He was in a dark cell, not dissimilar to the one he’d been confined in under Urû’baen. A narrow wooden cot sat against one wall, with a bucket for relieving himself next to it. His cloak lay beneath him, crumpled and wrinkled. There were no windows, only three blank stone walls, and iron bars where the fourth would have been. (He noted the bars especially; they represented an unusual amount of metal for such a small village.)

  The only light came from a dim oil lamp near the end of the hallway in front of the cell.

  Across the hall were three more cells, lost in inky shadows.

  Murtagh tried to reach Thorn with his mind, but their thread of connection was nowhere to be found. Moreover—and equally concerning—Murtagh couldn’t feel a single other mind in the vicinity. Either the village had been deserted or somehow his tendrils of thought were being blocked…. And what was that taste sticking to his tongue and throat? He could almost place it.

  Cold fear settled into Murtagh’s bones. Once again, he and Thorn found themselves overmatched, even as with Galbatorix. And once again, they found themselves bound against their will, for he could not imagine Thorn was free to fight, or else the dragon would have already rescued him.

  Even in his worst nightmares, Murtagh had never imagined they would find themselves in a like situation again. Foolish, he thought, and cursed himself. He’d been overconfident, and now both he and Thorn were paying the price.

  There would be time enough for recriminations later. For now, he had to concentrate on escape.

  Murtagh clenched his hands several times in preparation. Then he gripped the cold iron, gathered his will, and whispered, “Kverst.”

  Nothing happened. He could not seem to breach the barrier in his mind—the thin, glass-like pane that a consciousness had to break in order to directly manipulate energy. He tried again, but he found no purchase for his will. The barrier kept slipping away, and his thoughts remained too unfocused to pierce it.

  His fear deepened until it was more akin to despair. He knew then what he was tasting: the drug called vorgethan, or some compounding of it. Galbatorix had fed it to him in Urû’baen until the king had forced his fealty, Durza had used it on Eragon at Gil’ead, and Du Vrangr Gata now mandated its consumption by magicians who refused to join or swear loyalty to their organization.

  For vorgethan had two very specific effects: it slowed down the movements of the body and made it nigh on impossible to cast spells.

  Murtagh shook his head, dismayed and furious with himself. How was I so stupid? Escaping would be far more difficult now. If he could contact Thorn…but then, Thorn was likely chained in place, and moreover, vorgethan made it difficult to touch the minds of others.

  “Your weirding words will not work, human.”

  The voice was deep as rumbling rocks and wild as a northern wind. It came from the cell opposite his, and the sound made Murtagh start and stumble back, hands raised as if to fend off attack.

  A shape moved in the shadows: a hulking, heavy-shouldered mass with a head that was far larger than it ought to have been….

  From the inky darkness emerged a battered, scar-slashed face as large as Murtagh’s chest. Grey skin, yellow eyes, pointed teeth, and huge ram’s horns that descended in jagged turns around broad cheekbones—

  An Urgal!

  Murtagh’s neck prickled as the Urgal studied him from across the hall, the creature’s yellow eyes fierce as a wildcat’s. The Urgal wore a jerkin of crudely sewn leather trimmed with bear fur. His arms were massively muscled, and the skin was scarred and tattooed with cabled patterns similar to those Murtagh had seen on the banners in the Urgal villages he and Thorn had flown over. A hide loincloth completed the Urgal’s outfit. He wore no shoes, and Murtagh could see the yellow clawlike nails on his seven-toed feet.

  “She used the Breath on you,” said the Urgal. His mouth and chin projected from the rest of his face enough to give him a slight muzzle, and his heavy jaw mangled the words in a way that Murtagh found difficult to understand. But he could understand. “That is how she captured you, human.”

  “The Br— How do you know our tongue, Urgal?” Murtagh found it hard to string words together into coherent sentences. His mind was still strange, his thoughts kept skating in different directions, and his body felt light and unbalanced, lacking substance.

