GALLADON hid in the shadows, careful not to move until the gyorn and his strange, bare-chested companions were gone. Then, motioning to Karata, he crept up to Raoden’s body. “Sule?”
Raoden did not move.
“Doloken, sule!” Galladon said, choked with emotion. “Don’t do this to me!”
A noise came from Raoden’s mouth, and Galladon leaned in eagerly, listening.
“Failed…” Raoden whispered. “Failed my love…” The mantra of the fallen; Raoden had joined the Hoed.
Galladon sank down on the hard cobblestones, his body shaking as he wept tearlessly. The last hour had been a horror. Galladon and Karata had been at the library, planning how to lead the people away from Elantris. They had heard the screams even at that distance, but by the time they had arrived at New Elantris, everyone there had already become Hoed. As far as he knew, he and Karata were the last two conscious Elantrians.
Karata placed a hand on his shoulder. “Galladon, we should go. This place is not safe.”
“No,” Galladon said, climbing to his feet. “I have a promise to keep.” He looked up at the mountain slope just south of Kae, a slope that held a special pool of water. Then, reaching down, he tied his jacket around Raoden to cover the wound, and hefted his friend up onto his shoulder.
“Raoden made me vow to give him peace,” Galladon said. “After I see to him, I intend to do the same for myself. We are the last, Karata; there is no more room for us in this world.”
The woman nodded, moving to share Galladon’s burden. Together, the two of them began the hike that would end in oblivion.
* * *
LUKEL DIDN’T STRUGGLE; there was little use in it. His father, however, was a different story. It took three Fjordells to bind Kiin and throw him on a horse—and even then, the large man managed to get off the odd kick at a passing head. Eventually one of the soldiers thought to knock him on the back of the skull with a stone, and Kiin fell still.
Lukel held his mother and wife close as the warriors herded them toward Elantris. There was a long line of people—nobles gathered from the corners of Kae, their clothing and faces ragged. Soldiers kept a watchful eye on the captives—as if any of them had the courage or will left to try escaping. Most of the people didn’t even look up as they were pushed through the streets.
Kaise and Daorn clung to Lukel, wide-eyed and frightened. Lukel pitied them the most, for their youth. Adien walked along behind him, apparently unconcerned. He slowly counted the steps as he moved. “Three hundred fifty-seven, three hundred fifty-eight, three hundred fifty-nine…”
Lukel knew that they were marching to their own execution. He saw the bodies that lined the streets, and he understood that these men were not intent on mere dominion. They were here to commit a massacre, and no massacre would be complete with victims left alive.
He considered fighting back, grabbing a sword in some hopeless feat of heroism. But in the end, he simply plodded along with the others. He knew that he was going to die, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. He was no warrior. The best he could hope for was a quick end.
* * *
HRATHEN STOOD NEXT to Dilaf, remaining perfectly still as instructed. They stood in a circle—fifty Dakhor, Sarene, and Hrathen, with one solitary monk in the center. The Dakhor raised their hands, and the men on either side of Hrathen placed a hand on his shoulder. His heart began to pound as the monks began to glow, the bone inscriptions beneath their skin shining. There was a jarring sensation, and Kae vanished around them.
They reappeared in an unfamiliar city. The houses lining the nearby street were tall and connected, rather than separated and squat like those of Kae. They had arrived in Teoras.
The group still stood in a circle, but Hrathen did not fail to notice that the man in the center was now missing. Hrathen shuddered, images from his youth returning. That monk had been fuel, his flesh and soul burned away—a sacrifice in return for the instantaneous transportation to Teoras.
Dilaf stepped forward, leading his men up the street. As far as Hrathen could tell, Dilaf had brought the bulk of his monks with him, leaving Arelon in the care of regular Fjordell soldiers and a few Dakhor overseers. Arelon and Elantris had been defeated; the next battle was Teod. Hrathen could tell from Dilaf’s eyes that the monk would not be satisfied until every person of Aonic descent was dead.
Dilaf chose a building with a flat roof and motioned for his men to climb. It was easy for them, their enhanced strength and agility helping them leap and scramble up surfaces no normal man could possibly scale. Hrathen felt himself lifted and thrown over a monk’s shoulder, and the ground fell away as he was carted up the side of the wall—carried without difficulty despite his plate armor. The Dakhor were unnatural monstrosities, but one couldn’t help being awed at their power.
The monk dropped Hrathen unceremoniously on the roof, his armor clanking against the stone. As Hrathen pulled himself to his feet, his eyes found those of the princess. Sarene’s face was a tempest of hatred. She blamed him, of course. She didn’t realize that, in a way, Hrathen was as much a prisoner as she.
Dilaf stood at the edge of the roof, scanning the city. A fleet of ships was pulling into Teoras’s enormous bay.
