Murtagh scratched his chin, thinking. He could just trigger the trap and trust his wards to protect him, but…that was hardly the smartest path forward. The question was, what would it take to outthink the magician who had enchanted the door? If the spellcaster were clever enough, doing anything to meddle with the door or its surroundings would set off an alarm. Even the Name of Names was no guarantee that Murtagh could completely subvert someone else’s spells, as his experience with Muckmaw had taught him.

  Blast it. I can’t waste time.

  He paced back and forth, debating. What if he tunneled around the door? That would take a lot of energy; he’d be exhausted by the time he broke through into the room on the other side. And there was a good chance that the walls surrounding the next room were enchanted with some sort of warning spell as well. Again, it was what he would do.

  Murtagh squatted and rested his head in his hands. To subvert a ward, you had to think in a sideways fashion. Which was hard—very hard—but in a way, that was the point. The difficulty of imagining a new approach was what protected the person or thing behind the ward.

  He imagined inverting a sphere without breaking it. He imagined moving in a straight line down a right angle. Every impossible action that his mind could conceive, he thought of.

  A small smile formed on his lips. Perhaps…Eragon had defeated Galbatorix not by trying to hurt him but by trying to help him understand the consequences of his own actions—an approach that neither the king nor his many enemies over the years had thought of. It was possible that a similar indirect approach might work on the door.

  The jewels contained energy needed to power whatever enchantments were imbued into the bone door. And if that power were consumed, it would need to be replaced. So it ought to be possible to both place and remove energy from the gems without triggering an additional trap.

  Again, it depended on how clever the mysterious magician had been.

  Murtagh decided to chance it. What was the worst that could happen? A grim chuckle left him. Most people might say death, but dying was far from the most fearful fate. He and Thorn had already passed through the darkest valley; nothing the wards might do could approach the depths of pain, fear, and debasement they had already faced.

  First he needed a place to funnel the energy; it was too much to hold within his body. He’d burn up if he tried. Normally he would store energy within Zar’roc’s ruby pommel, but without the sword…

  He retrieved the teardrop-shaped yellow diamond from his cloak. It seemed the stone was going to prove its usefulness sooner than expected.

  Holding the diamond in his left hand, he pressed his right against the door. The facets of the jewels were sharp against his palm. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and slowly, cautiously, began to siphon energy out of the gems and into the yellow diamond.

  For the first few seconds, the flow of energy was smooth and untroubled. But then he felt increasing resistance, and the diamond grew warm in his hand. The heat quickly increased to an unbearable level. His skin began to burn.

  In an instant, he realized the stone was about to explode.

  He dropped the diamond and gasped, “Brisingr!”

  A bright blue werelight sprang into existence to his right: a burning ball of flame hanging at eye level, the rippling flames causing the air to shimmer and waver like crystal water.

  He diverted the energy into the werelight, which grew brighter and brighter, until it was painful to look at, and waves of heat washed off the fist-sized knot of flames. Murtagh ducked his head and leaned away, but he kept his hand on the gems, and he kept drawing on them.

  He slowed the flow of energy when the heat became unbearable. Beyond that, his own wards would have been triggered.

  Minutes passed while the miniature sun blazed beside him, a pocket furnace suspended by invisible forces, fueled by the potential stored within the jewels.

  At last, he felt the flow subsiding, and the werelight dimmed and cooled. He drained every last iota of energy from the gems, emptied them of their dregs, and left them as brittle chalices ready to again be topped to the brim.

  Then he ended his spell, and wings of shadows wrapped around him as the werelight vanished.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow. His heart was pounding painfully fast, and he felt shaky. The spell, he knew, had nearly killed him. If the diamond had exploded, he doubted that his wards would have been strong enough to protect him.

