Bachel spread out the prisoner’s bloody intestines across the ashen altar, and she made a show of studying them. Then she raised her stained hands and cried, “Azlagûr has blessed us!” The cultists roared with approval. “The time of the Draumar is at hand! Hark! I see our people stepping forth from the shadows and marching across the land! I see the sons and daughters of Azlagûr’s betrayers brought to heel! I see the Dragon Thorn and the Rider Murtagh flying at our fore! Yea, and even shall they cast down the false hero Eragon, and by their claw and tooth and blade shall they usher in the end of this age. All shall bow before Azlagûr’s might, and His reign shall take hold, and so shall we endure, yea even unto the end of time. As it is dreamt, so it shall be!”

  “As it is dreamt, so it shall be!” the villagers chanted.

  Then Bachel stepped back from the altar and gestured at the corpse of the man. “Take him to the deep and deposit his body in the Well of Dreams, that Azlagûr may know we have served Him.”

  Two of the warriors dragged the corpse away, leaving black streaks across the altar.

  With a wicked smile, Bachel advanced on Murtagh. He froze, and his heart jumped as she took his right hand in hers. She lifted his hand, and the diamond slipped from between his fingers, and the cloak fell straight. Her smile deepened as she pressed her black-bladed dagger into his palm and wrapped his fingers about the hilt. The blood on her skin stained his own.

  “Now it is your turn to prove yourself a faithful servant to Azlagûr the Devourer,” she said, and a tone of unhealthy delight colored her voice. “Bring another!”

  The warriors grabbed the next prisoner—a short, brown-haired woman—and carried her to the altar. Despite the stultifying effects of the Breath, she was clearly terrified. Her nostrils flared, and her lungs rasped like overworked bellows, and a fine sheen of sweat coated her ashen skin.

  Even though Murtagh wasn’t touching the diamond, he should have been able to draw the energy from it. Under normal circumstances he could have. He felt sure that if he just tried hard enough…but even in that moment, with his heart pounding and the smell of blood and death filling his nostrils, he could not bring his full strength to bear.

  One of the warriors cut open the front of the woman’s tunic. Bachel savored the sight before turning back to Murtagh. “Now, Kingkiller. You know what is to be done. Now, by my word, my will, my command, sacrifice this unbeliever to Azlagûr the Devourer! Do this, and you shall be favored above all others.”

  A scrap of black smoke blew into Murtagh’s face as he inhaled, and the smoke choked him and unbalanced his thoughts. The world distorted, and the festival and Nal Gorgoth itself seemed to thin and waver.

  His hand trembled around the hilt of the dagger.

  For the slightest moment, he imagined accepting. No longer would he and Thorn be outcasts. They would belong to the Draumar, and the Draumar would belong to them, and wherever they went, whatever they did, they would be able to rely upon the Draumar for help, even as the cultists might rely upon them. He would lead the Draumar to victory against the rest of Alagaësia. He knew how. Bachel was not wrong in that. And in victory, he and Thorn might at last be truly safe.

  The prospect was enormously tempting.

  Yet he could not bring himself to take the first step along that path. The costs were too high. He and Thorn would still be Bachel’s thralls, servants to her grim cause, and there was no certainty they could ever overcome her. Besides, to pursue an absence of danger beyond all other considerations was its own form of madness. And as much as he yearned to belong, the question of to whom mattered. The Draumar, he deemed, were unworthy of his loyalty. He had rejected what Galbatorix offered—and through that rejection won his freedom. Likewise, he now rejected Bachel.

  “Kill her, Kingkiller!” Bachel insisted. The leaping flames of the bonfire gilded her hollow cheeks with liquid gold. The chanting of the cultists surged in response to her words, rising to a demented frenzy.

  Murtagh lifted the knife. He had to. Bachel’s words left him no choice. But in his mind, he continued to rebel. Time was nearly gone, and yet he still failed to breach the barrier and access the energy in the diamond.

  He couldn’t do it alone.

  The thought struck him with clarifying force. In an instant, he diverted his mental energies to Thorn—and then to Uvek—and threw himself against the unnatural haze that separated their minds and pierced it through the strength of his will. I need your help! he said.

