Inheritance

INFIDELS ON THE LOOSE

“What an idiot,” proclaimed Angela as she hurried to the edge of the patterned disk on the floor. She was bleeding from a number of cuts and scratches, and her clothes were stained with even more blood, which Eragon suspected was not her own. Otherwise, she appeared unharmed. “All he had to do was-this!”

And she swung her sword with its transparent blade up and over her head, and brought the pommel down against one of the amethysts that ringed the disk. The crystal shattered with an odd snap, like a shock of static, and the light it emitted flickered and went out. The other crystals maintained their radiance.

Without pause, Angela stepped to the next piece of amethyst and broke it as well, then the one after it, and so on.

Never in his life had Eragon been so grateful to see anyone.

He alternated between watching the herbalist and watching the cracks widening at the top of the first egg. The Ra’zac had almost pecked its way out, a fact it seemed to be aware of, for it was squeaking and tapping with increased vigor. Between the pieces of shell, Eragon saw a thick white membrane and the beaked head of the Ra’zac pushing blindly against it, horrible and monstrous.

Hurry, hurry, Eragon thought as a fragment as large as his hand fell from the egg and clattered against the floor, like a plate made of fired clay.

The membrane tore, and the young Ra’zac stuck its head out of the egg, revealing its barbed purple tongue as it uttered a triumphant screech. Slime dripped from its carapace, and a fungus-like smell pervaded the chamber.

Eragon tugged at his bonds once more, futile as it was.

The Ra’zac screeched again, then struggled to extricate itself from the remainder of the egg. It pulled one clawed arm free, but in the process it unbalanced the egg, which tipped to one side, spilling a thick, yellowish fluid across the patterned disk. The grotesque hatchling lay on its side for a moment, stunned. Then it stirred and got to its feet, where it stood, swaying and uncertain, clicking to itself like an agitated insect.

Eragon stared, appalled and terrified, but also fascinated.

The Ra’zac had a deep, ridged chest that made it look as if its ribs were on the outside of its body, not the inside. The creature’s limbs were thin and knobby, like sticks, and its waist was narrower than any human’s. Each leg had an extra backward-bending joint, something that Eragon had never seen before, but which accounted for the Ra’zac’s unsettling gait. Its carapace appeared soft and malleable, unlike those of the more mature Ra’zac Eragon had encountered. No doubt it would harden in time.

The Ra’zac tilted its head-its huge, protruding, pupil-less eyes catching the light-and it chittered as if it had just discovered something exciting. Then it took a tentative step toward Arya … and another … and then another, its beak parting as it strained toward the pool of blood by her feet.

Eragon shouted into his gag, hoping to distract the creature, but other than a quick glance, it ignored him.

“Now!” exclaimed Angela, and she broke the last of the crystals.

Even as the shards of amethyst skittered across the floor, Solembum leaped toward the Ra’zac. The werecat’s form blurred in midair-head shrinking, legs shortening, fur sprouting-and he landed on all fours, his body once more that of an animal.

The Ra’zac hissed and clawed at Solembum, but the werecat dodged the blow and, faster than the eye could follow, slapped the Ra’zac’s head with one of his large, heavy paws.

The Ra’zac’s neck broke with a crack, and the creature flew across the room and landed in a twisted heap, where it lay twitching for several seconds.

Solembum hissed, his one uninjured ear pressed flat against his skull; then he wriggled out of the loincloth that was still tied around his hips and went over to sit and wait by the other egg.

“What have you done to yourself?” said Angela as she hurried over to Arya. Arya wearily lifted her head, but she made no attempt to answer.

With three swift strokes of her colorless blade, the herbalist sliced through Arya’s remaining cuffs, as if the tempered metal were no harder than cheese.

Arya fell to her knees and doubled over, pressing her injured hand against her stomach. With her other hand, she tore at her gag.

The burning in Eragon’s shoulders eased when Angela cut him free and he was finally able to lower his arms. He pulled the cloth out of his mouth and, in a hoarse voice, said, “We thought you were dead.”

“They’ll have to try harder than that if they want to kill me. Bunglers, the lot of them.”

