plaza. The shadows resolved into a group of men, and they approached the woman with determined, controlled steps, surrounding her. One reached out and took her basket of offerings. The woman didn’t have the strength left to resist; she simply collapsed again. Raoden felt Galladon’s fingers dig into his shoulder as he involuntarily pulled forward, wanting to dash out to confront the thieves.
“Not a good idea. Kolo?” Galladon whispered. “Save your courage for yourself. If stubbing your toe nearly knocked you out, think how it would feel to have one of those cudgels cracking across your brave little head.”
Raoden nodded, relaxing. The woman had been robbed, but it didn’t look like she was in further danger. It hurt, however, to watch her. She wasn’t a young maiden; she bore the stout figure of a woman accustomed to childbirth and the running of a household. A mother, not a damsel. The strong lines of the woman’s face bespoke hard-won wisdom and courage, and somehow that made watching her more difficult. If such a woman could be defeated by Elantris, what hope was there for Raoden?
“I told you she chose well,” Galladon continued. “She might be a few pounds of food lighter, but she doesn’t have any wounds. Now, if she had turned right—like you did, sule—she would have been at the dubious mercy of Shaor’s men. If she had gone forward, then Aanden would have had claim on her offerings. The left turn is definitely best—Karata’s men take your food, but they rarely hurt you. Better to be hungry than spend the next few years with a broken arm.”
“Next few years?” Raoden asked, turning away from the courtyard to regard his tall, dark-skinned companion. “I thought you said our wounds would last us an eternity.”
“We only assume they will, sule. Show me an Elantrian who has managed to keep his wits until eternity ends, and maybe he’ll be able to prove the theory.”
“How long do people usually last in here?”
“A year, maybe two,” Galladon said.
“What?”
“Thought we were immortal, did you? Just because we don’t age, we’ll last forever?”
“I don’t know,” Raoden said. “I thought you said we couldn’t die.”
“We can’t,” Galladon said. “But the cuts, the bruises, the stubbed toes … they pile up. One can only take so much.”
“They kill themselves?” Raoden asked quietly.
“That’s not an option. No, most of them lie around mumbling or screaming. Poor rulos.”
“How long have you been here, then?”
“A few months.”
The realization was another shock to pile on the already teetering stack. Raoden had assumed that Galladon had been an Elantrian for at least a few years. The Dula spoke of life in Elantris as if it had been his home for decades, and he was impressively adept at navigating the enormous city.
Raoden looked back at the courtyard, but the woman had already gone. She could have been a maid in his father’s palace, a wealthy merchant’s lady, or a simple housewife. The Shaod respected no classes; it took from all equally. She was gone now, having entered the gaping pit that was Elantris. He should have been able to help her.
“All that for a single loaf of bread and a few flaccid vegetables,” Raoden muttered.
“It may not seem like much now, but just wait a few days. The only food that enters this place comes clutched in the arms of its new arrivals. You wait, sule. You will feel the desire as well. It takes a strong man to resist when the hunger calls.”
“You do it,” Raoden said.
“Not very well—and I’ve only been here a few months. There’s no telling what the hunger will drive me to do a year from now.”
Raoden snorted. “Just wait until my thirty days are done before you become a primordial beast, if you please. I’d hate to feel that I hadn’t got my beef’s worth out of you.”
Galladon paused for a moment, then laughed. “Does nothing frighten you, sule?”
“Actually, pretty much everything here does—I’m just good at ignoring the fact that I’m terrified. If I ever realize how scared I am, you’ll probably find me trying to hide under those paving stones over there. Now, tell me more about these gangs.”
Galladon shrugged, walking away from the broken door and pulling a chair out from the wall. He turned a critical eye on its legs, then carefully settled down. He moved just quickly enough to stand again as the legs cracked. He tossed the chair aside with disgust, and settled on the floor.