“We are early,” Dilaf said, squatting down. “We will wait.”
* * *
GALLADON COULD ALMOST imagine that the city was peaceful. He stood on a mountainside boulder, watching the morning’s light creep across Kae—as if an invisible hand were pulling back a dark shade. He could almost convince himself that the rising smoke was coming from chimneys, not the ashen wrecks of buildings. He could nearly believe that the specks lining the streets were not bodies, but bushes or boxes, the crimson blood on the streets a trick of the early sunlight.
Galladon turned away from the city. Kae might appear peaceful, but it was the peace of death, not of serenity. Dreaming otherwise did little good. Perhaps if he had been less inclined to delusion, he wouldn’t have let Raoden pull him out of Elantris’s gutters. He wouldn’t have allowed one man’s simplistic optimism to cloud his mind; he wouldn’t have begun to believe that life in Elantris could be anything but pain. He wouldn’t have dared to hope.
Unfortunately, he had listened. Like a rulo, he had allowed himself to give in to Raoden’s dreams. Once, he’d thought that he could no longer feel hope; he’d chased it far away, wary of its fickle tricks. He should have left it there. Without hope, he wouldn’t have to worry about disappointment.
“Doloken, sule,” Galladon mumbled, looking down at the mindless Raoden, “you certainly made a mess of me.”
The worst of it was that he still hoped. The light that Raoden had kindled still flickered inside Galladon’s chest, no matter how hard he tried to stomp it out. The images of New Elantris’s destruction were still crisp in his memory. Mareshe, an enormous, ragged hole torn in his chest. The quiet craftsman Taan, his face crushed beneath a large stone, but his fingers still twitching. The old Kahar—who had cleaned all of New Elantris practically by himself—missing an arm and both legs.
Galladon had stood amid the carnage, screaming at Raoden for abandoning them, for leaving them behind. Their prince had betrayed them for Sarene.
And still he hoped.
Hope was like a small rodent cowering in the corner of his soul, frightened by the anger, the rage, and the despair. Yet every time he tried to grab hold of it, the hope slipped to another part of his heart. It was what had spurred him to leave the dead behind, to crawl from Elantris in search of Raoden, believing for some irrational reason that the prince could still fix everything.
You are the fool, Galladon. Not Raoden, Galladon told himself bitterly. He couldn’t help being what he was. You, however, know better.
Yet he hoped. A part of Galladon still believed that Raoden would somehow make things better. This was the curse his friend had set upon him, the wicked seed of optimism that refused to be uprooted. Galladon still had hope, and he probably would until the moment he gave himself up to the pool.
Silently Galladon nodded to Karata, and they picked Raoden up, ready to trek the last short distance to the pond. In a few minutes he would be rid of both hope and despair.
* * *
ELANTRIS WAS DARK, even though dawn was breaking. The tall walls made a shadow, keeping the sunlight out, expanding the night for a few moments. It was here, at one side of the broad entry plaza, that the soldiers deposited Lukel and the other nobles. Another group of Fjordells was building an enormous pile of wood, hauling scraps of buildings and furniture into the city.
Surprisingly, there were very few of the strange demon warriors; only three directed the work. The rest of the men were regular soldiers, their armor covered with red surcoats marking them as Derethi monks. They worked quickly, keeping their eyes off their prisoners, apparently trying not to think too hard about what the wood would be used for.
Lukel tried not to think about that either.
Jalla pulled close to him, her body trembling in fright. Lukel had tried to convince her to plead for freedom because of her Svordish blood, but she would not go. She was so quiet and unassertive that some mistook her for weak, but if they could have seen her as she was now, voluntarily staying with her husband though it meant certain death, they would have realized their mistake. Of all the deals, trades, and recognitions Lukel had won, the prize of Jalla’s heart was by far the most valuable.
His family pulled close to him, Daora and the children having no place to turn now that Kiin was unconscious. Only Adien stood apart, staring at the pile of lumber. He kept mumbling some number to himself.
Lukel searched through the crowd of nobles, trying to smile and give encouragement, though he himself felt little confidence. Elantris would be their grave. As he looked, Lukel noticed a figure standing near the back of the group, hidden by bodies. He was moving slowly, his hands waving in front of himself.
Shuden? Lukel thought. The JinDo’s eyes were closed, his hands moving fluidly in some sort of pattern. Lukel watched his friend with confusion, wondering if the JinDo’s mind had snapped; then he remembered the strange dance that Shuden had done that first day in Sarene’s fencing class. ChayShan.
Shuden moved his hands slowly, giving only a bare hint of the fury that was to come. Lukel watched with growing determination, somehow understanding. Shuden was no warrior. He practiced his dance for exercise, not for combat. However, he was not going to let the ones he loved be murdered without some sort of fight. He would rather die struggling than sit and wait, hoping that fate would send them a miracle.
