Black sun, black dragon, and an eternity of despair. He was falling toward the bottom of an incomprehensibly large void, and at the bottom lay slumbering a mind of impossible size, whose thoughts moved as slowly as the currents
within an icebound sea and were just as black, cold, and hostile. He felt a presence that made him shudder and shrink to insignificance, and all of human endeavor seemed of no more importance than the accomplishments of a colony of ants.
He searched for Thorn, but the bond they shared was no longer to be found. He was utterly alone, without recourse, resource, or hope of rescue.
Then he was spinning through space, and all around malevolence pressed against him with crushing force. He saw dragons tearing at his flesh, and the bodies of his foes laid out across the mortified earth, scorched with flame, charred with soot. He saw the darkness beneath the mountains, and felt the coolness of the earth firm against his sides. Worms fed off his putrefying limbs as the smell of death wrapped him in its charnel embrace.
The void yawned wider. Amid the despair and screeching horrors, a bloody dawn spilled across a brazen land, and he saw himself triumphant: a golden crown upon his head, Zar’roc in his hand, Thorn by his side, and Bachel too…and a world at his feet, bowing to him as they had bowed to his father and Galbatorix.
A vision. A premonition. A dreadful promise.
Then he was in his cell beneath the citadel in Urû’baen. Stone walls wet with seeping moisture, black mold grown in veined maps across the crumbling mortar, ground mixed with droppings and urine and fallen crumbs from week-old crusts of
bread. The jailers beat the bars of the cells and jeered at the prisoners—no sympathy from them, no help or kindness. And when the jailers left, terrors came crawling forth from cracks within the walls: fat-bodied spiders, pale and heavy, with furred legs and long feelers. They dragged their bloated stomachs across him and bit and bit him, and always it seemed he could feel the jittery touch of their clawed feet. The sounds of them moving about kept him awake nights, and never could he sleep in earnest.
A red egg before him, knee-high and shot through with white. Behind him, the unseen shadow of HIM. The egg cracked, and he watched, breathless, as a piece of shell fell free, and he saw the most delicate, beautiful, helpless hatchling: red and squalling and hungry, hungry, hungry. He reached for it, and snout and hand touched, and the contact was electric….
He yanked against his shackles, screaming, sobbing, as he felt the hatchling’s torment from the other side of the wall. HE bent over him—close-cropped beard like a black dagger, thin mouth distorted in angry delight—and said, “Swear to me, Murtagh. Swear to me, or I’ll have them strip every scale from his body. Swear fealty to me as your father did before you.”
He shook and shivered and raged, but he couldn’t hold out. The pain of the hatchling—the pain of such a perfect, innocent creature, a pain that he felt as if each fleck of agony were his own—it was too much. Of his own, he could have endured. But not this.
“I swear,” he sobbed. “I swear fealty to you.”
The evil smile widened. “In the ancient language now. Use the words I gave you.”
So he swore as instructed, and the words were ashes in his mouth.
Later came more oaths. And later still, HE spoke their true names, and then Murtagh and Thorn both were lost, lost, lost….
 |
Awareness returned, hazy as a cloud.
Murtagh blinked, uncertain of himself, his place, and how he had gotten there. He felt stuffed full of wool: thick, slow, and heavy.
He sat up, befuddled.
Marble walkway beneath him. Curved tunnel walls around him. And before him…a woman with tumbling hair, a glowing spear in one hand, and the light of triumph in her hawk-eyed face. She was fierce and beautiful and terrible. No mercy or comfort was to be found in her features, only burning passion that would sweep aside anything that barred her way.
Bachel. Remembering the name was a struggle; speaking it, impossible.
The woman bent toward him. “Rise, Kingkiller,” she commanded, and her voice thrummed with power.
Her words were irresistible. In a daze, he rose to his feet, still unable to form a coherent sound.
She put her lips together and blew on him. Vapor whorled toward him, and with it, a heavy, rotten odor. For some reason, he no longer found it offensive. Rather, it was intoxicating, as if he could never breathe enough of it. Each lungful was an exhilaration that set his head spinning and prevented him from focusing on any one thing for more than a moment.
“Walk with me, my son,” said Bachel. Her words echoed in his mind, soft as song but strong as iron.
She strode away through the vapor, and he followed, dumb and wildered.
A man accompanied them with a lurching, long-limbed tread. Murtagh studied his cragged face, trying and failing to place it. The man carried a red sword in one hand and an iron-shod club in the other, with a loose cloak draped over the crook of his arm.
Into a marble-clad chamber they went and along a tiled tunnel and through a slime-lit cave with a broken floor. As they arrived at the base of a set of stairs cut into the stone, Murtagh’s mind began to sharpen, though he remained deeply confused.
“Where…where are—”
Bachel turned and blew on him again, a gentle breath of warm air. With it came a billow of vapor from a crystal vial she held on her palm. He had not noticed it before.
At the touch of the vapor, all thought deserted him.
“Close your mouth, Kingkiller,” said Bachel. “It is unseemly of you to gape as a poleaxed fish.”
He did as he was told.
“Good. Now come with me, Kingkiller. Come.”
