And he knew that every soldier owed him fealty, and that he could order them onto the field of battle, and they would die for him to the last.
Murtagh felt power to be his, and he welcomed the sense of control. With it, he could do what was right—what was needed—and, more important, he could keep Thorn and himself safe. No one could command or enslave them if they ruled the land. How simple. How direct. Why had he never thought about it before? No longer would he have to wrestle with the question of whether to keep apart from the doings of Alagaësia. By assuming his rightful place on the throne, he could sidestep the problem, and everyone in the realm might become a part of him, rather than he a part of them.
He smiled as he beheld his dominion. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he had found his place.
At the end of the impossibly large audience chamber, a trefoil window allowed for a view westward, and framed in it, a black sun descended….
“Murtagh-man…Can you hear me?…Wake now, human…. Human?”
The dark arch of the stone ceiling was the first thing Murtagh saw. He blinked and stirred. Every muscle in his body felt sore and strained; he’d pulled against the manacles with all his might, and he was paying the price for it now. Tomorrow would be worse.
Dried blood cracked on his chest as he rolled to his knees. His mind was still bleary, his wits dulled, his vision fuzzed.
On the other side of the hallway, he saw Uvek crouched by the door to the Urgal’s own enclosure, the tips of his horns touching the bars. It was difficult to tell, but Murtagh thought the Urgal appeared, if not concerned, at least of a mind to commiserate with a fellow prisoner.
“Can you speak, Murtagh-man?”
It took him longer than he liked to make a sound: “I—”
Footsteps echoed off the walls, approaching. Dread filled Murtagh, and he scooted back, away from the door to his cell. Opposite him, Uvek silently withdrew until he was hidden within shadow.
Then Murtagh saw Alín sweep down the hallway. She stopped before his cell and stared at him, her cheeks as pale as her robe. Her eyebrows narrowed, and her lips pressed together, and she trembled slightly, as if racked by a powerful passion.
She knelt and placed a wooden plate in his cell, along with a small pitcher of what smelled like watered wine. The plate held bread and hard cheese and several strips of smoked bergenhed.
Again she stood. She smoothed the front of her robe, and Murtagh noticed that her hands were shaking. Then she turned and ran from his cell, and her robe flapped like a pennant in the wind.
“You have friend, Murtagh-man.” Uvek’s rumbling voice preceded him as the Urgal emerged from the shadows.
“…Maybe.” Sudden hunger—ravenous, burning, unbearable—sent Murtagh scrabbling forward to tear at the bread and cheese. His own hands were no more steady than Alín’s. Whether she was a friend or not, the unmistakable flavor of brandy tainted the food she’d brought—the dreaded drug vorgethan. For a moment, he considered forgoing the food, but he was desperately weak. If he did not eat, he knew his will would desert him entirely. To survive, he had to force down the very poison that kept him imprisoned.
“The witch treated you roughly,” said Uvek.
It wasn’t a question. Looking at him again, Murtagh saw a kindness in the Urgal’s expression that he had never before encountered among Uvek’s race. An image came to Murtagh, so bright and strong that he felt as if he were looking upon another time and place—an image of Uvek sitting on a high mountain ridge, near a scraggled, windblown pine…sitting hunched over a single blue flower, wan and delicate, a thoughtful expression on his face.
Murtagh shook his head. The Breath and the vorgethan were making reality as thin as a threadbare curtain, as if he could peek through a frayed hole and see what otherwise would be hidden.
“What does she want from you, Murtagh-man?”
“She…” He coughed. Flakes of dried blood fell to the floor. “She wants me to swear fealty to her and to join the Draumar.”
Uvek tilted his head. The tip of one horn tapped the bars of his cell. “She wants same from me.”
“But she doesn’t torture you.”
“Not since they capture you. I think she find you more interesting.”
“Lucky me.” Murtagh drank deeply of the watered wine and then started in on the smoked bergenhed. As he chewed, he studied Uvek. “Why does Bachel seek your fealty?”
“The Draumar seek fealty from all who cross path.”
Murtagh shook his head again. He was having trouble summoning the words he needed. “Yes, but…No. Why…why you?”
“Because I was one they could find.”
That still wasn’t what Murtagh wanted to know, but expressing himself was too difficult, so he grunted and focused on eating.
When the food was gone, he leaned back and rested his head against the cold stone of the cell, closing his eyes while he tried to strengthen the thin, nearly indetectable umbilical cord that joined him and Thorn. Uvek watched the whole while, but Murtagh didn’t care. There was plenty of iron separating him from the Urgal, and besides, he didn’t feel threatened by Uvek…though he felt sure that Uvek was capable of great violence when the occasion called for it.
Murtagh found little success with Thorn. All he could discern were indistinct emotions, none of them pleasant. Full thoughts and words still proved impossible to exchange. In any case, Murtagh’s mind kept wandering, and he noticed himself slipping in and out of awareness, as if the world were divided into short sections of consciousness, brief flashes of lucidity, and the rest madness, or worse, nonexistence.
Yet throughout, his mind kept returning to Nasuada, and the horrible intimacy of their time together in the Hall of the Soothsayer. His shame swelled, and with it, his respect for her. That she had resisted Galbatorix and endured for so long now seemed miraculous to Murtagh. He wasn’t sure how she had managed. Nor how she had recovered. He feared he wasn’t as strong.
He was nearly asleep—or lost in a fugue state that resembled sleep—when Uvek said, “Murtagh-man, why did you and Thorn-dragon come to Nal Gorgoth?”
“Wanted to…find out…who Bachel…brimstone…stone.”
“How did Draumar catch you? Was when earth shook?”
It was too difficult to explain in full. “No…got careless…after feast…”
He heard Uvek shift, and the Urgal made an angry sound. “Feast! How long you been in Nal Gorgoth, Murtagh-man?”
“Two…two days.”
“Why not kill Draumar when you could?”
Murtagh forced his eyes open. “…was curious. Important to know before act.”
Uvek’s beetled brow smoothed, and then his heavy head moved up and down. “Ah. That wise, Murtagh-man. But now you trapped like Uvek. Would have been better act sooner, save much pain, much…”
His voice faded into oblivion as Murtagh’s eyes rolled back, and he fell away from the cell, down, down, down, through endless black, into the harsh visions of promised dreams.
CHAPTER XVII
Fragments
The cultists came for him again.
The cell door banged open, and Murtagh woke with a start, confused. It felt like the middle of the night, though there was no way to tell in the windowless space. Night or day, time had lost all sense of cohesion, and for a scattered few seconds, he had no idea where he was or what was happening.