Still doubled over, Arya began to chant spells of binding and healing. Her words were soft and strained, but she never faltered or misspoke.

While she worked to repair the damage to her hand, Eragon healed the cut on his ribs as well as the sores on his wrists. Then he motioned at Solembum and said, “Move.”

The werecat flicked his tail but did as Eragon asked.

Lifting his right hand, Eragon said, “Brisingr!”

A pillar of blue flame erupted around the second egg. The creature inside screamed: a terrible, unearthly sound, more like the screech of tearing metal than the cry of person or beast.

Narrowing his eyes against the heat, Eragon watched with satisfaction as the egg burned. And let that be the last of them, he thought. When the screaming ceased, he extinguished the flame, and it went out from the bottom up. The silence afterward was unexpectedly complete, for Arya had finished her incantations and all was still.

Angela was the first to stir. She went to Solembum and stood over him, murmuring in the ancient language as she mended his ear and other wounds.

Eragon knelt by Arya and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, then uncurled her body enough to show him her hand. The skin along the lower third of her thumb, as well as along the outer edge of her palm and across the back of her hand, was shiny and bright red. However, the muscles underneath appeared sound.

“Why didn’t you finish healing it?” he asked. “If you’re too tired, I can-”

She shook her head. “I damaged several nerves … and I can’t seem to repair them. I need Blodhgarm’s help; he is more skilled than I at manipulating flesh.”

“Can you fight?”

“If I’m careful.”

He tightened his grip on her shoulder for a moment. “What you did-”

“I only did what was logical.”

“Most people wouldn’t have had the strength.… I tried, but my hand was too big. See?” And he held up his hand against hers.

She nodded, then grasped his arm and slowly got to her feet. Eragon rose with her, providing her with a steady support.

“We have to find our weapons,” he said, “as well as my ring, my belt, and the necklace the dwarves gave me.”

Angela frowned. “Why your belt? Is it enchanted?”

When Eragon hesitated, unsure whether to tell her the truth, Arya said, “You would not know the name of its maker, wise one, but during your travels, you must surely have heard tell of the belt of the twelve stars.”

The herbalist’s eyes widened. “That belt?! But I thought it was lost over four centuries ago, destroyed during the-”

“We recovered it,” said Arya flatly.

Eragon could see that the herbalist longed to ask more questions, but she merely said, “I see.… We can’t waste time searching every room in this warren, though. Once the priests realize you’ve escaped, we’ll have the whole pack of them nipping at our heels.”

Eragon motioned toward the novitiate on the floor and said, “Maybe he can tell us where they took our things.”

Dropping into a squat, the herbalist placed two fingers against the youth’s jugular vein, feeling his pulse. Then she slapped his cheeks and peeled back his eyelids.

The novitiate remained slack and motionless.

His lack of response seemed to annoy the herbalist. “One moment,” she said, closing her eyes. A slight frown creased her brow. For a while, she was still; then she sprang upward with sudden speed. “What a self-absorbed little wretch! No wonder his parents sent him to join the priests. I’m surprised they put up with him as long as they did.”

“Does he know anything of use?” asked Eragon.

“Only the path to the surface.” She pointed toward the door to the left of the altar, the same door through which the priests had entered and departed. “It’s amazing that he tried to free you; I suspect it’s the first time in his life he’s ever done anything of his own accord.”

“We have to bring him with us.” Eragon hated to say it, but duty compelled him. “I promised we would if he helped us.”

“He tried to kill you!”

“I gave my word.”

Angela sighed and rolled her eyes. To Arya, she said, “I don’t suppose you can convince him otherwise?”

Arya shook her head, then hoisted the young man onto her shoulder without apparent effort. “I’ll carry him,” she said.

“In that case,” the herbalist said to Eragon, “you had best have this, since it seems you and I are to do most of the fighting.” She handed him her short sword, then drew a poniard with a jeweled hilt from within the folds of her dress.

“What is it made of?” Eragon asked as he peered through the transparent blade of the sword, noticing how it caught and reflected the light. The substance reminded him of diamond, but he could not imagine that anyone would make a weapon out of a gemstone; the amount of energy required to keep the stone from breaking with every blow would soon exhaust any normal magician.

