Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [263]
Something touched her arm, and Sarene yelped. Lukel, kneeling beside her, raised his lantern. “Come on!” he urged, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet.
They dashed the short distance to Kiin’s mansion, her uncle lumbering behind. They pushed through the doors, then stumbled into the kitchen, where a frightened group waited for their return. Daora rushed to her husband as Lukel slammed the door.
“Lukel, collapse the entryway,” Kiin ordered.
Lukel complied, throwing the lever Sarene had always mistaken for a torch-holder. A second later there was a mighty crash from the entryway, and dust poured through the kitchen door.
Sarene plopped into a chair, staring at the quiet room. Shuden was there, and he had managed to find Torena, who sniffled quietly in his arms. Daorn, Kaise, and Adien huddled in a corner with Lukel’s wife. Raoden was not there.
“What … what are those things?” Sarene asked, looking up at Lukel.
Her cousin shook his head. “I don’t know. The attack started just a short time ago, and we were worried that something had happened to you. We were outside waiting—it’s a good thing Father spotted your coach down at the bottom of the hill.”
Sarene nodded, still a bit numb.
Kiin stood with his wife in one arm, looking down at the bloodied axe in his other hand. “I swore I would never take up this cursed weapon again,” he whispered.
Daora patted her husband’s shoulder. Despite her shock, Sarene realized that she recognized the axe. It used to hang on the kitchen wall, with other mementoes of Kiin’s travels. Yet he had held the weapon with obvious skill. The axe wasn’t a simple ornament as she had assumed. Looking closely, she could see nicks and scratches on its blade. Etched into the steel was a heraldic Aon—Aon Reo. The character meant “punishment.”
“Why would a merchant need to know how to use one of those?” Sarene asked, almost to herself.
Kiin shook his head. “A merchant wouldn’t.”
Sarene knew of only one person who had used Aon Reo, though he was more a myth than a man. “They called him Dreok,” she whispered. “The pirate Crushthroat.”
“That was always a mistake,” Kiin said in his raspy voice. “The true name was Dreok Crushedthroat.”
“He tried to steal the throne of Teod from my father,” Sarene said, looking up into Kiin’s eyes.
“No,” Kiin said, turning away. “Dreok wanted what belonged to him. He tried to take back the throne that his younger brother, Eventeo, stole—stole right from under Dreok’s nose while he foolishly wasted his life on pleasure trips.”
Dilaf strode into the chapel, his face bright with satisfaction. One of his monks dropped an unconscious Raoden next to the far wall.
“This, my dear Hrathen,” Dilaf said, “is how you deal with heretics.”
Appalled, Hrathen turned away from the window. “You are massacring the entire town, Dilaf! What is the point? Where is the glory for Jaddeth in this?”
“Do not question me!” Dilaf screamed, his eyes blazing. His raging zeal had finally been released.
Hrathen turned away. Of all the titles in the hierarchy of the Derethi Church, only two outranked gyorn: Wyrn, and gragdet—leader of a monastery. The gragdets were usually discounted, for they generally had little to do with the world outside their monasteries. Apparently that had changed.
Hrathen ran his eyes over Dilaf’s bare chest, seeing the twisted patterns that had always been hiding beneath the arteth’s robes. Hrathen’s stomach turned at the lines and curves that ran like varicose veins beneath the man’s skin. It was bone, Hrathen knew—hard, unyielding bone. Dilaf wasn’t just a monk, and he wasn’t just a gragdet; he was monk and gragdet of the most infamous monastery in Fjorden. Dakhor. The Order of Bone.
The prayers and incantations used to create Dakhor monks were secret; even the gyorns didn’t know them. A few months after a boy was initiated into the Dakhor order, his bones