“There are three sections of Elantris, sule, and three gangs. The market section is ruled by Shaor; you met a few members of his court yesterday, though they were too busy licking the slime off your offerings to introduce themselves. In the palace section you’ll find Karata—she’s the one who so very politely relieved that woman of her food today. Last is Aanden. He spends most of his time in the university section.”
“A learned man?”
“No, an opportunist. He was the first one who realized that many of the library’s older texts were written on vellum. Yesterday’s classics have become tomorrow’s lunch. Kolo?”
“Idos Domi!” Raoden swore. “That’s atrocious! The old scrolls of Elantris are supposed to hold countless original works. They’re priceless!”
Galladon turned him a suffering eye. “Sule, do I need to repeat my speech about hunger? What good is literature when your stomach hurts so much your eyes water?”
“That’s a terrible argument. Two-century-old lambskin scrolls can’t possibly taste very good.”
Galladon shrugged. “Better than slime. Anyway, Aanden supposedly ran out of scrolls a few months back. They tried boiling books, but that didn’t work very well.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t tried boiling one another.”
“Oh, it’s been tried,” Galladon said. “Fortunately, something happens to us during the Shaod—apparently the flesh of a dead man doesn’t taste too good. Kolo? In fact, it’s so violently bitter that no one can keep it down.”
“It’s nice to see that cannibalism has been so logically ruled out as an option,” Raoden said dryly.
“I told you, sule. The hunger makes men do strange things.”
“And that makes it all right?”
Wisely, Galladon didn’t answer.
Raoden continued. “You talk about hunger and pain as if they are forces that can’t be resisted. Anything is acceptable, as long as the hunger made you do it—remove our comforts, and we become animals.”
Galladon shook his head. “I’m sorry, sule, but that’s just the way things work.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
* * *
TEN YEARS WASN’T long enough. Even in Arelon’s thick humidity, it should have taken longer for the city to deteriorate so much. Elantris looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries. Its wood was decaying, its plaster and bricks were disintegrating—even stone buildings were beginning to crumble. And coating everything was the omnipresent film of brown sludge.
Raoden was finally getting used to walking on the slippery, uneven paving stones. He tried to keep himself clean of the slime, but the task proved impossible. Every wall he brushed and every ledge he grasped left its mark on him.
The two men walked slowly down a broad street; the thoroughfare was far larger than any of its kind back in Kae. Elantris had been built on a massive scale, and while the size had seemed daunting from without, Raoden was only now beginning to grasp just how enormous the city was. He and Galladon had been walking for quite a while, and Galladon said they were still a moderate distance from their destination.
The two did not rush, however. That was one of the first things Galladon had taught: In Elantris, one took one’s time. Everything the Dula did was performed with an air of utter precision, his movements relaxed and careful. The slightest scratch, no matter how negligible, added to an Elantrian’s pain. The more careful one was, the longer one would stay sane. So Raoden followed, trying to mimic Galladon’s attentive gait. Every time Raoden began to feel that the caution was excessive, all he had to do was look at one of the numerous forms that lay huddled in gutters and on street corners, and his determination would return.
The Hoed, Galladon called them: those Elantrians who had succumbed to the pain. Their minds lost, their lives were filled with continual, unrelenting torture. They rarely moved, though some had enough feral instinct to remain crouched in the shadows. Most of them were quiet, but few were completely silent. As he passed, Raoden could hear their mumbles, sobs, and whines. Most seemed to be repeating words and phrases to themselves, a mantra to accompany their suffering.
“Domi, Domi, Domi…”
“So beautiful, once so very beautiful…”
“Stop, stop, stop. Make it stop.…”
Raoden forced himself to close his ears to the words. His chest was beginning to constrict, as if he were suffering with the poor, faceless wretches. If he paid too much attention, he would go mad long before the pain took him.
However, if he let his mind wander, it invariably turned to his outside life. Would his friends continue their clandestine meetings? Would Kiin and Roial be able to hold the group together? And what of his best friend, Lukel? Raoden had barely gotten to know Lukel’s new wife; now he would never get to see their first child.
