Murtagh stood unmoving before Bachel’s high-backed, fur-strewn throne. Above, the rustles and whispered caws of hidden crows echoed off the stones of the shadowed ceiling: a constant
accompaniment to the doings below.
Murtagh stared without seeing as cultists stripped him of his clothes. All of his wounds had been attended to; where Bachel had inflicted her tortures upon him, his skin was again smooth and seamless.
From her raised seat, the witch watched with an impassive gaze over the rim of a dented brass goblet. Grieve stood beside her, stone-faced.
“Turn about, my son,” she said. He did.
By the middle of the chamber sat Thorn, wings furled, shoulders hunched high and tense. No shackles bound his scaled limbs, yet he did not stir.
“Stop.”
Murtagh stood with his back to Bachel, eyes fixed upon the pale beams of sunlight that crept in about the edges of the distant doorway. The mosaic floor was cold against his feet. He shivered, but it was a reflex; no thought accompanied the movement.
“A most unsightly scar lies upon him, Grieve.” “Verily, Speaker.”
“I wonder, ought I remove this blight from him? He is to be our shining paragon, after all. Our faultless champion. Our king of kings.”
Murtagh’s lips twitched, but he could not speak. “If you so wish, Speaker.”
“Hmm.” A slosh of wine in the goblet as the witch took a sip. “No, I think not. It is good for him to remember that he is not without flaw. And that he is not all-powerful.”
“Very wise, my Lady.”
Thorn’s limbs trembled, and the slightest sound escaped his throat. “Turn now and face me, my son.”
He did.
The witch leaned forward in her seat. “You are as you deserve to be, Kingkiller. Never forget that. Your father’s hate marks you, and I shall not be the one to lift that burden. Not until you bring yourself to accept Azlagûr, myself, and the Draumar as your family. For that we are, and we love you more than you know.” She looked then to Grieve. “See to it that he is well fitted. After all, he is our most honored son.”
Disapproval crossed Grieve’s face, but his voice remained deferential. “As you say, Speaker.”
“I do.”
For a time, Murtagh stood fully exposed. His skin felt strange upon him, and he knew not who or what he was. An unaccountable sense of grief formed deep within him.
Then the cultists brought clothes in which to garb him. Fine woolen trousers—red and black—soft leather riding boots that reached to his knees, and a thin undershirt overlaid with a padded jerkin. Atop that, a tabard of archaic scale armor, the metal velvet grey and the tip of each scale adorned with a line of embedded gold that traced the shape of the scale. A gold-studded belt cinched about his waist, and upon his head they placed a crown-like helm, such as some long-forgotten king might have worn into battle.
“There,” said Bachel, leaning back in her seat. “Now you look as you should.”
Murtagh did not answer. Words seemed of no import. Behind him, he heard Thorn’s heavy breath as they waited upon the witch’s command.
Bachel’s eyes were cold as she studied them—they her vassals, she their maternal sovereign. Her voice rang with a stony determination that overrode the soft cries of the crows above: “The time has come. We have not arrived at the end of the end, nor the middle of the end, but I say now that this day marks the beginning of the end. And it shall be a calamity to all who oppose us.”
 |
Many things Bachel had Murtagh do. He did as he was told—listless, unresisting, his mind muffled as if bound in batts of felted wool. On the few occasions when a coherent thought came to him, he wondered whether any of it was real.
Nights he spent in the cell beneath the temple. The Urgal opposite him kept trying to speak with him, but none of the creature’s words held in Murtagh’s mind. They were not from Bachel, and so he did not remember them.
Days he spent sitting to the right of Bachel in the temple’s inner sanctum
—while Grieve glowered at him from across the chamber—or else riding beside the witch as she led him about the valley. Evenings they feasted in the courtyard: leisurely banquets of roasted boar meat, aged wine, and mushrooms cooked in every possible way. And always Bachel was talking to him: talking, talking, talking, an endless stream of words that shaped his actions and ordered the world about him.
As she spoke, she sometimes rested her hand on his arm, not with any passion, but as she might with a valued possession, and her scent mingled with that of the ever-present brimstone.
