Christopher Paolini - Inheritance

She closed her eyes and concentrated upon slowing her breathing as she tried to calm her body.

The first time Galbatorix and Murtagh had visited her, she had been far more courageous. She had cursed and taunted them and done all she could to hurt them with her words. However, through Murtagh, Galbatorix had made her suffer for her insolence, and she had soon lost her taste for open rebellion. The iron made her timid; even the memory of it made her want to curl into a tight little ball. During their second, most recent visit, she had said as little as possible until her final, imprudent outburst.

She had tried to test Galbatorix’s claim that neither he nor Murtagh would lie to her. She did this by asking them questions about the Empire’s inner workings, facts that her spies had informed her of but that Galbatorix had no reason to believe she knew. So far as she could determine, Galbatorix and Murtagh had told her the truth, but she was not about to trust anything the king said when there was no way to verify his claims.

As for Murtagh, she was not quite so sure. When he was with the king, she gave no credence to his words, but when he was by himself …

Several hours after her first, agonizing audience with King Galbatorix-when she had at long last fallen into a shallow, troubled sleep-Murtagh had come alone to the Hall of the Soothsayer, bleary-eyed and smelling of drink. He had stood by the monolith upon which she lay, and he had stared at her with such a strange, tormented expression, she had not been sure what he was going to do.

At last he had turned away, walked to the nearest wall, and slid down it to the floor. There he sat, with his knees pulled up against his chest, his long, shaggy hair obscuring most of his face, and blood oozing from the torn skin on the knuckles of his right hand. After what felt like minutes, he had reached into his maroon jerkin-for he was wearing the same clothes as earlier, although without the mask-and drawn forth a small stone bottle. He drank several times and then began to talk.

He talked, and she listened. She had no choice, but she did not allow herself to believe what he said. Not at first. For all she knew, everything he said or did was a sham designed to win her confidence.

Murtagh had started by telling her a rather garbled story about a man named Tornac, which involved a riding mishap and some sort of advice Tornac had given him regarding how an honorable man ought to live. She had been unable to make out whether Tornac was a friend, a servant, a distant relative, or some combination thereof, but whatever he was, it was obvious that he had meant a great deal to Murtagh.

When he concluded his story, Murtagh had said, “Galbatorix was going to have you killed.… He knew Elva wasn’t guarding you as she used to, so he decided it was the perfect time to have you assassinated. I only found out about his plan by chance; I happened to be with him when he gave the orders to the Black Hand.” Murtagh shook his head. “It’s my fault. I convinced him to have you brought here instead. He liked that; he knew you would lure Eragon here that much faster.… It was the only way I could keep him from killing you.… I’m sorry.… I’m sorry.” And he buried his head in his arms.

“I would rather have died.”

“I know,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Will you forgive me?”

That she had not answered. His revelation only made her more uneasy. Why should he care to save her life, and what did he expect in return?

Murtagh had said nothing more for a while. Then, sometimes weeping and sometimes raging, he told her of his upbringing in Galbatorix’s court, of the distrust and jealousy he had faced as the son of Morzan, of the nobles who had sought to use him to win favor with the king, and of his longing for the mother he barely remembered. Twice he mentioned Eragon and cursed him for a fool favored by fortune. “He would not have done so well if our places had been reversed. But our mother chose to take him to Carvahall, not me.” He spat on the floor.

She found the whole episode maudlin and self-pitying, and his weakness did nothing but inspire contempt in her until he recounted how the Twins had abducted him from Farthen Dur, how they had mistreated him on the way to Uru’baen, and how Galbatorix had broken him once they arrived. Some of the tortures he described were worse than her own and, if true, gave her a slight measure of sympathy for his own plight.

“Thorn was my undoing,” Murtagh finally confessed. “When he hatched for me and we bonded …” He shook his head. “I love him. How could I not? I love him even as Eragon loves Saphira. The moment I touched him, I was lost. Galbatorix used him against me. Thorn was stronger than me. He never gave up. But I could not bear to see him suffer, so I swore my loyalty to the king, and after that …” Murtagh’s lips curled with revulsion. “After that, Galbatorix went into my mind. He learned everything about me, and then he taught me my true name. And now I am his.… His forever.”

Then he leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, and she watched the tears roll down his cheeks.

Eventually, he stood, and as he walked toward the door, he paused next to her and touched her on the shoulder. His nails, she noted, were clean and trimmed, but nowhere near as well cared for as her jailer’s. He murmured a few words in the ancient language, and a moment later, her pain melted away, although her wounds looked the same as ever.

As he took his hand away, she said, “I cannot forgive … but I understand.”

Whereupon he nodded and stumbled away, leaving her to wonder if she had found a new ally.

As Nasuada lay on the slab, sweating and shivering, every part of her body aching with pain, she found herself wishing that Murtagh would return, if only so he could again free her from her agony.

When at last the door to the eight-sided chamber swung open, she was unable to suppress her relief, but her relief turned to bitter disappointment when she heard the shuffling footsteps of her jailer descending the stairs that led into the room.

As he had once before, the stocky, narrow-shouldered man bathed her wounds with a wet cloth, then bound them with strips of linen. When he released her from the restraints so that she could visit the privy room, she found she was too weak to make any attempt to grab the knife on the tray of food. Instead, she contented herself with thanking the man for his help and, for the second time, complimenting him on his nails, which were even shinier than before and which he quite obviously wanted her to see, for he kept holding his hands where she could not help but look at them.

After he fed her and departed, she tried to sleep, but the constant pain of her wounds made it impossible for her to do more than doze.

Her eyes snapped open as she heard the bar to the door of the chamber being thrown open.

Not again! she thought, panic welling up inside her. Not so soon! I can’t bear it.… I’m not strong enough . Then she reined in her fear and told herself, Don’t. Don’t say such things or else you’ll start to believe them . Still, although she was able to master her conscious reactions, she could not stop her heart from pounding at twice its normal speed.

A single pair of footsteps echoed in the room, and then Murtagh appeared at the corner of her vision. He wore no mask, and his expression was somber.

This time he healed her first, without waiting. The relief she felt as her pain abated was so intense, it bordered on ecstasy. In all her life, she had never experienced a sensation quite so pleasurable as the draining away of the agony.

She gasped slightly at the feeling. “Thank you.”