“He shouldn’t be here, Galladon,” Raoden said as he studied the Fjordell priest from atop their garden-roof observation point.
“You’re certain that’s the gyorn?” Galladon asked.
“He says so in that prayer of his. Besides, he’s definitely Fjordell. That frame of his is too large to be Aonic.”
“Fjordells don’t get taken by the Shaod,” Galladon said stubbornly. “Only people from Arelon, Teod, and occasionally Duladel.”
“I know,” Raoden said, sitting back in frustration. “Perhaps it’s just percentages. There aren’t many Fjordells in Arelon—perhaps that’s why they never get taken.”
Galladon shook his head. “Then why don’t Jindos ever get taken? There’s plenty of them living along the spice route.”
“I don’t know,” Raoden said.
“Listen to him pray, sule,” Galladon said scoffingly. “As if the rest of us hadn’t tried that already.”
“I wonder how long he’ll wait.”
“Three days already,” Galladon said. “Must be starting to get hungry. Kolo?”
Raoden nodded. Even after three days of almost continual prayer, the gyorn’s voice was firm. Everything else considered, Raoden had to respect the man’s determination.
“Well, when he finally realizes he’s not getting anywhere, we’ll invite him to join us,” Raoden said.
“Trouble, sule,” Galladon warned. Raoden followed the Dula’s gesture, picking out a few huddled shapes in the shadows to the gyorn’s left.
Raoden cursed, watching Shaor’s men slink from the alleyway. Apparently, their food had run out even more quickly than Raoden had assumed. They had probably returned to the courtyard to look for scraps, but they found something much more promising: the still full basket of food at the gyorn’s feet.
“Come on,” Raoden urged, turning to climb down from the roof. There was a time when Shaor’s men might have gone directly for the food. However, recent events had changed the wild men. They had begun wounding indiscriminately—as if they had realized that the fewer mouths opposed them, the more likely they were to get food.
“Doloken burn me for helping a gyorn,” Galladon muttered, following. Unfortunately, he and Raoden moved too slowly. They were too late … to save Shaor’s men.
Raoden rounded the side of the building as the first wildman jumped at the gyorn’s back. The Fjordell leapt to his feet, spinning with near-inhuman speed and catching Shaor’s man by the head. There was a snap as the gyorn cracked his opponent’s neck, then threw him against the wooden gate. The other two attacked in unison. One met with a powerful spinning kick that tossed him across the courtyard like a pile of rags. The other received three successive punches to the face, then a kick to the midsection. The madman’s howl of rage cut off with a whine as the gyorn placed another kick at the side of the man’s head.
Raoden stumbled to a halt, mouth half open.
Galladon snorted. “Should have realized. Derethi priests can take care of themselves. Kolo?”
Raoden nodded slowly, watching the priest return smoothly to his knees and resume his prayers. Raoden had heard that all Derethi priests were trained in the infamous monasteries of Fjorden, where they were required to undergo vigorous physical training. However, he hadn’t realized that a middle-aged gyorn would maintain his skills.
The two wildmen who could still move crawled away, while the other one lay where the gyorn had tossed him, whimpering pitifully with his broken neck.
“It’s a waste,” Raoden whispered. “We could have used those men back in New Elantris.”
“I don’t see what we can do about it,” Galladon said with a shake of his head.
Raoden stood, turning toward the market section of Elantris. “I do,” he said with determination.
They penetrated Shaor’s territory so quickly and directly that they got nearly to the bank before they were noticed. Raoden didn’t respond when Shaor’s men began to howl—he continued to walk, resolute, focused on his goal. Galladon, Karata, and Dashe—Karata’s former second was one of the few experienced fighting men left in Raoden’s camp—accompanied him. Each nervously carried a medium-sized sack in his arms.
Shaor’s men followed them, cutting off their escape. After the losses they had received over the last few weeks, there could only be a couple of dozen men left in Shaor’s band, but those few seemed to multiply and shift in the shadows.
