The question, then, was how to stop a man who was resolved to persist and prevail in spite of whatever obstacles barred his way.
It was an unsolvable conundrum until, at last, Eragon realized that the only way to best Murtagh was to give him what he wanted. In order to achieve his own desire, Eragon would have to accept defeat.
But not entirely. He could not leave Murtagh free to carry out Galbatorix’s bidding. Eragon would grant Murtagh his victory, and then he would take his own.
As she listened to his thoughts, Saphira’s anguish and concern grew more pronounced, and she said, No, Eragon. There must be another way.
Then tell me what it is, he said, for I cannot see it.
She snarled, and Thorn growled back at her from across the pool of light.
Choose wisely, said Arya, and Eragon understood her meaning.
Murtagh rushed at him, and their blades met with a clamorous ring, and then they disengaged and paused a moment to gather their strength. As they started toward each other once again, Eragon sidled to Murtagh’s right, while at the same time allowing his sword arm to drift away from the side of his body, as if through exhaustion or carelessness. It was a slight motion, but he knew that Murtagh would notice and that he would attempt to exploit the opening he had provided.
At that moment, Eragon felt nothing. He still registered the pain from his wounds, but at a remove, as if the sensations were not his own. His mind was like a pool of deep water on a breathless day, flat and motionless, and yet filled with the reflection of those things around it. What he saw, he registered without conscious thought. The need for that had passed. He understood all that was before him, and further contemplation would only hamper him.
As Eragon expected, Murtagh lunged toward him, stabbing at the middle of his belly.
When the time was ripe, Eragon turned. He moved neither fast nor slow but at just the right speed the situation required. The motion felt preordained, as if it were the only action he could have taken.
Instead of striking him in the gut, as Murtagh had intended, Zar’roc struck Eragon in the muscles along his right side, directly below his ribcage. The impact felt like a hammerblow, and there was a steely slither as Zar’roc slid past the broken links of his mail and into his flesh. The coldness of the metal made Eragon gasp more than the pain itself.
Behind him, the tip of the blade tugged at his hauberk as it emerged from his body.
Murtagh stared, seemingly taken aback.
Before Murtagh could recover, Eragon drew back his arm and thrust Brisingr into Murtagh’s abdomen, close to his navel: a far worse wound than the one Eragon had just received.
Murtagh’s face went slack. His mouth opened as if he were going to speak, and he fell to his knees, still clutching Zar’roc.
Off to the side, Thorn roared.
Eragon pulled Brisingr free, then stepped back and grimaced in a soundless howl as Zar’roc slid out of his body.
There was a clatter as Murtagh released Zar’roc and it dropped to the floor. Then he wrapped his arms around his waist, doubled over, and pressed his head against the polished stone.
Now Eragon was the one to stare, hot blood dripping into one eye.
From on his throne, Galbatorix said, “Naina,” and dozens of lanterns throughout the chamber sprang to life, once again revealing the pillars and carvings along the walls and the block of stone where Nasuada stood chained.
Eragon staggered over to Murtagh and knelt next to him.
“And to Eragon goes the victory,” said the king, his sonorous voice filling the great hall.
Murtagh looked up at Eragon, his sweat-beaded face contorted with pain. “You couldn’t just let me win, could you?” he growled in an undertone. “You can’t beat Galbatorix, but you still had to prove that you are better than me.… Ah!” He shuddered and began to rock back and forth upon his shins.
Eragon put a hand on his shoulder. “Why?” he asked, knowing that Murtagh would understand the question.
The answer came as a barely audible whisper: “Because I hoped to gain his favor so that I could save her.” Tears blurred Murtagh’s eyes, and he looked away.
At that, Eragon realized that Murtagh had been telling the truth earlier, and he felt a sense of dismay.
Another moment passed, and Eragon was aware of Galbatorix watching them with keen interest.
Then Murtagh said, “You tricked me.”
“It was the only way.”
Murtagh grunted. “That was always the difference between you and me.” He eyed Eragon. “You were willing to sacrifice yourself. I wasn’t.… Not then.”
“But now you are.”
