“Yes, but why? Where does it come from?”

  A hint of exasperation livened Alín’s features. “That is a silly question. It comes from the Dreamer of Dreams, as does everything in life.” She bowed, then said, “Your rooms, my Lord,” and turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Without thinking, Murtagh reached out to stop her. But Alín saw, and she shrank from his hand as if it were a red-hot iron, and her back struck a column built into the wall.

  She let out an anguished cry and arched her chest, losing all composure.

  Murtagh yanked back his hand as he realized he’d nearly touched her. Then his eyes narrowed as he noticed how gingerly Alín straightened her posture, face pale as fresh-fallen snow.

  “She had you whipped,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He recognized the way Alín moved; he’d moved the same every time Galbatorix sent him to the post.

  “I should not have spoken to you as I did earlier,” said Alín in a low voice.

  “After the hunt?” Murtagh struggled to keep the anger out of his voice.

  She nodded. “It was wrong to be so familiar. I was wrong.” She covered her face with her hands, and before Murtagh could reply, she rushed away, her soft leather shoes pattering along the stone hall.

  * * *

  A thick cloud layer had formed over the mountains, rendering it a starless, moonless night. The darkness suited Murtagh; it would make sneaking around that much easier.

  Still, it was hard to gauge the passage of time without a view of the sky, and he wasn’t sure how long to wait before leaving his quarters. He lit a small fire on the bedroom hearth and watched the flames consume the wood.

  His mind refused to rest. Images of the black sun and looming dragon kept intruding, and he found himself planning and overplanning what might happen if he and Thorn had to fight Bachel and the rest of the Draumar.

  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.

  Murtagh glanced at the arched ceiling of stone high above. “Even here?” he said in a quiet voice. He had thought there was enough room that Thorn would not feel threatened.

  The dragon growled equally softly. I am sorry.

  “Your wings don’t even touch the walls. You can still fight if you need, and if we have to flee, there’s space for you to turn ar—”

  No. I…Thorn put a paw forward, and then trembled violently and pulled it back. He blinked, and a glistening film coated his eyes, bright in its reflection of the werelight. I want, but I cannot.

  Murtagh returned to him and put his arms around Thorn’s neck. For a moment, they stood like that, and the heat from Thorn’s scales warmed Murtagh’s chest through his thin linen shirt.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Stay here. I’ll be quick, and then we can be gone.”

  Thorn hummed, appearing abashed. I wish I were not so faulted.

  A rush of sorrow, compassion, and regret overwhelmed Murtagh. Opening his mind more fully, he said, My hurts are different from yours, but I am as faulted as you, if not more. You know.

  I know.

  No one is perfect. No one makes it through life whole and unscathed. So do not blame yourself for what is out of your control. We are here, and we have each other. That is what is important.

  Another shiver ran Thorn’s length. I will try to follow you. If—

  No, no. Stay. We’ll try somewhere else, when we don’t have to worry about being stabbed in the back. Stay, and I’ll be back directly.

  You promise?

  I promise. Wiol ono.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Bad Sleep-Well

  Murtagh advanced alone into the waiting darkness.

  Despite his assurances to Thorn, he felt vulnerable and afraid. The chambers that lay buried beneath him were full of the unfamiliar, the unguessed, and the obscure. How could he ready himself to face that which he had yet to name?

  He kept Zar’roc loose in its sheath as he descended along the cut-stone stairs that led into the cavern. The ceiling remained high, lost in a dome of shadow that the feeble illumination from the werelight could not penetrate. He could have increased the flow of energy to the werelight—fanned it bright as a miniature sun—but that might have attracted attention. Also, he heard the squeaks of roosting bats far overhead; more light would risk waking them, and that would bring the cultists down upon his position.

  His footsteps seemed curiously loud as he continued down the stairs, each gritty scuff and scrape bouncing off the unseen walls and raising his pulse. The steps ran back and forth in a zigzag, and they were worn hollow in the centers from the passage of uncounted feet over the centuries. Murtagh felt a sense of not just age but antiquity. Whoever had built the stairs had done so long before Alagaësia had been a settled place. What was it Bachel had said? That the cultists had lived in Nal Gorgoth since before elves were elves…. He was starting to think she had told the truth.

  The cavern maintained enough height and width for a dragon Thorn’s size—or larger—as it continued to sink deeper and deeper into the sounding earth. The air was warmer now, and moister too, and the smell of brimstone stronger still.

  Murtagh wiped his palms against his trousers. He didn’t want his grip slipping on Zar’roc.

  The mouth of the cave faded behind him, and soon he dwelt alone in a world of gloom. He reached back with his thoughts—farther than he realized he’d traversed—and touched Thorn’s mind. All well? he asked.