Galladon shot Raoden an apprehensive look. Raoden could tell what he was thinking. You’d better be sure as Doloken you know what you’re doing, sule….
Raoden set his jaw firmly. He had only a single hope—his belief in the rational nature of the human soul.
Shaor was much the same as before. Though her men must have delivered some of their spoils to her, one would never have known it from her screaming. “Bring me food!” she wailed, her voice audible long before they entered the bank. “I want food!”
Raoden led his small group into the bank. Shaor’s remaining followers filed in behind, approaching slowly, waiting for their goddess’s inevitable command to kill the intruders.
Raoden moved first. He nodded to the others, and each dropped their sacks. Corn spilled across the uneven floor of the bank, mixing with the slime and falling into cracks and crevices. Howls sounded behind them, and Raoden waved his people to the side as Shaor’s men descended upon the corn.
“Kill them!” Shaor yelled belatedly, but her followers were too busy stuffing their mouths.
Raoden and the others left as simply as they had come.
The first one approached New Elantris barely a few hours later. Raoden stood beside the large fire they had kindled atop one of the taller buildings. The blaze required many of their precious wood scraps, and Galladon had been against it from the start. Raoden ignored the objections. Shaor’s men needed to see the fire to make the connection—the leap that would bring them back to sensibility.
The first wild man appeared out of the evening’s darkness. He moved furtively, his stance nervous and bestial. He cradled a ripped sack, a couple of handfuls of grain clutched within.
Raoden motioned for his warriors to move back. “What do you want?” he asked the madman.
The man stared back dumbly.
“I know you understand me,” Raoden said. “You can’t have been in here long—six months at the most. That’s not enough to forget language, even if you want to convince yourself that it is.”
The man held up the sack, his hands glistening with slime.
“What?” Raoden insisted.
“Cook,” the man finally said.
The grain they’d dropped had been seed corn, hardened over the winter to be planted in spring. Though they had most certainly tried, Shaor’s men wouldn’t have been able to chew or swallow it without great pain.
And so, Raoden had hoped that somewhere in the back of their abandoned minds, these men would remember that they had once been human. Hoped that they would recall civilization, and the ability to cook. Hoped they would confront their humanity.
“I won’t cook your food for you,” Raoden said. “But I will let you do it yourself.”
CHAPTER 32
“So, you’ve returned to wearing black, have you, my dear?” Duke Roial asked as he helped her into the carriage.
Sarene looked down at her dress. It wasn’t one that Eshen had sent her, but something she’d asked Shuden to bring up on one of his caravans through Duladel. Less full than most current trends in Arelish fashion, it hugged tightly to her form. The soft velvet was embroidered with tiny silver patterns, and rather than a cape it had a short mantle that covered her shoulders and upper arms.
“It’s actually blue, Your Grace,” she said. “I never wear black.”
“Ah.” The older man was dressed in a white suit with a deep maroon undercoat. The outfit worked well with his carefully styled head of white hair.
The coachman closed the door and climbed into his place. A short moment later they were on their way to
the ball.
Sarene stared out at the dark streets of Kae, her mood tolerant, but unhappy. She couldn’t, of course, refuse to attend the ball—Roial had agreed to throw it at her suggestion. However, she had made those plans a week ago, before events in Elantris. The last three days had been devoted to reflection; she has spent them trying to work through her feelings and reorganize her plans. She didn’t want to bother with a night of frivolities, even if there was a point behind it.
“You look at ill-ease, Your Highness,” Roial said.
“I haven’t quite recovered from what happened the other day, Your Grace,” she said, leaning back in her seat.
“The day was rather overwhelming,” he agreed. Then, leaning his head out the carriage’s window, he checked the sky. “It is a beautiful night for our purposes.”
Sarene nodded absently. It no longer mattered to her whether the eclipse would be visible or not. Ever since her tirade before Iadon, the entire court had begun to step lightly around her. Instead of growing angry as Kiin had predicted, Iadon simply avoided her. Whenever Sarene entered a room, heads turned away and eyes looked down. It was as if she were a monster—a vengeful Svrakiss sent to torment them.