“Neither stone nor metal,” said the herbalist. “A word of caution, though. You must take great care when handling it. Never touch the edge or allow anything you cherish to come near it, else you will regret it. Likewise, never lean the sword against something you might need-your leg, for example.”

Wary, Eragon held the sword farther away from his body. “Why?”

“Because,” said the herbalist with evident relish, “this is the sharpest blade in all of existence. No other sword or knife or ax can match the keenness of its edge, not even Brisingr. It is the ultimate embodiment of an incision-making instrument. This”-she paused for emphasis-“is the archetype of an inclined plane.… You’ll not find its equal anywhere. It can cut through anything not protected by magic, and many things that are. Try it if you don’t believe me.”

Eragon looked around for something to test the sword against. In the end, he strode over to the altar and swung the blade at one corner of the stone slab.

“Not so quickly!” cried Angela.

The transparent blade passed through four inches of stone as if the granite were no harder than custard, then continued down toward his feet. Eragon yelped and jumped back, barely managing to stop his arm before he cut himself.

The corner of the altar bounced off the step below and then tumbled clacking toward the middle of the room.

The blade of the sword, Eragon realized, might very well be diamond after all. It would not need as much protection as he had assumed, since it would rarely meet with any substantial resistance.

“Here,” said Angela. “You had better have this as well.” She unbuckled the sword’s scabbard and gave it to him. “It’s one of the few things you can’t cut with that blade.”

It took Eragon a moment to find his voice after so nearly lopping off his toes. “Does the sword have a name?”

Angela laughed. “Of course. In the ancient language, its name is Albitr, which means exactly what you think. But I prefer to call it Tinkledeath.”

“Tinkledeath!”

“Yes. Because of the sound the blade makes when you tap it.” She demonstrated with the tip of a fingernail and smiled at the resulting high-pitched note that pierced the darkened chamber like a ray of sunshine. “Now then, shall we be off?”

Eragon checked to make sure they were not forgetting anything; then he nodded, strode to the left-hand door, and opened it as quietly as he could.

Through the doorway was a long, broad hallway lit by torches. And standing guard in two smart rows, one along each side of the hallway, were twenty of the black-garbed warriors who had ambushed them earlier.

They looked at Eragon and reached for their weapons.

A curse ran through Eragon’s mind, and he sprang forward, intending to attack before the warriors could draw their swords and organize themselves into an effective group. He had only covered a few feet, however, when a flicker of movement appeared next to each man: a soft, shadowy blur, like the motion of a windblown pennant seen at the edge of his vision.

Without so much as a single cry, the twenty men stiffened and fell to the floor, dead, every last one of them.

Alarmed, Eragon slowed to a stop before he ran into the bodies. Each of the men had been stabbed through an eye, as neat as could be.

He turned to ask Arya and Angela if they knew what had happened, but the words died in his throat as he beheld the herbalist. She stood braced against a wall, leaning on her knees and panting heavily. Her skin had gone deathly white, and her hands were shaking. Blood dripped from her poniard.

Awe and fear filled Eragon. Whatever the herbalist had done, it was beyond his understanding.

“Wise one,” said Arya, and she too sounded uncertain, “how did you manage to do this?”

The herbalist chuckled between breaths, then said, “I used a trick … I learned from my master … Tenga … ages ago. May a thousand spiders bite his ears and knobbly bits.”

“Yes, but how did you do it?” insisted Eragon. A trick like that might be useful in Uru’baen.

The herbalist chuckled again. “What is time but motion? And what is motion but heat? And are not heat and energy but different names for the same thing?” She pushed herself off the wall, walked over to Eragon, and patted him on the cheek. “When you understand the implications of that, you’ll understand how and what I did.… I won’t be able to use the spell again today, not without hurting myself, so don’t expect me to kill everyone the next time we run into a batch of men.”

With some difficulty, Eragon swallowed his curiosity and nodded.

He stripped a tunic and a padded jerkin off one of the fallen men, and after donning the clothes, he led the way down the hall and through the archway at the far end.