Lukel took a breath, feeling ashamed. He searched around him, his eyes finding a table leg that one of the soldiers had dropped nearby. When the time came, Shuden would not fight alone.
* * *
RAODEN FLOATED, SENSELESS and unaware. Time meant nothing to him—he was time. It was his essence. Occasionally he would bob toward the surface of what he had once called consciousness, but as he approached he would feel pain and back away. The agony was like a lake’s surface: If he broke through it, the pain would return and envelop him.
Those times he got close to the surface of pain, however, he thought he saw images. Visions that might have been real, but were probably just reflections of his memory. He saw Galladon’s face, concerned and angry at the same time. He saw Karata, her eyes heavy with despair. He saw a mountain landscape, covered with scrub and rocks.
It was all immaterial to him.
* * *
“I OFTEN WISH that they had just let her die.”
Hrathen looked up. Dilaf’s voice was introspective, as if he were talking to himself. However, the priest’s eyes were focused on Hrathen.
“What?” Hrathen asked hesitantly.
“If only they had let her die…” Dilaf trailed off. He sat at the edge of the rooftop, watching the ships gather below, his face reminiscent. His emotions had always been unstable. No man could keep Dilaf’s level of ardor burning for long without doing emotional damage to his mind. A few more years, and Dilaf would probably be completely insane.
“I was already fifty years old back then, Hrathen,” Dilaf said. “Did you know that? I have lived nearly seventy years, though my body looks no older than twenty. She thought I was the most handsome man she’d ever seen, even though my body had been twisted and destroyed to fit the mold of an Arelene.”
Hrathen remained quiet. He had heard of such things, that the incantations of Dakhor could change the way a person looked. The process had undoubtedly been very painful.
“When she fell sick, I took her to Elantris,” Dilaf mumbled, his legs pulled tightly against his chest. “I knew it was pagan, I knew it was blasphemous, but even forty years as a Dakhor wasn’t enough to keep me away … not when I thought Elantris could save her. Elantris can heal, they said, while Dakhor cannot. And I took her.”
The monk was no longer looking at Hrathen. His eyes were unfocused. “They changed her,” he whispered. “They said the spell went wrong, but I know the truth. They knew me, and they hated me. Why, then, did they have to put their curse on Seala? Her skin turned black, her hair fell out, and she began to die. She screamed at night, yelling that the pain was eating her from the inside. Eventually she threw herself off the city wall.”
Dilaf’s voice turned reverently mournful. “I found her at the bottom, still alive. Still alive, despite the fall. And I burned her. She never stopped screaming. She screams still. I can hear her. She will scream until Elantris is gone.”
* * *
THEY REACHED THE ledge behind which lay the pool, and Galladon laid Raoden down. The prince slumped idly against the stone, his head hanging slightly over the side of the cliff, his blank eyes staring out over the city of Kae. Galladon leaned back against the rock face, next to the door of the tunnel that led down to Elantris. Karata slumped next to him in exhaustion. They would wait a brief moment, then find oblivion.
* * *
ONCE THE WOOD was gathered, the soldiers began a new pile—this one of bodies. The soldiers went searching through the city, seeking the corpses of Elantrians who had been slain. Lukel realized something as he watched the pile grow. They weren’t all dead. In fact, most of them weren’t.
Most of them had wounds so grievous that it sickened Lukel to look at them, yet their arms and legs twitched, their lips moving. Elantrians, Lukel thought, truly are the dead whose minds continue to live.
The pile of bodies grew higher. There were hundreds of them, all of the Elantrians that had been collecting in the city for ten years. None of them resisted; they simply allowed themselves to be heaped, their eyes uncaring, until the pile of bodies was larger than the pile of wood.
“Twenty-seven steps to the bodies,” Adien whispered suddenly, walking away from the crowd of nobles. Lukel reached for his brother, but it was too late.
A soldier yelled for Adien to get back with the others. Adien didn’t respond. Angry, the soldier slashed at Adien with a sword, leaving a large gash in his chest. Adien stumbled, but kept walking. No blood came from the wound. The soldier’s eyes opened wide, and he jumped back, making a ward against evil. Adien approached the pile of Elantrians and joined its ranks, flopping down among them and then lying still.
Adien’s secret of five years had finally been revealed. He had joined his people.
* * *
“I REMEMBER YOU, Hrathen.” Dilaf was smiling now, his grin cruel and demonic. “I remember you as a boy, when you came to us. It was just before I left for Arelon. You were frightened then, as you are frightened now. You ran from us, and I watched you go with satisfaction. You were never meant to be Dakhor—you are far too weak.”
Hrathen felt chilled. “You were there?”
“I was gragdet already, Hrathen,” Dilaf said. “Do you remember me?”