  He picked up the gem. It was still uncomfortably warm. Murtagh had never had difficulty storing energy in a gem before. Though now that he thought about it, he’d only really used the ruby in Zar’roc’s pommel, and that was a far larger stone, of finer quality too, and woven through with elven enchantments. The diamond had none of those advantages. It must have already been filled to its limit. That or there had been significantly more energy stored in the door than he’d realized.

  He carefully tucked the diamond back into the hem of his cloak. It was a matter that bore more attention, when he had the time.

  He squared his shoulders. Now for the most dangerous part…

  He pushed on the door.

  It didn’t move.

  He pulled, and still…it remained obstinately closed.

  Angered, Murtagh said, “Ládrin.” Open, and he put the full force of his will behind the arcane word.

  With an alarming creak, the door swung inward on hidden hinges. Murtagh waited a moment to see if he’d triggered a trap, but nothing happened, so he again took up his candle and stepped across the threshold.

  * * *

  Another light sprang to life from a piece of quartz set into the ceiling of the third room. By the calm, unwavering light, Murtagh saw an underground garden. Raised beds of dirt, edged with brick, lay to the right and left of a narrow path, and in those beds grew trees, flowers, vines, bushes, and all manner of small, woody herbs. The air was warm and aromatic with a heady perfume, and it was moist too, as if a bank of mist had settled across the ground. The low hum of bees sounded amid the leaves.

  Some of the plants Murtagh recognized: healing plants, poisonous plants, plants for inducing visions and compelling sleep. But many were unknown to him. There was a lily whose leaf and stem seemed made of living gold and whose petals were of a whitish metal. A drooping tree with berries that glittered like beryls. Mushrooms that had purple caps and electric-blue gills.

  And he saw a plant unlike any he had encountered before. It had a single stem topped with a fleshy, pitcher-shaped cup perhaps two hands high. And from the cup stood small orange tentacles, which waved gently in the air.

  Even as he watched, a frog hopped past the pitcher plant. Two of the tentacles reached out, fast as snakes, grabbed the frog, and pulled it into the mouth of the cup and held it there.

  The frog uttered the smallest, most pitiful screech Murtagh had ever heard. Then it made no more sounds.

  His face tightened, and he gripped the hilt of the arming sword, half-minded to chop the tentacled plant in twain.

  After a moment, he thought better of it. But he kept his hand on the sword as he continued down the path. What witchery is this?

  He was so focused on the odd sights that he forgot to watch where he was walking, and he caught an ankle on the corner of a brick that stuck out. He stumbled forward a step. As he recovered, he saw a crystal case sitting between two bushes, nearly hidden by the leafy branches. And resting in the case, a blue-black oval that was half a foot wide and half a foot tall. An egg. An evil-looking egg.

  He stared at it, unsettled. What sort of creature hatches from such a thing? Not a dragon, that seemed sure, nor any other being he was familiar with. For the first time in his travels, he wished that Eragon or Arya were there with him. Whatever the purpose of the rooms underneath Gil’ead, they had been built and furnished with serious intent, and he had a creeping feeling that whoever it was that used them was dangerous in the extreme.

  His gaze turned to the door at the back of the garden—the last door that needed opening, or so he hoped.

  With quiet steps, he moved toward it.

  The door was made not of wood, not of bone, but of grey granite, as hard and unyielding as an oath of revenge. The surface had a dry, textured appearance, and there were veins of tarnished copper running throughout. A handle also made of granite was mounted upon the left side.

  Murtagh stood before the door, wary. He probed with his mind and felt…nothing. No gems, no stored energy, no hidden consciousness watching him, just cold dead stone, heavy with the weight of ages.

  He pushed his thoughts past the door, into the chamber beyond. Even there, he found nothing but blank emptiness.

  Worry and anger hardened his mind. Had Carabel been telling him the truth about Silna? Suddenly he had doubts. What if all this was a ploy to deceive me into coming here? But for what reason? To gather information on Carabel’s behalf? To confront the spellcaster using the chambers? Was Carabel working at Relgin’s behest?