“I’m not the person I once was. I have Thorn now, and …” Murtagh hesitated; then his shoulders rose and fell in a tiny shrug. “I’m not fighting for myself anymore.… It makes a difference.” He took a shallow breath and winced. “I used to think you were a fool to keep risking your life as you have.… I know better now. I understand … why. I understand.…” His eyes widened and his grimace relaxed, as if his pain was forgotten, and an inner light seemed to illuminate his features. “I understand-we understand,” he whispered, and Thorn uttered a strange sound that was half whimper and half growl.
Galbatorix stirred on his throne, as if uneasy, and in a harsh voice, he said, “Enough of this talk. Your duel is over, and Eragon has won. Now the time has arrived for our guests to bend their knees and give to me their oaths of fealty.… Come closer, the both of you, and I shall heal your wounds, and then we shall proceed.”
Eragon started to stand, but Murtagh grabbed his forearm, stopping him.
“Now!” said Galbatorix, his heavy brows drawing together. “Or I will leave you to suffer from your wounds until we have finished.”
Ready yourself, Murtagh mouthed to Eragon.
Eragon hesitated, not sure what to expect; then he nodded and warned Arya, Saphira, Glaedr, and the other Eldunari.
Then Murtagh pushed Eragon aside, and he rose up on his knees, still clutching his belly. He looked at Galbatorix. And he shouted the Word.
Galbatorix recoiled and lifted a hand, as if to shield himself.
Still shouting, Murtagh voiced other words in the ancient language, speaking too quickly for Eragon to understand the purpose of the spell.
The air around Galbatorix flashed red and black, and for an instant, his body appeared to be wreathed in flames. There was a sound like that of a high summer wind stirring the branches of an evergreen forest. Then Eragon heard a series of thin shrieks as twelve orbs of light appeared around Galbatorix’s head and fled outward from him and passed through the walls of the chamber and thus vanished. They looked like spirits, but Eragon saw them for such a brief span, he could not be certain.
Thorn spun around-as fast as a cat whose tail has been stepped on-and he pounced on Shruikan’s immense neck. The black dragon bellowed and scrambled backward, shaking his head in an attempt to throw Thorn off. The noise of his growls was painfully loud, and the floor shook from the weight of the two dragons.
On the steps of the dais, the two children screamed and covered their ears with their hands.
Eragon saw Arya, Elva, and Saphira lurch forward, no longer bound by Galbatorix’s magic. Dauthdaert in hand, Arya started toward the throne, while Saphira loped toward where Thorn clung to Shruikan. Meanwhile, Elva put her hand to her mouth and seemed to say something to herself, but what it was Eragon could not hear over the sound of the dragons.
Fist-sized drops of blood rained down around them and lay smoking on the stone.
Eragon rose from where Murtagh had pushed him, and he followed Arya toward the throne.
Then Galbatorix spoke the name of the ancient language, along with the word letta. Invisible bonds seized hold of Eragon’s limbs, and throughout the chamber, silence fell as the king’s magic restrained everyone, even Shruikan.
Rage and frustration boiled within Eragon. They had been so close to striking at the king, and still they were helple
ss before his spells. “Get him!” he shouted, both with his mind and his tongue. They had already tried to attack Galbatorix and Shruikan; the king would kill the two children whether or not they continued. The only path left to Eragon and those with him-the only hope of victory that yet remained-was to break past Galbatorix’s mental barriers and seize control of his thoughts.
Along with Saphira and Arya and the Eldunari they had brought with them, Eragon stabbed outward with his consciousness toward the king, pouring all his hate, anger, and pain into the single, burning ray that he drove into the center of Galbatorix’s being.
For an instant, Eragon felt the king’s mind: a terrible, shadow-ridden vista swept with bitter cold and searing heat-ruled by bars of iron, hard and unyielding, which portioned off areas of his consciousness.
Then the dragons under Galbatorix’s command, the mad, howling, grief-stricken dragons, attacked Eragon’s mind and forced him to withdraw within himself to avoid being torn to pieces.
Behind him, Eragon heard Elva start to say something, but she had barely uttered a sound when Galbatorix said, “Theyna!” and she stopped with a choked gurgle.
