Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [121]
Hrathen felt himself grow cold. Dilaf gestured to the side of the stage, where a pair of torches suddenly burst into flame. Diren the Elantrian stood tied to a post, his head bowed. There were cuts on his face that had not been there before.
“Behold the enemy!” Dilaf screamed. “Look, see! He does not bleed! No blood runs through his veins, and no heart beats in his chest. Did not the philosopher Grondkest say that you can judge the equality of all men by their common unity of blood? But what of one who has no blood? What shall we call him?”
“Demon!” a member of the crowd yelled.
“Devil!”
“Svrakiss!” Dilaf screamed.
The crowd raged, each member yelling his own accusations at the wretched target. The Elantrian himself screamed with wild, feral passion. Something had changed within this man. When Hrathen had spoken with him, the Elantrian’s answers had been unenthusiastic, but lucid. Now there was nothing of sanity in his eyes—only pain. The sound of the creature’s voice reached Hrathen even over the congregation’s fury.
“Destroy me!” the Elantrian pled. “End the pain! Destroy me!”
The voice shocked Hrathen out of his stupor. He realized one thing immediately: that Dilaf couldn’t be allowed to murder this Elantrian in public. Visions of Dilaf’s crowd becoming a mob flashed through Hrathen’s mind, of them burning the Elantrian in a fit of collective passion. It would destroy everything; Iadon would never suffer something as violent as a public execution, even if the victim was an Elantrian. It smelled too much of chaos a decade old, chaos that had overthrown a government.
Hrathen stood at the side of the podium dais, amid a group of priests. There was a pressing crowd bunched up against the front of the dais, and Dilaf stood in front of the podium itself, hands outstretched as he spoke.
“They must be destroyed!” Dilaf screamed. “All of them! Cleansed by holy fire!”
Hrathen leaped up onto the dais. “And so they shall be!” he yelled, cutting the arteth off.
Dilaf paused only briefly. He turned to the side, nodding toward a lesser priest holding a lit torch. Dilaf probably assumed that there was nothing Hrathen could do to stop the execution—at least, nothing he could do that wouldn’t undermine his own credibility with the crowd.
Not this time, Arteth, Hrathen thought. I won’t let you do whatever you wish. He couldn’t contradict Dilaf, not without making it seem like there was a division in the Derethi ranks.
He could, however, twist what Dilaf had said. That particular vocal feat was one of Hrathen’s specialties.
“But, what good would that do?” Hrathen yelled, struggling to speak over the screaming crowd. They were surging forward in anticipation of the execution, calling out curses at the Elantrian.
Hrathen gritted his teeth, pushing past Dilaf and grabbing the torch from the passing priest’s hand. Hrathen heard Dilaf hissing in annoyance, but he ignored the arteth. If he didn’t gain control of the crowd, they would simply push forward and attack the Elantrian on their own.
Hrathen held aloft the torch, thrusting it upward repeatedly, causing the crowd to yell with pleasure, building a kind of chanting rhythm.
And in between pulses of rhythm, there was silence.
“I ask you again, people!” Hrathen bellowed as the crowd fell silent, preparing for another yell.
They paused.
“What good would killing this creature do?” Hrathen asked.
“It’s a demon!” one of the men in the crowd yelled.
“Yes!” Hrathen said. “But it is already tormented. Jaddeth himself gave this demon its curse. Listen to it pleading for death! Is that what we want to do? Give the creature what it wants?”
Hrathen waited tensely. While some of the crowd’s members screamed “Yes!” out of habit, others paused. Confusion showed, and a bit of the tension deflated.
“The Svrakiss are our enemies,” Hrathen said, speaking with more control now, his voice firm rather than passionate. His words calmed the people further. “However, they are not ours to punish.