Murtagh

And beneath it all—beneath the overpowering images and emotions brought forth from the unwelcome past—lay the yawning void, and within it…a core of slow-turning madness centered upon some unknown yet implacable purpose.

And Murtagh wept and cried out with fear.

CHAPTER XIV Uvek

Murtagh woke.

There was no slow return to reality. No gradual brightening of light, no ramped awareness of his senses. One moment, nothing. The next—

A grey stone floor lay beneath him, inches from his nose. The stone was cracked, and small filigrees of moss had infiltrated the tiny crevices in the material: a tracery of green in an otherwise bare, grim surface. The smell of moss and stone combined was like that of a high mountain stream, or else a deep cave filled with a sunless lake.

His body was cold. He was lying face down on the hard floor. His left knee throbbed, and his right arm was numb from being folded underneath him.

As for his mind…his thoughts were clearer, more focused than before, although he still felt strangely muzzy, and there was a sickly-sweet taste at the back of his throat that he felt he ought to recognize….

He remembered the caves beneath the village, and the glowing slime, and finding the grated well where Bachel and Grieve had confronted him.

Alarm rushed through him. Thorn!

With his left arm, he pushed himself upright. His head swam, and he braced himself against the floor and closed his eyes until his balance returned and his right arm stopped tingling. Then he looked around.

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….