Murtagh advanced alone into the waiting darkness.
Despite his assurances to Thorn, he felt vulnerable and afraid. The chambers that lay buried beneath him were full of the unfamiliar, the unguessed, and the obscure. How could he ready himself to
face that which he had yet to name?
He kept Zar’roc loose in its sheath as he descended along the cut-stone stairs that led into the cavern. The ceiling remained high, lost in a dome of shadow that the feeble illumination from the werelight could not penetrate. He could have increased the flow of energy to the werelight—fanned it bright as a miniature sun—but that might have attracted attention. Also, he heard the squeaks of roosting bats far overhead; more light would risk waking them, and that would bring the cultists down upon his position.
His footsteps seemed curiously loud as he continued down the stairs,
each gritty scuff and scrape bouncing off the unseen walls and raising his pulse. The steps ran back and forth in a zigzag, and they were worn hollow in the centers from the passage of uncounted feet over the centuries. Murtagh felt a sense of not just age but antiquity. Whoever had built the stairs had done so long before Alagaësia had been a settled place. What was it Bachel had said? That the cultists had lived in Nal Gorgoth since before elves were elves…. He was starting to think she had told the truth.
The cavern maintained enough height and width for a dragon Thorn’s size—or larger—as it continued to sink deeper and deeper into the sounding
earth. The air was warmer now, and moister too, and the smell of brimstone stronger still.
Murtagh wiped his palms against his trousers. He didn’t want his grip slipping on Zar’roc.
The mouth of the cave faded behind him, and soon he dwelt alone in a world of gloom. He reached back with his thoughts—farther than he realized he’d traversed—and touched Thorn’s mind. All well? he asked.
The crows are stirring, but the village yet sleeps.
Murtagh quickened his pace. I’ll try not to be much longer, but this cave…it seems bottomless.
Worry not. I will guard the entrance. I know.
Despite the heat, Murtagh shivered. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he felt a disconcerting presence, as if a thousand unseen eyes surrounded him in the press of dark. His nerve faltered, and he was about to increase the brightness of the werelight when…
A greenish glow appeared before him, so dim that it was barely perceptible. At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but after a few more yards, he realized that, no, there was indeed light ahead.
He extinguished the werelight, and the shadows rushed in. The sickly green luminescence led him on, and with every step, it swelled in strength until he saw: the cut-stone stairs ended at a rocky cave floor that extended in unknown directions. The coal-seamed rocks were mottled with membranes of virescent slime, from which emanated the low, flameless light. Poking up among the rocks were numerous mushrooms, the most common variety being a short, purple-capped toadstool with drooping gills that resembled an oyster’s inner flesh. Throughout, wisps of brimstone vapor drifted up from the cave floor, as if the earth itself were breathing and sweating.
A winding path set with flagstones like the temple courtyard extended from the bottom of the stairs and disappeared into the ringing shadows.
Murtagh swore to himself, softly, as he arrived at the bottom. He’d never seen such a place—not even in the Beor Mountains, among the tunnels and caves the dwarves built and tended. Whether or not the space was naturally
occurring, he couldn’t tell. No stalactites or stalagmites were visible, and the slimed rocks were broken into pieces much like quarry stones.
He pushed his cloak back from his shoulders. I should have left it with Thorn. The heat was becoming unbearable.
He tried to estimate how far underground he was. It had to be several hundred feet, if not more. Chiseling out that many steps would have been a monumental undertaking, even with magic, and if it had been done by hand…What is so important down here?
He started along the path.
The off-putting glow from the slime and the smell of sulfur and his underlying wariness combined to turn his stomach, as if he’d eaten a duck egg that had been insufficiently cooked. He swallowed the spit that was filling his mouth and tried to ignore the feeling, though his body was telling him to flee to open skies and fresh air.
His right foot struck something hard.
A fist-sized rock rolled away. He stepped off the path and retrieved the stone. The rock glistered and gleamed as if burning from within. It was a perfect pair to the stone he’d had off Sarros in Ceunon what seemed like half a year ago.
His heart racing, he tucked the stone into the pouch on his belt.