  The Urgal’s eyes shifted away, as if he were looking at something in the far distance. “I know many things. What is your name, hornless one?”

  Murtagh knew enough of Urgals to realize the creature had just insulted him, and badly. If he were an Urgal, he supposed it would have bothered him, but he wasn’t, and it didn’t.

  He briefly considered lying, but lies were beyond his ability at the moment. Even so, he was cautious. “Names are powerful things. It would be foolish…foolish to share them carelessly.”

  Again, the Urgal focused on him. The creature went “Hmmm,” deep in his throat, and scratched at the thicket of black bristles that covered his chest. “You say truth, but some names are more dangerous than others. Do you not have a common name, to speak with outlanders?”

  “…I do.”

  “Hrmm. I am Windtalker and Peak-Climber. I sit in silence and listen to birds and bears and words of trees. No tribe claims me, and I claim none myself. My common name is Uvek.”

  “Uvek…. My common name is Murtagh.”

  A flash of fire illuminated the Urgal’s deep-set eyes. “So. You are one who shares thoughts with worm Thorn. Word of you reached even farthest parts of Alagaësia. I heard tell that you fought Urgralgra in dwarf mountains, and that you then fought Urgralgra for dragonkiller Galbatorix. Is true?”

  It seemed surreal to Murtagh that he was having a conversation with an Urgal—and that Uvek was asking him much the same questions that he received from humans in Nasuada’s realm. “Is true,” he said wearily. “Galbatorix captured us and forced us to fight against the Varden. Otherwise, I suppose I would have been shieldmates with your kind once they joined the Varden.”

  “Hrmm. Do you hate Urgralgra?”

  “No,” said Murtagh, again approaching the iron bars. He leaned against them, welcoming the support. “But neither do I have any love for your kind. One of your chieftains almost killed me when I was younger.”

  Uvek bared his large teeth in what Murtagh realized was an approximation of a smile. If not for his experience with Thorn, the expression would have been terrifying and difficult, possibly impossible, to interpret. “You say truth. I like that, human. And you are here, so chieftain cannot have been so bad. You live, he dead?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “So all good. What else matter?”

  Murtagh grunted. He grasped the bars and shook them; they didn’t budge. The ends were seated in deep sockets drilled into the stone, and he suspected some form of magic fortified them, for they were free of rust or discoloration.

  Tonnng. Uvek snapped a finger against his bars, and the metal rang like a bell. “I cannot break this iron, Murtagh-man. You cannot break either.”

  “No…. You said she—Bachel—used the Breath on me?”

  Uvek’s heavy head moved up and down in a nod. “That is what she call it.”

  “What is it? The breath of what?”

  A shrug this time. “She not tell me, so I cannot tell you.”

  Murtagh frowned as he tried to think. “Weirding…How do you know I can’t use magic?”

  “Because,” said Uvek, hunching forward, a grim look on his bestial face, “I also cannot. They give us poison that steal our strength, make us weak and helpless. So I sit here like chukka waiting for knife.”

  Murtagh found it hard to wrap his mind around this new piece of information. “You…you are a spellcaster?”

  “No. I am shaman. There is difference. But I am familiar with weirding ways, and I know some words of power.” Uvek tugged on the tip of one horn, thoughtful. “They give you more poison, I think. Or same amount, but you smaller, it hurts you more.”

  A moment of silence passed as Murtagh studied Uvek again, reevaluating. He knew the Urgals had magicians of their own, but he had never met any; the alliance between Galbatorix and their kind had already been broken by the time the Twins dragged him back to Urû’baen.

  His knees felt suddenly weak, and he lowered himself to the floor, using the iron bars for support. He reached back and pulled over his cloak and draped it across his shoulders. “There has to be a way to escape,” he muttered.

  Uvek chuckled, an unpleasant sound. “I am stronger than you, and I have more clear head, but I cannot find escape. The witch is smart, and strong too.”

  Murtagh blinked. He couldn’t seem to clear his eyes; everything appeared slightly blurry. “If I could just talk to Thorn—”

  “If wishes were real, world would end.”