They encountered no one else in the complex of rooms and corridors thereafter, nor did they find any sign of their stolen possessions. Although Eragon was glad to avoid notice, the absence of even servants worried him. He hoped that he and his companions had not triggered alarms that had warned the priests of their escape.

Unlike the abandoned chambers they had seen before the ambush, those they passed through now were filled with tapestries, furniture, and strange devices made of brass and crystal, the purpose of which Eragon could not fathom. More than once, a desk or a bookcase tempted him to pause and inspect its contents, but he always resisted the urge. They did not have time to read musty old papers, no matter how intriguing.

Angela chose the path they took whenever there was more than one option, but Eragon remained in the lead, clutching the wire-wrapped hilt of Tinkledeath with a grip so hard, his hand began to cramp.

Soon enough, they arrived at a passageway ending in a flight of stone steps that narrowed as it rose. Two novitiates stood by the stairs, one on either side, each holding a rack of bells such as Eragon had seen earlier.

He ran at the two young men and managed to stab one novitiate through the neck before he could shout or ring his bells. The other, however, had time to do both before Solembum leaped on him and bore him to the ground, tearing at his face, and the whole of the passageway rang with the clamor.

“Hurry!” Eragon cried as he bounded up the stairs.

At the top of the steps was a freestanding wall some ten feet wide, covered with ornate scrollwork and carvings that seemed vaguely familiar to Eragon. He dodged around the wall and came out into a beam of rose-tinted light of such intensity that he faltered, confused. He lifted Tinkledeath’s scabbard to shade his eyes.

Not five feet in front of him, the High Priest sat on its bier, blood dripping from a cut on its shoulder. Another of the priests-a woman missing both her hands-sat kneeling by the side of the bier, catching the fall of blood in a golden chalice that she held clamped between her forearms. Both she and the High Priest stared at Eragon with astonishment.

Then Eragon looked past them and saw, as if in a series of lightning flashes: Massive ribbed columns rising toward a vaulted ceiling that vanished into shadow. Stained-glass windows set within towering walls-the windows on the left burning with light from the rising sun; those on the right dull and flat, lifeless. Pale statues standing between the windows. Rows of granite pews, dappled with different colors, extending all the way to the far-off entrance to the nave. And, filling the first four rows, a flock of leather-garbed priests, their faces upturned and their mouths opened in song, like so many hatchlings begging for food.

He was, Eragon belatedly realized, standing in the great cathedral of Dras-Leona, on the other side of the altar he had once knelt before in reverence, long ago.

The handless woman dropped the chalice and stood, throwing her arms out wide as she shielded the High Priest with her body. Behind her, Eragon glimpsed the blue of Brisingr’s sheath lying near the leading edge of the bier, and he thought he saw Aren next to it.

Before he could chase after his sword, two guards rushed toward him from either side of the altar, slashing at him with engraved, red-tasseled pikes. He sidestepped the first guard and sliced the shaft of the man’s pike in half, sending the blade flying through the air. Then Eragon sliced the man himself in half; Tinkledeath passed through his flesh and bones with shocking ease.

Eragon dispatched the second guard just as quickly and turned to face a pair approaching from behind. The herbalist joined him, brandishing her poniard, and somewhere off to his left, Solembum growled. Arya hung back from the fighting, still carrying the young man.

The spilled blood from the chalice had coated the floor around the altar. The guards slipped in the puddle and the rear man fell and knocked his companion off his feet. Eragon shuffled toward them-never lifting his feet off the floor so as to avoid losing his balance-and before the guards could react, he slew them both, taking care to control the herbalist’s enchanted blade as it effortlessly cut through the two men.

As he did, Eragon was aware that the High Priest was screaming, as if at a great distance, “Kill the infidels! Kill them! Don’t let the blasphemers escape! They must be punished for their crimes against the Old Ones!”

The congregation of priests began to howl and stamp their feet, and Eragon felt their minds clawing at his, like a pack of wolves tearing at a weakened deer. He retreated deep within himself, warding off the attacks with techniques he had been practicing under Glaedr’s tutelage. It was difficult to defend himself from so many foes, however, and he feared that he would not be able to maintain his barriers for long. His one advantage was that the panicked, disorganized priests attacked him as individuals, not as a unit; their combined might would have overwhelmed him.