  The knife began to descend.

  Thorn blinked, and Uvek snarled, and yet Murtagh felt nothing from them. Despair sank its teeth into him. They had lost, and Bachel had triumphed. If only—

  New strength poured into him. Thorn’s and Uvek’s both. Their contribution was limited—neither was able to fully overcome the restrictions of the Breath or the vorgethan—but it was more than he had on his own.

  With them backing him, Murtagh again drove his mind into the diamond. It took every scrap of their combined might, but he was able, just barely, to prize open the bottled store of energy.

  The torrent of potential rushed into him.

  He directed it into the blackstone charm. At the same instant, he mouthed the Urgal word that Uvek had taught him: “Shûkva.” Heal. It felt strange to work magic without the ancient language, but the word served its purpose nonetheless, and the charm triggered.

  A sense of lightness passed through Murtagh, and a cloud seemed to lift from his mind as his sight and hearing sharpened and his thoughts grew swift as a high-spirited stallion. It occurred to him that he was lucky his remaining wards hadn’t blocked the effects of the charm.

  He stopped the downward motion of his arm. The tip of the black-bladed dagger hung a hair’s breadth from the center of the woman’s chest.

  Bachel looked at him, and her angled eyes began to narrow. “Do not hesitate, Kingkiller. Finish the deed!”

  Murtagh knew the odds were against him. His wards that protected him from physical harm were exhausted. All he had was the force of his mind and the strength of his body, and Bachel and the entirety of the Draumar were arrayed before him—and they were well protected by amulets and enchantments.

  His lips curled. A good fight, then.

  The first flash of alarm crossed Bachel’s face, but before she could act—

  “Vindr!” Murtagh shouted, and stabbed the dagger toward the witch’s heart.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Fire and Wind

  The Draumar were warded against magic, but they were not warded against the effects of magic.

  At Murtagh’s shouted command, a torrent of ferocious wind knocked the cultists and prisoners off their feet, and even sent a number of them tumbling across the flagstones. Behind him, the bonfire roared to sudden heights, the flames leaping twenty feet or more into the air, and a cloud of swirling embers filled the yard while writhing shadows stretched to the surrounding buildings.

  Summoning so much wind ought to have been beyond Murtagh’s strength, but he drained the yellow diamond empty, and he drew upon Thorn and Uvek, and his might was more than that of any single man, even a Rider.

  The tip of the black-bladed dagger bounced off Bachel’s breast, stopped by a spell, and the weapon flew from his hand.

  Then the witch was shouting in a guttural, unfamiliar language as she jumped back. One of her onyx claws pointed at him.

  “Skölir!” he shouted. Shield. It was a generic ward, so vague as to be dangerous, but it was all he had time for.

  Gouts of inky darkness poured from her finger and flowed around Murtagh as water around a stubborn boulder, deflected by his counterspell.

  Another word, and she could kill him. His makeshift ward could be bypassed in any number of ways. So he did what always ought to be the first thing in a duel between magicians: he attacked Bachel’s mind with his own. Now freed of the Breath and the vorgethan, he knew he had a chance of overcoming her, if he could just—

  Bachel laughed, and there was no humor or levity in the sound, only cruel, scornful mocking.

  She stepped back, and a cloud of flapping wings and clattering beaks and stark white eyes obscured her as the murder of crows descended into the yard and surrounded the witch. Then the birds darted forward, and Murtagh heard and felt them everywhere around him, and they blotted out the light.

  In the distance, Uvek bellowed, and fear shaded his thoughts.

  From within the storm of crows, Murtagh sensed the witch’s mind slipping away, like a wisp on the wind. He tried to find her again, but to no avail. The minds of the flitting birds confused his inner eye, and he felt himself lost and uncertain of his balance.

  It was an untenable position. At any moment, a blade or spell might end him.

  Desperate, Murtagh thought back to the compendium, and he uttered the simplest, and greatest, of the killing words: “Deyja.”

  Die.

  The crows fell as dark, heavy rain.

  He stood alone beside the altar. The female prisoner had rolled off the block of basalt. Around him lay a rosette of slain crows, their feathers pressed flat against the flagstones, as so many green-black petals.