Up the stairs they went, and the slime-glow faded behind them. In its place, torchlight appeared above and ahead, the flames—which were not yet visible—casting a throng of shadows upon the walls and mouth of the cave.
The last step passed beneath Murtagh’s feet, and then he stood on level ground again. Bachel led him toward a great red dragon crouched on the dark path before them.
The dragon snarled, and his tail twitched, and something of the dragon’s presence resonated in Murtagh’s mind, but he could make no sense of it. The words and impressions forced upon his consciousness were a meaningless storm filled with random bits of wind-tossed flotsam.
A roar burst forth from the dragon, strong enough that Murtagh felt the vibration against his cheek.
“Hush now,” said Bachel. She lifted the vial and blew across the crystal mouth, and a cloud of vapor streamed forth and surrounded the dragon’s head.
The glittering creature thrashed and quivered, and then his catlike eyes rolled back, and his enormous bulk went slack and still.
Formless alarm filled Murtagh, yet he could do nothing. After long minutes…the dragon stirred again.
Bachel walked over to him and placed a hand upon his snout. “Awake, O slave of dream.”
The dragon’s eyelids flicked open with a snick, and he arched his neck and shook his head, as if to throw off a swarm of flies. The creature stared at Murtagh, and Murtagh at him, and neither of them spoke, both equally confounded.
A set of seven crows descended from the blackened sky. They circled Bachel’s head in a murderous crown and then settled about her shoulders and arms. She smiled at them fondly and stroked their feathers with the back of
her forefinger while the birds peered with pale eyes, bright and suspicious, at Murtagh and the dragon.
With the birds as her companions, Bachel strode forward from the cave and into the grove of trees. “Come,” she said, and Murtagh and the dragon followed.
They had no choice.
The black-needled pines stood as silent sentinels watching over the strange, staggered procession passing beneath their arching boughs. Murtagh stared up at the treetops and the velvet blackness of the clouded sky, and he tried to understand why the world felt so out of joint.
With measured steps, they walked across the cropped turf and then back into the courtyard before the temple. Rows of grey-robed people stood like hooded statues in the yard. Each held a lit torch, and their faces were turned down, so only the tops of their hoods were visible.
Bachel led Murtagh and the dragon into the center of the mute congregation, and a quartet of warriors gathered close around her, spears held at the ready.
She pointed at the dragon with a taloned finger. “Secure him,” she said, her voice ringing clear in the night air. And she tossed the vial at the dragon’s feet. It broke with a sharp chime. A plume of vapor expanded upward and gathered around the dragon’s head, moving as if it were a living thing.
Then Bachel beckoned to Murtagh. “With me, Kingkiller,” she said, and walked toward the entrance of the temple, the seven crows still riding upon her arms and shoulders.
He wanted to object, but he could not form the words, and no sound left his throat.
The tall witch led him deep into the temple, through cold corridors devoid of light, past windows shuttered closed and empty doorways that stared like eyeless sockets. Then down again, along a snail-shell staircase, until they arrived at a series of iron-barred cells. Grieve opened one door and pushed Murtagh inside.
“Now, O Rider, drink this,” said Bachel. And she handed Murtagh another vial, this one smaller, more delicate. Within was a pearlescent liquid that glowed with an unnatural luminance.
He stared dumbly at the vial, unable to make sense of what was expected. The floor and the ceiling seemed to spin; he swayed and nearly fell.
Bachel placed a finger against the back of his hand and pressed it toward his mouth. Her skin was cool against his. “Drink,” she said, and her voice was a wind brushing through branches bare of leaves, needles, or bark.
He drank. The liquid burned like brandy.
Then Grieve took the vial from his hand and closed the iron door.
“Give him his cloak, that he may remain warm,” said Bachel. “He is my child, after all, and I would have him treated as such.”
The garment landed upon him, a heavy petal of felted wool. He pulled it off his face. The fibers rubbed against his skin; he could feel each individual one, and they overwhelmed him with the influx of sensation.
Bachel bent toward him from beyond the iron bars. “Sleep, Kingkiller.
Sleep…and dream…. Dream…. Dream.”
Her voice faded into the distance, and shadow swallowed her face as Murtagh fell backward—fell and fell and fell, and all the universe spun around him, and he cried out. But no one answered.
|
He was standing in the royal balcony overlooking the arena, Galbatorix behind him, looming and unseen, for Murtagh kept his gaze fixed on the sandy pit—the same pit where he’d killed his first man.
“Watch now,” said the king, and his voice contained the authority of rolling thunder.
Murtagh gripped the balcony railing until his nails turned white. He wanted to shout and rant—he wanted to leap over the railing and jump into the arena—but it would only make the situation worse.
Thorn stood in the center of the pit. He was only four days old: still weak, still unable to fly, though he kept raising his thin, undersized wings and driving them down in a futile attempt to take off. He turned in circles, chirping in concern, uncertain of where to go or what to do. He saw Murtagh on the balcony and let out a pitiful whine, and Murtagh knew his own feelings were affecting the hatchling. So he hardened his heart and, despite the anguish it caused him, closed his mind to the hatchling below.
“He’s too young,” he said from between clenched teeth.