Perhaps a hundred feet from the stairs, a huge curving wall emerged before him, rough and creviced. Three tunnels pierced the wall, and Thorn would have fit into each had he folded his wings tight and kept his belly against the ground, like a great glittering serpent. The tunnel in the middle was edged with finished stone: a ring of rectangular blocks carved with sharp-cornered lines and the same unfamiliar runes as in the village. In the center of each block was set a cabochon of opal, which reflected the slime-glow like so many cats’ eyes.
The tunnels to the left and right were plain, unfinished: rough tubes of stone that burrowed into the roots of the mountains. They did not look chiseled or hammered, and yet neither did they feel entirely natural. More than a little, they reminded Murtagh of the tunnels he’d fled through during
his escape from Captain Wren’s secret chambers beneath Gil’ead—only far larger.
Faint sounds emanated from the depths of the tunnels. Whispers. Moans. Soft echoing cries that had a hooting, birdlike quality. At first he thought he was hearing speech or calls of animals, but after a time, he grew convinced it was the air itself moving through the veins of the earth that gave rise to the eerie sounds.
He chose to enter the central tunnel. The unknown craftsmen who had labored upon the caves had taken special pains with that one, and so it must be of importance or lead to importance.
He continued forward. Deeper into the womb of the earth. Deeper into the black unknown, seeking, seeking, always seeking a farther shore, every sense razor-sharp and razor-scraped, skin all goosefleshed, cold sweat dripping down the back of his neck and gathering around his belted waist.
The walls of the tunnel were sheathed with diamond-shaped tiles of rough stone that were lapped like the scales of a dragon. He felt as if he were walking inside a shed skin of enormous proportion.
Not far, then. A minute of walking, no more, and the darkness again encroached, for the tiles were free of slime.
Then he saw a room before him, warm with light. A pale room. A bone-white room clad in finest marble, the veins of which were chased with hammered gold. Brass censers hung on chains from the snouts of sculpted dragon heads, which projected from the circular, column-lined walls. Small flames burned in alcoves in the wall, but the fires consumed no wicks and no fuel; they seemed to spring straight from the marble.
Several open, human-sized doorways led to yet more tunnels. But it was what lay in the center of the room that captured Murtagh’s attention, for it was large and strange: a ring of rough marble, several hands high, with a lid of grey metal atop it, like a covered well.
As he crept closer, he saw a pane of clear crystal framed within the metal, and through the crystal…a vaporous void dropping deeper into the earth.
He frowned. Was this the sacred well that Grieve had mentioned? Was it
—or what it contained—the source of Bachel’s power? The well itself didn’t
look like much. And yet, the air seemed to thrum like a plucked string. It was true that not all magics were made by humans, elves, dwarves, or any other self-aware, thinking race. There were natural magics also, such as the floating crystals of Eoam, but they tended to be wild and unpredictable.
If the well were such a place, that could explain Bachel’s prowess with magic. And if so, it wasn’t the sort of thing that the Draumar ought to have dominion over. Not that he would want Du Vrangr Gata to assume control over such an important location either. This was exactly what the Riders had been created for: to oversee and mediate that which could destabilize the land.
He bent over the hammered lid and squinted as he tried to peer through the snakes of vapor swirling below. There was a hint of a shape beneath the haze: a vague outline that he could almost make sense of.
Opening his mind, he sent a cautious, probing thought into the murk. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but he suspected there was something of interest hidden at the bottom of the well….
The moans and murmurs echoing through the tunnels seemed to grow
louder, and Murtagh’s vision flickered as if shadowy creatures were moving about the edges. When he blinked, images flashed behind his lids—too fast to fully register—and a powerful urge to sleep settled upon his shoulders, pressing him down. He fought against it, alarmed. Wherever the urge came from, he felt sure it was the source of the bad dreams that plagued the village, as an evil miasma seeping out of the ground and infecting their sleeping minds.
The vapor below parted in places, and dimly in the dark he saw different levels of tunnels and chambers, pierced by the shaft plunging downward. And at the distant bottom, obscured by drifting patches, a pulsing glow that
—
“You should not be here, my son.”
Murtagh spun to see Bachel and Grieve standing by the entrance. The witch’s hair was down, and it tumbled in a stormy mess around her face and shoulders to her midback, dark and lustrous. The sleeves of her dress were pushed up to expose her forearms, her feet were bare, and the soot round
her eyes was smudged as if she’d been interrupted while removing it. In one hand, she carried a tall spear, the haft of which was made of a greenish material, with a long, barbed blade of strange design atop it. A faint glow surrounded the head of the weapon.