Thorn accompanied them most times, but not always. Twice Murtagh saw Grieve climb into Thorn’s saddle and ride on the dragon high into the sky above Nal Gorgoth. And once they flew out of sight beyond the jagged peaks and did not return until several hours thence.
When they did, Thorn landed in the courtyard and crouched there, cold and shivering. Murtagh stared at the dragon, miserable, though with no means to give voice to his misery.
From among the pillars along the front of the temple came Alín, bearing a pitcher of water and a basket of bergenhed and a ragged piece of cloth. She placed the basket before Thorn’s head and then wet the cloth and began to wash dirt and dried blood from the healing wounds that striped Thorn’s side.
Murtagh’s lips trembled, and he clenched the belt around his waist.
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At Bachel’s command, the cultists began preparations for a grand festival to be held in a week’s time. “I have had a premonition,” she announced to the assembled village. “The time of the Black Smoke Festival approaches. Send forth raiding parties that we may gather the means to properly worship Azlagûr the Devourer.”
Then Nal Gorgoth became a hive of activity. The cultists swarmed about in constant, frantic pursuit of their duties. Three groups of armed warriors left on horses, shouting their praise and devotion to Bachel, spears held high. Murtagh watched them go from beside Thorn, and he wished he could leave with them—to escape the valley and breathe fresh air untainted by brimstone.
That day, Bachel took him on another boar hunt. She gave him a spear to wield, and he held it without feeling, though the weight of the weapon stirred an obscure desire within him.
The witch rode before him on Thorn, her hair bound up in feathered tufts, her arms bare to the wind, her teeth flashing with fierce delight. It felt strange to have another upon Thorn with him—strange to Murtagh and strange to Thorn. But neither of them complained of it.
Bachel’s honor guard followed on the ground while Thorn flew from Nal Gorgoth into the mushroom-laden valley where the boars rooted and rutted.
The hunt went much as before. At Bachel’s command, Murtagh took his place by her side and set his spear against the arch of his foot and waited while Thorn drove the beasts toward their position. He waited, and no fear quickened his pulse, nor excitement nor joy nor any form of normal human feeling.
He watched what was happening as if viewing it from a great distance, as if nothing he saw could affect him or Thorn and, thus, was of no real consequence. Even his own actions felt as if they belonged to another person: a stranger without a name who wore his face but contained nothing of his self.
The boars drummed across the beaten ground, a wall of snarling, snorting animal flesh, intent on trampling a path through those blocking their way.
A shock of impact: blood and heat and the smell of viscera. He killed his boar, as Bachel did hers.
Afterward, Bachel reclined on her litter and had Murtagh sit at her feet while her warriors tended the wounded and dressed the slain beasts. A circle of broken mushrooms surrounded them, and the air was heavy with the earthen scent.
Murtagh stared unblinking at the sky beyond the high mountain peaks, at the pale emptiness that beckoned, impossible and unreachable.
Cold fingers slid between his neck and shoulder and rested there. In a low voice that seemed to match the scent of the mushrooms, the witch said, “Can you imagine, Kingkiller, what it was like to be blessed with the full force of Azlagûr’s dreams while still a child? What the power of those visions might do to you? How they might change you?…How lonely you would feel when you could see what others could not? When every moment was a waking dream? Can you imagine?”
He turned to her. The witch’s expression was distant and contemplative, a mood he had not seen in her before. She sipped from her dented goblet. Blood lay splattered in jagged coins across her dress, same as with his hands and jerkin.
“I believe you can, Kingkiller. My mother…she could not. Her dreams drew her away from her people to Nal Gorgoth, but she grew jealous when Azlagûr spoke to me and the Draumar knew I was to be their new Speaker. Their mehtra. Such a blessed thing. Yet my own flesh found it unbearable. Her resentment maddened her, and she turned against me, and in time, I had no choice but to strike her down.”
Another sip. “Do you judge me for it, Kingkiller? No, I think not. You would have killed Morzan had you the chance. You understand my decision, I believe. Something of it, at least. And when the time of black smoke arrives, you will understand better still.”
Her words struck a false note with Murtagh, but he struggled to think why. Would he have killed Morzan?…Yes. But there was more to it than that, and the touch of Bachel’s cold fingers made him want to dash her hand away and flee her presence.
He looked back at the patch of sky cupped between the snowbound peaks.
