Murtagh

Thorn seemed unconvinced. Mmm. Did you ever have a dog?

You know I didn’t…. The other boys would have hurt or killed any dog I owned.

Thorn’s lip wrinkled slightly, not enough that others would notice, but Murtagh saw. They would not have dared were I there.

Murtagh chuckled. No. That they wouldn’t.

He coaxed his mare to sidestep over to Bachel. “I notice you have no dogs.”

Disdain sharpened the witch’s angled features. “And for good reason. They are blasphemous creatures.”

“Dogs?”

“They refuse to accept the insight one may receive through the power of this place. No dog will stay here in Nal Gorgoth, and that has ever been the case. Crows are wiser. They understand the promise of dream.”

“How will you drive the boars, though?”

Her hooded gaze grew mysterious. “You shall see, Kingkiller. We will not need such assistance as you are accustomed to.”

As the group organized their provisions, Murtagh spotted Alín watching from among the temple’s shadowed pillars, a furtive figure half hidden behind the carved stone.

When everyone in the party was mounted up, Bachel lifted a spear over her head and cried, “With me!” and spurred her shaggy stallion forward, away from the temple and into the village.

Murtagh was tempted to brandish Zar’roc, as if rallying troops, but instead he spurred his mare and followed at a sedate pace. The cultists trailed after, and Thorn brought up the rear, his weighted tread shaking dust from the shingles of the buildings.

Dozens of villagers gathered along the streets to watch them depart. Murtagh spotted a surprising number of children among their ranks. It seems like there ought to be more people here, given how many children they have, he said to Thorn. It’s odd.

The dragon answered: Perhaps they send the younglings elsewhere when they are grown.

Once the party reached the edge of Nal Gorgoth, Bachel reined in her stallion and pointed toward the southern side of the valley. “Do you see that small gap between the mountains, Kingkiller? Where the trees follow a stream out of the heights? That is our destination.”

“We will find boars there, my Lady?”

“Enough to feed a thunder of dragons!” Then she spurred her stallion again, bending low over the horse’s neck as he sprang forward with a startled snort over the blackened earth.

Grieve scowled and lashed the side of his mare as he followed. “Keep with the Speaker, blast you!” he shouted at the warriors who filled out their party.

With a clamor of drumming hooves and the cries of the excited men, the group headed south toward the narrow wedge of space that separated one mountain from the next.

It will be a wonder if we don’t scare away all the boars with this ruckus, said Murtagh.

Thorn surprised him then by taking flight; his wings cast a crimson shadow upon the group as he soared over them. I will scout ahead and see where our prey might be, before you drive them from their feeding grounds and watering holes.

Murtagh watched with some regret as Thorn rose with enviable ease above the foothills. He wished he were riding Thorn instead of the mare with the coat of liver chestnut; he hated being left behind among strangers.

Most of all, he hated how familiar a feeling it was.

The air grew warmer as they neared the sliver of a side valley, and more and more wisps of smoke rose like garden eels from the crusted earth. A few times, a scrap of wind-torn smoke struck him in the face, and he gagged from the overwhelming stench of sulfur. The land had a charred and barren appearance, as if razed by fire in the recent past.

Bachel had slowed her stallion to a more measured pace, so Murtagh rode up next to her. “I’ve never seen a place like this before, except for the Burning Plains far to the south. And those don’t smell of brimstone.”

The witch nodded. “There are many such places, Kingkiller, scattered about Alagaësia, though you will not easily find them. There is another, not far south of here: the barrows of Anghelm, where Kulkarvek the Terrible is buried in state.”

Murtagh fought to hide his reaction. Kulkarvek was the only Urgal known to have united their fractious race under a single banner, an event that had occurred long before the fall of the Riders, if stories were to be trusted. His resting place was one of the other locations—along with the ruins of El-harím and Vroengard Island—that Umaroth had warned Thorn and Murtagh to avoid.