Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [143]
A youth, dressed in clothing no better than that of the old man, hobbled around the corner. The boy froze, blanching pale white. “Not him, you old fool!” he hissed. Then, to Hrathen, he quickly said, “I’m sorry, my lord. My father loses his wits sometimes and thinks he is a beggar. Please forgive us.” He moved to grab the old man’s arm.
Hrathen held up his hand commandingly, and the youth stopped, growing another shade paler. Hrathen knelt down beside the elderly man, who was smiling with a half-senile daze. “Tell me, old man,” Hrathen asked, “why do I see so few beggars in the city?”
“The king forbids begging in his city, good sir,” the man croaked. “It is a poor sign of prosperity to have us on his streets. If he finds us, he sends us back to the farms.”
“You say too much,” the youth warned, his frightened face indicating that he was very close to abandoning the old man and bolting away.
The elderly beggar wasn’t finished. “Yes, good sir, we mustn’t let him catch us. Hide outside the city, we do.”
“Outside the city?” Hrathen pressed.
“Kae isn’t the only town here, you know. There used to be four of them, all surrounding Elantris, but the others dried up. Not enough food for so many people in such a small area, they said. We hide in the ruins.”
“Are there many of you?” Hrathen asked.
“No, not many. Only those who’ve the nerve to run away from the farms.” The old man’s eyes took on a dreamy look. “I wasn’t always a beggar, good sir. Used to work in Elantris—I was a carpenter, one of the best. I didn’t make a very good farmer, though. The king was wrong there, good sir—he sent me to the fields, but I was too old to work in them, so I ran away. Came here. The merchants in the town, they give us money sometimes. But we can only beg after night comes, and never from the high nobles. No, sir, they would tell the king.”
The old man squinted up at Hrathen—as if realizing for the first time why the boy was so apprehensive. “You don’t look much like a merchant, good sir,” he said hesitantly.
“I’m not,” Hrathen responded, dropping a bag of coins in the man’s hand. “That is for you.” Then he dropped a second bag beside the first. “That is for the others. Good night, old man.”
“Thank you, good sir!” the man cried.
“Thank Jaddeth,” Hrathen said.
“Who is Jaddeth, good sir?”
Hrathen bowed his head. “You’ll know soon enough, old man. One way or another, you’ll know.”
The breeze was gusty and strong atop the wall of Elantris, and it whipped at Hrathen’s cape with glee. It was a cool ocean wind, bearing the briny scent of saltwater and sea life. Hrathen stood between two burning torches, leaning against the low parapet and looking out over Kae.
The city wasn’t very large, not when compared with the sheer mass of Elantris, but it could have been far better fortified. He felt his old dissatisfaction returning. He hated being in a place that couldn’t protect itself. Perhaps that was part of the stress he was feeling with this assignment.
Lights sparked throughout Kae, most of them streetlamps, including a series that ran along the short wall that marked the formal border of the city. The wall ran in a perfect circle—so perfect, in fact, that Hrathen would have remarked upon it had he been in any other city. Here it was just another remnant of fallen Elantris’s glory. Kae had spilled out beyond that inner wall, but the old border remained—a ring of flame running around the center of the city.
“It was so much nicer, once,” a voice said behind him.
Hrathen turned with surprise. He had heard the footsteps approaching, but he had simply assumed it was one of the guards making his rounds. Instead he found a short, bald Arelene in a simple gray robe. Omin, head of the Korathi religion in Kae.
Omin approached the edge, pausing beside Hrathen and studying the city. “Of course, that was back then, when the Elantrians