Elantris - Brandon Sanderson [85]
“How did you escape?” the officer asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Raoden said. “Right now, you should probably put us back in the city before we wake the entire neighborhood and start a panic. Oh, and I wouldn’t get too close to me. The Shaod is, after all, highly contagious.”
The guards backed away at his words. Watching Elantris was one thing; being confronted by a talking corpse was another. The officer, uncertain what else to do, ordered the gates opened.
“Thank you, my good man,” Raoden said with a smile. “You’re doing a wonderful job. We’ll have to see if we can get you a raise.” With that, Raoden held out his arm to Karata and strolled through the gates to Elantris as if the soldiers were his personal butlers, rather than prison guards.
Karata couldn’t help snickering as the gate closed behind them. “You made it sound as if we wanted to be in here. Like it was a privilege.”
“And that is exactly the way we should feel. After all, if we’re going to be confined to Elantris, we might as well act as if it were the grandest place in the entire world.”
Karata smiled. “You have a measure of defiance in you, my prince. I like that.”
“Nobility is in one’s bearing as much as it is in one’s breeding. If we act like living here is a blessing, then maybe we’ll start to forget how pathetic we think we are. Now, Karata, I want you to do some things for me.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t tell anyone who I am. I want loyalty in Elantris based on respect, not based on my title.”
“All right.”
“Second, don’t tell anyone about the passage into town through the river.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too dangerous,” Raoden said. “I know my father. If the guards start finding too many Elantrians in the city, he’ll come and destroy us. The only way Elantris is going to progress is if it becomes self-sufficient. We can’t risk sneaking into the city to support ourselves.”
Karata listened, then nodded in the affirmative. “All right.” Then she paused in thought for a moment. “Prince Raoden, there’s something I want to show you.”
The children were happy. Though most slept, a few were awake, and they giggled and played with one another. They were all bald, of course, and they bore the marks of the Shaod. They didn’t seem to mind.
“So this is where they all go,” Raoden said with interest.
Karata led him farther into the room, which was buried deep within the palace of Elantris. Once, this building had housed the leaders elected by the Elantrian elders. Now it hid a playroom for babes.
Several men stood watchful guard over the children, eyeing Raoden with suspicion. Karata turned toward him. “When I first came to Elantris, I saw the children huddled in the shadows, frightened of everything that passed, and I thought of my own little Opais. Something within my heart healed when I began to help them—I gathered them, showed them a little bit of love, and they clung to me. Every one of the men and women you see here left a little child back on the outside.”
Karata paused, affectionately rubbing a small Elantrian child on the head. “The children unite us, keep us from giving in to the pain. The food we gather is for them. Somehow, we can endure the hunger a little better if we know it has come, in part, because we gave what we had to the children.”
“I wouldn’t have thought …” Raoden began quietly, watching a pair of young girls playing a clapping game together.
“That they would be happy?” Karata finished. She motioned for Raoden to follow her and they moved back, out of the children’s hearing range. “We don’t understand it either, my prince. They seem better at dealing with the hunger than the rest of us.”
“A child’s mind is a surprisingly resilient thing,” Raoden said.
“They seem to be able to endure a certain amount of pain as well,” Karata continued, “bumps and bruises and the like. However, they eventually snap, just like everyone else. One moment a child