Then, looking into the man’s eyes, Hrathen had a flash of remembrance. He remembered evil eyes in the body of a tall, unmerciful man. He remembered chants. He remembered fires. He remembered screams—his screams—and a face hanging above him. They were the same eyes.
“You!” Hrathen gasped.
“You remember.”
“I remember,” Hrathen said, a dull chill coming over him. “You were the one that convinced me to leave. In my third month, you demanded that one of your monks use his magic and send you to Wyrn’s palace. The monk complied, giving up his life to transport you a distance that you could have walked in fifteen minutes.”
“Absolute obedience is required, Hrathen,” Dilaf whispered. “Occasional tests and examples bring loyalty from the rest.” Then, pausing, he looked out over the bay. The armada was docked, waiting as per Dilaf’s order. Hrathen scanned the horizon, and he could see several dark specks—the tips of masts. Wyrn’s army was coming.
“Come,” Dilaf ordered, rising to his feet. “We have been successful; the Teo armada has docked. They will not be able to stop our fleet from landing. I have only one duty remaining—the death of King Eventeo.”
* * *
A VISION SPRANG into Raoden’s passive mind. He tried to ignore it. Yet for some reason it refused to leave. He saw it through the shimmering surface of his pain—a simple picture.
It was Aon Rao. A large square with four circles around it, lines connecting them to the center. It was a widely used Aon—especially among the Korathi—for its meaning. Spirit. Soul.
Floating in the white eternity, Raoden’s mind tried to discard the image of Aon Rao. It was something from a previous existence, unimportant and forgotten. He didn’t need it any longer. Yet even as he strove to remove the image, another sprung up in its place.
Elantris. Four walls forming a square. The four outer cities surrounding it, their borders circles. A straight road leading from each city to Elantris.
Merciful Domi!
* * *
THE SOLDIERS OPENED several barrels of oil, and Lukel watched with revulsion as they began pouring them over the heap of bodies. Three shirtless warriors stood at the side, singing some sort of chant in a foreign language that sounded too harsh and unfamiliar to be Fjordell. We will be next, Lukel realized.
“Don’t look,” Lukel ordered his family, turning away as the soldiers prepared Elantris for immolation.
* * *
KING EVENTEO STOOD in the distance, a small honor guard surrounding him. He bowed his head as Dilaf approached. The monk smiled, preparing his knife. Eventeo thought he was presenting his country for surrender—he didn’t realize that he was offering it up for a sacrifice.
Hrathen walked beside Dilaf, thinking about necessity and duty. Men would die, true, but their loss would not be meaningless. The entire Fjordell Empire would grow stronger for the victory over Teod. The hearts of men would increase in faith. It was the same thing Hrathen himself had done in Arelon. He had tried to convert the people for political reasons, using politics and popularity. He had bribed Telrii to convert, lending no effort toward saving the man’s soul. It was the same thing. What was a nation of unbelievers when compared with all of Shu-Dereth?
Yet even as he rationalized, his stomach grew sick.
I was sent to save these people, not to slaughter them!
Dilaf held Princess Sarene by the neck, her mouth gagged. Eventeo looked up and smiled reassuringly as they approached. He could not see the knife in Dilaf’s hand.
“I have waited for this,” Dilaf whispered softly. At first Hrathen thought the priest referred to the destruction of Teod. But Dilaf wasn’t looking at the king. He was looking at Sarene, the blade of his knife pressed into her back.
“You, Princess, are a disease,” Dilaf whispered in Sarene’s ear, his voice barely audible to Hrathen. “Before you came to Kae, even the Arelenes hated Elantris. You are the reason they forgot that loathing. You associated with the unholy ones, and you even descended to their level. You are worse than they are—you are one who is not cursed, but seeks to be cursed. I considered killing your father first and making you watch, but now I see it will be much worse the other way around. Think of old Eventeo watching you die, Princess. Ponder that image as I send you to Jaddeth’s eternal pits of torment.”
She was crying, the tears staining her gag.
* * *
RAODEN STRUGGLED TOWARD consciousness. The pain hit him like an enormous block of stone, halting his progress, his mind recoiling in agony. He threw himself against it, and the torment washed over him. He slowly forced his way through the resistant surface, coming to a laborious awareness of the world outside himself.
He wanted to scream, to scream over and over again. The pain was incredible. However, alongside the pain, he felt something else. His body. He was moving, being dragged along the ground. Images washed into his mind as sight returned. He was being pulled toward something round and blue.
The pool.
NO! he thought desperately. Not yet! I know the answer!
* * *
RAODEN SCREAMED SUDDENLY, twitching. Galladon was so surprised that he dropped the body.
Raoden stumbled forward, trying to get his footing, and fell directly into the pool.