  Bachel was gone. Vanished. As was Grieve, and half the guests at the long table.

  Blast it. He needed to catch Bachel before she could work more evil. But first—

  The cultists were massing at the side of the courtyard, warriors and common Draumar alike gathering themselves for a charging attack.

  “Vindr!” Murtagh drove them back with word and wind as he strode to Thorn. Once more the dragon’s strength served as his own. With another arcane command—“Kverst!”—he struck the shackles and muzzle from Thorn, and then he took the blackstone charm from his boot, pressed it against Thorn’s snout, and again said, “Shûkva.”

  The change in Thorn’s demeanor was instantaneous. He arched his neck and roared, and a glittering ripple flashed along his sinuous length. At last! he said. And the feel of his mind, once more whole and sound, filled Murtagh’s eyes with tears.

  It was the work of seconds to effect a similar cure on Uvek and to free him of his fetters.

  The Urgal rolled his massive, rounded shoulders and let out a roar to match Thorn’s. “Is good, Murtagh-man. Has been long time since I fought. This I think I enjoy.”

  “No younglings,” said Murtagh in a hard tone as he handed the blackstone charm back to the Urgal.

  A rippling sheet of flame shot from Thorn’s mouth, driving back the surging mass of cultists. The same goes for you, said Murtagh with his mind. Leave the younglings alone.

  I will try.

  Uvek lifted his horns to show his throat. “As you say, Murtagh-man. And I ask you not kill more crows. Is bad fortune.”

  Murtagh nodded in return. “I promise. Now let’s—”

  He stopped when he saw Alín appear deep among the shadowed pillars that fronted the temple, running toward them with Thorn’s saddle and bags piled in her arms. As she staggered beneath the weight, Grieve and two armored acolytes darted up from behind and seized her.

  The saddle and bags fell, and Alín thrashed in a frantic attempt to free herself. But Grieve and the acolytes dragged her back into the depths of the temple, and they vanished from sight even as Murtagh readied a spell.

  He shouted in anger and started after her.

  After two steps, he swung back to Thorn and slapped him on the side. “Go! Break! Burn! Tear this place to the ground.”

  Thorn’s jaws parted in a toothy snarl, and the tip of his tail twitched. I thought you would never ask. Then he roared again and leaped into the air with a thunderous sweep of his wings.

  The backdraft sent swirls of embers through the air, each one a tiny whirling firestorm.

  As Thorn cleared the buildings that edged the courtyard, he laid down a wall of fire between Murtagh and the massing mob. A clutch of arrows pierced the wall and streaked past his head, trailing pennants of flapping flames.

  Murtagh sprinted toward the temple even as the flames died down and the cultists surged forward. Behind him, he heard Uvek loose a mighty bellow: a battle cry fit to make even the bravest man quail.

  Then Murtagh was among the dark rows of faceted columns. He ran through the open doors of blackened oak, down the alcove-lined passage, and into the atrium with the nightmarish statue of dream.

  A deafening crash sounded behind him, and an enormous thud vibrated the ground. He spun around to see a cloud of dust rising above the front of the temple. A dark shadow swept over him as Thorn swooped overhead.

  There, said Thorn. None shall reach you from the entrance. I blocked the doors with stone. As he spoke, the dragon alit upon the Tower of Flint and began to tear at the slate shingles that roofed it. A twisting stream of angry, frightened, cawing crows flew up through the holes and dispersed into the smoke that darkened the valley.

  Murtagh smiled tightly. Thanks. Be careful.

  Thorn roared in response.

  Then Murtagh turned left and started out of the atrium, heading toward the temple’s inner sanctum, where he was most likely to find Bachel, Grieve, and Alín.

  Along the way, he ended his shielding spell. It was too broad to be truly effective, and although it was a ward, the way he had cast it was as an ongoing effect, which was costing him precious energy that he knew—or rather, feared—he would need to overcome Bachel. Better to start fresh with proper wards, which would only trigger when actually needed.

