“Curse you,” he muttered, meaning the page. It wasn’t the betrayal itself that bothered him—Murtagh was well acquainted with betrayal—it was the inconsistency. Pages weren’t supposed to rat out those who came to them in confidence! How could a court function otherwise?
A feather-light touch brushed Murtagh’s mind.
He recoiled, retreating deep within himself and armoring his mind with a wall of iron determination. “You shall not have me,” he muttered again and again, using the words to focus his thoughts. The emptier his mind, the less there would be for the magician to find.
The robed man frowned and said something to the soldiers. He pointed down the street.
Murtagh moved. Time to leave before the soldiers cornered him.
He’d just reached the other end of the alley when a thickset man in a sleeveless jerkin stepped in front of him. The man’s bare arms were as heavily muscled as a smith’s, and he carried a cudgel in one hand.
Murtagh nearly struck the stranger, but the man backed off, arms spread wide, and in a low, gruff voice said, “Are you Tornac?”
“Who asks?” He had made no mention of Tornac to the page, although he had used the name on the note for Ilenna. Was the man her servant? If not…
A flicker of annoyance crossed the man’s face. “The werecat Carabel has sent me. She requests the company of this Tornac.”
A werecat! Alarm and curiosity coursed through Murtagh. He glanced back. The magician and soldiers were nearly to the mouth of the alleyway. He had to decide. “That’s me,” he said, curt.
“This way, then. Right quicklike, if you please.”
The bare-armed man hurried up the side street, and Murtagh followed close behind, carrying his staff sideways in his hand. There was no reason for subterfuge now.
For a few minutes, the only sounds were their breath and the soft pad of their boots on the ground.
Murtagh’s mind whirled with puzzlement. How had Carabel ended up with his note? Of all the creatures in Alagaësia, werecats were the most secretive. Always they kept apart from others, although in the final press of the war, they had joined forces with the Varden against Galbatorix. But on the whole, they weren’t partisan as the other races were.
Since the fall of the Empire, Murtagh had heard tell that a werecat sat on a velvet cushion next to Nasuada’s throne. And likewise in King Orrin’s court in Surda, and in the courts of all the great cities. Murtagh assumed Carabel served in a similar fashion at Gil’ead. But what did she want with him?
She can’t know who I really am, he thought. Unless, of course, she was a confederate of Ilenna’s. He supposed he would find out soon enough.
Murtagh felt another faint touch against his mind, but it was so soft as to be nearly imperceptible, and it slid past without stopping.
Not so skilled, are you? he thought. But he didn’t allow himself to relax. Not yet.
The man led him to a narrow house built close to the fortress, through the house’s gated yard, and down a flight of mossy stairs set against the fortress’s outer wall. At the bottom was a well situated within an alcove adorned with carved flowers. Murtagh was entirely unsurprised when the man pushed on a petal and a small stone door swung open.
A breath of cold air washed over them.
Most castles had bolt-holes or the like. Escape routes for the nobles who lived within. Such things compromised the fortifications, but when needed, nothing else would suffice.
“After you, sir,” said the man, holding the door open. A low, dark tunnel ran under the fortress, its far end hidden in shadow. “Carabel awaits.”
“And what does she wish with me?”
“Wouldn’t be my place t’ say. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”
Murtagh hesitated. Once he entered the fortress, it would be far, far harder to leave, even with all of his magical prowess. It was a risk. A big one. How likely was it that he was walking into a trap?
The man shifted with impatience.
Murtagh wished he could tell Thorn what was happening, but he didn’t dare expose his consciousness for the equivalent of a mental shout.
He spared a glance for the open sky and wondered when he would see it again. Then he gathered his cloak close and ducked inside.
The door shut behind them with a soft thud, and the sound echoed the length of the tunnel.
CHAPTER II
Questions for a Cat
The tunnel smelled of wet stone, mold, and the sweat of the man shuffling along behind him. It was pitch-black.
Murtagh felt an uncomfortable prickle along his spine: not a premonition, but a concern. It would be easy for the man to hit him in the head with the cudgel. Too easy. Murtagh had wards to fend off attacks, but there was no knowing what enchantments your opponent had, if any.
The mark on his palm no longer itched, which gave him some comfort. Nevertheless, he remained tense.
“Keep straight,” said the man, rough. “ ’Bout a hundred feet there’s a turn to the right. Be careful, there are stairs going up directly after.”
“Understood.”
Murtagh was tempted to summon a werelight, but there was no point in revealing that he could use magic.
As he felt his way through the dark, a profusion of possibilities bedeviled him. A thousand likely—and unlikely—fates, each worse than the last. It was fruitless speculation, so he wrenched his thoughts away and instead reviewed his answers to every question he could imagine.
He wasn’t about to allow Carabel to catch him out, even if she were the cleverest of werecats.
In the blackness beneath the ground, the hundred feet seemed more like a thousand. Murtagh would have sworn they had crossed the fortress yard and were under the houses on the other side.
Just when he was about to ask how much farther they had to go, the hand he had on the wall slipped around a corner. Finally! He breathed a sigh of relief as he turned. Another stride, and his left foot bumped into the bottom of a step.
Using his staff for balance, he climbed.
One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
Fi— He slipped on the fifth step; a patch of water caused his boot to lose its grip. He caught himself on his staff and then continued, heart pounding.
Five…
Six…
Seven. A dim thread of light appeared before him, tall and straight.
“Give it a good push,” said the man. “It’ll open right fine.”
Murtagh put his hand out and pushed. An arched door swung open, revealing a small storeroom. A lit candle sat in a sconce on the wall, and after the profound blackness of the tunnel, the flickering flame was almost blinding. Several barrels were stacked in one corner, and dried hams and chains of sausages hung from hooks in the ceiling.
“Nasty business that,” said the man. Murtagh turned to see him closing the door behind them; when shut, the outline of the door was practically invisible. The man brushed cobwebs from his shoulders and made a face. “Too many spiders down there. Right, she’ll be wanting to see you directly. This way.”
Murtagh followed as the man led him through several side passages in the fortress—retreating behind corners whenever they heard voices—until they arrived at a dark wood door somewhere on the eastern side of the complex.
The sleeveless man bowed in what Murtagh thought was a slightly mocking fashion and opened the door for him.
Murtagh stepped through it.
He found himself in a sumptuously appointed study. Rows of polished bookcases lined the walls; thick dwarven rugs, rich with reds, greens, and blues, covered the floor; and a beautiful map of Alagaësia, painstakingly annotated with thousands of names, was framed as a centerpiece above a stone fireplace, wherein a stack of logs merrily burned.