Cold lead loaded Murtagh’s gut, keeping him from moving. He recognized the spear. It was a Dauthdaert—a Deathspear—made by the elves with but one purpose in mind: to kill dragons. The elves had forged the twelve Dauthdaert during their war with the dragons, prior to the formation of the Riders, and they had enchanted the weapons that they might pierce scale and bypass even a dragon’s wild magic.
Moreover, Murtagh knew this specific Dauthdaert. It was the selfsame lance that Arya had used to kill Shruikan. Niernen was its name, and it was cursed and hated and coveted by every person of bloody ambition. He’d thought the Dauthdaert had been lost in the destruction following Galbatorix’s death. That it had survived was surprising. That someone had spirited it out of Ilirea and brought it to Bachel was profoundly alarming.
In contrast to the lance’s arcane appearance, Grieve carried a more mundane weapon: a club of hardwood shod with iron bands secured around the head.
Thorn! How had Bachel and Grieve gotten past him? Murtagh wanted to reach out with his mind to the dragon, but he didn’t dare lower his mental defenses with the witch and her companion so close. Still, he felt no pain or alarm through the constant background connection that he and Thorn shared, and that was a comfort. More tunnels, he thought. There had to be a passage joining the temple with the caves beneath.
Murtagh’s hand tightened around Zar’roc’s hilt. In any other circumstances, he would have drawn, but he wanted—no, needed—a better understanding of Bachel’s power before fighting her, especially as he was on his own, without Thorn. “I saw the cave, and I was curious.”
“This is not a place for outsiders.” Bachel’s stance was poised but not overly stiff, the perfect way to ready oneself for violent action. Her eyes flashed with dark promise, and she held the Dauthdaert with an ease that convinced Murtagh that she was well accustomed to its use.
“And what is this place, my Lady?”
Bachel and Grieve started to stalk with measured steps around the lidded well of stone. Murtagh mirrored their movement, keeping the well between him and them.
Grieve was the one who answered, glowering beneath his heavy, unfinished brow. “It is the Well of Dreams, Rider, and none may approach it without Bachel’s permission. It is the heart of all things, the source of prophecy and power, and those who defile it must die.”
With the thumb of his left hand, Murtagh pressed Zar’roc an inch or two out of the sheath so that it would slide free without binding. “And have I defiled it, Bachel?”
At first he thought the witch would respond with anger. But then she laughed in a lazy fashion and took another step closer. Grieve split from her and came round the other side of the well, bracketing Murtagh.
He retreated a step to keep from being flanked. One of the open doorways was to his back; he had room to flee.
“Defile?” said Bachel, nearly purring. “No, my son, I think not. Not so long as you kneel now and swear fealty to me. For how can the servant be in the wrong if they are acting in accordance with their mistress’s will? Kneel now, Murtagh son of Morzan, and your life will be spared.”
Zar’roc sang as he drew it, the familiar weight a comfort in his hand. He smiled a crooked smile. “You know I will not. You have given me no reasons worth hearing. Even if you had, Thorn and I will never again kneel out of fear or desperation. If we bend our knees, it will be because of love, duty, and respect, or not at all.”
Bachel’s expression grew haughty. “You would not understand if I told you, Kingkiller. You would claim you did, but you would not feel the truth, and your heart would be empty. I had hoped to spare you this. I had hoped you would dream as we all dream here in Nal Gorgoth, and you would come to understand the truth as we all have. You would have devoted yourself to our cause, freely and willingly.”
“Is that how it was with Saerlith?” asked Murtagh. “Did he follow you freely?” As he spoke, he risked sending a single blade of thought toward the
surface. Thorn! A cry for help to the only one he could count on.
But all he received in return was fear. Fear of enclosed spaces, fear of being trapped, fear of loss. Murtagh’s mouth grew sour. He could expect no reinforcement.
Bachel’s lips twisted to one side. “Saerlith was a pawn and nothing more.
He served our aims, even as did Galbatorix and Morzan.”
The mention of his father seemed like an obvious attempt to needle him. He chose to ignore the bait. “Somehow I doubt that. Galbatorix served nothing and no one.”