Then Arya’s consciousness was pressing against his-a familiar, comforting presence amid the clutch of enemies scrabbling against his inner self. Relieved, he opened himself to her, and they joined their minds, even as he and Saphira would do, and for a time their identities merged and he lost the ability to determine where many of their shared thoughts and feelings came from.

Together they stabbed with their minds at one of the priests. The man struggled to evade their grasp, like a fish wriggling through their fingers, but they tightened their grip and refused to let him escape. He was reciting a stilted, oddly worded phrase in an attempt to keep them out of his consciousness; Eragon assumed it was a scrap of scripture from the Book of Tosk.

The priest lacked discipline, however, and his concentration soon wavered as he thought, The infidels are too close to Master. We have to kill them before-Wait! No! No …!

Eragon and Arya seized upon the priest’s weakness and quickly subjugated the man’s thoughts to their will. Once they were certain he could not retaliate against them with mind or body, Arya cast a spell that, from examining the priest’s memories, she knew could slip past his wards.

In the third row of pews, a man screamed and burst into flame, green fire pouring from his ears, mouth, and eyes. The flames ignited the clothes of several priests close to him, and the burning men and women began to thrash and run about wildly, further disrupting the attacks against Eragon. The rippling flames sounded like branches snapping in a storm.

The herbalist ran down from the altar and moved among the priests, stabbing here and there. Solembum followed close at her heels, finishing off those she felled.

After that, it was easy for Eragon and Arya to invade and seize control of their enemies’ minds. Continuing to work together, they killed four more priests, at which point the rest of the congregation broke and scattered. Some fled through the vestibule that Eragon remembered led to the priory next to the cathedral, while others crouched behind the pews and wrapped their arms around their heads.

Six of the priests, however, neither fled nor hid, but rather charged Eragon, brandishing curved knives with what hands they still possessed. Eragon cut at the first priest before she could strike at him. To his annoyance, the woman was protected by a ward that stopped Tinkledeath half a foot from her neck, causing the sword to turn in his hand and a shock to run up his arm. With his left hand, Eragon swung at the woman. For whatever reason, the spell did not stop his fist, and he felt the bones in her chest give way as he knocked her sprawling into the people behind her.

The remaining priests extricated themselves and resumed their charge. Stepping forward, Eragon blocked a clumsy slash from the foremost priest; then-with a shout of “Ha!”-he drove his fist into the man’s gut and sent him flying into a pew, which the priest struck with a nasty crack.

Eragon killed the next man in a similar manner. A green and yellow dart buried itself in the throat of the priest to his right, and there was a tawny blur as Solembum leaped past him and tackled another of the group.

That left but one of Tosk’s followers standing before him. With her free hand, Arya grabbed the woman by the front of her leather robes and threw her screaming thirty feet over the pews.

Four novitiates had lifted up the High Priest’s bier and were carrying it at a quick trot along the east side of the cathedral as they headed toward the front entrance of the building.

Seeing them escaping, Eragon uttered a roar and bounded onto the altar, knocking a plate and goblet to the floor. From there, he jumped out over the bodies of the fallen priests. He landed lightly in the aisle and sprinted to the end of the cathedral, heading off the novitiates.

The four young men stopped when they saw Eragon arrive at the doors. “Turn around!” shrieked the High Priest. “Turn around!” Its servants obeyed, only to be confronted by Arya standing behind them, one of their own slung over her right shoulder.

The novitiates yelped and turned sideways, darting between two rows of pews. Before they had gone more than a few feet, Solembum stepped around the end of the pews and began to pad toward them. The werecat’s ears were pressed flat against his skull, and the constant low rumble of his growl made Eragon’s neck prickle. Close behind him came Angela, striding down the cathedral from the altar, her poniard in one hand and a green and yellow dart in the other.

Eragon wondered how many weapons she had about herself.

To their credit, the novitiates did not lose their courage or abandon their master. Instead, the four shouted and ran even faster at Solembum, presumably because the werecat was the smallest and the closest of their opponents, and because they believed he would be the easiest to overcome.

They were mistaken.

