A moment of silence passed as Murtagh studied Uvek again, reevaluating. He knew the Urgals had magicians of their own, but he had never met any; the alliance between Galbatorix and their kind had already been broken by the time the Twins dragged him back to Urû’baen.
His knees felt suddenly weak, and he lowered himself to the floor, using the iron bars for support. He reached back and pulled over his cloak and draped it across his shoulders. “There has to be a way to escape,” he muttered.
Uvek chuckled, an unpleasant sound. “I am stronger than you, and I have more clear head, but I cannot find escape. The witch is smart, and strong too.”
Murtagh blinked. He couldn’t seem to clear his eyes; everything appeared slightly blurry. “If I could just talk to Thorn—”
“If wishes were real, world would end.”
“The…the world might be ending anyway.”
“Hrmm. That depend on what witch is want to do.”
“How did you…How were you…” The light from the lamp seemed to fail, and the shadows narrowed his vision, and all grew dark and grey.
“Human?…Human?…Open eyes, Murtagh-man. Open….”
The dreams this time were more fragmented. Quick flashes of images, each of which carried a charge of emotion strong enough to knock a man from his feet. Murtagh found himself whipped from the heights of frenzied delight to the depths of grim morbidity and back again. At times, he thought he felt Thorn, and their dreams seemed to intertwine, and then the whirling currents of fevered imaginings would rip them apart: strange tides leading to stranger shores.
Throughout, Murtagh tried to hold to his sense of self, but it was difficult, for he did not know what was real and he had no lodestone to set his course by. The experience was exhausting and terrifying in equal measure, even more so because he sensed a gaping chasm underlying all of the visions—and, within that chasm, a lurking presence so huge and malevolent, he shrank from it for fear of going mad.
In desperation, he cried out in the ancient language, trying to still the stormy waters of his mind. But though he could voice the words of power, he could not give them the strength needed to work a change in the sawtoothed jags of disjointed images.
Helpless, he had no choice but to ride the ups and downs of the stormy swells and hope—hope—that they would soon subside.
A splash of cold water roused Murtagh from his torpor.
He sputtered and inhaled a spray of droplets. He started to cough.
A pair of white-robed cultists stood over him. One held an empty bucket, the other a wooden bowl and spoon.
“Wha—”
The men pinned him against the hard floor, holding down his arms and legs. He thrashed, but he had no strength. They restrained him as easily as a child.
One of them produced a small crystal vial from inside his tunic. Murtagh recognized it as containing the same enchanted vapor Bachel had used on him. No!
He struggled harder as the cultist unstoppered the vial and blew the contents into his face. The vapor filled Murtagh’s nostrils, and within seconds, his will to resist bled away, and his limbs grew slack, and he stared unblinking at the ceiling.
“Keep him upright, that I may feed him,” said the other cultist.
Murtagh felt himself pushed into a sitting position. Then the man who held him grabbed his jaw and forced his mouth open while his companion spooned in slop. Murtagh gagged. A large portion spilled onto his shirt.
The cultist frowned, and after the next spoonful, he pinched Murtagh’s nose and pressed the palm of his hand over Murtagh’s mouth.
As the slop ran down his throat, Murtagh recognized the burning brandy taste.
When the bowl was empty, the cultists let him fall onto his side and left the cell. The door closed with a hollow clang.
Footsteps receded into the distance.
From across the hall, Uvek’s voice sounded: “Murtagh-man? Can you speak?”
Murtagh made an incoherent sound and tried to roll onto his side. The movement nearly made him throw up. Before he could progress any further, more footsteps echoed through the dungeon, this time approaching.
The pair of white-robed cultists returned with empty hands. They opened the cell and, despite Murtagh’s murmured protestations, picked him up by his arms and dragged him away.
CHAPTER XV
Obliteration
Two turns of the hall brought them to a wooden door. The door opened to a stone room with a brazier full of glowing coals and a wooden slab table fitted with iron manacles.
The sight struck him with shocking force. It was horribly similar to how the Hall of the Soothsayer had appeared when Galbatorix had forced him to torture Nasuada therein. Every part of Murtagh’s being rebelled at what lay before him. He rejected, repudiated, and forswore both past and future, and for a second, the searing fire of recognition burned away the effects of the vorgethan.
No! He dug in his heels and twisted in his captors’ hands in a futile attempt to break free. Desperate, he bent and bit the hand of one man. The cultist yelled as hot blood pulsed into Murtagh’s mouth.
The men slammed him against the table, and stars flashed across his vision as his head hit the wood. He continued to struggle even as they forced the manacles about his wrists and ankles.
“No,” he growled, barely audible.
The cultists ignored him. They withdrew to the corners of the room and stood at attention, the one man cradling his hand as blood dripped from the teeth marks Murtagh had left in his flesh.
Again, Murtagh tried to use magic. Again, he failed.
The door swung open, and—with a rush of air as from a beat of giant wings—Bachel strode in. The witch wore a long, black, high-collared robe with gold stitching along the cuffs. From her brow rose a matching headdress, stiff and splayed, made of netted threads adorned with pearls and the polished skulls of crows. The dark backdrop of the headdress framed her angular face, as in a carefully painted portrait. But unlike in most portraits, a mask covered the upper half of her face, and it seemed to blend into her skin and grant the witch a strange, draconic aspect, as if the shape of a dragon were somehow imposed over her body, as a glamour or an illusion.
It was more than a simple trick; Murtagh could feel an additional presence in the room, a stifling, inhuman force for which Bachel was merely the vessel.
The effect of the mask was the same as…as…He struggled to remember. Then it came to him: Captain Wren. The same as the masks the captain kept in his study, and it seemed to Murtagh they must have come from the same place. Perhaps Wren had given the Draumar the mask. Or perhaps they gave him his masks.
Either way, Bachel had taken on a terrifying, outsized appearance, and every sound and movement she made acquired a heightened reality, as if he lay before a god made flesh.
As disorienting and intimidating as the experience was, that wasn’t the worst of it. Not for him. For the mask reminded him, more than anything, of when Galbatorix had ordered him to wear a half mask of his own while interrogating Nasuada. Why exactly, Murtagh had never known, but he suspected the king wanted to force distance between Nasuada and him, that she might take no comfort in any look or expression of his, and he might more easily assume the role of torturer.
Murtagh had hated the blasted thing.
“Welcome, Kingkiller.” The witch’s words resonated as if from the peaks of the mountains: a supernatural sound that in no way resembled the voice of a human or elf.