  As he passed among the pillars along the southern edge of the atrium, he struggled to remember the exact wording of his earliest wards. It had been some time since he cast them, and it wouldn’t do to accidentally curse himself. Ah, that’s it, he thought, and opened his mouth to—

  A heavy weight slammed into his back, between the shoulder blades. His head whipped back, pain shot through his neck, and he fell forward onto the paved floor. White sparks flashed behind his eyes as his forehead bounced off the stones.

  A boot rammed into his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. Then again. And again.

  “There! That’s right! You never were any better than a piece of gutter filth!” shouted Lyreth.

  The sound of his voice and the feel of the blows filled Murtagh’s mind with memories of being ambushed on the spiral staircase at the citadel of Urû’baen. An instinctual sense of panic and helplessness gripped him, and he curled into a kneeling ball, trying to protect his head and the back of his neck.

  Magic. That was the answer. If he could just cast a spell—

  Something hard struck his temple. His vision flickered, and the ground seemed to tilt and turn beneath him. Dazed, he tried to recover, but it was impossible to think, impossible to move—

  He lost his balance and rolled onto his side. He saw Lyreth standing over him, a bloodstained brass goblet in one hand, a vicious, snarling expression on his face. Lyreth raised the goblet again and—

  Something yanked Lyreth to the side and sent him tumbling across the floor. The goblet fell and bounced with several high-pitched tings.

  Then Uvek was standing over Murtagh, offering him a huge grey hand. In the other, the Urgal held a spear taken from the Draumar.

  “Thanks,” Murtagh managed to gasp as he accepted Uvek’s help and the Urgal pulled him onto his feet.

  “Of course, blood brother.”

  Several pillars away, Lyreth stood somewhat unsteadily. He glanced between Murtagh and Uvek, and fear widened his eyes. He made to turn, as if to flee, and Murtagh said, “Don’t even think about it, Lyreth. I could kill you with a word.”

  The noble’s face went even paler. He wet his lips. “Nonsense. Bachel’s magic protects me.”

  Ah, he has an amulet.

  “Do you really think that can stop me, Lyreth? Me? Even Galbatorix could not stop me with his oaths. If not for me, you’d still be a slave to his will.” It was a bluff, but Murtagh somehow believed his own words. If forced to, he felt sure he could find a way past the amulet’s wards. Somehow.

  Lyreth lifted his sharp jaw. “So then kill me. What are you waiting for?” When Murtagh didn’t immediately answer, he smirked and began to back away. “That’s what I thought. An empty b—”

  “No,” said Uvek, and his voice was like grinding rocks. He pointed at Lyreth with one hooked nail. “You stay.” Lyreth froze. There was no chance he could outrun an Urgal, and they all knew it. “Do you want I should kill this hornless stripling for you, Murtagh-man?”

  Murtagh was sorely tempted. But he shook his head. “No. Leave him. He’ll make a better prisoner. We’ll take him back to face Nasuada’s interrogators.”

  Fear again animated Lyreth’s face, but then he assumed the same haughty, contemptuous expression that Murtagh had learned to hate growing up. “Do you think it’s so easy to make me a prisoner? You never could best me at court, Murtagh.”

  “And you could never best me in the arena. Goreth of Teirm could attest to that.”

  Somewhere in the village, a building collapsed amid shouts and roars. Murtagh resisted the urge to look. He felt no pain from Thorn; the dragon was safe enough.

  Lyreth made a dismissive motion. “You don’t have a sword now, Murtagh son of Morzan, and if you have that pet Urgal of yours catch and bind me, you’re a bigger coward than I thought. I wager you can’t make me bend a knee. I wager upon my life.”

  It was a provocation, and Murtagh knew it, but neither could he let the challenge pass unanswered. “It might very well be on your life,” he said darkly. He wiped a line of blood from his throbbing temple. “No one calls me coward without a fair answer.”

  Uvek nodded approvingly. “I will watch, Murtagh-man. Is good to fight. Clears the blood, adds honor to your name.”

  “And my honor is your honor. Yes.”

  The Urgal moved back several paces as Murtagh and Lyreth began to circle each other among the pillars. Lyreth’s unexpected courage puzzled Murtagh; he never would have thought of Lyreth as brave. Cunning, yes. Charming, when need be, yes. Cruel, most certainly. But not the sort of man who would jump at the opportunity to lead a charge in battle.