“No creature is too young,” answered the king. “If he is to survive, he must learn to fight and feed. There is no other way.”
The iron portcullises at either side of the arena ratcheted up, and from each opening, a pair of grey timber wolves loped into the pit. They growled and snarled as they saw Thorn, and the fur along their spines bristled.
Thorn shrank back, but there was nowhere to run or hide. “Please,” said Murtagh, gritting his teeth.
“No.” The king’s breath was warm against his ear.
The wolves circled Thorn. The dragon was longer than they were, but the wolves outweighed the hatchling by a significant amount.
After a few false starts, the wolves began to dart in and nip at Thorn’s wings and
tail.
The dragon twisted round to face each new threat, but he wasn’t fast enough, and
the wolves moved together with silent understanding. Within seconds, drops of steaming blood dripped from rents in Thorn’s wings, and he held his left forefoot off the ground, unable to place his weight on it.
Each drop of blood struck like a drumbeat of doom.
Murtagh felt as if he were about to explode. He tore down the barrier he’d erected in his mind and sent his thoughts hurtling toward the dragon’s small but fierce consciousness.
Thorn flinched, distracted, and the wolves closed in.
Jump! Murtagh shouted in his mind, including an image of what he meant. Thorn hesitated, still uncertain, and one of the wolves bit his tail. With a yelp,
Thorn spun to face his attacker.
It was a mistake. The other wolves rushed toward him, jaws parted, foam-flecked fangs ready to close on Thorn’s slender legs and delicate wings.
Murtagh forced his will onto the dragon’s as-yet-unformed mind and again shouted, Jump! To his relief, Thorn jumped, and he used his wings to gain a few extra feet of height before dropping down on the other side of the arena. The walls were too high for Thorn to surmount, which meant he had to fight.
The wolves raced after Thorn, and Murtagh fed the dragon more instructions. Thorn was, like all of his kind, a natural fighter, and it took only seconds before he started to understand and respond.
Thorn sprang onto the back of the nearest wolf and sank his teeth into the beast’s neck. With a sharp, vicious gesture, he tore out a chunk of hide and muscle— releasing a spray of blood—and then jumped onto a second wolf.
The wolf twisted nearly in half, snapping at the dragon, but Thorn dug his claws in and bit at the wolf’s head until the creature’s legs buckled and it collapsed to the ground.
The fall knocked Thorn onto his side, and before Murtagh could do anything to help, the other two wolves darted in and began to savage Thorn.
“No!”
For a few seconds, the dragon was barely visible, lost beneath a twisting knot of grey fur, legs, and tails. Growls and snarls and yelps of pain filled the arena, and fans of blood sprayed across the packed sand. Murtagh felt sharp pangs from Thorn, and he feared all was lost. He couldn’t understand. Why would Galbatorix allow his newest prize to die?
“How could you?” he said, barely able to form the words. “Watch.”
The wolves fell apart. One dragged itself away, hind legs limp and useless, fur matted with spit and foam and blood. The other rolled onto its side and kicked helplessly, its belly ripped open and a pile of grey intestines spilling out. The kicking slowed.
Between the wolves stood Thorn. The small dragon was battered and torn—his wings shredded in several places—but fire burned in his sparkling eyes, and blood dripped from his razor-sharp fangs and from the large claws on his hind feet.
With a small roar, he sprang after the wolf with the paralyzed hindquarters. He bit and held the back of the wolf’s neck, and the animal shuddered and went limp, dead.
Then Thorn crouched low over his kill and began to tear at the corpse, ravenous in his hunger.
“Do you see?” said the king. “He is a dragon, and dragons are meant to kill. It is what they are. It is who you are. If you learn this now, the coming days will be that much easier for you, O son of Morzan. Now go to your dragon and heal him as you will.”
“I’ll kill you for this.”
A deep chuckle behind him. “No, you shall not. You will dream of killing me, you will plan for it, you will desire my demise with all your heart, but in the end you will see the rightness of my ways and realize that there is no opposing my power. You are mine, Murtagh, as is Thorn, and you shall serve me as your father did before you.”
To that, Murtagh had no answer. He went to attend Thorn’s wounds.
Nor was that the only time they visited the arena. Every time Thorn grew hungry, Galbatorix forced him to fight for his food, and Murtagh had no choice but to watch, helpless, as the young dragon killed and killed again. Even when Thorn grew larger than the largest bear, the king still insisted on making him face his prey in mortal conflict.
Murtagh saw the sands of the pit soak through with blood, and outside the citadel, he seemed to see the sky turn red. All around he heard the sounds of prisoners shrieking and yammering their torment, and he turned and ran and ran and ran through a warren of rocky tunnels, but they kept leading him back to the charnel grounds of the arena, and each time, he saw Thorn sitting hunched over his kills, alone, frightened, covered in blood, and desperately eating.
As Thorn had his trials, so too did Murtagh have his own. And they were just as long, bloody, and inescapable.
And beneath it all—beneath the overpowering images and emotions brought forth from the unwelcome past—lay the yawning void, and within it…a core of slow-turning madness centered upon some unknown yet implacable purpose.
And Murtagh wept and cried out with fear.
