Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [217]
Now she lay curled up, shivering in the cold. The room’s two other women slept soundly, neither one bothering with a blanket despite the frigid air. The other Elantrians didn’t seem to notice temperature variation as much as Sarene did. Spirit claimed that their bodies were in a kind of stasis, that they had stopped working as they waited for the Dor to finish transforming them. Still, it seemed unpleasantly cold to Sarene.
The dismal atmosphere didn’t do much for her mood. As she bunched up against the hard stone wall, she remembered the looks. Those awful looks. Most other Elantrians had been taken at night, and they would have been discovered quietly. Sarene, however, had been exhibited before the entire aristocracy. And at her own wedding, no less.
It was a mortifying embarrassment. Her only consolation was that she would probably never see any of them again. It was a small comfort, for by the same reasoning she would probably never see her father, mother, or brother again. Kiin and his family were lost to her. So, where homesickness had never hit her before, now it attacked with a lifetime’s worth of repression.
Coupled with it was the knowledge of her failure. Spirit had asked her for news from the outside, but the topic had proven too painful for her. She knew that Telrii was probably already king, and that meant Hrathen would easily convert the rest of Arelon.
Her tears came silently. She cried for the wedding, for Arelon, for Ashe’s madness, and for the shame dear Roial must have felt. Thoughts of her father were worst of all. The idea of never again feeling the love of his gentle banter—never again sensing his overwhelming, unconditional approval—brought to her heart an overpowering sense of dread.
“My lady?” whispered a deep, hesitant voice. “Is that you?”
Shocked, she looked up through her tears. Was she hearing things? She had to be. She couldn’t have heard …
“Lady Sarene?”
It was Ashe’s voice.
Then she saw him, hovering just inside the window, his Aon so dim it was nearly invisible. “Ashe?” she asked with hesitant wonder.
“Oh, blessed Domi!” the Aon exclaimed, approaching quickly.
“Ashe!” she said, wiping her eyes with a quivering hand, numbed by shock. “You never use the Lord’s name!”
“If He has brought me to you, then He has His first Seon convert,” Ashe said, pulsing excitedly.
She could barely keep herself from reaching out and trying to hug the ball of light. “Ashe, you’re talking! You shouldn’t be able to speak, you should be …”
“Mad,” Ashe said. “Yes, my lady, I know. Yet, I feel no differently from before.”
“A miracle,” Sarene said.
“A wonder, if nothing else,” the Seon said. “Perhaps I should look into converting to Shu-Korath.”
Sarene laughed. “Seinalan would never hear of it. Of course, his disapproval has never stopped us before, has it?”
“Not once, my lady.”
Sarene rested back against the wall, content to simply enjoy the familiarity of his voice.
“You have no idea how relieved I am to find you, my lady. I have been searching for two days. I had begun to fear that something awful had happened to you.”
“It did, Ashe,” Sarene said, though she smiled when she said the words.
“I mean something more horrible, my lady,” the Seon said. “I have seen the kind of atrocities this place can breed.”
“It has changed, Ashe,” Sarene said. “I don’t quite understand how he did it, but Spirit brought order to Elantris.”
“Whatever he did, if it kept you safe, I bless him for it.”
Suddenly, something occurred to her. If Ashe lived … Sarene had a link to the outside world. She wasn’t completely separated from Kiin and the others.
“Do you know how everyone is doing?” she asked.
“No, my lady. After the wedding dismissed, I spent an hour demanding that