  Murtagh wasn’t willing to give up on the idea of Silna, though. He had to know for sure whether she was imprisoned beneath the barracks.

  He grasped the handle.

  The garden remained as before, bees humming in the background.

  He pulled.

  The door swung open in perfect silence.

  * * *

  The room past the garden was a bare stone cell. The walls were roughly quarried granite, devoid of windows, with a single iron bracket hung next to the door. On the bracket sat a stub of a candle.

  A small sky-blue blanket lay crumpled on the floor. And that was all.

  The sight made Murtagh’s heart ache. For a moment, it felt as if he were back in Urû’baen, in the dungeons beneath the citadel—he and Thorn both—listening to the screams of other prisoners while the overpowering weight of the king’s mind bore down upon him. The walls seemed to close in on him, and he had a sudden feeling of being deep underground, alone and isolated, trapped in the airless dark.

  He picked up the blanket. It was barely bigger than a kerchief and smelled of…smelled of fear. Silna, or some other child, had been held captive there. That much seemed certain.

  Tears welled in his eyes, but they did not fall.

  He blinked and took a closer look at the back wall. Was there something on the…Yes. A faint line of white chalk. He traced it with his eyes and found that the line drew an arch from floor to head height.

  An arch or a doorway. The idea of a doorway. A yearning for freedom.

  He touched the back wall. It was hard, with no hint of movement, and when he tapped on the stone, it sounded solid.

  His breath caught in his throat, and an oppressive grief collapsed upon him. Then a terrible rage began to build atop the grief, and his hands closed in fists, and he set his teeth and ground his jaw.

  They would pay. They would all pay for what they had done to the werecat youngling, and he would teach them to fear him as they had feared his father.

  “Curse you,” he muttered, and spun around to leave.

  A blur of brindled fur sprang toward him from the back corner of the cell. Weight struck him against the neck and shoulders, and hisses and yowls echoed in his ears as a flurry of white claws tore at his throat.

  CHAPTER XII

  Pathways into Darkness

  Murtagh’s wards protected him from the creature’s attack, but the impact caused him to stumble backward into the edge of the door. He dropped to one knee.

  Despite his wards, instinct led him to keep his eyes screwed shut. He felt upward until his hands closed upon warm fur, and then he pulled the kicking, clawing, spitting creature off his neck.

  Only then did he get a good look at it.

  Silna!

  The youngling was a mosaic-coated cat with large green eyes narrowed in anger, tufted ears pressed flat, tail puffed out, and heavy paws that scraped at the air. The werecat was close in size to a housecat, and her head had the distinctive, overly large appearance of a kitten’s.

  “Shh, shh,” Murtagh tried to say in a calming manner, but the werecat kept twisting and biting in a desperate attempt to break free.

  Finally, he said, “Silna! Eka fricai. Eka fricai.” I am a friend.

  The werecat’s clawing ceased, and she stared at him with a flat, hostile gaze.

  He hesitated and then carefully placed her on the floor and let go.

  The ridge of fur along Silna’s spine remained raised. But she didn’t run. She seemed, Murtagh was relieved to see, unharmed, though she looked painfully thin.

  He held out his hands, palms raised. “Can you understand me? Carabel sent me to find you.”

  Silna’s lips retracted to bare her sharp white teeth.

  “I’m a friend,” Murtagh insisted. He reached out with his thoughts toward the werecat’s mind. The instant he touched her consciousness, she hissed, and he felt nothing but fear on her part.

  He recoiled from her mind. “I’m sorry. Sorry. Do you understand?”

  The werecat’s slitted eyes darted between him and the open door, and he realized he was still blocking the way. He didn’t move. “I can help you out of here, but you have to trust me.” He held out one hand toward her, same as he would with a skittish horse.

  Silna let out a small hiss, but she didn’t retreat.

  It’s a start. “Can you change forms?” he asked. “Then we could talk. If you can talk…” Murtagh wondered at what age werecats gained the ability to shift their shape. Were they born with it?