“I am not the only Speaker, you know, Kingkiller. There have been countless others before me, stretching back to the beginning of time. Nor am I the only one now in the land. Wherever the black smoke rises, there you will find the Draumar.”
That drew his attention back to her. She lifted a dark eyebrow. “Oh yes, Kingkiller. The Draumar have been part of the warp and weft of the world far more than you realize. Nor has it come about by happenstance. Why else do you think a Speaker sat in the Hall of the Soothsayer, whispering visions of what might be into the ears of the elves? Long has the will of Azlagûr shaped the course of events.”
She drained her goblet. “I will tell you this, Kingkiller. There are places deep underground where Azlagûr’s dreams become reality. It is true. Specters acquire substance, and the roots of the mountains seem to move, and it is difficult to know your way. Someday you shall see.”
Soon afterward, Bachel stood and collected herself, and she spoke no more of such things. Then they hoisted their kills onto litters, and the
cultists dragged them back to Nal Gorgoth while Murtagh and Bachel rode on Thorn.
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It was night, and Murtagh found himself staring into the dark mirror of water that filled the bucket in his cell. He did not recognize the bearded visage that looked back at him from the still surface.
An urge came upon him, and his lips moved as he attempted to speak his true name. The words were familiar upon his tongue, but they no longer rang true, and he felt a hollow despair as he realized he had again become a stranger to himself.
Anger flared, and he dashed the water aside, scattering the reflection in a thousand different directions.
The anger passed. Then he knelt and wet his hands in the water that remained in the bucket, and he washed them over and over. It seemed to him that the boar’s blood still clung to his skin, and so he scrubbed until the skin was red and raw, and yet the blood never seemed to lift free.
He sat kneeling before the bucket, staring at the scratches on his hands, and he wished…He wasn’t sure what he wished, only that it would somehow relieve the burning in his chest.
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The dreams that night were worse than before. They seemed more potent and immediate, but also more distorted and disturbing. Slaughtered villages rose before him, and memories of battle brought cold sweat to his brow. A current of deep notes—too discordant to call a melody—ran throughout, and it reminded him of the feel of a dragon’s mind, only vastly larger and more twisted and alien than even the maddest Eldunarí.
Then, amid the cavalcade of bloody images, came a memory. A true memory:
The arming room smelled of rust, oil, leather, and stale sweat. Afternoon light poured like honey through the slit windows and lit the blades of spears stored in racks
along the walls. It was a room of many hopes…and many fears.
Tornac tugged on the buckles along the side of Murtagh’s breastplate, checking that they were properly tight. Then he slapped Murtagh on the shoulder. “Good to go. Keep your breathing under control and you’ll have nothing to fear.”
“Nothing?”
“Not from the likes of Goreth. He’s fast enough, but he hasn’t the technique.” Tornac came around to Murtagh’s front and gave him a look-over from top to bottom. “You’ll do.” The words were more comforting than the armor, but even so, Murtagh knew the tough-minded swordsman was putting on a brave face. Goreth was one of the most feared duelists in the king’s court. He’d wounded three men in the past four months, and out of his twenty-seven duels, he’d lost only five.
Tornac read Murtagh’s thoughts easily enough. He always did. “Be of good courage. It’s an exhibition. The king doesn’t want to see you killed any more than he’d like to see a prize horse put down.”
“I know.”
“Remember what I taught you and you’ll acquit yourself with distinction.”
Then Tornac surprised him by giving him a brief embrace. It was the first time the swordsman had shown such emotion—but then, it was the first time Murtagh was to fight a duel.
They parted, and Murtagh let out a shaky laugh.
The brightness of the sandy arena caused him to pause and squint as his eyes adjusted. It was a brisk autumn day, but expectations of combat had raised his pulse, and he already felt overly heated in his armor.
The stands were packed with nobles, there to witness the spectacle of Morzan’s only-born son in an ostensibly friendly contest of arms against Goreth of Teirm, he of the silver sword. The duel had been Galbatorix’s idea. He had chanced to pass the sparring yards while Murtagh took his daily instruction with Tornac, and upon seeing them, the king had proposed that a more formal test of Murtagh’s skills might be appropriate. And as always, what the king desired was soon made manifest.
