Murtagh

She put her lips together and blew on him. Vapor whorled toward him, and with it, a heavy, rotten odor. For some reason, he no longer found it offensive. Rather, it was intoxicating, as if he could never breathe enough of it. Each lungful was an exhilaration that set his head spinning and prevented him from focusing on any one thing for more than a moment.

“Walk with me, my son,” said Bachel. Her words echoed in his mind, soft as song but strong as iron.

She strode away through the vapor, and he followed, dumb and wildered.

A man accompanied them with a lurching, long-limbed tread. Murtagh studied his cragged face, trying and failing to place it. The man carried a red sword in one hand and an iron-shod club in the other, with a loose cloak draped over the crook of his arm.

Into a marble-clad chamber they went and along a tiled tunnel and through a slime-lit cave with a broken floor. As they arrived at the base of a set of stairs cut into the stone, Murtagh’s mind began to sharpen, though he remained deeply confused.

“Where…where are—”

Bachel turned and blew on him again, a gentle breath of warm air. With it came a billow of vapor from a crystal vial she held on her palm. He had not noticed it before.

At the touch of the vapor, all thought deserted him.

“Close your mouth, Kingkiller,” said Bachel. “It is unseemly of you to gape as a poleaxed fish.”

He did as he was told.

“Good. Now come with me, Kingkiller. Come.”

Up the stairs they went, and the slime-glow faded behind them. In its place, torchlight appeared above and ahead, the flames—which were not yet visible—casting a throng of shadows upon the walls and mouth of the cave.

The last step passed beneath Murtagh’s feet, and then he stood on level ground again. Bachel led him toward a great red dragon crouched on the dark path before them.

The dragon snarled, and his tail twitched, and something of the dragon’s presence resonated in Murtagh’s mind, but he could make no sense of it. The words and impressions forced upon his consciousness were a meaningless storm filled with random bits of wind-tossed flotsam.

A roar burst forth from the dragon, strong enough that Murtagh felt the vibration against his cheek.

“Hush now,” said Bachel. She lifted the vial and blew across the crystal mouth, and a cloud of vapor streamed forth and surrounded the dragon’s head.

The glittering creature thrashed and quivered, and then his catlike eyes rolled back, and his enormous bulk went slack and still.

Formless alarm filled Murtagh, yet he could do nothing.

After long minutes…the dragon stirred again.

Bachel walked over to him and placed a hand upon his snout. “Awake, O slave of dream.”

The dragon’s eyelids flicked open with a snick, and he arched his neck and shook his head, as if to throw off a swarm of flies. The creature stared at Murtagh, and Murtagh at him, and neither of them spoke, both equally confounded.

A set of seven crows descended from the blackened sky. They circled Bachel’s head in a murderous crown and then settled about her shoulders and arms. She smiled at them fondly and stroked their feathers with the back of her forefinger while the birds peered with pale eyes, bright and suspicious, at Murtagh and the dragon.

With the birds as her companions, Bachel strode forward from the cave and into the grove of trees. “Come,” she said, and Murtagh and the dragon followed.

They had no choice.

The black-needled pines stood as silent sentinels watching over the strange, staggered procession passing beneath their arching boughs. Murtagh stared up at the treetops and the velvet blackness of the clouded sky, and he tried to understand why the world felt so out of joint.

With measured steps, they walked across the cropped turf and then back into the courtyard before the temple. Rows of grey-robed people stood like hooded statues in the yard. Each held a lit torch, and their faces were turned down, so only the tops of their hoods were visible.

Bachel led Murtagh and the dragon into the center of the mute congregation, and a quartet of warriors gathered close around her, spears held at the ready.

She pointed at the dragon with a taloned finger. “Secure him,” she said, her voice ringing clear in the night air. And she tossed the vial at the dragon’s feet. It broke with a sharp chime. A plume of vapor expanded upward and gathered around the dragon’s head, moving as if it were a living thing.

Then Bachel beckoned to Murtagh. “With me, Kingkiller,” she said, and walked toward the entrance of the temple, the seven crows still riding upon her arms and shoulders.

He wanted to object, but he could not form the words, and no sound left his throat.

The tall witch led him deep into the temple, through cold corridors devoid of light, past windows shuttered closed and empty doorways that stared like eyeless sockets. Then down again, along a snail-shell staircase, until they arrived at a series of iron-barred cells. Grieve opened one door and pushed Murtagh inside.