Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [184]
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,