“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.