Whatever happened, he wanted to protect the children. But it would be difficult, very difficult, given the witch’s abilities.
He fished out one of the gold crowns from the pouch on his belt and held it up before the fire. The metal gleamed with an almost mirror-smooth polish. There was a spell on it, he guessed, to preserve the coin from wear.
Nasuada’s sculpted profile remained as mysterious as ever. He brushed a thumb across her cheek and then stopped, feeling as if he’d taken an unwarranted liberty.
She was in danger—he was sure of it—and in no small part from Bachel. And he was determined to help protect her. “If only…,” he murmured, then stopped. Was there a more useless phrase than that? If only he hadn’t convinced Galbatorix to have Nasuada abducted. But if he hadn’t, the king would have killed her instead. As had happened so often in Murtagh’s life, he’d been forced to choose between a pair of evils, and though he tried to pick the lesser of the two, it was evil all the same.
Moody, he put away the coin and stared into the depths of the fire.
He wished he had thought to take the compendium from Thorn’s saddlebags and bring it with him. Reading would have been a welcome distraction. Instead, he turned to composing another poem.
The words came in fits and starts, with little grace, and the lines seemed broken and unpleasant to hear. Still, he kept trying to hammer them smooth, and in the end, he recited to himself:
Fragile is the flower that grows in darkness.
Precious is the flower that blossoms at night.
Their gardeners absent, blind, or uncaring.
But bent and broken petals still have beauty
All their own. Have care where you tread, lest you
Trample the treasures scattered before your feet.
When the fire had burned for what seemed like an hour, Murtagh ground out the embers with the heel of his boot, went to the east-facing windows, and looked down at the men standing guard in the courtyard.
He swore. Instead of two, there were now seven warriors, all of them awake. And upon their mailed chests, he saw the familiar shape of the cultists’ enchanted bird-skull amulet. Bachel was sending him a message. She knew he’d snuck out of his room the previous night, and now she was taking precautions to keep him from doing so again. Seven men or two—the exact numbers didn’t matter. What mattered were the amulets, which might be able to block the spell he had used before.
There was only one way to find out.
“Slytha,” he murmured.
Murtagh felt the slightest decrease of strength, but the men seemed entirely unaffected. “Blast it,” he said between clenched teeth.
Thorn eyed him from where he lay curled upon the flagstones. Do you wish me to remove the men?
The idea was tempting. Not yet. Let me think a moment.
A puff of grey smoke rose from Thorn’s nostrils. The warriors gave him nervous looks.
Murtagh retreated from the windows and paced the room while he considered options. It was his memory of the tangle box that gave him the first hint of a solution. The box had been designed to catch and hold spellcasters who were likewise protected against magic. It had done so through a combination of brute force and by altering the things around an unlucky captive, but not the captive themselves.
We’ll have to be quick, said Murtagh, moving back to the windows.
They won’t escape, replied Thorn.
Murtagh flexed his hands, readying himself. Then he drew in his will and whispered, “Thrysta vindr.” The spell was simple enough, but it was the intent that mattered.
At first the seven warriors didn’t notice that anything was amiss. Then one of them made a curious face and motioned in a panicked way toward the man opposite him. His companion frowned.
Murtagh was already moving. He leapt through the window, slid across the skirt-roof below—barely bothering to slow himself—and dropped to the courtyard.
His sudden appearance startled the men, caused them to seize their spears and train them on Murtagh. But when they attempted to shout and raise the alarm, no sound came from their mouths. For, as Murtagh knew, the spell had hardened the air about their faces so that they could neither inhale nor exhale.
The men’s eyes bulged with anger, outrage, and horror, and their faces turned purple as the blood congested beneath their skin. They were courageous, though. Murtagh would give them that. Five of the men charged him, while one turned to run into the main part of the village and one ran toward the entrance of the temple.
Thorn reached out with a forefoot and slapped the village-bound warrior to the ground. He did not rise.
Murtagh darted sideways and slammed his shoulder into the man running for the temple. The warrior stumbled and fell.
The five other men closed upon Murtagh. A clumsy jab of a spear glanced off his wards, and then he managed to retreat and put the ruined fountain between him and his pursuers.
The warriors tried to follow. But they were out of air. One after another, they collapsed, faces mottled and discolored, veins standing proud along their corded necks.
Then all was quiet, save for the kicking of their feet on the flagstones.
Murtagh hurried to Thorn and checked that the saddle straps were secure. He hadn’t removed the dragon’s tack the whole time they’d been in Nal Gorgoth, nor had Thorn asked him to. “There’s no helping it now,” said Murtagh in a low voice.
We should leave before anyone notices.
“First the cave.” Thorn snorted in disapproval, and Murtagh gave him a look. “It’s our only chance to find out what’s in there.”
The dragon growled deep in his chest. Fine, but I will be glad to be gone from this place.
“That makes two of us.”
The last of the warriors went limp and lifeless as Murtagh tightened his sword belt and fetched his cloak from the saddlebags. He debated donning his mail. The armor would have been a comfort—if only a small one—but even with a slight layer of muffling rust on the iron rings, he feared the shirt would make too much noise.
With Thorn a stealthy companion at his back—or as stealthy as a dragon his size could be—Murtagh slipped around the northeastern corner of the temple and headed across the swath of cropped turf to the grove of pinetrees. At the mouth of the grove, Murtagh paused to search with his thoughts. Finding no one ahead of them, he whispered, “Brisingr,” and set a faint red werelight burning in the air above.
The arcane fire lit the way as they proceeded along the path that wound among the dark-shadowed pines. Gloom and murk pressed in from all sides, as if the only piece of reality that existed was the small circle of earth the werelight painted red.
Thorn shivered with discomfort and kept his head and tail low to avoid the branches.
Beneath the pines, the air was heavy with the scent of herbs and mushrooms, as well as the ever-present stench of brimstone. Murtagh felt as if they were in a healer’s storehouse, and he wondered at the uses of the plants.
At the gaping cavern set within the base of the foothills, Murtagh saw a stain of fresh blood atop the altar to the left of the opening. In the werelight’s ruby radiance, the mark was black as ink, and the sight of it filled Murtagh with an apprehension of evil.
He loosened Zar’roc in its sheath and continued forward.
Twenty feet into the cavern, he heard Thorn’s footsteps falter behind him. He looked back to see the dragon pressed flat against the ground, wings tight against his body, upper lip wrinkled in a fearful snarl.