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. 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.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!" 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 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.