Murtagh saw many a familiar face in the stands, but no friendly ones. He knew Tornac was watching from the arming room, though, and the knowledge both gave him courage and made him all the more determined not to disappoint his mentor. That, and he would sooner die than embarrass himself before the current crowd. The
slightest hint of weakness would earn him a lifetime of derision at court, and his position was already difficult enough.
Goreth entered through the gateway opposite him. The man was tall and clean-limbed, with the sinuous grace of a practiced warrior. Despite Tornac’s assurances, there was no doubt that Goreth was a formidable fighter, and Murtagh knew he would be pressed to the limit of his abilities.
They saluted the king, who was a shadowed shape upon his throne beneath a velvet canopy. Then the heralds made their declarations, and the arena marshal read the rules of combat: No biting. No kicking while a man was upon the ground. No gouging of eyes. No striking of unmanly blows (by which was meant no striking below one’s belt).
At the conclusion of the interminable talking, a horn sounded, the marshal dropped his kerchief, and the duel was begun.
Despite the fire in his veins, Murtagh felt as if he were trapped in quicksand, barely able to move his legs or swing his arms. Yet he dodged and parried and beat his opponent’s blade as he should. They used no shields, as the contest was to be a test of pure bladesmanship, and Murtagh had forgone vambraces that he might move all the faster. He trusted his mail shirt to protect his arms from cuts.
Most times it would have. But the tip of Goreth’s sword found the cuff of Murtagh’s left sleeve, and the length of sharpened steel slid up under the gambeson he wore beneath the mail. A shivering line, hot and cold and agonizing, ran along the outside of his forearm.
Out of instinct, he yanked his arm back. He cried out as the sword cut him again on the return.
The fingers of his left hand spasmed and curled into a useless knot. If not for the onlookers, he would have conceded the duel, but pride, fear, and sheer stubborn anger forbade.
Goreth seized the advantage and stabbed again, quick. Retreating, Murtagh beat aside the attack. Goreth pressed him hard with several more strikes, and then he lunged, and Murtagh took a glancing blow to his hip, upon the skirt of mail. In a desperate attempt to recover, he replied with a swing of his own and caught Goreth’s elbow with the tip of his sword.
Goreth dropped his blade.
It was a lucky strike. Murtagh could not have hoped to duplicate it in a week of sparring. He did not hesitate and followed through as Tornac had taught him and slipped the point of his sword under Goreth’s arm and pricked him in the armpit, where the armor did not cover.
It was a narrow wound, but deep enough to cause Goreth to cry out and fall to the ground and to mark the end of the duel.
Or so Murtagh thought.
With blood dripping from his limp left arm, he looked to the king for the final verdict. It was tradition for Galbatorix to declare the winner of any contest he sat in witness of; the king’s word was final, and until he spoke, no outcome—no truth—was official.
The shadow leaned forward on the throne, and glints of light appeared on the tips of his crown, but the king’s face remained too dark to see his expression.
“Make an end of him, son of Morzan.”
At first Murtagh did not believe what he heard, but Galbatorix’s voice carried with unnatural force, and there was no mistaking his words. The crowd grew tense, and several gasps and cries sounded among the rows of seating, but no one spoke out against the king’s command. No one was so foolish.
Goreth had not their restraint. He began to beg in a high-pitched voice. In an instant the image of the famous warrior vanished, replaced by yet another frightened soldier crawling on the battlefield, pleading for mercy from the approaching enemy.
Murtagh hesitated. He frantically searched the edge of the arena, searched for any means of escape. Then he saw Tornac standing inside the entrance tunnel to the arena, out of sight from the audience, but in plain view of Murtagh. The swordmaster’s face was pale and pinched, and he looked as if he wanted to speak, but his lips remained pressed together, and his expression was severe. He shook his head, a single, short movement, and Murtagh understood. There was no escape to be had. And no help either.
“End him, son of Morzan.”
Then Murtagh did as he had to, though it made him sick to bear it. He went to Goreth and attempted to give the man a quick death with a cut to the neck. But Goreth raised his arm, and Murtagh’s blade skated off Goreth’s iron vambrace. The man wasn’t about to give up and die. Murtagh hated him for it as much as he pitied
him. He lost all sense of control then, and began to rain blows upon Goreth even as the man continued to attempt to fend him off. All the while Goreth kept screaming and pleading, and Murtagh was shouting as well, nonsense sounds to drown out the man’s voice.
