Murtagh

Disapproval crossed Grieve’s face, but his voice remained deferential. “As you say, Speaker.”

“I do.”

For a time, Murtagh stood fully exposed. His skin felt strange upon him, and he knew not who or what he was. An unaccountable sense of grief formed deep within him.

Then the cultists brought clothes in which to garb him. Fine woolen trousers—red and black—soft leather riding boots that reached to his knees, and a thin undershirt overlaid with a padded jerkin. Atop that, a tabard of archaic scale armor, the metal velvet grey and the tip of each scale adorned with a line of embedded gold that traced the shape of the scale. A gold-studded belt cinched about his waist, and upon his head they placed a crown-like helm, such as some long-forgotten king might have worn into battle.

“There,” said Bachel, leaning back in her seat. “Now you look as you should.”

Murtagh did not answer. Words seemed of no import. Behind him, he heard Thorn’s heavy breath as they waited upon the witch’s command.

Bachel’s eyes were cold as she studied them—they her vassals, she their maternal sovereign. Her voice rang with a stony determination that overrode the soft cries of the crows above: “The time has come. We have not arrived at the end of the end, nor the middle of the end, but I say now that this day marks the beginning of the end. And it shall be a calamity to all who oppose us.”

***

Many things Bachel had Murtagh do. He did as he was told—listless, unresisting, his mind muffled as if bound in batts of felted wool. On the few occasions when a coherent thought came to him, he wondered whether any of it was real.

Nights he spent in the cell beneath the temple. The Urgal opposite him kept trying to speak with him, but none of the creature’s words held in Murtagh’s mind. They were not from Bachel, and so he did not remember them.

Days he spent sitting to the right of Bachel in the temple’s inner sanctum—while Grieve glowered at him from across the chamber—or else riding beside the witch as she led him about the valley. Evenings they feasted in the courtyard: leisurely banquets of roasted boar meat, aged wine, and mushrooms cooked in every possible way. And always Bachel was talking to him: talking, talking, talking, an endless stream of words that shaped his actions and ordered the world about him.

As she spoke, she sometimes rested her hand on his arm, not with any passion, but as she might with a valued possession, and her scent mingled with that of the ever-present brimstone.

Thorn accompanied them most times, but not always. Twice Murtagh saw Grieve climb into Thorn’s saddle and ride on the dragon high into the sky above Nal Gorgoth. And once they flew out of sight beyond the jagged peaks and did not return until several hours thence.

When they did, Thorn landed in the courtyard and crouched there, cold and shivering. Murtagh stared at the dragon, miserable, though with no means to give voice to his misery.

From among the pillars along the front of the temple came Alín, bearing a pitcher of water and a basket of bergenhed and a ragged piece of cloth. She placed the basket before Thorn’s head and then wet the cloth and began to wash dirt and dried blood from the healing wounds that striped Thorn’s side.

Murtagh’s lips trembled, and he clenched the belt around his waist.

***

At Bachel’s command, the cultists began preparations for a grand festival to be held in a week’s time. “I have had a premonition,” she announced to the assembled village. “The time of the Black Smoke Festival approaches. Send forth raiding parties that we may gather the means to properly worship Azlagûr the Devourer.”

Then Nal Gorgoth became a hive of activity. The cultists swarmed about in constant, frantic pursuit of their duties. Three groups of armed warriors left on horses, shouting their praise and devotion to Bachel, spears held high. Murtagh watched them go from beside Thorn, and he wished he could leave with them—to escape the valley and breathe fresh air untainted by brimstone.

That day, Bachel took him on another boar hunt. She gave him a spear to wield, and he held it without feeling, though the weight of the weapon stirred an obscure desire within him.

The witch rode before him on Thorn, her hair bound up in feathered tufts, her arms bare to the wind, her teeth flashing with fierce delight. It felt strange to have another upon Thorn with him—strange to Murtagh and strange to Thorn. But neither of them complained of it.

Bachel’s honor guard followed on the ground while Thorn flew from Nal Gorgoth into the mushroom-laden valley where the boars rooted and rutted.

The hunt went much as before. At Bachel’s command, Murtagh took his place by her side and set his spear against the arch of his foot and waited while Thorn drove the beasts toward their position. He waited, and no fear quickened his pulse, nor excitement nor joy nor any form of normal human feeling.