"You're an imbecile do you know that? Only you could have managed to drop that case on yourself. Everyone else has the sense to stay away, but you? Oh no, gods forbid you actually do something right and sane. Did you want to get yourself killed?"
"Yes." He replied quietly, left hand massaging his injured arm. The memories were drifting back to him in their own time, but he did remember faintly falling back into the table and somethign hard sending torturous pain up his arm. Galbatorix blanched, and for a while they just sat there in silence.
"Your arm...the bone was turned into powder from the impact. I healed the bone structure itself, however I wasn't able to see if there was any nerve damage. How does it feel?"
"Why should I tell you?" Galbatorix brought a tired hand to his head and sighed. He wasn't sure who was more annoying, the Rider or his pip-squeak dragon that had a knack for destruction.
"Because if you dont, I'll force it out of your head, and all that's going to cause is you to brood for a few more hours, and for me to get more tired then I already am. Now can we skip this pathetic act and just get on with the fact that your arm is injured and I need to know to what extent?"
"Why do you care?" Murtagh shot back, moving his working hand to his right shoulder and squeezing it; his back pressed firmly against the headboard.
"So many useless questions, do you really want me to break through your 'sanctuary' again, I will do it." The boy shuddered as he advanced, knowing he couldn't escape the touch he stared firmly at the fireless furnace. Hand touched his head, and he forced his mind to concentrate on the wall. However even walls break under the wrath of the king and his mighty sledge hammer. Sighing once more, the king removed his palm - placing it instead on his own brow. "Why couldn't you just have told me that it was numb, istead of dragging on this miserable experience?" The boy stayed silent, lips clenched tight as he shook in shock from the assault. The elder man sighed and rubbed a wrinkled hand through his hair, acknowledging fully that the boy was more stubborn then the brick wall he had envisioned
"Come with me. I have something to show you." The man muttered, dragging the boy after him as he thrust open the doors and made his way to the throne room and Shruikan. Once inside, Murtagh soon found himself with an armful of something red and scaly. It took him a momment before realizing what it was. "It hatched...while you were asleep. If you will look at your palm -" He was to late, the boy was already staring at the symbol he had not noticed when he first awoke.
"It cannot be..." He whispered quietly, as the baby hiccuped against his chest.
"Start believing boy. That dragon is yours. Better give it a name. Then we'll discuss your...training..." He waited for the weight of the words to hit the boy. When Murtagh looked up at him in surprise, he noticed that it was not as large as he had origionally believed. "Think of it this way. When you bring your brother to me, you wont be completely alone. You'll have someone you can talk to...train with."
"What makes you think I would do something like that?" Galbatorix sighed. It was a dirty trick that he was going to use now, and if he wanted the boy to trust him at all he knew this was not the way to do it. Still, Murtagh was right - there was no way the teen would willingly capture his newfound brother and bring him before the king in Uru'Baen.