When it was over, blood stained the packed sand for yards around them, and Goreth’s horribly cut and disfigured body was finally still.
Murtagh fell to one knee and used his sword as a crutch to keep from collapsing. It was a terrible abuse of the weapon, but right then he didn’t care how badly Tornac might thrash him for wrecking the edge on the blade.
A lone clapping sounded from the throne, and Galbatorix stood. The rest of the onlookers rose in response. “Well done, Murtagh.” He gestured with a finger, and Murtagh gasped and clutched his wounded forearm as skin and muscles squirmed like snakes and knit themselves whole. Then the king said, as an aside to the marshal: “Bring him to my chambers once he is washed and changed.”
“My liege.”
The king departed, along with his followers, and the arena quickly emptied, leaving Murtagh alone with the corpse of his first kill. The marshal approached, but before he could speak, Tornac appeared by Murtagh’s side. “I’ll see that he gets to the king,” Tornac said in a harsh voice, and the marshal did not argue.
As Tornac guided him out of the arena, Murtagh said, “I…I…He wouldn’t—” “You did what was necessary. Don’t think about it.”
But of course Murtagh did. And it was after meeting with Galbatorix in his chambers—where the king set him the task of destroying a village he believed was harboring traitors of the Varden—that Murtagh, with Tornac’s wholehearted agreement, decided to flee the capital and Galbatorix himself.
He never spoke of the duel again.
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Some days after the cultists began their preparations for the festival, a small group of visitors arrived at Nal Gorgoth. The men came riding on proud horses, and they blew a horn to announce their arrival. They were richly
appointed, and they carried pennants with colorful designs, and they were well armed and well armored.
In the temple’s inner sanctum, Murtagh sat upon a stone chair next to Bachel’s throne. More chairs had been set up in a double row extending from the dais with the throne, and on them reclined the visitors. The men looked to be a mix of nobles and, as evidenced by their fine garb, merchants. Their faces seemed to swim before Murtagh; he found it difficult to concentrate on their features, and remembering them was next to impossible. But there was something familiar about—
“Why, Murtagh! To think I would find you here, of all places. Whatever are you doing in Nal Gorgoth?”
The words came from a youngish man at the head of the left-hand row of chairs. Murtagh frowned as he struggled to focus. The man’s features sharpened for a moment, and a name drifted to the top of Murtagh’s mind: Lyreth.
Murtagh opened his mouth, closed it.
The young man burst out laughing. “My dear fellow, you look like a fish that’s been struck with an oar.” He moved his mouth to demonstrate.
The rest of the visitors laughed as well.
With a supreme effort, Murtagh found his voice. “I don’t know why I am here.”
“You must forgive him,” said Bachel. Above her bronze goblet, her offset mouth lifted in the smallest of smiles. “The Kingkiller is not himself these days.”
The gathered men again laughed, and the crows above imitated them with harsh, chattering cries.
Then cultists came with food. Swirls of thick, sage-scented smoke drifted from the nearby braziers, clogging the air, and Bachel and the visitors fell to talking with avid desire. Murtagh could not follow the conversation. The incense made his eyes burn and his throat fill with phlegm, and it made it even harder to concentrate, and the food distracted him, although…he found himself strangely reluctant to eat the cut of boar meat placed before
him. The meat no longer smelled sweet and savory, and its flavor had lost all appeal.
His gaze kept returning to the faces in front of him. Aside from the one who had spoken to him, he felt as if…as if he ought to know the man sitting by the end, on the right. Something about the man’s features lingered in Murtagh’s mind—an irritant that wouldn’t go away.
He put down his knife and stared at his plate, at the slices of meat that turned his stomach.
Beyond the rows of chairs, in the shadows by the entrance, Thorn sat curled on the mosaic, humming in a meaningless manner while Alín fed him scraps of boar.
Murtagh looked up. High above, in the shadowed vault of the ceiling, he thought he saw the pale circles of crow eyes looking down upon them, cold and cruel.