Even worse were the thoughts of his own marriage. He had never met the woman he was to have married, though he had spoken to her via seon on many occasions. Was she really as witty and interesting as she had seemed? He would never know. Iadon had probably covered up Raoden’s transformation, pretending that his son was dead. Sarene would never come to Arelon now; once she heard the news, she would stay in Teod and seek another husband.
If only I had been able to meet her, if just once. But such thoughts were useless. He was an Elantrian now.
Instead he focused on the city itself. It was difficult to believe that Elantris had once been the most beautiful city in Opelon, probably in the world. The slime was what he saw—the rot and the erosion. However, beneath the filth were the remnants of Elantris’s former greatness. A spire, the remains of a delicately carved wall relief, grand chapels and vast mansions, pillars and arches. Ten years ago this city had shone with its own mystical brightness, a city of pure white and gold.
No one knew what had caused the Reod. There were those who theorized—most of them Derethi priests—that the fall of Elantris had been caused by God. Living as gods themselves, the pre-Reod Elantrians had allowed other religions in Arelon, but suffered them the same way a master lets his dog lick fallen food off the floor. The beauty of Elantris, the powers its inhabitants wielded, had kept the general population from converting to Shu-Keseg. Why seek an unseen deity when you had gods living before you?
It had come with a tempest—that much even Raoden remembered. The earth itself had shattered, an enormous chasm appearing in the south, all of Arelon quaking. With the destruction, Elantris had lost its glory. The Elantrians had changed from brilliant white-haired beings to creatures with splotchy skin and bald scalps—like sufferers of some horrible disease in the advanced stages of decay. Elantris had stopped glowing, instead growing dark.
And it had happened only ten years ago. Ten years was not enough. Stone should not crumble after just a decade of neglect. The filth should not have piled up so quickly—not with so few inhabitants, most of whom were incapacitated. It was as if Elantris were intent on dying, a city committing suicide.
* * *
“THE MARKET SECTION of Elantris,” Galladon said. “This place used to be one of the most magnificent marketplaces in the world—merchants came from across Opelon to sell their exotic goods to the Elantrians. A man could also come here to buy the more luxurious Elantrian magics. They didn’t give everything away for free. Kolo?”
They stood atop a flat-roofed building; apparently some Elantrians had preferred flat roofs to peaks or domes, for the flat sections allowed for rooftop gardens. Before them lay a section of city that looked essentially the same as the rest of Elantris—dark and falling apart. Raoden could imagine that its streets had once been decorated with the colorful canvas awnings of street vendors, but the only remains of such was the occasional filth-covered rag.
“Can we get any closer?” Raoden asked, leaning over the ledge to look down on the market section.
“You can if you want, sule,” Galladon said speculatively. “But I’m staying here. Shaor’s men are fond of chasing people; it’s probably one of the few pleasures they have left.”
“Tell me about Shaor himself, then.”
Galladon shrugged. “In a place like this, many look for leaders—someone to ward off a bit of the chaos. Like any society, those who are strongest often end up in command. Shaor is one who finds pleasure in controlling others, and for some reason the most wild and morally corrupt Elantrians find their way to him.”
“And he gets to take the offerings of one-third of the newcomers?” Raoden asked.
“Well, Shaor himself rarely bothers with such things—but yes, his followers get first call on one-third of the offerings.”
“Why the compromise?” Raoden asked. “If Shaor’s men are as uncontrollable as you imply, then what convinced them to hold to such an arbitrary agreement?”
“The other gangs are just as big as Shaor’s, sule,” Galladon said. “On the outside, people tend to be convinced of their own immortality. We are more realistic. One rarely wins a battle without at least a few wounds, and here even a couple of slight cuts can be more devastating, and more agonizing, than a swift decapitation. Shaor’s men are wild, but they are not complete idiots. They won’t fight unless they have incredible odds or a promising reward. You think it was your physique that kept that man from attacking you yesterday?”
