Murtagh

He spun around to see a great brown bear standing on its hind legs not twenty feet away. The beast was as tall as a Kull and far thicker and more muscled.

Murtagh’s pulse spiked for a second, and then he mastered himself. The bear was no threat. A single word would be more than sufficient to kill it, but Murtagh didn’t like the idea; he and Thorn were the intruders, not the bear.

Thorn snaked his head around Murtagh and growled in response, making the bear sound puny in comparison.

The animal didn’t seem scared. It roared again, dropped to all fours, and then reared back up, paws and claws extended.

“What’s wrong with you?” Murtagh shouted. “Are you stupid? Don’t you realize you can’t win?”

The bear appeared startled. It snarled at him and then looked at Thorn and let out a long, outraged bellow. On a hunch, Murtagh searched the surrounding area with his mind for cubs or other bears. Nothing.

“I think it just wants to fight.”

The dragon’s eyes glittered. Then we shall fight.

“No, please. Not now,” said Murtagh. “It’s been a long day.”

Thorn huffed, disappointed. Fine. As you want. Then he loosed a long jet of red and orange fire directly over the bear’s head, singeing the fur on the tips of its ears.

The bear yowled, turned, and loped down the shoreline faster than a man could run.

“Thanks,” said Murtagh as he watched the animal go. “I wager it’s never met anything it couldn’t intimidate before.”

Well, now it has, said Thorn, sounding satisfied.

Murtagh glanced at the snowcapped mountains. He hoped no one had heard the commotion. “We should be careful from now on,” he said, returning to the fire he was building. “You never know who might be listening. Especially out here.”

***

That night both Murtagh and Thorn had terrible dreams, and their nightmares spilled over from one mind to the other until it was impossible to tell where they originated. Urgals featured in many of the dreams: a great army of them marching through the Spine, with a king at their fore and the heads of their enemies spiked on their spears. And a bloody battle beneath the dark pinetrees, with Urgals bellowing like bears and humans screaming, and Murtagh and Thorn crouched by the upturned roots of a fallen tree, trying to hide. They were crying, crying, crying, and the tears pattered against the dirt along with the drops of black blood….

Sleep provided no rest that night, and when Murtagh and Thorn woke, they were still exhausted. Those were no normal dreams, said Thorn.

No. There’s something strange in the land here…. We can’t be far, I think.

Murtagh’s words proved prophetic. In the middle of the afternoon, as Thorn rounded the flank of a particularly tall peak, a swift-flowing river came into view, pouring out of a cleft in the Spine and feeding into the Bay of Fundor. A blanket of low-hanging clouds roofed the cleft, and the interior was deep and dark and densely wooded. However, the shadows and the trees did nothing to conceal the pall of bluish smoke crowded at the back of the narrow valley.

And as the wind gusted, it carried a whiff of sulfurous stench that made Murtagh’s throat sting and his eyes water.

He straightened in the saddle, feeling a strange thrill.

They had arrived.

PART III Nal Gorgoth

CHAPTER I The Village

On still wings, Thorn soared into the cleft. The soft ceiling of clouds muffled the air, and the silence only heighted Murtagh’s anticipation as he leaned forward in the saddle, peering over Thorn’s neck to see what lay ahead.

The mountains formed blue-white walls to either side, broken by cliffs of bare grey granite that protruded from the ranks of snowbound trees. Below, the river flowed swift and narrow along its course, the water so clear Murtagh could count the rounded rocks beneath its rippling surface.

As they neared the back of the valley, the smell of rotten eggs grew stronger, and to Murtagh’s surprise, the air seemed to grow warmer as well, as if winter had yet to lay its frozen fingers upon the northern reaches.

Beneath the scrim of smoke draped over the foothills piled before them, he saw a collection of closely built stone structures. They were dark grey with domed roofs, unlike the style of construction elsewhere in Alagaësia. Some were houses, he thought, but there were other buildings as well: a narrow tower that would not have been out of place in Urû’baen and, set into the base of the near hill, what looked to be a palace or temple with a large open courtyard and a tiered roof.

Figures were visible in the streets, but distance and smoke obscured them.