Disclaimer: All places and people belong to Mr. Paolini. Me, I just exploit them.
When Murtagh woke up he wasn't sure how much time had passed. The only thing he knew was that he was not still laying on the throne room's floor. He groaned. His head was throbbing, his mouth tasted of metal, and he felt as if his muscles were made of water.
"Shhhh . . . " he heard someone whisper.
Murtagh immediatly tried to raise himself up onto his elbows but fell back onto pillows. "Alrae?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm here," she whispered as she lay a cool, damp cloth across his forehead.
Murtagh then closed his eyes. He was safe: for the time being. 'So,' he thought, 'it was her that I heard.' This didn't really make sense to him. Alrae usually avoided her father like he was the plague. Galbatorix had never paid attention to his children once is was shown that they couldn't be Riders. Sometimes when he was young, he used to think that it would have been more pleseant to be Galbatorix's son than Morzan's. But he did cut that idea loose. Morzan wasn't the best father, he could be just as cruel as the king, but sometimes - though it was rare - he would spend time with Murtagh, having fun. Those rare moments were worth the pain of the other times.
He could hear Alrae pacing. She wanted to hear news of what he'd done while he was away. He sighed, "So what do you want to know?"
Alrae came and sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at him. He pale gold hair framing her thin pallid pace, her large gray eyes seemed too large for her face, they gave her and innocent air. That air was enhanced by the fact that she was always thinking and distracted. "Why did you not bring Eragon?" she asked.
If her father had been asking the question he would have closed his mind and his lips but he trusted Alrae. When they were smaller Murtagh had harbored a secret love for her that he never revealed and now it had been replaced by the love of a brother for a sister. "I found a loophole in Galbatorix's command. I managed to let him go but I did take Zar'roc from him."
"I saw that," Alrae said in her soft voice, "I'm glad you let him go." Then she rose, touched his cheek, and said, "Now rest."
Alrae quicklly walked through the labrinth of halls, until she came to the doors to her father's library. Galbatorix did not like to read but he maintained the pretext that he did so he could escape into the library and no one would bother him. Alrae knew this was the only place she could speak to him. She raised her hand and gently knocked on the door. The door was opened by Omiliki, a deaf, and blind slave from Surda. The king was slouching in a chair his brow furrowed. When Alrae entered his raised his head and bluntly asked, "What did you learn?"
Alrae took another chair before she began to speak. "What he told me with his mouth was that he found a loophole in his oaths. But his mind when he's unconscious is as open as that of a newborn child. While him and the other Rider were fighting Murtagh realized that he still loved his little brother, and this renewed his hate against you. And also , buried deep in his mind, he obviously made an attempt to hide it while he was conscious, was the fact that he became friends with the daughter of the former Varden's leader. Her name is Nasuada and she is now the leader of the Varden," She said all this quietly and slowly. While her stomach twisted with guilt. Murtagh trusted her, had once loved her and a woman instead of a sister. She felt like a traitor, which was what she was.
