Elantris 50: Sarene

Hrathen is threatening to force everyone to convert religions, which if it happens will likely result in Sarene and her friends being arrested and executed (presumably because they would not be trusted to convert). Telrii is hesitating for now, but there is a sense of urgency about getting him off the throne.

She visits Roial's mansion where the fencing practice is now done. Roial has a new visitor, a mysterious Dula refugee named Kaloo (and his servant). Sarene is suspicious of him and challenges him to a duel and is surprised that he does not bleed when she pokes him with her sword. That means he's an Elantrian. It must be Galladon in disguise and the servant is Raoden. It must be a very good disguise.

Elantris 49: Raoden

Well, it's all going to happen now. Raoden is in the library trying to figure out why the Aons don't work any more. Elements of Aons looks like features on maps of Araluen, so what changed in Araluen? Of course it was the earthquake that opened a chasm: a chasm not caused by the Reod but that caused the Reod! It's all so obvious now.

Raoden makes an Aon that shoots fire. This releases a lot of energy, and via Scooby Doo logic he knows he will no longer have the attacks of pain he's been getting twice a day. So that will buy him more time to work on this. But after that first successful spell the pressure has been released somewhat and Aons work only weakly. And they can't cast spells on Elantrians because they aren't proper Elantrians; they're stuck half way.

So, our heroes have new powers but they still have work to do. Raoden at least manages to make himself a magical disguise that makes it look as if he has been healed. He's planning to use that to escape Elantris. Maybe he can keep up the disguise, marry Sarene, and take up the throne. He'll just have to be careful not to bang his funnybone.

Elantris 48: Hrathen

Hrathen is annoyed that he is not being shown enough courtesy by the king he helped crown. But no big deal, he's going to pay the king more Fjorden money and eventually render him powerless. Except Telrii doesn't want money. He wants to be a gyorn just like Hrathen, and he's written to the supreme ruler of the universe Wryn to demand that it be so.

Hrathen thinks that this is a bit preposterous and presumably assumes that Wryn will just send armies to kill everyone who doesn't convert. That all of his efforts to take Araluen peacefully have been in vain. I suspect Wryn will play along for a while longer, though.

Hrathen is dazed. Probably he should have seen it coming; Telrii is supposedly not all that smart. I guess he's the Donald Trump of kings: not caring about convention and doing what he wants, which is both vulgar and surprising.

Elantris 47: Sarene

Hrathen meets Sarene outside the gates. She tells him that she knows what he did. Her friends attack him but he fights them off and goes away, leaving them. He says that her father will convert to Shu-Dereth now, which rattles her.

But now presumably she is still free. Free to make a fuss and tell everyone what Hrathen did. Surely she still has reputation enough to do damage to Hrathen. He seems unconcerned about that for now, though.

Sarene goes back to her uncle Kiin's house and spends a few pages eating. Roial is there and he accepts that Hrathen was behind Sarene's adventure. There is discussion of the difficulty of taking action against Telrii since it would be treason. They agree to sleep on it.

Sarene calls her dad and amazingly, he is determined to go through with his conversion even though he knows Hrathen was behind his daughter's curse. It makes no sense to do this out of honour, since the promise was made under false pretences. But he says Fjorden will overwhelm Teod eventually anyway so he might as well surrender. Oh dear.

Even if our gang overthrow Telrii by force, Araluen has no defence against Fjorden. Their only hope is to solve the Elantrian magic problem, but apart from Raoden, no-one is working on that. And no-one expects it to be possible anyway. Something is going to have to change about that.

Elantris 46: Raoden

Raoden and Sarene make idle chit-chat while Raoden practices his Aons and she reads. Hrathen is apparently screaming at his god to heal Elantris, which Sarene finds to be a strange change of heart. Presumably this is part of the theatre to convice people that he was the one who healed Sarene.

Raoden and Sarene discuss the main important mystery: why the Elantrian magic stopped working. If they could solve that and fix things all the other problems will go away, since Elantrian magic beats Fjordell might every time. Sarene hits on the notion that Aons look a bit like a map of Arelon. This comes as a complete revelation to Raoden and Galladon. Maybe they're just drawing the Aons wrong now that the land has changed shape or something like that.

Probably the Elantrian computer systems just downloaded an auto update and the shell has changed from Bash to Dash and it's broken a bunch of scripts. That happened to me once.

Anyway, Sarene is suddenly healed and they figure out the whole Hrathen poison trick. Raoden immediately takes Sarene to the gates and tells her to return and go and fix Arelon. I'm not sure what the rush is, but ok.

Elantris 45: Hrathen

Hrathen is wandering the Elantris walls again. He finds the hole but decides not to report it. The Elantrians aren't too much of a worry to him.

Now Telrii is king, his plan is to continue to ply him with money to get him increasingly indebted to Fjorden, thus undermining his power. Sounds plausible, since Telrii is greedy and easily manipulated.

We find out that Hrathen is worried about Sarene and wants her to live. That's a turn up for the books. I was assuming he thought throwing her in Elantris would get rid of her. Why does he want her alive? Her father phones him up and somewhat answers that question. Seems like he is going to pretend to have Jaddeth save her in return for her father, the king of Teod, converting to Shu-Dereth.

So he's going to claim credit for that. Interesting.

Elantris 44: Sarene

Sarene explains everything that has happened on the outside. Raoden is pretending to have been in Elantris a bit longer than he really has. Sarene is impressed at how well he seems to know all the people she knows. He just says it's important for even minor nobles to keep up to speed on the major nobles.

Raoden almost gives the game away when he reveals he knows about Sarene's marriage contract, but she doesn't follow this up.

She sends Ashe off to find out the latest news and he returns to say that Telrii is already king. That was a bit quick. So much for Sarene getting out of Elantris in time to stop it.