The servants were no better. Where they had once been subservient, now they cringed. Her dinner had come late, and though the cook insisted it was because one of her serving women had suddenly run off, Sarene was certain it was simply because no one wanted to face the fearful princess’s wrath. The entire situation was putting Sarene on edge. Why, in the blessed name of Domi, she wondered, does everyone in this country feel so threatened by an assertive woman?
Of course, this time she had to admit that woman or not, what she had done to the king had been too forward. Sarene was just paying the price for her loss of temper.
“All right, Sarene,” Roial declared. “That is enough.”
Sarene started, looking up at the elderly duke’s stern face. “Excuse me, Your Grace?”
“I said it’s enough. By all reports, you’ve spent the last three days moping in your room. I don’t care how emotionally disturbing that attack in Elantris was, you need to get over it—and quickly. We’re almost to my mansion.”
“Excuse me?” she said again, taken aback.
“Sarene,” Roial continued, his voice softening, “we didn’t ask for your leadership. You wiggled your way in and seized control. Now that you’ve done so, you can’t just leave us because of injured feelings. When you accept authority, you must be willing to take responsibility for it at all times—even when you don’t particularly feel like it.”
Suddenly abashed by the duke’s wisdom, Sarene lowered her eyes in shame. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah, Princess,” Roial said, “we’ve come to rely on you so much in these last few weeks. You crept into our hearts and did what no one else, even myself, could have done—you unified us. Shuden and Eondel all but worship you, Lukel and Kiin stand by your side like two unmoving stones, I can barely unravel your delicate schemes, and even Ahan describes you as the most delightful young woman he’s ever met. Don’t leave us now—we need you.”
Flushing slightly, Sarene shook her head as the carriage pulled up Roial’s drive. “But what is left, Your Grace? Through no cleverness of my own, the Derethi gyorn has been neutralized, and it appears that Iadon has been quelled. It seems to me that the time of danger has passed.”
Roial raised a bushy white eyebrow. “Perhaps. But Iadon is more clever than we usually credit. The king has some overwhelming blind spots, but he was capable enough to seize control ten years ago, and he has kept the aristocracy at one another’s throats all this time. And as for the gyorn …”
Roial looked out the carriage window, toward a vehicle pulling up next to them. Inside was a short man dressed completely in red; Sarene recognized the young Aonic priest who had served as Hrathen’s assistant.
Roial frowned. “I think we may have traded Hrathen for a foe of equal danger.”
“Him?” Sarene asked with surprise. She’d seen the young man with Hrathen, of course—even remarked on his apparent fervor. However, he could hardly be as dangerous as the calculating gyorn, could he?
“I’ve been watching that one,” the duke said. “His name is Dilaf—he’s Arelish, which means he was probably raised Korathi. I’ve noticed that those who turn away from a faith are often more hateful toward it than any outsider could be.”
“You might be right, Your Grace,” Sarene admitted. “We’ll have to change our plans. We can’t deal with this one the same way we did Hrathen.”
Roial smiled, a slight twinkle in his eyes. “That’s the girl I remember. Come; it wouldn’t do for me to be late to my own party.”
Roial had decided to have the eclipse-observation party on the grounds behind his house—an action necessitated by the relative modesty of his home. For the third-richest man in Arelon, the duke was remarkably frugal.
“I’ve only been a duke for ten years, Sarene,” Roial had explained when she first visited his home, “but I’ve been a businessman all my life. You don’t make money by being wasteful. The house suits me—I fear I’d get lost in anything larger.”
The grounds surrounding the home, however, were extensive—a luxury Roial admitted was a bit extravagant. The duke was a lover of gardens, and he spent more time outside wandering his grounds than he did in his house.