“I stripped him of his wards!” shouted Murtagh. “He’s-”
Whatever Galbatorix said, it was too fast and too low for Eragon to catch, but Murtagh ceased speaking, and a moment later, Eragon heard him fall to the floor with a tinkle of mail and the sharp clink of his helm striking stone.
“I have plenty of wards,” said Galbatorix, his hawklike face dark with fury. “You cannot harm me.” He rose from his seat and strode down the steps of the dais toward Eragon, his cape billowing around him and his sword, Vrangr, white and deathly in his hand.
In the brief time he had, Eragon tried to capture the mind of at least one of the dragons battering at his consciousness, but there were too many, and his attempt left him scrambling to repel the horde of Eldunari before they completely subjugated his thoughts.
Galbatorix stopped a foot in front of him and glared at him, a thick, forked vein prominent on his brow, the muscles of his heavy jaw knotting. “Think you to challenge me, boy?” he growled, fairly spitting with rage. “Think you to be my equal? That you could lay me low and steal my throne?” The cords in Galbatorix’s neck stood out like a skein of twisted rope. He plucked at the edge of his cape. “I cut this mantle from the wings of Belgabad himself, and my gloves too.” He lifted Vrangr and held its bleak blade before Eragon’s eyes. “I took this sword from Vrael’s hand, and I took this crown from the head of the mewling wretch who wore it before me. And yet you think to outwit me? Me? You come to my castle, and you kill my men, and you act as if you are better than I. As if you are more noble or virtuous.”
Eragon’s head rang, and a constellation of throbbing, swirling crimson motes appeared before his eyes as Galbatorix struck him on the cheek with Vrangr’s pommel, tearing his skin.
“You need to be taught a lesson in humility, boy,” said Galbatorix, moving closer, until his gleaming eyes were mere inches from Eragon’s.
He struck Eragon on the other cheek, and for a second, all Eragon could see was a black immensity littered with flashing lights.
“I shall enjoy having you in my service,” said Galbatorix. In a lower voice, he said, “Ganga,” and the pressure from the Eldunari assailing Eragon’s mind vanished, leaving him free to think as he would. But not so the others, as he could see from the strain on their faces.
Then a blade of thought, honed to an infinitesimal point, pierced Eragon’s consciousness and sheathed itself in the marrow of his being. The blade twisted and, like a cocklebur lodged within a batt of felt, it tore at the fabric of his mind, seeking to destroy his will, his identity, his very awareness.
It was an attack unlike any Eragon had experienced. He shrank from it and concentrated upon a single thought-revenge-as he struggled to protect himself. Through their contact, he could feel Galbatorix’s emotions: anger, mainly, but also a savage joy at being able to hurt Eragon and watch him writhe in discomfort.
The reason, Eragon realized, that Galbatorix was so good at breaking the minds of his enemies was because it gave him a perverse pleasure.
The blade dug deeper into Eragon’s being and he howled, unable to help himself.
Galbatorix smiled, the edges of his teeth translucent, like fired clay.
Defense alone was no way to win a fight, and so, despite the searing pain, Eragon forced himself to attack Galbatorix in return. He dove into the king’s consciousness and grasped at his razor-sharp thoughts, trying to pin them in place and prevent the king from moving or thinking without his approval.
Galbatorix made no attempt to guard himself, however. His cruel smile widened, and he twisted the blade in Eragon’s mind even further.
It felt to Eragon as if a nest of briars were ripping him apart from the inside. A scream racked his throat, and he went limp in the grip of Galbatorix’s spell.
“Submit,” said the king. He grabbed Eragon’s chin with fingers of steel. “Submit.” The blade twisted yet again, and Eragon screamed until his voice gave out.
The king’s probing thoughts closed in around Eragon’s consciousness, restricting him to an ever-smaller part of his mind, until all that was left to him was a small, bright nub overshadowed by the looming weight of Galbatorix’s presence.
“Submit,” the king whispered, almost lovingly. “You have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.… This life is at an end for you, Eragon Shadeslayer, but a new one awaits. Submit, and all shall be forgiven.”