His words appeared to prick the witch’s pride. “Your fear leads you to overestimate the king. How is it, do you think, he came to lose his dragon?”
Murtagh felt his pride similarly afflicted. “Galbatorix? He went adventuring in the north, and a group of Urgals—”
“No!” cried Bachel, and she slashed through the air with one arm, the hand flat and narrow as a blade. Then, in a more measured tone: “It is true that Urgals slew Jarnunvösk in the icy reaches of the far north, but you are mistaken as to the reason Galbatorix and his unfortunate party ventured forth. He lied to you, Outlander. What he told you, and everything else you have heard from the Riders of old about that expedition, all lies!”
Keep her talking. Murtagh continued to edge around the well, trying to maintain equal distance between him, the witch, and Grieve. “Then what is the truth, Bachel? Or will you only answer with more riddles?”
Bachel assumed a cold, cruel demeanor. “The truth is this: The Riders feared us, Du Eld Draumar. And they feared me. And, in secret, they dispatched Galbatorix and his companions to seek us out, that the Riders might later destroy us.”
Just how old was the witch? “If they feared you so,” said Murtagh, “why would they send Riders who were not even fully trained or tested? None of them had even a score of years. Surely you cannot expect me to believe such a tale.”
“The purpose of Galbatorix’s party was to find us. Theirs was not to attack,” said Bachel. “Indeed, they did not even know the truth of whom
they looked for, as their elders sought to keep them ignorant of the Draumar.”
Murtagh’s steps slowed as dozens of possibilities raced through his mind. Nothing the witch said was impossible, and if she was right, the implications were dire, for they meant the Draumar were dangerous enough to threaten even the Riders. “But they were attacked.”
Bachel gave a curt nod. “Galbatorix came wandering back through the
Spine, alone and half mad. As such, he found us, and it was as such we took him in. At first he distrusted us, even as you have, and he blamed us for the death of Jarnunvösk, but I ministered him with what attentions were needed, and in time, he came to understand that it was the Riders who were to blame for his loss.”
“You turned him against them,” Murtagh breathed. “And then you sent him back to confront them.”
Again, Bachel nodded. “It was a test. Were the Riders as kind and compassionate as they claimed, they would have taken pity upon Galbatorix and given him another dragon. But they were not, and they did not, and so Galbatorix came to understand the truth of them.”
Fear hollowed out Murtagh. It was hard for him to imagine Galbatorix being anything less than the most powerful person in the land, elves included. If Bachel had done what she claimed—whether through the force of her words or the strength of her magic or a combination thereof—then by some measure, she surmounted even the king.
In a low voice, he said, “Do you mean to say Galbatorix and the Forsworn were your thralls?”
“In part. They were useful instruments to a needed end.” He cocked his head. “Which was?”
“The eradication of the Riders.”
“Why would you seek that? Are not dragons sacred to your people?”
A dismissive wave of Bachel’s hand. “The lesser worms matter not. Their blood is tainted by the wrongdoings of their forefathers, and only once the Riders and their dragons were washed from the world could a new era begin.”
Grieve moved a bit too close for Murtagh’s liking, and he retreated a few steps. “What of Durza?” he asked. “Always I’ve heard that Galbatorix met him in the Spine, after Jarnunvösk died.”
“That is true,” Bachel said, inclining her head. “The Shade shared in our dreams, and it was because of them that his ambitions grew longer and broader than is the wont of his ilk.”
“He lived here?”
“For many a year, even as Galbatorix and your father lived here after they fled Ilirea with the hatchling Shruikan.” The glow from the Dauthdaert lit the side of Bachel’s face with a ghoulish cast. “Your king and your father knew the truth of things, Murtagh son of Morzan. Always you were destined to follow in their footsteps. There is no other path for you.”
Murtagh’s mind was awhirl as he parsed the witch’s revelations. And yet he remained convinced of one truth: Galbatorix would never have bent his knee to another. Not after he turned against the Riders. If he had been allied with the Draumar, it had only been as a matter of convenience. The king was no zealot, no true believer. At the soonest opportunity, he would have turned against the Draumar and attempted to undo them. Murtagh recalled what Bachel had said before their boar hunt: that Galbatorix once tried to purge their settlements. Tried and failed.