Fortunately, the weather had decided to comply with the duke’s plans, providing a warm breeze from the south and a completely cloudless sky. Stars splattered the sky like specks of paint on a black canvas, and Sarene found her eyes tracing the constellations of the major Aons. Rao shone directly overhead, a large square with four circles at its sides and a dot in the center. Her own Aon, Ene, crouched barely visible on the horizon. The full moon rose ponderously toward its zenith. In just a few hours it would vanish completely—or, at least, that was what the astronomers claimed.
“So,” Roial said, walking at her side, their arms linked, “are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“What what’s all about?”
“The ball,” Roial said. “You can’t claim that you had me organize it on a whim. You were much too specific about the date and location. What are you planning?”
Sarene smiled, rekindling the night’s schemes. She had nearly forgotten about the party, but the more she considered it, the more excited she became. Before this night was over, she hoped to find the answer to a problem that had been bothering her almost since she’d arrived in Arelon.
“Let’s just say I wanted to view the eclipse with company,” she said with a sly smile.
“Ah, Sarene, ever dramatic. You’ve missed your calling in life, my dear—you should have been an actress.”
“As a matter of fact, I considered it once,” Sarene said reminiscently. “Of course, I was eleven years old at the time. A troop of players came through Teoin. After watching them, I informed my parents that I had decided not to grow up to be a princess, but an actress instead.”
Roial laughed. “I would like to have seen old Eventeo’s face when his prize daughter told him she wanted to become a traveling performer.”
“You know my father?”
“Really, Sarene,” Roial said with indignation, “I haven’t been old and senile all my life. There was a time when I traveled, and every good merchant has a few contacts in Teod. I’ve had two audiences with your father, and both times he mocked my wardrobe.”
Sarene chuckled. “He’s merciless with visiting merchants.”
Roial’s grounds centered around a large courtyardlike patch of grass overlaid by a wooden dancing pavilion. Hedge-walled pathways led away from the pavilion, toward newly blooming flower beds, bridge-covered ponds, and sculpture displays. Torches lined the pavilion, providing full illumination. These would, of course, be doused prior to the eclipse. However, if things went as Sarene planned, she wouldn’t be there to see it.
“The king!” Sarene exclaimed. “Is he here?”
&nb
sp; “Of course,” Roial said, pointing toward an enclosed sculpture garden to one side of the pavilion. Sarene could barely make out the form of Iadon inside, Eshen at his side.
Sarene relaxed. Iadon was the whole point of the night’s activities. Of course, the king’s pride wouldn’t let him miss a ball thrown by one of his dukes. If he had attended Telrii’s party, he would certainly make it to Roial’s.
“What could the king have to do with little Sarene’s schemes?” Roial mused to himself. “Maybe she sent someone to peruse his chambers while he’s away. Her Seon, perhaps?”
However, at that moment Ashe floated into view a short distance away. Sarene shot Roial a sly look.
“All right, perhaps it wasn’t the Seon,” Roial said. “That would be too obvious anyway.”
“My lady,” Ashe said, bobbing in greeting as he approached.
“What did you find out?” Sarene asked.
“The cook did indeed lose a serving woman this afternoon, my lady. They claim she ran off to be with her brother, who was recently moved to one of the king’s provincial mansions. The man, however, swears he hasn’t seen anything of her.”
Sarene frowned. Perhaps she had been too quick in judging the cook and her minions. “All right. Good work.”
“What was that about?” Roial asked suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Sarene said, this time completely honest.
Roial, however, nodded knowingly.
The problem with being clever, Sarene thought with a sigh, is that everyone assumes you’re always planning something.
“Ashe, I want you to keep an eye on the king,” Sarene said, aware of Roial’s curious smile. “He’ll probably spend most of his time in his exclusive portion of the party. If he decides to move, tell me immediately.”
“Yes, my lady,” Ashe said, hovering away to take an unobtrusive place next to one of the torches, where the flame’s light masked his own.
Roial nodded again. He was obviously having a delightful time trying to decipher Sarene’s plans.
“So, do you feel like joining the king’s private gathering?” Sarene asked, trying to divert the duke’s attention.