Tears distorted Eragon’s vision as he stared into the featureless abyss of Galbatorix’s pupils.
They had lost.… He had lost.
The knowledge was more painful than any of the wounds he had received. A hundred years’ worth of striving-all for naught. Saphira, Elva, Arya, the Eldunari: none of them could overcome Galbatorix. He was too strong, too knowledgeable. Garrow and Brom and Oromis had all died in vain, as had the many warriors of different races who had laid down their lives in the course of fighting the Empire.
The tears spilled from Eragon’s eyes.
“Submit,” whispered the king, and his grip tightened.
More than anything, it was the injustice of the situation that Eragon hated. It seemed wrong on a fundamental level that so many had suffered and died in pursuit of a hopeless goal. It seemed wrongthat Galbatorix alone should be the cause of so much misery. And it seemed wrong that he should escape punishment for his misdeeds.
Why? Eragon asked himself.
He remembered, then, the vision the oldest of the Eldunari, Valdr, had shown him and Saphira, where the dreams of starlings were equal to the concerns of kings.
“Submit!” shouted Galbatorix, and his mind bore down on Eragon with even greater force as splinters of ice and fire lanced through him from every direction.
Eragon cried out, and in his desperation he reached for Saphira and the Eldunari-their minds besieged by the crazed dragons of Galbatorix’s command-and without intending to, he drew from their stores of energy.
And with that energy, he cast a spell.
It was a spell without words, for Galbatorix’s magic would not allow otherwise, and no words could have described what Eragon wanted, nor what he felt. A library of books would have been insufficient to the task. His was a spell of instinct and emotion; language could not contain it.
What he wanted was both simple and complex: he wanted Galbatorix to understand … to understand the wrongness of his actions. The spell was not an attack; it was an attempt to communicate. If Eragon was going to spend the rest of his life as a slave to the king, then he wanted Galbatorix to comprehend what he had done, fully and completely.
As the magic took effect, Eragon felt Umaroth and the Eldunari turn their attention to his spell, fighting to ignore Galbatorix’s dragons. A hundred years of inconsolable grief and anger welled up within the Eldunari, like a roaring wave, and the dragons melded their minds with Eragon’s and began to alter the spell, deepening it, wi
dening it, and building upon it until it encompassed far more than he originally intended.
Not only would the spell show Galbatorix the wrongness of his actions; now it would also compel him to experience all the feelings, both good and bad, that he had aroused in others since the day he had been born. The spell was beyond any Eragon could have invented on his own, for it contained more than a single person, or a single dragon, could conceive of. Each Eldunari contributed to the enchantment, and the sum of their contributions was a spell that extended not only across the whole of Alagaesia but also back through every moment in time between then and Galbatorix’s birth.
It was, Eragon thought, the greatest piece of magic the dragons had ever wrought, and he was their instrument; he was their weapon.
The power of the Eldunari rushed through him, like a river as wide as an ocean, and he felt a hollow and fragile vessel, as if his skin might tear with the force of the torrent he channeled. If not for Saphira and the other dragons, he would have died in an instant, drained of all strength by the voracious demands of the magic.
Around them, the light of the lanterns dimmed, and in his mind, Eragon seemed to hear the echo of thousands of voices: an unbearable cacophony of pains and joys innumerable, echoing forth from both the present and the past.
The lines upon Galbatorix’s face deepened, and his eyes began to bulge from their sockets. “What have you done?” he said, his voice hollow and strained. He stepped back and put his fists to his temples. “What have you done!”
With an effort, Eragon said, “Made you understand.”
The king stared at him with an expression of horror. The muscles of his face jumped and twitched, and his whole body began to shake with tremors. Baring his teeth, he growled, “You will not get the better of me, boy. You … will … not.…” He groaned and staggered, and all at once the spell holding Eragon vanished and he fell to the floor, even as Elva, Arya, Saphira, Thorn, Shruikan, and the two children began to move again as well.
A deafening roar from Shruikan filled the chamber, and the huge black dragon shook Thorn off his neck, sending the red dragon flying halfway across the room. Thorn landed on his left side, and the bones in his wing broke with a loud snap.
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