Time passed with creeping slowness. Murtagh tried counting the beats of his heart, but that only made the minutes seem even longer.

  He was determined to wait until at least an hour past midnight before he chanced the catacombs. That would allow the guards plenty of time to fall asleep, and it might even be long enough for the man standing watch underground to nod off.

  At least Murtagh hoped so.

  He shifted on the cot, uncomfortable. He’d spent so long out of doors with Thorn, it felt strange to be lying on a bed again, even an unpadded cot. The canvas backing sagged beneath his weight, putting a curve in his spine that made his lower back ache. He tried shifting to his side, but that only put a painful crook in his neck.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was going to be a taxing few hours.

  To distract himself, he set to composing another poem, this one not an Attenwrack, but a form of his own devising. In a silent voice, he said:

  Sing of sorrows soft and sad.

  Cry, O winged herald, of battles won and lost.

  Who mourns for fallen men, in conflict slain?

  What comfort tears when flocks of crows descend?

  The words echoed in his mind as he lay in the dark. “Forgive me,” he whispered. Whether the words were meant for the ghosts of his past or the men in the barracks, he wasn’t sure, but when he closed his eyes, a field of drowned bones filled his vision.

  CHAPTER X

  Softly Creeping…

  Somewhere in the sleeping city, a black-faced owl hooted and then hooted again.

  Murtagh levered himself into a sitting position on his cot. Throughout the barracks, the guards lay still and silent, their breathing slow, even, measured. One or two of them snored, but not loudly enough to wake the others.

  Ever so carefully, Murtagh opened his mind and extended his consciousness to touch the thoughts of the other men. They were, as he hoped, all deeply asleep, lost in the confusion of their dreams.

  He maintained a delicate contact with their collective minds as he edged down his cot and put a hand on the lid of the chest. “Maela,” he whispered. Quiet.

  Holding his breath, he lifted the lid.

  It swung up and back with hardly a sound.

  Relieved, he slowly pulled out his bedroll and all it contained, as well as the boots, cloak, and arming sword he’d been given.

  But he left the kite shield. It would just slow him down and make stealth that much more difficult. Besides, he had his own shield, albeit with Thorn. And he left the tabard. It might have helped him to avoid unwanted attention, but he no longer felt comfortable wearing the uniform of the guard.

  He wrapped the cloak around the belt of the sword so the buckle wouldn’t jangle, and then slowly stood and padded on sock-covered feet toward the back of the room.

  At the last cot in line—which was empty—he tripped.

  He cursed silently as he regained his balance, his face frozen in a snarl.

  Across the barracks, one of the guards stirred, and he sensed a twinge of awareness from the man’s mind.

  Murtagh remained hunched in a half crouch, afraid to move.

  After several minutes, when the man seemed to again be deep in slumber, Murtagh straightened inch by inch and continued to the ink-black archway at the rear of the barracks.

  He put a hand against the cold stone wall and felt his way down several steps. Then he sat and pulled on his boots, laced them tight, unwrapped the sword, buckled it around his waist, and secured the clasp of the cloak at his throat. The cloak was a gamble; it could easily get caught between his legs at an inopportune time, but it would also serve to muffle his movements. Lastly, he slung his bedroll across his shoulders. He wasn’t planning on returning to the barracks—not to sleep, in any case—and there was a chance he’d have to leave in a hurry, and he didn’t want to lose any more of his belongings. When you owned only a few things, they became all the more precious.

  He stood and resumed feeling his way down the stairs. He wanted to cast a werelight, but it would be too risky, and besides…

  …a dull orange glow appeared before him as he spiraled beneath the surface of the earth, gilding the face of the stone wall so that every pit and pock and chipped imperfection stood in high relief.

  At the bottom of the stairs was another archway, this one easy enough to see in the flickering light.

  Murtagh pressed himself against the outer curve of the staircase as he edged down to the archway and poked his head around the frame of mortared stone.