“I wasn’t sure,” Raoden admitted.
“Even the slightest hint that you might fight back is enough to scare these men off, sule,” Galladon said. “The pleasure of torturing you just isn’t worth the gamble that you might get in a lucky blow.”
Raoden shivered at the thought. “Show me where the other gangs live.”
* * *
THE UNIVERSITY AND the palace bordered one another. According to Galladon, Karata and Aanden had a very uneasy truce, and guards were usually posted on both sides to keep watch. Once again, Raoden’s companion led him to a flat-roofed building, an untrustworthy set of stairs leading to the top.
However, after climbing the stairs—and nearly falling when one of the steps cracked beneath him—Raoden had to admit that the view was worth the effort. Elantris’s palace was large enough to be magnificent despite the inevitable decay. Five domes topped five wings, each with a majestic spire. Only one of the spires—the one in the middle—was still intact, but it rose high into the air, by far the tallest structure Raoden had ever seen.
“That’s said to be the exact center of Elantris,” Galladon said, nodding to the spire. “Once you could climb the steps winding around it and look out over the entire city. Nowadays, I wouldn’t trust it. Kolo?
“Karata is at the same time the harshest and most lenient of the gang leaders,” Galladon said, gazing at the palace. There was something odd in his eyes, as if he were seeing things Raoden couldn’t. His description continued in its characteristic rambling tone, as if his mouth wasn’t aware that his mind was focused elsewhere.
“She doesn’t often let new members into her gang, and she is extremely territorial. Shaor’s men might chase you for a while if you wander onto his turf, but only if they feel like it. Karata suffers no intruders. However, if you leave Karata alone, she leaves you alone, and she rarely harms newcomers when she takes their food. You saw her earlier today—she always takes the food personally. Maybe she doesn’t trust her underlings enough to handle it.”
“Perhaps,” Raoden said. “What else do you know about her?”
“Not much—leaders of violent thieving gangs don’t tend to be the type to spend their afternoons chatting.”
“Now who’s taking things lightly?” Raoden said with a smile.
“You’re a bad influence, sule. Dead people aren’t supposed to be cheerful. Anyway, the only thing I can tell you about Karata is that she doesn’t like being in Elantris very much.”
Raoden frowned. “Who does?”
“We all hate it, sule, but few of us have the courage to try and escape. Karata has been caught in Kae three times now—always in the vicinity of the king’s palace. One more time and the priests will have her burned.”
“What does she want at the palace?”
“She hasn’t been kind enough to explain it to me,” Galladon replied. “Most people think she intends to assassinate King Iadon.”
“Why?” Raoden said. “What would that accomplish?”
“Revenge, discord, bloodlust. All very good reasons when you’re already damned. Kolo?”
Raoden frowned. Perhaps living with his father—who was absolutely paranoid about the prospect of getting killed by an assassin—had desensitized him, but murdering the king just didn’t seem like a likely goal to him. “What about the other gang leader?”
“Aanden?” Galladon asked, looking down at the university. It was large, but less magnificent than the palace. It consisted of five or six long, flat buildings and a lot of open space—ground that had probably once held grass or gardens, both things that would have been eaten to their roots long ago by Elantris’s starving inhabitants. “He claims he was some kind of noble before he was thrown in here—a baron, I think. He’s tried to establish himself as monarch of Elantris, and he is incredibly annoyed that Karata has control of the palace. He holds court, claims he will feed those who join him—though all they’ve gotten so far are a few boiled books—and makes plans for attacking Kae.”
“What?” Raoden asked with surprise. “Attacking?”
“He isn’t serious,” Galladon said. “But he is good at propaganda. He claims to have a strategy to free Elantris, and it’s gained him a large following. However, he’s also brutal. Karata only harms people who try to sneak into the palace—Aanden is notorious for dispensing judgments at a whim. Personally, sule, I don’t think he’s completely sane.”
