Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [164]
“You learned that Aon from the book?” Galladon asked, leaning through the window with a leisurely posture. “What was it supposed to do?”
“Aon Tia?” Raoden asked. “It’s a transportation Aon. Before the Reod, that Aon could move a person from Elantris to the other side of the world. The book mentions it because it was one of the most dangerous Aons.”
“Dangerous?”
“You have to be very precise about the distance it is to send you. If you tell it to transport you exactly ten feet, it will do so—no matter what happens to be ten feet away. You could easily materialize in the middle of a stone wall.”
“You’re learning much from the book, then?”
Raoden shrugged. “Some things. Hints, mostly.” He flipped back in the book to a page he had marked. “Like this case. About ten years before the Reod, a man brought his wife to Elantris to receive treatment for her palsy. However, the Elantrian healer drew Aon Ien slightly wrong—and instead of just vanishing, the character flashed and bathed the poor woman in a reddish light. She was left with black splotches on her skin and limp hair that soon fell out. Sound familiar?”
Galladon raised an eyebrow in interest.
“She died a short time later,” Raoden said. “She threw herself off a building, screaming that the pain was too much.”
Galladon frowned. “What did the healer do wrong?”
“It wasn’t an error so much as an omission,” Raoden said. “He left out one of the three basic lines. A foolish error, but it shouldn’t have had such a drastic effect.” Raoden paused, studying the page thoughtfully. “It’s almost like …”
“Like what, sule?”
“Well, the Aon wasn’t completed, right?”
“Kolo.”
“So, maybe the healing began, but couldn’t finish because its instructions weren’t complete,” Raoden said. “What if the mistake still created a viable Aon—one that could access the Dor, but couldn’t provide enough energy to finish what it started?”
“What are you implying, sule?”
Raoden’s eyes opened wide. “That we aren’t dead, my friend.”
“No heartbeat. No breathing. No blood. I couldn’t agree with you more.”
“No, really,” Raoden said, growing excited. “Don’t you see—our bodies are trapped in some kind of half transformation. The process began, but something blocked it—just like in that woman’s healing. The Dor is still within us, waiting for the direction and the energy to finish what it started.”
“I don’t know that I follow you, sule,” Galladon said hesitantly.
Raoden wasn’t listening. “That’s why our bodies never heal—it’s like they’re trapped in the same moment in time. Frozen, like a fish in a block of ice. The pain doesn’t go away because our bodies think time isn’t passing. They’re stuck, waiting for the end of their transformation. Our hair falls away and nothing new grows to replace it. Our skin turns black in the spots where the Shaod began, then halted as it ran out of strength.”
“It seems like a leap to me, sule,” Galladon said.
“It is,” Raoden agreed. “But I’m sure it’s true. Something is blocking the Dor—I can sense it through my Aons. The energy is trying to get through, but there’s something in the way—as if the Aon patterns are mismatched.”
Raoden looked up at his friend. “We’re not dead, Galladon, and we’re not damned. We’re just unfinished.”
“Great, sule,” Galladon said. “Now you just have to find out why.”
Raoden nodded. They understood a little more, but the true mystery—the reason behind Elantris’s fall—remained.
“But,” the Dula continued, turning to tend to his plants again, “I’m glad the book was of help.”
Raoden cocked his head to the side as Galladon walked away. “Wait a minute, Galladon.”
The Dula turned with a quizzical look.
“You don’t really care about my studies, do you?” Raoden asked. “You just wanted to know if your book was useful.”
“Why would I care about that?” Galladon scoffed.
“I don’t know,” Raoden said. “But you’ve always been so protective of your study. You haven’t shown it to anyone, and you never even go there yourself. What is so sacred about that place and its books?”
“Nothing,” the Dula said with a shrug. “I