Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [20]
Raoden looked back at the courtyard, but the woman had already gone. She could have been a maid in his father’s palace, a wealthy merchant’s lady, or a simple housewife. The Shaod respected no classes; it took from all equally. She was gone now, having entered the gaping pit that was Elantris. He should have been able to help her.
“All that for a single loaf of bread and a few flaccid vegetables,” Raoden muttered.
“It may not seem like much now, but just wait a few days. The only food that enters this place comes clutched in the arms of its new arrivals. You wait, sule. You will feel the desire as well. It takes a strong man to resist when the hunger calls.”
“You do it,” Raoden said.
“Not very well—and I’ve only been here a few months. There’s no telling what the hunger will drive me to do a year from now.”
Raoden snorted. “Just wait until my thirty days are done before you become a primordial beast, if you please. I’d hate to feel that I hadn’t got my beef’s worth out of you.”
Galladon paused for a moment, then laughed. “Does nothing frighten you, sule?”
“Actually, pretty much everything here does—I’m just good at ignoring the fact that I’m terrified. If I ever realize how scared I am, you’ll probably find me trying to hide under those cobblestones over there. Now, tell me more about these gangs.”
Galladon shrugged, walking away from the broken door and pulling a chair away from the wall. He turned a critical eye on its legs, then carefully settled down. He moved just quickly enough to stand again as the legs cracked. He tossed the chair away with disgust, and settled on the floor.
“There are three sections of Elantris, sule, and three gangs. The market section is ruled by Shaor; you met a few members of his court yesterday, though they were too busy licking the slime off your offerings to introduce themselves. In the palace section you’ll find Karata—she’s the one who so very politely relieved that woman of her food today. Last is Aanden. He spends most of his time in the university section.”
“A learned man?”
“No, an opportunist. He was the first one who realized that many of the library’s older texts were written on vellum. Yesterday’s classics have become tomorrow’s lunch. Kolo?”
“Idos Domi!” Raoden swore. “That’s atrocious! The old scrolls of Elantris are supposed to hold countless original works. They’re priceless!”
Galladon turned him a suffering eye. “Sule, do I need to repeat my speech about hunger? What good is literature when your stomach hurts so much your eyes water?”
“That’s a terrible argument. Two-century-old lambskin scrolls can’t possibly taste very good.”
Galladon shrugged. “Better than slime. Anyway, Aanden supposedly ran out of scrolls a few months back. They tried boiling books, but that didn’t work very well.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t tried boiling one another.”
“Oh, it’s been tried,” Galladon said. “Fortunately, something happens to us during the Shaod—apparently the flesh of a dead man doesn’t taste too good. Kolo? In fact, it’s so violently bitter that no one can keep it down.”
“It’s nice to see that cannibalism has been so logically ruled out as an option,” Raoden said dryly.
“I told you, sule. The hunger makes men do strange things.”
“And that makes it all right?”
Wisely, Galladon didn’t answer.
Raoden continued. “You talk about hunger and pain as if they are forces which can’t be resisted. Anything is acceptable, as long as the hunger made you do it—remove our comforts, and we become animals.”
Galladon shook his head. “I’m sorry, sule, but that’s just the way things work.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
Ten years wasn’t long enough. Even in Arelon’s thick humidity, it should have taken longer for the city to deteriorate so much. Elantris looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries. Its wood was decaying,