  “The…the world might be ending anyway.”

  “Hrmm. That depend on what witch is want to do.”

  “How did you…How were you…” The light from the lamp seemed to fail, and the shadows narrowed his vision, and all grew dark and grey.

  “Human?…Human?…Open eyes, Murtagh-man. Open….”

  * * *

  The dreams this time were more fragmented. Quick flashes of images, each of which carried a charge of emotion strong enough to knock a man from his feet. Murtagh found himself whipped from the heights of frenzied delight to the depths of grim morbidity and back again. At times, he thought he felt Thorn, and their dreams seemed to intertwine, and then the whirling currents of fevered imaginings would rip them apart: strange tides leading to stranger shores.

  Throughout, Murtagh tried to hold to his sense of self, but it was difficult, for he did not know what was real and he had no lodestone to set his course by. The experience was exhausting and terrifying in equal measure, even more so because he sensed a gaping chasm underlying all of the visions—and, within that chasm, a lurking presence so huge and malevolent, he shrank from it for fear of going mad.

  In desperation, he cried out in the ancient language, trying to still the stormy waters of his mind. But though he could voice the words of power, he could not give them the strength needed to work a change in the sawtoothed jags of disjointed images.

  Helpless, he had no choice but to ride the ups and downs of the stormy swells and hope—hope—that they would soon subside.

  * * *

  A splash of cold water roused Murtagh from his torpor.

  He sputtered and inhaled a spray of droplets. He started to cough.

  A pair of white-robed cultists stood over him. One held an empty bucket, the other a wooden bowl and spoon.

  “Wha—”

  The men pinned him against the hard floor, holding down his arms and legs. He thrashed, but he had no strength. They restrained him as easily as a child.

  One of them produced a small crystal vial from inside his tunic. Murtagh recognized it as containing the same enchanted vapor Bachel had used on him. No!

  He struggled harder as the cultist unstoppered the vial and blew the contents into his face. The vapor filled Murtagh’s nostrils, and within seconds, his will to resist bled away, and his limbs grew slack, and he stared unblinking at the ceiling.

  “Keep him upright, that I may feed him,” said the other cultist.

  Murtagh felt himself pushed into a sitting position. Then the man who held him grabbed his jaw and forced his mouth open while his companion spooned in slop. Murtagh gagged. A large portion spilled onto his shirt.

  The cultist frowned, and after the next spoonful, he pinched Murtagh’s nose and pressed the palm of his hand over Murtagh’s mouth.

  As the slop ran down his throat, Murtagh recognized the burning brandy taste.

  When the bowl was empty, the cultists let him fall onto his side and left the cell. The door closed with a hollow clang.

  Footsteps receded into the distance.

  From across the hall, Uvek’s voice sounded: “Murtagh-man? Can you speak?”

  Murtagh made an incoherent sound and tried to roll onto his side. The movement nearly made him throw up. Before he could progress any further, more footsteps echoed through the dungeon, this time approaching.

  The pair of white-robed cultists returned with empty hands. They opened the cell and, despite Murtagh’s murmured protestations, picked him up by his arms and dragged him away.

  CHAPTER XV

  Obliteration

  Two turns of the hall brought them to a wooden door. The door opened to a stone room with a brazier full of glowing coals and a wooden slab table fitted with iron manacles.

  The sight struck him with shocking force. It was horribly similar to how the Hall of the Soothsayer had appeared when Galbatorix had forced him to torture Nasuada therein. Every part of Murtagh’s being rebelled at what lay before him. He rejected, repudiated, and forswore both past and future, and for a second, the searing fire of recognition burned away the effects of the vorgethan.

  No! He dug in his heels and twisted in his captors’ hands in a futile attempt to break free. Desperate, he bent and bit the hand of one man. The cultist yelled as hot blood pulsed into Murtagh’s mouth.

  The men slammed him against the table, and stars flashed across his vision as his head hit the wood. He continued to struggle even as they forced the manacles about his wrists and ankles.