  A long, dark tunnel stretched out to the left and right. Despite what Esvar had said, it didn’t look like elf-work to Murtagh, but rather ordinary human craftsmanship. The passage to the right extended underneath the fortress, while the left-hand branch reached toward the city.

  Too many tunnels, he thought. It would have been helpful to know of them when he’d been trying to rescue Eragon from the fortress. He’d had no idea that the city was sitting on a rabbit warren of underground passages.

  It was the left-hand side of the tunnel that interested him the most. Several wooden doors, reinforced with bands of wrought iron, were set into the walls. Bolted to the walls between the doors were sconces that held tall candles, two of which were lit and which cast a field of dancing shadows across the stones.

  A guard stood next to the middlemost door, leaning on his pike, head slumped forward, eyes half closed.

  Murtagh took a moment to consider. From what Captain Wren had said, he knew the guards had wards on them. And he knew that some of the wards were intended to protect against magical attacks. But what exactly constituted an attack was open to interpretation.

  Murtagh didn’t want to harm the man. The guard was doing his duty without obvious malice. But he did have to get past him.

  He frowned. If he cast a spell on the guard and it triggered any of his wards, the man was sure to know. The drain of energy would alert him, if nothing else. Which left only two options: either Murtagh could physically overpower the man or he could use the Name of Names to strip the man’s defenses and then incapacitate him with magic.

  He tightened his hand on the hilt of the arming sword. The Name of Names was the obvious choice, but he hated to keep using it. The Word was a powerful secret—one of the most powerful secrets—and every time he uttered it, he risked teaching it to some unknown listener, even if he paired it with a concealing spell, as he had done in the Fulsome Feast. And no matter how well constructed a piece of magic, there was always a chance it might not have the intended effect.

  It was bad enough that he, Eragon, and Arya knew the Word. Three was two too many to keep a secret, and every additional person who learned the Name was another chance for someone to cause untold harm.

  If Murtagh had known more of the ancient language and its uses—if he’d been properly trained as a Rider and magician, as Eragon had been—he would have felt more confident of bypassing the guard’s wards without the Name of Names. But as it was, he keenly felt the inadequacy of his instruction, and he resented it.

  The arguments for and against using the Word flashed through Murtagh’s mind, but he knew he had already made his decision. He had to avoid making noise, and since he wasn’t going to kill the guard…

  Keeping his voice as low as possible, he uttered the Name of Names, and with it, he said, “Slytha.” Sleep.

  Even as he spoke, he darted into the tunnel and ran toward the guard.

  The man twitched and fell forward, arms and legs going limp, pike slipping from his slack fingers.

  Murtagh caught the guard before his head slammed into the floor, but the pike clattered against the stones, and his helmet slipped off and bounced away, sending echoes chasing back and forth through the tunnel.

  “Ah!” said Murtagh. He lowered the man to the floor and then fled down the tunnel, out of the range of the candlelight and into the shadows. There he waited, breathless, straining his ears to hear if anyone in the barracks was coming to investigate.

  Long moments passed. A breath of wind tickled the back of his neck, and he watched a large brown spider crawl along the corner of the wall, a sac of white eggs webbed to its back. His lip curled.

  He loosened his grip on the hilt of the arming sword. They’re still asleep. He didn’t feel safe, though. All it would take was one of the guards waking up to use the privy, and his absence could be discovered.

  Moving quietly, he returned to the guard he’d put to sleep and placed a finger against the man’s stubbled neck. His pulse was strong and steady, and his chest continued to move.

  Satisfied that the man was fast asleep, Murtagh stepped over the pike on the ground and went to the middlemost door. It was the one the man had been standing watch by, so Murtagh guessed it was the door he wanted.

  He pulled on the iron ring bolted to the wood. The door didn’t move. Of course. He pushed instead. The door still didn’t move.