  He edged to one side of the doorway, opening a space for Silna to pass through. “Come on,” he said in a coaxing tone. “Come with me.”

  The werecat’s eyes narrowed again, and then she darted forward and past him before he could react.

  “Blast it!” Murtagh scrambled to his feet as Silna streaked toward the far end of the arcane garden.

  Just before she reached the doorway to the alchemy workshop, a voice sounded ahead of them. Esvar’s voice: “—an’ I swore I heard somethin’, so I came t’ get you directly. Look!”

  Silna slid to a stop and darted back the way she’d come.

  Within the workshop, Murtagh saw Esvar, three other guards, and the nearly white-haired magician of Du Vrangr Gata. Esvar gaped at Silna. Whether from surprise that she had escaped or at seeing a werecat, Murtagh didn’t know.

  Nor did he wait to find out.

  He opened his mouth to speak the Word and break any spells protecting the men or directed at him or Silna. But before he could utter a sound, the men spotted him, and a blade of thought stabbed into his mind—the magician attacking the very essence of his self.

  Stay! Murtagh flung the word toward Silna’s consciousness, and then turtled in on himself, armoring his mind with blinkered focus: “You shall not have me. You shall not have me.” He dared not let the magician see his thoughts, and because of that, he dared not loosen his defenses enough to speak the Word and work magic of his own. Not until he gained control of his enemy’s mind.

  The werecat kitten cowered behind his back foot and hissed.

  The three guards in the front charged: one in front, two behind.

  Murtagh swept his cloak across their field of vision, causing them to flinch, and used the momentary cover to draw his arming sword.

  The distraction allowed him to strike first. He jabbed the lead man in his right hip and—

  —the tip of the blade skated off an invisible barrier a finger’s width from the guard’s skin.

  Blast it!

  The guard slashed at Murtagh with his own weapon, causing Murtagh to duck. Swordplay alone wasn’t going to win the day. He had to figure out a way around the guard’s wards.

  His misadventure with Muckmaw leaped to mind.

  Fine. Bracing himself, Murtagh slammed his shoulder into the guard’s chest and knocked him across the room. The guard’s wards kept him from suffering scratches or worse as he crashed into a pair of bushes, but they did nothing to keep his head from whipping to the side and striking the crystal case that contained the blue-black egg, dazing the poor man.

  Cracks spiderwebbed the case.

  The next soldier shouted and stabbed a spear toward Murtagh’s face. He let his own wards deflect the blow as he darted forward and, still holding the sword, clapped his hands against the sides of the guard’s helmet. The man cried out, dropped his spear, and collapsed.

  As Murtagh had suspected. No wards against sound.

  The third guard poked at Murtagh with a billed pike. He dodged and smashed the pommel of his sword against the crest of the man’s helm. The blow staggered the guard, and Murtagh followed up with another clap on either side of the man’s head, which sent him reeling into a bed of lilies.

  The whole while, Murtagh could feel the magician trying to dig into his mind. The man’s neck was corded with strain, his lips pressed white against his bared teeth, and his hands worked feverishly within the sleeves of his robe.

  Murtagh started for him, but Esvar stepped in front of the magician and raised his sword.

  “Move aside,” said Murtagh between clenched teeth.

  Esvar held his ground. His face was red with anger, but he also had a look of hurt innocence that Murtagh could hardly bear to see. “You swore,” said Esvar. “You swore. I was there. An’ you betrayed us!”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” said Murtagh. “Stand down.” A bumblebee flew past his face. Its body was iridescent blue.

  Esvar shook his head, his expression one of fixed determination, and took a half step forward. “Never! You attacked th’ guard. I’ll die afore I let you pass. Traitor.”

  Murtagh had been called worse. He spared a glance for the men lying groaning on the floor; they wouldn’t be a problem. Silna still crouched low to the ground behind him, safe for the moment.