  “No,” he growled, barely audible.

  The cultists ignored him. They withdrew to the corners of the room and stood at attention, the one man cradling his hand as blood dripped from the teeth marks Murtagh had left in his flesh.

  Again, Murtagh tried to use magic. Again, he failed.

  The door swung open, and—with a rush of air as from a beat of giant wings—Bachel strode in. The witch wore a long, black, high-collared robe with gold stitching along the cuffs. From her brow rose a matching headdress, stiff and splayed, made of netted threads adorned with pearls and the polished skulls of crows. The dark backdrop of the headdress framed her angular face, as in a carefully painted portrait. But unlike in most portraits, a mask covered the upper half of her face, and it seemed to blend into her skin and grant the witch a strange, draconic aspect, as if the shape of a dragon were somehow imposed over her body, as a glamour or an illusion.

  It was more than a simple trick; Murtagh could feel an additional presence in the room, a stifling, inhuman force for which Bachel was merely the vessel.

  The effect of the mask was the same as…as…He struggled to remember. Then it came to him: Captain Wren. The same as the masks the captain kept in his study, and it seemed to Murtagh they must have come from the same place. Perhaps Wren had given the Draumar the mask. Or perhaps they gave him his masks.

  Either way, Bachel had taken on a terrifying, outsized appearance, and every sound and movement she made acquired a heightened reality, as if he lay before a god made flesh.

  As disorienting and intimidating as the experience was, that wasn’t the worst of it. Not for him. For the mask reminded him, more than anything, of when Galbatorix had ordered him to wear a half mask of his own while interrogating Nasuada. Why exactly, Murtagh had never known, but he suspected the king wanted to force distance between Nasuada and him, that she might take no comfort in any look or expression of his, and he might more easily assume the role of torturer.

  Murtagh had hated the blasted thing.

  “Welcome, Kingkiller.” The witch’s words resonated as if from the peaks of the mountains: a supernatural sound that in no way resembled the voice of a human or elf.

  She advanced upon the table, and Murtagh saw she wore jewelry on her hands: for each finger an onyx claw fixed to a setting of carved gold. The claws were sharp, and he stiffened as she traced them across the curve of his shoulder. Even through his shirt, they scratched him.

  With an effort of will, he forced himself to say: “What do…do you want, witch?”

  “I want you.” She smiled, and beneath the mask, her teeth showed with feral hunger.

  “Never.”

  “You will bow to me, Kingkiller, and you will serve me and the one I in turn serve.” Her eyes glowed with honeyed light. “And you will be richly rewarded for helping to forge our fearsome future. No longer a princeling but a king fit to rule the world.”

  Her oversized, dragon-like bearing was crushing to be near, and Murtagh faltered before the force of it, faltered and felt diminished. “No,” he said, but the word seemed pitifully weak.

  “A king,” she whispered, leaning down so he could feel her breath on his ear. “A king such as the world needs, and I your priestess, and we shall bring long-delayed vengeance to this corrupted land.”

  He shook his head, trying to block out her insidious voice. A trial was coming, he knew, and it was going to test him to the utmost.

  “…Why?”

  The witch straightened, as tall and distant as a cruel-faced statue. “We are the devotees of Azlagûr the Devourer. Azlagûr the Firstborn. Azlagûr the Dreamer. He who sleeps and whose sleeping mind weaves the warp and weft of the waking world. But the sleeper grows restless, Kingkiller, and we are His eyes and ears and hands. By our doing, we shall ready the world for His dread arrival. Those who serve Azlagûr, those who well please Him—those He shall elevate above all others and grant to them power. Power such as has not existed in the world since the days of old, when magic was wild and unbound and the Grey Folk were yet primitives clawing their way out of the muck.”

  She bent toward him again, her expression terrible, and he thought to see flames leaping in her eyes and blood dripping from her onyx claws. “Join me, Kingkiller. Join me of your own accord. All that you wish will be yours if you but have faith.”