The doors closed with heavy finality.
You do not expect me to depart, hmm? said Thorn, sharing his thoughts with Nasuada.
The queen’s expression didn’t change. “Of course not. You are a welcome guest, Thorn.”
Murtagh wondered if the same were true of him.
A spate of lightheadedness caused him to sway, and Nasuada said, “Sit before you fall over.”
With some gratitude, he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed.
He watched, wary, as Nasuada approached with perfectly measured steps and settled into Alín’s recently vacated seat. “You should be careful. It was no sure thing that you would live. You were fever-blind and raving when Thorn brought you here. My spellcasters had to labor long and hard to save you.”
He winced. The attentions of Du Vrangr Gata were hardly what he would have wanted, but then, he was alive, and for that he was grateful. “Then I am in their debt. And yours.” Later, he would have to use the Name of Names to remove whatever unwanted enchantments the queen’s pet magicians might have placed upon him. As well as Bachel, he thought with sudden alarm.
Nasuada inclined her head. “The work was not entirely theirs. I am told”—her eyes flickered toward Thorn—“that your companion, the Urgal Uvek, used a charm that was sufficient to keep you from dying on the spot.”
“He did a lot more than just that.” Murtagh spoke his next words with care. “Who else knows that Thorn and I are in Ilirea?”
She turned and plucked a dried apricot from the platter on the side table and took the smallest bite.
“If you are asking whether the people of the city are currently assembled outside these walls, clamoring for your head…you may rest assured, they are not. Thorn was careful in his approach. He found my mind, at night, and I saw to it that no one might hear his wings as he brought you to this very room.” She waited as he took another drink. “Only I, my handmaids, and a select few of my spellcasters know you are here, and they have all sworn to me oaths of utmost secrecy in the ancient language.”
That made Murtagh feel better. But only a bit. “And what of you?” he asked. “Do you wish to claim my head, Your Majesty?” He trembled slightly, and he was not sure why. He hoped it went unnoticed.
The queen took her time answering. “That depends.” Her bearing softened somewhat then, and for the first time, a deep well of concern appeared within her eyes. The sight of it left him unbalanced. He was not used to such consideration. “Murtagh…what happened? Thorn has given me some of it, but not all he said made sense, and Alín insisted it was not her place to say. I would have the rest from you. The truth.”
“The truth…” Murtagh reached over, took the platter of food from the side table, and placed it on his lap. “If I may.”
“As you will.”
He tore off a piece of bread and paired it with the hard sheep cheese. He chewed without thinking, without feeling, simply seeking the strength to say what was needed.
Nasuada waited without complaint. She contained a stillness not unlike Uvek’s: a patient, careful watchfulness, as of a hunter observing a dangerous animal.
Murtagh knew he was that animal.
He swallowed. “Did you receive my letter? I sent you one from Gil’ead.”
Nasuada nodded. “It arrived two days before you did. I must say, it raised more questions than it answered.”
“Ah. Well then…Where to start?” He started at the beginning, on the day they had parted—on the day Galbatorix had died—when Umaroth had warned him of brimstone and fire and not delving too deeply in the depths. He spoke slowly, haltingly, at first, finding it difficult to frame things with the proper words. Nasuada did not press him, and the words came more easily as he went. At least for a time. He told her of his suspicions and the reasons he’d pursued them, and how that pursuit had led him to Ceunon and thence to Gil’ead.
He told her of all that had occurred in Gil’ead, of Carabel and Muckmaw and Captain Wren and the traitors within Du Vrangr Gata—of Lyreth and the tangle box, and the destruction that had resulted thereof.
Nasuada listened without interruption, but he saw her expression alternately soften and harden, and often he could not tell why.
Then of his and Thorn’s great flight north, he spoke. Of the mountains and the herds of red deer and the villages of the Urgals. He drank and ate as he could, but his appetite deserted him when it came time to speak of Nal Gorgoth.
Murtagh faltered then, and the words again grew difficult. Yet he persisted. He spoke unsparingly of the village, and Bachel, and his mistakes that resulted in the witch ensnaring and imprisoning both him and Thorn.
He made no attempt to hide what had happened to them while in Bachel’s thrall. He told Nasuada every sordid detail, and as he spoke of their torture, she placed her hand on his, and the understanding in her eyes caused him even more pain than his recollection.
“You must hate me for what I did to you,” he said in a thick voice.
“At first, but only at first. It wasn’t your choice.”
He squeezed her fingers, a silent thanks. Still, his guilt remained. “I don’t know how you endured. I…I couldn’t.”
“It helped to know you cared.”
Tears again filled his eyes, and he looked out the window, unable to bear Nasuada’s gaze. “She broke me. And there was nothing I could do about it. I…” His voice hitched, and his throat tightened like a clenched fist.
Then he spoke of the raid on the Orthroc. The images that filled his head were worse than any nightmare, and when he attempted to explain whom he had slain—attempted to describe the fallen bodies, large and small—his emotions burst forth, and he wept openly, without shame.
Nasuada stirred, and he felt her hand upon the back of his head, and he bent toward her as his grief ran its course. She held him, and her presence was a balm for his soul.
In time, he found the strength to continue.
“Do you think that the creature you felt was Azlagûr?”
They were sitting by the dormer window, looking out over a small atrium with an ash tree growing in the center and an artful stream that wound among beds of perennials. Rock doves roosted among the branches of the ash, and a cheeky red-tailed squirrel ran up and down the trunk, chattering at every movement above and below.
After speaking for so long, Murtagh couldn’t bear to remain in the bed, so they had moved to the sill, next to Thorn. Murtagh’s legs had been stiff and weak, but Nasuada had helped him, without comment, by wrapping an arm tight around his waist.
Her scent was completely different from the stench of brimstone: sweet and clean and healthy. It made it hard for him to concentrate.
“I don’t know. If nothing else, I believe it was what the Draumar believe to be Azlagûr.”
Nasuada looked out over the walls of the atrium toward the western horizon. The sun was setting, and the buildings of Ilirea cast long shadows back toward the citadel. The serenity of the city stood in stark contrast to how it had last appeared to him: covered in smoke, lit with fire, and echoing with the discordant clamor of battle. Not unlike his final visions of Nal Gorgoth….
“Do you think you killed it?” she asked.
“I hope so, but…I fear not.”
She looked back at him, and he saw his concern mirrored in her eyes. “How could a creature so large go undiscovered for so long?”
“I’m not sure it has. The Draumar know of it, and the dragons too, it seems. Some of them, at least.” He scratched his beard. It was getting longer than he liked. “I need to talk with Eragon, to warn him. And I want to question Umaroth and find out exactly what he and the other Eldunarí know. I’d ask you to send a courier on my behalf, but I wouldn’t trust this to a scroll or to someone’s mind. Besides, a courier would be too slow, and— No, once I’m fit, Thorn and I will go to Mount Arngor.”