Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [282]
Raoden shook his head. No one could be expected to win a sword fight against one such as Dilaf.
“And my revenge begins,” Dilaf whispered reverently, bringing up his sword. “You may stop yelling, my love.”
Raoden grabbed Sarene protectively with a bleeding hand. Then he paused. There was something moving behind Dilaf—a form in the shadows of the alleyway.
Frowning, Dilaf turned to follow Raoden’s gaze. A figure stumbled from the darkness, holding his side in pain. The figure was a tall, broad-chested man with dark hair and determined eyes. Though the man no longer wore his armor, Raoden recognized him. The gyorn, Hrathen.
Strangely, Dilaf didn’t seem happy to see his companion. The Dakhor monk spun, raising his sword, eyes flashing with anger. He leapt, screaming something in Fjordell, and swung his sword at the obviously weakened gyorn.
Hrathen stopped, then whipped his arm out from beneath his cloak. Dilaf’s sword hit the flesh of Hrathen’s forearm.
And stopped.
Sarene gasped beside Raoden. “He’s one of them!” she whispered.
It was true. Dilaf’s weapon scraped along Hrathen’s arm, pushing back the sleeve there and revealing the skin beneath. The arm was not that of a normal man; it showed twisting patterns beneath the skin, the outcroppings of bone that were the sign of a Dakhor monk.
Dilaf, obviously, was surprised by the revelation as well. The monk stood stunned as Hrathen’s hand whipped out and grabbed Dilaf by the neck.
Dilaf began to curse, squirming in Hrathen’s grasp. The gyorn, however, began to stand up straighter, his grip tightening. Beneath his cloak, Hrathen was bare-chested, and Raoden could see that his skin there bore no Dakhor markings, though it was wet with blood from a wound at his side. Only the bones in his arm had the strange twisted patterns. Why the partial transformation?
Hrathen stood tall, ignoring Dilaf, though the monk began to swing at Hrathen’s enhanced arm with his short sword. The blows bounced off, so Dilaf swung at Hrathen’s side instead. The sword bit deeply into Hrathen’s flesh, but the gyorn didn’t even grunt. Instead, he tightened his grip on Dilaf’s neck, and the little monk gasped, dropping his sword in pain.
Hrathen’s arm began to glow.
The strange, twisting lines beneath Hrathen’s skin took on an eerie radiance as the gyorn lifted Dilaf off the ground. Dilaf squirmed and twisted, his breath coming in gasps. He struggled to escape, prying at Hrathen’s fingers, but the gyorn’s grip was firm.
Hrathen held Dilaf aloft, as if toward the heavens. He stared upward, toward the sky, eyes strangely unfocused, Dilaf proffered like some sort of holy offering. The gyorn stood there for a long moment, immobile, arm glowing, Dilaf becoming more and more frantic.
There was a snap. Dilaf stopped struggling. Hrathen lowered the body with a slow motion, then tossed it aside, the glow in his arm fading. He looked toward Raoden and Sarene, stood quietly for a moment, then toppled forward lifelessly.
When Galladon arrived a few moments later, Raoden was trying unsuccessfully to heal Sarene’s shoulder with his wounded hands. The large Dula took in the scene, then nodded for a couple of Elantrians to check on Dilaf and Hrathen’s corpses. Then Galladon settled down, letting Raoden tell him how to draw Aon Ien. A few moments later, Raoden’s hands and ribs had been restored, and he moved to help Sarene.
She sat quietly. Despite her wound, she had already checked on Hrathen. He was dead. In fact, either one of the wounds in his sides should have killed him long before he managed to break Dilaf’s neck. Something about his Dakhor markings had kept him alive. Raoden shook his head, drawing a healing Aon for Sarene’s shoulder. He still didn’t have an explanation as to why the gyorn had saved them, but he quietly blessed the man’s intervention.
“The armada?” Sarene asked anxiously as Raoden drew.
“Looks to me like it’s doing fine,” Galladon said with a shrug. “Your father is searching for you—he came to the docks soon after we arrived.”
Raoden drew the Chasm line, and the wound in Sarene