Raoden frowned. If this Aanden really had been a baron, then Raoden would have known him. However, he didn’t recognize the name. Either Aanden had lied about his background, or he had chosen a new name after entering Elantris.
Raoden studied the area between the university and the palace. Something there had caught his attention—something so mundane he wouldn’t have given it a second look, had it not been the first of its kind he had seen in all of Elantris.
“Is that … a well?” he asked uncertainly.
Galladon nodded. “The only one in the city.”
“How is that possible?”
“Indoor plumbing, sule, courtesy of AonDor magic. Wells weren’t necessary.”
“Then why build that one?”
“I think it was used in religious ceremonies. Several Elantrian worship services required water that had been freshly gathered from a moving river.”
“Then the Aredel River does run under the city,” Raoden said.
“Of course. Where else would it go. Kolo?”
Raoden narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, but he didn’t volunteer any information. As he stood, watching the city, he noticed a small ball of light floating through one of the streets below. The seon meandered with an aimless air, occasionally floating in circles. It was far too distant for him to make out the Aon at its center.
Galladon noticed Raoden’s scrutiny. “A seon,” the Dula noted. “Not uncommon in the city.”
“It’s true, then?” Raoden asked.
Galladon nodded. “When a seon’s master gets taken by the Shaod, the seon itself is driven mad. There’s a number of them floating through the city. They don’t talk, they just hover about, mindless.”
Raoden glanced away. Since being thrown into Elantris, he’d avoided thinking about the fate of his own seon, Ien.
Galladon glanced up at the sky. “It will rain soon.”
Raoden raised an eyebrow at the cloudless sky. “If you say so.”
“Trust me. We should get inside, unless you want to spend the next few days in damp clothing. Fires are hard to make in Elantris; the wood is all too wet or too rotten to burn.”
“Where should we go?”
Galladon shrugged. “Pick a house, sule. Chances are it won’t be inhabited.”
They had spent the previous night sleeping in an abandoned house—but now, something occurred to Raoden. “Where do you live, Galladon?”
“In Duladel,” Galladon immediately answered.
“I mean nowadays.”
Galladon thought for a moment, eyeing Raoden uncertainly. Then, with a shrug, he waved Raoden to follow him down the unstable stairs. “Come.”
* * *
“BOOKS!” RAODEN SAID with excitement.
“Should never have brought you here,” Galladon muttered. “Now I’ll never get rid of you.”
Galladon had led Raoden into what had seemed to be a deserted wine cellar, but had turned out to be something quite different indeed. The air was drier here—even though it was below ground—and much cooler as well. As if to revoke his earlier cautions about fire, Galladon had pulled a lantern from a hidden alcove and lit it with a bit of flint and steel. What the light had revealed was surprising indeed.
It looked like a learned man’s study. There were Aons—the mystical ancient characters behind the Aonic language—painted all over the walls, and there were several shelves of books.
“How did you ever find this place?” Raoden asked eagerly.
“I stumbled upon it.” Galladon shrugged.
“All these books,” Raoden said, picking one up off its shelf. It was a bit moldy, but still legible. “Maybe these could teach us the secret behind the Aons, Galladon! Did you ever think of that?”
“The Aons?”
“The magic of Elantris,” Raoden said. “They say that before the Reod, Elantrians could create powerful magics just by drawing Aons.”
“Oh, you mean like this?” the large dark-skinned man asked, raising his hand. He traced a symbol in the air, Aon Deo, and his finger left a glowing white line behind it.
Raoden’s eyes opened wide, and the book tumbled from his grasp. The Aons. Historically, only the Elantrians had been able to call upon the power locked within them. That power was supposed to be gone; it was said to have failed when Elantris fell.
Galladon smiled at him through the glowing symbol that hovered in the air between them.