Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [77]
Raoden pointed to the coverless book in front of him. He sat in the former Korathi church that had become their center of operations. Galladon, still determined to keep his small book-filled study a secret, had insisted that they lug the necessary volumes up to the chapel rather than let anyone else into his sanctuary.
“Sule, I can’t read that,” Galladon protested, looking down at the book. “It’s written completely in Aons.”
“That’s what made me suspicious,” Raoden said.
“Can you read it?” Galladon asked.
“No,” Raoden said with a smile. “But I do have this.” He reached down and pulled out a similar coverless volume, its cover pages stained with Elantris grime. “A dictionary of the Aons.”
Galladon studied the first book with a critical eye. “Sule, I don’t even recognize a tenth of the Aons on this page. Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take you to translate it?”
Raoden shrugged. “It’s better than searching for clues in those other books. Galladon, if I have to read one more word about the landscape of Fjorden, I am going to be sick.”
Galladon grunted his agreement. Whoever had owned the books before the Reod must have been a geography scholar, for at least half of the volumes dealt with the topic.
“You’re sure this is the one we want?” Galladon asked.
“I’ve had a little training in reading pure Aon texts, my friend,” Raoden said, pointing at an Aon on a page near the beginning of the book. “This says AonDor.”
Galladon nodded. “All right, sule. I don’t envy you the task, however. Life would be much simpler if it hadn’t taken your people so long to invent an alphabet. Kolo?”
“The Aons were an alphabet,” Raoden said. “Just an incredibly complex one. This won’t take as long as you think—my schooling should start to come back to me after a little while.”
“Sule, sometimes you’re so optimistic it’s sickening. I suppose then we should cart these other books back to where we got them?” There was a measure of anxiety in Galladon’s voice. The books were precious to him; it had taken Raoden a good hour of arguing to convince the Dula to let him take off their covers, and he could see how much it bothered the larger man to have the books exposed to the slime and dirt of Elantris.
“That should be all right,” Raoden said. None of the other books were about AonDor, and while some of them were journals or other records that could hold clues, Raoden suspected that none of them would be as useful as the one in front of him. Assuming he could translate it successfully.
Galladon nodded and began gathering up the books; then he looked upward apprehensively as he heard a scraping sound from the roof. Galladon was convinced that sooner or later the entire assemblage would collapse and, inevitably, fall on his shiny dark head.
“Don’t worry so much, Galladon,” Raoden said. “Maare and Riil know what they’re doing.”
Galladon frowned. “No they don’t, sule. I seem to recall that neither of them had any idea what to do before you pressed them into it.”
“I meant that they’re competent.” Raoden looked up with satisfaction. Six days of working had completed a large portion of the roof. Mareshe had devised a claylike combination of wood scraps, soil, and the ever-prevalent Elantris sludge. This mixture, when added to the fallen support beams and some less-rotted sections of cloth, had provided materials to make a ceiling that was, if not superior, at least adequate.
Raoden smiled. The pain and hunger were always there, but things were going so well that he could almost forget the pain of his half-dozen bumps and cuts. Through the window to his right he could see the newest member of his band, Loren. The man worked in the large area beside the church that had probably once been a garden. According to Raoden’s orders, and equipped with a newly fashioned pair of leather gloves, Loren moved rocks and cleared away refuse, revealing the soft dirt underneath.
“What good is that going to do?” Galladon asked,