With the harsh light of insight, he realized: Somehow the Draumar held their own against the king. Somehow she did. Bachel was a danger even to Galbatorix. But why, why, why, why?
“I am not my father,” he said in a tight voice. “Nor am I the man I once was. It is you who are mistaken, witch. I shall not bend to you.”
“How unfortunate,” said Bachel. But she seemed entirely unconcerned.
Murtagh lifted Zar’roc and twirled the hilt in his hand, as if he had not a care in the world. “You cannot best me, Bachel. Neither of you can.”
The witch laughed, a wild, unrestrained laughter that sent chills down Murtagh’s spine. She was no more scared of him than he would be of a common footpad, and his palm grew slick with sweat on Zar’roc’s wire-wrapped hilt. Should have worn gloves, he thought. Without taking his gaze off Bachel or Grieve, he unhooked his cloak and spun it around his left
forearm, and he heard Tornac’s voice in his head saying, “An offhand garment may serve to distract, bind, and, in the absence of a shield, protect.” “Perhaps I cannot best you, Kingkiller,” said Bachel, “though it would be
an interesting contest. However, it is not I that you must overcome. I am merely an instrument of a higher power, and neither you nor I nor the wisest of elves nor the strongest of dragons yet living can prevail against that which I serve.”
She touched the pane of crystal in the hammered lid, and the pane slid open, seemingly of its own accord, and a choking cloud of green-lit vapor billowed into the room.
Murtagh didn’t know what danger the vapor posed, but he knew enough to be afraid. He had a half second to inhale, and then the cloud enveloped him, dimming the room and making his eyes smart.
A touch of panic spiked his pulse. He had made no wards to filter the air. An oversight. He turned to run, and the glowing tip of the Dauthdaert sliced past his ear.
He flinched and used Zar’roc to beat the haft of the lance away. Then he lunged toward Bachel, but the distance was wrong; she was out of reach, laughing amid the brimstone mist.
Grieve came at him from the side, swinging his iron-shod club with ruthless efficiency. He caught Murtagh in an awkward position, and the club slammed down against Murtagh’s right arm. His wards deflected, and the club skated away amid swirls of vapor.
At the same time, cruel thoughts assailed Murtagh’s mind: Bachel and Grieve attempting to batter down his defenses and assume control over his consciousness. Their mental attacks were as strong as any he had ever encountered, including Galbatorix’s. But Murtagh was no weakling, and he held fast within his inner being, secure in who and what he was.
Bachel stabbed again and again with Niernen, fast as an elf. The Dauthdaert flicked like a deadly tongue through the vapor. The edges were so sharp, they parted the cloud like cut gauze.
Only seconds had passed, but already Murtagh’s lungs were on fire. He felt as if he were going to explode. He needed air, needed to breathe….
He launched a counterattack against Bachel’s and Grieve’s minds, a desperate attempt to overwhelm them with the sheer force of his consciousness. From a distance, he felt Thorn adding strength to his own, and the realization gave him courage.
Then Murtagh stepped back, and his heel caught against the lip of a stone tile in the floor.
His stomach lurched as he fell. He twisted, intending to catch himself on one arm, but—
—too slow. He landed on his side, and the impact drove the air from his lungs. He inhaled without meaning to, and bitter, sulfurous fumes filled his nose and mouth and throat.
Coughing, he scrambled backward, keeping Zar’roc above his head to ward off blows. Bachel and Grieve were advancing on him, black shapes in the clotted clouds, their outlines bending and breaking, and he felt as if he were falling again and his body lacked substance and a horrible rushing sounded, as a wind across a desolate plain at the end of all things.
He tried to rise, tried to shout, tried to focus his will on a word or spell, but the world was dissolving around him, and his thoughts were as scattered as seeds before that horrible howling wind, and again he saw the black sun and the rising dragon, and an inexorable foreboding of doom crushed any hope he had.
Bachel’s face materialized before him, wisps of vapor wreathing her angled features. Her eyes were glowing with fevered ecstasy, and her lips were ruby red as if painted with blood. And she said, “You cannot win, Kingkiller. I serve the power of dream and He whose mind conjures dream. Sleep.”
Murtagh fought with all his might, but blackness descended, and Bachel
and the chamber and all that he knew vanished.
