POV: raoden
Summary
It hits Raoden mid-study at the chapel table. He does not hear himself gasp and does not feel himself topple out of the chair and seize on the floor. There is only the pain — sharp and total, as if a million tiny insects had latched on to every inch of skin and bone at once to eat him alive. The world flattens to a single sense; he has no body except the pain; the only output he is capable of is screaming. Behind the pain, in the back of his mind, he feels what is doing it. An enormous slick surface stands at the edge of his perception, without crack or cavity, pressing inward — vast enough to make men and mountains and worlds seem small, not malevolent, not even sentient, only frozen by its own pressure and seeking any escape. The pain is the search. There is no outlet.
His vision clears slowly as the force withdraws. He is staring up at the underside of the table; Galladon is shouting in alarm and Karata is looking down at him concerned. He tells them, ashamed at being seen failing this early, that he is all right — the pain came and went. The two help him sit; his entire body is sore as if he had tried to lift a dozen weights at once. He slides into the chair and answers Galladon's question with the ordinary explanation. It was the Hoed-pain, the slow accumulation of every cut and bruise; it had been too much for a moment; it would pass.
Galladon cuts him off. That is not how the pain works. In Elantris the pain is constant; it does not pulse; when it finally takes a man it snaps and the mind is gone. Five weeks is not even close to enough accumulated harm to send anyone Hoed. Raoden insists, helplessly, that for him the pain comes in waves; that perhaps he is just worse at handling it than the rest of them. Karata supplies the missing piece. He was glowing when he convulsed. Light coming out of him like an Aon. The shape of what is happening clicks into place for him. The Dor is trying to come through him as if he were a written Aon, and his body is not a viable passage. The force he had felt was the pressure of the reservoir searching for an outlet through what little of an Aon he in fact is. Galladon reminds him that some pre-Reod Elantrians had been simply closer to the Dor than others — some had drawn stronger Aons, some had felt more intimate with the power — and Karata points out that Raoden is the one of them who has been drawing Aons every day. The piece that closes the circle is the one Raoden half-remembers: at the Reod the most powerful Elantrians were the first to fall to the mobs, as if overwhelmed by something before they could defend themselves.
The relief of finally understanding why is, for one strange moment, larger than the dread. Then the dread comes in too. The attacks are getting worse and they will eventually take him; when they do, the Dor will keep trying to push through him and will tear his soul apart in the attempt. He renews their vow with Galladon and Karata — when it takes him they will carry him to the pool above Kae and not let him become a moaning thing in the Hall of the Fallen. They nod gravely. The knowledge that the end will be in their hands is enough to keep him going, and almost enough to make him wish the day were not so far off.
Galladon, trying to find a hopeful corner of the conversation, points at the gyorn's reported healing — perhaps something has changed; perhaps it will change. Raoden hesitates. Privately he is not convinced. He notes how much production went into pulling the gyorn out of the city; if he were Wyrn he would not want a Derethi Elantrian in public view embarrassing the faith, and would arrange a quiet extraction with a healing-shaped cover story. None of the inhabitants ever got a clean look at the man on the way out, and no Elantrian inside the city has been healed since the day the gyorn left. Galladon looks crestfallen at the line of reasoning; he, like the rest of the city, had taken hope from the rumour. Raoden keeps his suspicion off his face for the rest of the room. He turns back to his books.