Murtagh

And he saw a plant unlike any he had encountered before. It had a single stem topped with a fleshy, pitcher-shaped cup perhaps two hands high. And from the cup stood small orange tentacles, which waved gently in the air.

Even as he watched, a frog hopped past the pitcher plant. Two of the tentacles reached out, fast as snakes, grabbed the frog, and pulled it into the mouth of the cup and held it there.

The frog uttered the smallest, most pitiful screech Murtagh had ever heard. Then it made no more sounds.

His face tightened, and he gripped the hilt of the arming sword, half-minded to chop the tentacled plant in twain.

After a moment, he thought better of it. But he kept his hand on the sword as he continued down the path. What witchery is this?

He was so focused on the odd sights that he forgot to watch where he was walking, and he caught an ankle on the corner of a brick that stuck out. He stumbled forward a step. As he recovered, he saw a crystal case sitting between two bushes, nearly hidden by the leafy branches. And resting in the case, a blue-black oval that was half a foot wide and half a foot tall. An egg. An evil-looking egg.

He stared at it, unsettled. What sort of creature hatches from such a thing? Not a dragon, that seemed sure, nor any other being he was familiar with. For the first time in his travels, he wished that Eragon or Arya were there with him. Whatever the purpose of the rooms underneath Gil’ead, they had been built and furnished with serious intent, and he had a creeping feeling that whoever it was that used them was dangerous in the extreme.

His gaze turned to the door at the back of the garden—the last door that needed opening, or so he hoped.

With quiet steps, he moved toward it.

The door was made not of wood, not of bone, but of grey granite, as hard and unyielding as an oath of revenge. The surface had a dry, textured appearance, and there were veins of tarnished copper running throughout. A handle also made of granite was mounted upon the left side.

Murtagh stood before the door, wary. He probed with his mind and felt…nothing. No gems, no stored energy, no hidden consciousness watching him, just cold dead stone, heavy with the weight of ages.

He pushed his thoughts past the door, into the chamber beyond. Even there, he found nothing but blank emptiness.

Worry and anger hardened his mind. Had Carabel been telling him the truth about Silna? Suddenly he had doubts. What if all this was a ploy to deceive me into coming here? But for what reason? To gather information on Carabel’s behalf? To confront the spellcaster using the chambers? Was Carabel working at Relgin’s behest?

Murtagh wasn’t willing to give up on the idea of Silna, though. He had to know for sure whether she was imprisoned beneath the barracks.

He grasped the handle.

The garden remained as before, bees humming in the background.

He pulled.

The door swung open in perfect silence.

***

The room past the garden was a bare stone cell. The walls were roughly quarried granite, devoid of windows, with a single iron bracket hung next to the door. On the bracket sat a stub of a candle.

A small sky-blue blanket lay crumpled on the floor. And that was all.

The sight made Murtagh’s heart ache. For a moment, it felt as if he were back in Urû’baen, in the dungeons beneath the citadel—he and Thorn both—listening to the screams of other prisoners while the overpowering weight of the king’s mind bore down upon him. The walls seemed to close in on him, and he had a sudden feeling of being deep underground, alone and isolated, trapped in the airless dark.

He picked up the blanket. It was barely bigger than a kerchief and smelled of…smelled of fear. Silna, or some other child, had been held captive there. That much seemed certain.

Tears welled in his eyes, but they did not fall.

He blinked and took a closer look at the back wall. Was there something on the…Yes. A faint line of white chalk. He traced it with his eyes and found that the line drew an arch from floor to head height.

An arch or a doorway. The idea of a doorway. A yearning for freedom.

He touched the back wall. It was hard, with no hint of movement, and when he tapped on the stone, it sounded solid.

His breath caught in his throat, and an oppressive grief collapsed upon him. Then a terrible rage began to build atop the grief, and his hands closed in fists, and he set his teeth and ground his jaw.

They would pay. They would all pay for what they had done to the werecat youngling, and he would teach them to fear him as they had feared his father.

“Curse you,” he muttered, and spun around to leave.

A blur of brindled fur sprang toward him from the back corner of the cell. Weight struck him against the neck and shoulders, and hisses and yowls echoed in his ears as a flurry of white claws tore at his throat.

CHAPTER XII Pathways into Darkness