In a single lithe movement, Solembum crouched, jumped from the floor to the top of a pew. Then, without stopping, he leaped toward one of the two lead novitiates.

As the werecat sailed through the air, the High Priest shouted something in the ancient language-Eragon did not recognize the word, but the sound of it was unmistakably that of the elves’ native language. Whatever the spell was, it seemed to have no effect on Solembum, although Eragon saw Angela stumble as if she had been struck.

Solembum collided with the novitiate at whom he had flung himself, and the young man tumbled to the floor, screaming as Solembum mauled him. The rest of the novitiates tripped over their companion’s body, and the lot of them fell in a tangled heap, spilling the High Priest off its bier and onto one of the pews, where the creature lay squirming like a maggot.

Eragon caught up with them a second later, and with three swift strokes, he slew all of the novitiates, save the one whose neck Solembum held clamped between his jaws.

Once Eragon was sure the men were dead, he turned to strike down the High Priest once and for all. As he started toward the limbless figure, another mind invaded his, probing and grasping at the most intimate parts of his self, seeking to control his thoughts. The vicious attack forced Eragon to stop and concentrate on defending himself from the intruder.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Arya and Solembum also appeared immobilized. The herbalist was the sole exception. She paused for a moment when the attack commenced, but then she continued to walk with slow, shuffling steps toward Eragon.

The High Priest stared at Eragon, its deep-set, dark-ringed eyes burning with hate and fury. If the creature had had arms and legs, Eragon was convinced that it would have tried to tear out his heart with its bare hands. As it was, the malevolence of its gaze was so intense, Eragon half expected the priest to wiggle off the pew and start biting at his ankles.

The assault on his mind intensified as Angela drew near. The High Priest-for it had to be the High Priest who was responsible-was far more skilled than any of its underlings. To engage in mental combat with four different people at once, and to present a credible threat to each of the four, was a remarkable feat, especially when the enemies were an elf, a Dragon Rider, a witch, and a werecat. The High Priest had one of the most formidable minds Eragon had ever encountered; if not for the help of his companions, Eragon suspected that he would have succumbed to the creature’s onslaughts. The priest did things the likes of which Eragon had never experienced before, such as binding Eragon’s stray thoughts to Arya’s and Solembum’s, wrapping them into a knot of such confusion that for brief moments Eragon lost track of his own identity.

At last Angela turned in to the space between the pews. She picked her way around Solembum-who crouched next to the novitiate he had killed, every hair on his body standing on end-and then carefully made her way over the corpses of the three novitiates Eragon had slain.

As she approached, the High Priest began to thrash like a hooked fish in an attempt to push itself farther up the pew. At the same time, the pressure on Eragon’s mind lessened, although not enough for him to risk moving.

The herbalist stopped when she reached the High Priest, and the High Priest surprised Eragon by giving up its struggle and lying panting on the seat of the bench. For a minute, the hollow-eyed creature and the short, stern-faced woman glared at each other, an invisible battle of wills taking place between them.

Then the High Priest flinched, and a smile appeared on Angela’s lips. She dropped her poniard and, from within her dress, drew forth a tiny dagger with a blade the color of a ruddy sunset. Leaning over the High Priest, she whispered, ever so faintly, “You ought to know my name, tongueless one. If you had, you never would have dared oppose us. Here, let me tell it to you.…”

Her voice dropped even lower then, too low for Eragon to hear, but as she spoke, the High Priest blanched, and its puckered mouth opened, forming a round black oval, and an unearthly howl emanated from its throat, and the whole of the cathedral rang with the creature’s baying.

“Oh, be quiet!” exclaimed the herbalist, and she buried her sunset-colored dagger in the center of the High Priest’s chest.

The blade flashed white-hot and vanished with a sound like a far-off thunderclap. The area around the wound glowed like burning wood; then skin and flesh began to disintegrate into a fine, dark soot that poured into the High Priest’s chest. With a choked gargle, the creature’s howl ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

The spell quickly devoured the rest of the High Priest, reducing its body to a pile of black powder, the shape of which matched the outline of the priest’s head and torso.

“And good riddance,” said Angela with a firm nod.