Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [35]
“Yes, Your Grace. As I said, the Elantrians created many falsehoods to reinforce their divinity.”
Hrathen shook his head, then stood and began to remove his armor. Dilaf moved to help, but Hrathen waved the arteth away. “How, then, do you explain the sudden transformation of ordinary people into Elantrians, Arteth?”
Dilaf didn’t have a response.
“Hate has weakened your ability to see, Arteth,” Hrathen said, hanging his breastplate on the wall beside his desk and smiling. He had just experienced a flash of brilliance; a portion of his plan suddenly fit into place. “You assume because Jaddeth did not give them powers, they did not have any.”
Dilaf’s face grew pale. “What you say is—”
“Not blasphemy, Arteth. Doctrine. There is another supernatural force besides our God.”
“The Svrakiss,” Dilaf said quietly.
“Yes.” Svrakiss. The souls of the dead men who hated Jaddeth, the opponents to all that was holy. According to Shu-Dereth, there was nothing more bitter than a soul who had had its chance and thrown it away.
“You think the Elantrians are Svrakiss?” Dilaf asked.
“It is accepted doctrine that the Svrakiss can control the bodies of the evil,” Hrathen said, unbuckling his greaves. “Is it so hard to believe that all this time they have been controlling bodies of the Elantrians, making them appear as gods to fool the simpleminded and unspiritual?”
There was a light in Dilaf’s eyes; the concept was not new to the arteth, Hrathen realized. Suddenly his flash of inspiration didn’t seem quite so brilliant.
Dilaf regarded Hrathen for a moment, then spoke. “You don’t really believe it, do you?” he asked, his voice uncomfortably accusatory for one speaking to his hroden.
Hrathen was careful not to let discomfort show. “It doesn’t matter, Arteth. The connection is logical; people will follow it. Right now all they see are the abject remnants of what were once aristocrats—men do not loathe such, they pity them. Demons, however, are something everyone can hate. If we denounce the Elantrians as devils, then we will have success. You already hate the Elantrians; that is fine. To make others join you, however, you’ll have to give them more of a reason than ‘they disappointed us.’”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“We are religious men, Arteth, and we must have religious enemies. The Elantrians are our Svrakiss, no matter if they possess the souls of evil men long dead or evil men now living.”
“Of course, Your Holiness. We will destroy them then?” There was eagerness in Dilaf’s face.
“Eventually. Right now, we will use them. You will find that hate can unify people more quickly and more fervently than devotion ever could.”
CHAPTER 7
Raoden stabbed the air with his finger. The air bled light. His fingertip left a glowing white trail behind it as he moved his arm, as if he were writing with paint on a wall—except without the paint, and without the wall.
He moved cautiously, careful not to let his finger waver. He drew a line about a handspan long from left to right, then pulled his finger down at a slight slant, drawing a curved line downward at the corner. Next he lifted his finger from the unseen canvas and replaced it to draw a dot in the center. Those three marks—two lines and a dot—were the starting point of every Aon.
He continued, drawing the same three-line pattern at different angles, then added several diagonal lines. The finished drawing looked something like an hourglass, or perhaps two boxes placed on top of each other, pulling in just slightly near the middles. This was Aon Ashe, the ancient symbol for light. The character brightened momentarily, seeming to pulse with life; then it flashed weakly like a man heaving his last breath. The Aon disappeared, its light fading from brightness, to dimness, to nothing.
“You’re much better at that than I am, sule,” Galladon said. “I usually make one line a little too big, or slant it a bit too much, and the whole thing fades away before I’m done.”
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” Raoden complained. It had been a day since