Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [130]
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