Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [239]
Galladon looked at him, then smiled ruefully. “No one can give up when you’re around, sule. You utterly refuse to let a man despair.”
As they tried more Aons, it became more apparent that something was still blocking the Dor. They made a stack of papers float, but not an entire book. They turned one of the walls blue, then changed it back, and Raoden managed to convert a smile pile of charcoal into a few grains of corn. The results were encouraging, but many Aons failed completely.
Any Aon, for instance, that targeted either of them flashed away ineffectually. Their clothing was a valid target, but their flesh was not; Raoden broke off the tip of his thumbnail and tried to make that float, and was completely unsuccessful. The only theory Raoden could offer was the one he had expressed earlier.
“Our bodies are frozen in the middle of being changed, Galladon,” he explained, watching a sheet of paper hover in front of him, then burst into flames. Linked Aons appeared to work. “The Shaod hasn’t finished with us—whatever’s keeping the Aons from reaching their full potential is also stopping us from becoming true Elantrians. Until our transformation is finished, it appears that no Aons can affect us.”
“I still don’t understand that first explosion, sule,” Galladon said, practicing Aon Ashe in front of himself. The Dula knew only a few Aons, and his thick-fingered hands had trouble drawing them precisely. Even as he spoke, he made a slight error, and the character faded away. He frowned, then continued his question. “It seemed so powerful. Why hasn’t anything else worked that well?”
“I’m not sure,” Raoden said. A few moments earlier he had hesitantly redrawn Aon Ehe with the same modifications, creating the complex rune that was supposed to form another column of flame. Instead, the Aon had barely sputtered out enough fire to warm a cup of tea. He suspected that the first explosion had something do with the Dor’s surge through him … an expression of its long-awaited freedom.
“Perhaps there was some sort of buildup in the Dor,” Raoden said. “Like a pocket of gas trapped in the top of a cave. The first Aon I drew drained that reserve.”
Galladon shrugged. There was just so much they didn’t understand. Raoden sat for a moment, eyes falling on one of his tomes, a thought occurring.
He rushed over to his stack of AonDor books, selecting a large volume that contained nothing but page after page of Aon diagrams. Galladon, whom he had left behind midsentence, followed with a grumpy expression, peeking over Raoden’s shoulder at the page Raoden chose.
The Aon was extensive and complex. Raoden had to take several steps to the side as he drew it, the modifications and stipulations going far beyond the central Aon. His arm ached by the time he had finished, and the construction hung in the air like a wall of glowing lines. Then, it began to gleam, and the sheet of inscriptions twisted, turning and wrapping around Raoden. Galladon yelped in surprise at the suddenly bright light.
In a few seconds, the light vanished. Raoden could tell from the startled look on Galladon’s face that he had been successful.
“Sule … you’ve done it! You’ve healed yourself!”
“I’m afraid not,” Raoden said with a shake of his head. “It’s only an illusion. Look.” He held up his hands, which were still gray and spotted with black. His face, however, was different. He walked over, regarding his reflection in a polished plaque on the end of a bookshelf.
The garbled image showed an unfamiliar face—it was free from spots, true, but it didn’t look anything like his real face had before the Shaod had taken him.
“An illusion?” Galladon asked.
Raoden nodded. “It’s based on Aon Shao, but there are so many things mixed in that the base Aon is almost irrelevant.”
“But it shouldn’t work on you,” Galladon said. “I thought