  The crows are stirring, but the village yet sleeps.

  Murtagh quickened his pace. I’ll try not to be much longer, but this cave…it seems bottomless.

  Worry not. I will guard the entrance.

  I know.

  Despite the heat, Murtagh shivered. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he felt a disconcerting presence, as if a thousand unseen eyes surrounded him in the press of dark. His nerve faltered, and he was about to increase the brightness of the werelight when…

  A greenish glow appeared before him, so dim that it was barely perceptible. At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but after a few more yards, he realized that, no, there was indeed light ahead.

  He extinguished the werelight, and the shadows rushed in. The sickly green luminescence led him on, and with every step, it swelled in strength until he saw: the cut-stone stairs ended at a rocky cave floor that extended in unknown directions. The coal-seamed rocks were mottled with membranes of virescent slime, from which emanated the low, flameless light. Poking up among the rocks were numerous mushrooms, the most common variety being a short, purple-capped toadstool with drooping gills that resembled an oyster’s inner flesh. Throughout, wisps of brimstone vapor drifted up from the cave floor, as if the earth itself were breathing and sweating.

  A winding path set with flagstones like the temple courtyard extended from the bottom of the stairs and disappeared into the ringing shadows.

  Murtagh swore to himself, softly, as he arrived at the bottom. He’d never seen such a place—not even in the Beor Mountains, among the tunnels and caves the dwarves built and tended. Whether or not the space was naturally occurring, he couldn’t tell. No stalactites or stalagmites were visible, and the slimed rocks were broken into pieces much like quarry stones.

  He pushed his cloak back from his shoulders. I should have left it with Thorn. The heat was becoming unbearable.

  He tried to estimate how far underground he was. It had to be several hundred feet, if not more. Chiseling out that many steps would have been a monumental undertaking, even with magic, and if it had been done by hand…What is so important down here?

  He started along the path.

  The off-putting glow from the slime and the smell of sulfur and his underlying wariness combined to turn his stomach, as if he’d eaten a duck egg that had been insufficiently cooked. He swallowed the spit that was filling his mouth and tried to ignore the feeling, though his body was telling him to flee to open skies and fresh air.

  His right foot struck something hard.

  A fist-sized rock rolled away. He stepped off the path and retrieved the stone. The rock glistered and gleamed as if burning from within. It was a perfect pair to the stone he’d had off Sarros in Ceunon what seemed like half a year ago.

  His heart racing, he tucked the stone into the pouch on his belt.

  Perhaps a hundred feet from the stairs, a huge curving wall emerged before him, rough and creviced. Three tunnels pierced the wall, and Thorn would have fit into each had he folded his wings tight and kept his belly against the ground, like a great glittering serpent. The tunnel in the middle was edged with finished stone: a ring of rectangular blocks carved with sharp-cornered lines and the same unfamiliar runes as in the village. In the center of each block was set a cabochon of opal, which reflected the slime-glow like so many cats’ eyes.

  The tunnels to the left and right were plain, unfinished: rough tubes of stone that burrowed into the roots of the mountains. They did not look chiseled or hammered, and yet neither did they feel entirely natural. More than a little, they reminded Murtagh of the tunnels he’d fled through during his escape from Captain Wren’s secret chambers beneath Gil’ead—only far larger.

  Faint sounds emanated from the depths of the tunnels. Whispers. Moans. Soft echoing cries that had a hooting, birdlike quality. At first he thought he was hearing speech or calls of animals, but after a time, he grew convinced it was the air itself moving through the veins of the earth that gave rise to the eerie sounds.

  He chose to enter the central tunnel. The unknown craftsmen who had labored upon the caves had taken special pains with that one, and so it must be of importance or lead to importance.

  He continued forward. Deeper into the womb of the earth. Deeper into the black unknown, seeking, seeking, always seeking a farther shore, every sense razor-sharp and razor-scraped, skin all goosefleshed, cold sweat dripping down the back of his neck and gathering around his belted waist.

  The walls of the tunnel were sheathed with diamond-shaped tiles of rough stone that were lapped like the scales of a dragon. He felt as if he were walking inside a shed skin of enormous proportion.

  Not far, then. A minute of walking, no more, and the darkness again encroached, for the tiles were free of slime.

  Then he saw a room before him, warm with light. A pale room. A bone-white room clad in finest marble, the veins of which were chased with hammered gold. Brass censers hung on chains from the snouts of sculpted dragon heads, which projected from the circular, column-lined walls. Small flames burned in alcoves in the wall, but the fires consumed no wicks and no fuel; they seemed to spring straight from the marble.