  Murtagh’s eyes narrowed as he searched the wood planks for a keyhole. In the dim light, it took him a few seconds to find: a small round hole by one corner of the iron plate that backed the ring.

  He raised a finger and touched the keyhole, prepared to use magic, but a thought stopped him.

  He knelt by the sleeping guard and searched along his leather belt. The man smelled of smoke, mutton, cardus weed, and long hours spent drilling in the sun. Murtagh wrinkled his nose. He didn’t understand why more folks didn’t bathe on a regular basis. Cold water was no excuse to walk around stinking like a tannery.

  Metal clinked as his fingers found something hard hanging off the guard’s belt. He looked; as he’d hoped, a key.

  He fit the key into the lock and turned it until he heard an unpleasantly loud clunk. With a final glance up and down the tunnel, he pushed open the door.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Door of Stone

  The chamber inside was totally dark. Even Murtagh’s eyes—sharpened as they were by his bond with Thorn—could not pick out a single detail.

  He returned to the tunnel and retrieved a candle. With his free hand, he grabbed the guard’s ankle and dragged him through the doorway into—

  —a war room of sorts. A long wooden table occupied the center of the chamber, and on it, a map of Alagaësia, similar to the one in Captain Wren’s study. Backless chairs surrounded the table, and a rack of scrolls rose against a side wall. Several tall iron candelabra stood around the room, and there were soot stains on the low vaulted ceiling, which was covered with bricks.

  Opposite the door he’d entered, there was another—smaller, darker, made of polished wood—that led deeper into the catacombs.

  Murtagh left the guard by the table and went back out into the tunnel to fetch the fallen pike and helmet. With both in hand, he closed the door behind him, locked it, and then placed pike and helmet on the table.

  He glanced around, curious. Part of him wanted to linger, to see what was written on the scrolls, to see if he could find out what sort of schemes Captain Wren was working on. But time was limited, and he had no intention of getting caught.

  He checked on the guard one more time. Still asleep. The spell Murtagh had cast was a powerful one. Barring outside interference, the man should sleep for half a day or more.

  Murtagh lit several tapers in the candelabra before proceeding to the next door.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Interesting.”

  Lines of runes had been carved into the gleaming wood, which looked old and worn, ancient even. He touched the scarred surface; it felt denser than oak, hard as metal. “Môgren,” he muttered. The black-needled pinetrees that grew in the Beor Mountains, home of the dwarves. It was rare to find anything made of that wood in the western half of Alagaësia. He looked closer. The runes themselves were of an archaic design, and as he tried to read them, he realized that they were indeed runes such as the dwarves used, not humans.

  He shook his head. He could read many types of writing, but Dwarvish wasn’t one of them. What were dwarves doing here, and so long ago? he wondered. Or had the door been made elsewhere and then brought to Gil’ead at some later date?

  Questions that he doubted he would ever have answers to. Perhaps the Eldunarí could have told him.

  Unlike the first door, there was no keyhole cut into the Môgren, but there was an oddly shaped depression, as wide as his hand, in the center. Because of the shifting shadows of the candlelight, it took him a minute to realize what he was seeing: a reverse impression of the bear mask from Captain Wren’s study. A lock, then. Possibly magic, but not necessarily.

  “What are you up to?” he murmured.

  Murtagh considered sneaking back into the barracks and over to Wren’s study to retrieve the mask, but dismissed the idea as too risky.

  No, what he needed was…He glanced around the room. Wood. He needed wood.

  He went to the rack of scrolls and, after examining it, pulled out one of the shelves. He placed one end of the plank against the depression in the door and whispered, “Thrysta.”

  Instead of releasing the power in a single burst, he restricted it to a gentle—but inexorable—push. The plank crumpled inward as if being crushed by an invisible boulder, and the wood fit itself to the lines and contours of the mask impression.

  A small, tight smile formed on Murtagh’s face as he guided the spell. Just a little more…

  The door broke with a loud crack, splitting up the middle.

