“Leave her be!” said Sigling, and pulled Essie away, but the spell had already done its work, and Murtagh swept past them, cloak winged out behind him.
As he moved through the kitchen at the back of the inn, he heard Sigling and his wife utter sounds of astonishment, and then they and Essie started crying, but with joy, not grief.
Murtagh wasn’t done. While Essie’s parents were so distracted, he reached out with his mind and slipped unnoticed into their stream of thoughts. He was subtle, and no probing was needed. The very thing he sought was forefront in each consciousness: the moment, three years ago, when Essie had bumped into her father in the kitchen while he was carrying the dented iron stewpot with the crooked handle that had been full of water boiled for washing. Essie had been running about, not looking, not paying attention, and she had been where she wasn’t expected. From Sigling now, guilt and relief intermixed. From his wife, relief and sorrow and a relaxation of close-held resentment over how her husband had caused, though unintentionally, the accident.
Murtagh withdrew. His fears had been unfounded, and for that, he was glad. Essie and her siblings were safe with their family. There was nothing more he needed to do here.
He felt tears in his own eyes. At least he’d been able to accomplish some good today. No child should have to grow up with a scar like Essie’s…or his own. For an instant, he imagined smoothing his back with magic as he’d smoothed Essie’s arm, but he shook off the thought. Some hurts went too deep to heal.
He was his father’s son, and he could never pretend otherwise.
In the alley outside the Fulsome Feast, Murtagh lifted his head and took a deep breath of the night air. It was still snowing, soft flakes drifting down in a tumbling veil, and the whole city felt calm and quiet.
His pulse began to slow.
How long had it been since he’d last killed a man? Over a year. A pair of bandits had jumped him as he was returning to camp one evening—foolish, uneducated louts who hadn’t the slightest chance of taking him down. He’d fought back out of reflex, and by the time he knew what was happening, the two unfortunates were already lying on the ground. He could still hear the whimpers the younger one had made as he died….
Murtagh grimaced. Some people went their whole lives without killing. He wondered what that was like.
A drop of blood—not his own—trickled down the back of his hand. Disgusted, he scraped it off against the side of the building. The splinters bothered him less than the gore.
Even though he hadn’t gotten a specific location from Sarros, at least he now knew that the place Umaroth had warned him of existed. He would have far preferred disappointment. Whatever truth lay hidden beneath the field of blackened earth, he doubted it would herald anything good. Life was never so simple.
A questioning thought reached him from outside Ceunon: Thorn fearful for his safety.
I’m fine, Murtagh told him. Just a bit of trouble.
Do I need to come?
I don’t think so, but stand by in any case.
Always.
Thorn subsided with cautious watchfulness, but Murtagh still felt the thread of connection that joined them: a comforting closeness that had become the one unchanging reality in their lives.
He started down the alley. Time to go. The city watch would soon arrive to investigate the disturbance, and he’d lingered long enough.
A flicker of motion high above caught his attention.
At first Murtagh wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
Sailing down from the underside of the firelit clouds was a small ship of grass, no more than a hand or two in length. The hull and sail were made of woven blades, and the mast and spars built from lengths of stem.
No crew—however diminutive—was to be seen; the ship moved of its own accord, driven and sustained by an invisible force. It circled him twice, and he saw a tiny pennant fluttering above the equally tiny crow’s nest.
Then the ship turned westward and vanished within the veil of descending snow, leaving behind no trace of its existence.
Murtagh smiled and shook his head. He didn’t know who had made the ship or what it signified, but the fact that something so whimsical, so singular, could exist filled him with an unaccustomed joy.
He thought back to what he’d told the girl, Essie. Perhaps he should take his own advice. Perhaps it was time to stop running and return to old friends.
His smile faded. Wherever he’d gone in the year since Galbatorix’s death, he had heard the poison in people’s voices when they spoke his name. Few there were, aside from Nasuada, who would trust him after his actions in service to the king. It was a bitter, unfair truth—one that circumstances had long since forced him to accept.
Because of it, he had hidden his face, changed his name, and kept to the fringes of settled land, never walking where others might know him. And while the time alone had done both him and Thorn good, it was no way to live the rest of their lives.
So again he wondered. Had the time come to turn and face their past?
No. The thought arrived with decisive immediacy. He wasn’t sure if the conviction was his own or Thorn’s or a combination thereof. Even if they attempted to rejoin polite society, Murtagh couldn’t imagine how they would ever be seen as anything more than murderers and traitors.
Besides…Murtagh looked down at the object he was holding: the bird-skull amulet he’d taken off Sarros’s neck. A crow’s skull, by the look of it.
Who was the witch-woman Bachel? Murtagh had never heard of her. Casting spells without words was a wild, dangerous thing, and rare was the magician brave, foolish, or talented enough to risk it. Even with the proper training, he wouldn’t have dared do so in the Fulsome Feast, not with so many innocent bystanders nearby. And what of the Dreamers that Sarros had mentioned? Were they associates of Bachel? Always more mysteries.
No, before anything else, Murtagh wanted to know where the gleaming stone had come from, and he wanted to find the witch-woman Bachel and ask her a few questions.
The answers, he suspected, would be most interesting.
A brassy alarm bell sounded elsewhere in Ceunon, jarring him from his reverie. He tucked the amulet into his cloak and set off at a quick pace for the southern gates, determined to escape the city before the watch found him and he had to kill someone he would regret.
CHAPTER IV
Conclave
Fugitives again, thought Murtagh as he ran through Ceunon’s open gatehouse. It seemed like he and Thorn were always having to flee one place or another. Unwanted. That’s what we are.
A horn rang out within the city, and he ducked his head, half expecting a flight of angry arrows to land about him. He heard such horns in his dreams: dread-inducing clarions that heralded the approach of faceless hunters, relentless in their pursuit.
He ran faster.
Past the stables outside the city walls, he swung off the road and into rows of snow-dusted barley, heading east toward where Thorn waited for him.
The night was descending into total blackness. Even once his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could barely see where to put his feet. Nevertheless, he maintained his pace as best he could, determined to put distance between him and Ceunon.
Several molehills caused him to stumble, and he nearly twisted his ankle in a badger hole.
“Son of an Urgal,” he muttered.
At the far end of the fields, he paused to look back. The city gate had been closed, and lamps bobbed along the outer walls as soldiers patrolled the battlements, but he saw no sign that anyone had left Ceunon to give chase.