  “Son of an Urgal,” he said, teeth clenched. He ended the spell.

  There was no helping it now; the guards would know someone had broken in. Literally.

  Annoyed with himself, Murtagh started to pull the pieces of wood away. Once the opening was wide enough, he fetched a candle and stepped through.

  Light blossomed overhead.

  He winced and lifted a hand to shade his eyes. After a second, he could see.

  The light came from a piece of white quartz embedded in the ceiling; it emitted a steady glow similar to that of the dwarves’ flameless lanterns, which he had seen throughout their city-mountain Tronjheim.

  The chamber was longer and narrower than the war room. The walls curved inward and were supported by thick white ribs. Actual ribs. The bones of a dragon.

  A horrible suspicion formed in Murtagh that he was looking at the ribs of Morzan’s dragon, buried beneath the city by whoever had made that space.

  Anchored between the ribs were shelves. On those shelves, and on a stone-topped table in the center of the room, were dozens of flasks, alembics, beakers, burners, bottles, and casks, and several braziers. Alchemy. Or something like it.

  Murtagh slowly walked through the room, stopping at times to examine this or that. The place was a treasure house for any magician. He picked up one of several books and opened it to find himself looking at a list of words.

  Words in the ancient language.

  Words with definitions.

  Excitement shot through him as he realized what he was holding. A dictionary! His lips moved as he sounded out several of the entries: “Flauga, flautja, flautr…” Of all the valuables in the chamber, a compendium of the ancient language was by far the most precious.

  The book released a small puff of dust as he closed it. Hardly able to believe his good luck, Murtagh carefully placed it in the pouch on his belt and continued forward.

  Two steps farther, he found a small ornate box full of faceted gems. He picked up a teardrop-shaped yellow diamond nearly as big as his thumbnail and, on a hunch, attempted to touch it with his mind. A torrent of coiled energy twisted and turned before his inner eye, constrained by the substance of the gem.

  He withdrew his mind and smiled a crooked smile, bouncing the gem on his palm. After a moment’s thought, he tucked the diamond into the hem of his cloak, where no one was likely to find it. Having extra equipment was always a good idea, whether it was a weapon, armor, or—in this case—energy to fuel his spells.

  The more Murtagh looked, the more questions he had. The room seemed to be devoted to the study of all things magical. On a shelf was a line of bottled liquids labeled with such words as Health, Strength, Fire, and so forth. Potions, he guessed, enchanted to achieve certain effects.

  Deep disquiet stirred within Murtagh. Was Wren the magician who used the room? Or was there another? Some unknown spellcaster who lurked in Gil’ead while engaged in arcane study? And what invidious need could they possibly have for werecat younglings?

  He touched one of the ribs along the walls. The bone was cool and smooth against his hand, and he felt a pang imagining it was Thorn’s. But he was not sure how much sorrow he felt for Morzan’s dragon. The creature had chosen to serve Galbatorix as much as Morzan had himself; they were both culpable for their sins. As are we all, he thought.

  He hurried through the rest of the room. Surely he couldn’t be far from Silna now, though he feared what he might discover when he found her. If she was even there.

  Yet another door met him at the far end, and it too differed from those that came before. The lancet structure was made of a single piece of yellowed dragon bone. Perhaps a shoulder blade or a section of enormous skull. An iron ring hung from the center of the door. Embedded above it was a decorative pattern of gems of all different colors: rubies and emeralds and rainbowed diamonds. Tourmaline, star sapphires, and banded chrysoberyl.

  Wary, Murtagh touched one of the stones. As he suspected, it contained a notable amount of energy.

  He lowered his hand. The door was trapped. That seemed obvious. And if he triggered the trap, there was a good chance it would alert the magician who had made the door. At least, that was how Murtagh would have done it.

  Or was it? What if the magician were on the other side of Alagaësia? Alerting them might take a prohibitive amount of energy.