"Did your father ever tell you that when you were born he did everything in his power to keep you safe?" Murtagh looked at him surprised for a momment, and he opened his mouth to retort - but was cut off. "No, be silent boy." His mouth shut and the teen looked down at the dragon. "It was why he kept you hidden all of your life, why he never let you see anyone. He didn't want you to be taken and tortured for who you were. He did not want you to live a life in fear because of the rebels. He took you to the mountains when you were first weened from breast milk. While there he built a tower and hid you inside of it. It was a tower that only he, his servents, gaurds, and I knew about. He then placed a spell on the tower. None who did not know it, could enter." Murtagh looked at Galbatorix listening intently, for he did not know much about that tower. He stayed mostly in his room reading instead of venturing around it. "It is customary, for heirs of great houses to bare the mark of their family. However, instead of marking you, he did the only thing that he knew would keep you safe. He extracted the one peice of information from your mind that if you ever knew, if it ever fell into the wrong hands...would kill you eventually. He put your mind through terrible torture, only yeilding when he could no longer recognize his child's voice or the light in his eyes. Murtagh shivered trying to recall the events, but failing. "Finally, he discovered the small bit of information that he knew would turn against you some day. Then...skillfully, so skillfully...he reconstructed your broken mind. He placed all the peices back together - all accept one place was the way it should be. For around this small section of your subconscious - he walled in, barricaded it so fiercly and so well, that it would be impossible to shatter and impossible to remember. To this day, you do not remember the events that took place those long long nights in the tower's southwest corner. Do you?" Murtagh strained to remember this time, strained to recover the lost detail, strained to try to see the wall he had not even recognized all these years. Yet his efforts were futile, and he could not recall anything. He shook his head to the question, looking back at the dragon who had taken to trying to bite one of his fingers and use it as a licking toy. He tapped the baby on the head and shook his own to show no. The creature huffed, and wriggled from his hands - hopping back to the elderly dragon in the corner. "I thought not. However, now what should he do with this knowledge that he had forbidden his own son from knowing? He told no one is what he did. He did not even tell your mother. However, before he died, one man knew did know..." At this the teen met Galbatorix's eyes. For a momment they had a stand off, both their dragons now staring at them with increasing intensity. Murtagh's eyes were challenging - as if daring Galbatorix to speak the words that they both knew he knew. Galbatorix was eyeing the teen, wondering if those eyes would ever change.
"This man, being you?" Galbatorix smirked.
"No." Murtagh faltered, not sure what to do. "He kept that terrible secret that would kill his son until the day he died." He paused, waiting for the words to sink in. Murtagh's brow furrowed in thought, then it hit him.
"Brom!" He exclaimed in shock, recoiling as he felt the impact hitting him like a punch.
"Brom." The King agreed. "Just momments before you ran into that room, and saw that man standing over your father as he died. Just momments before Aji'had tore you from your father's body and knocked you sensless - your greatest secret was revealed."
"Why would he tell Brom? That was what he wanted isn't it? To die with this thing he discovered?"
"It was not on purpose. Never think that he would throw your future away to this rebel. His final thought was of his son, and only his son. So when he knew he would die, all he wanted was to see you once more. Even though you were not even in ear shot, he whispered your name and bade you to come. As that blade was driven into your father's heart, you had been called by this name - and you did come. That was his final sight, as he died. His little boy standing in the doorway in shock."
"But Brom dissapeard...you never found him again...he died taking that name with him." He said tyring to put the peices together.
"No...that is what you would hear, but that is not what happened. We did find him, and we struck a deal with him." Galbatorix smirked. "You honestly think that he would have escaped after killing my right hand man? You honestly think that he would get away with that?" Murtagh bit his lower lip, clearly upset by the words. "No, I extracted the information I needed from him, and then released him. I think you should thank me...Mith-hwesta o nar." Like a punch hitting his back the words shot from his chest faster then he'd ever responded before.
"Thank you sire!" So shocking were the words that he was forced onto his knees and stayed there shaking terribly. His mind suddenly exploded in a torrent of fire his hands went to his head. It felt as if the entirety of Uru'baen was in his head as it was being torn apart by all of the Empire's foes. There was screeching from beside him, and something warm started to force itself into his lap. He felt tears falling from his eyes as he sat there fore gods knows how long - weeping as his mind convulsed again and again. His father's spells and incantations that had kept him oblivous all his many years could not protect him from the truth that was so rapidly approaching. He no longer needed the barriors if he knew what lay behind them. As they fell he felt his entire body tensing as it was wraked over and over again with fire and pain.
He just wept on as the migraine grew more and more. Suddenly warm arms wrapped around him, warm arms to someone from so long ago. He could not recall the wanting to be held any stronger then this momment. This momment when those powerful arms were wrapped around him, and the strange sensation hit him as he was not weeping any longer. Yet the sounds remained, for he was no longer in Uru'baen. He was no longer in the king's presance with a baby dragon in his lap. He was no longer a strong man of nineteen, but rather a frail child of three.
He lay so still, his head resting in this stranger's lap as their arms were wrapped around his head. He lay there without moving, and though he once thought his eyes were open - they were now closed. All he could hear was the harsh and terrible sounds of a grown man weeping with no resolve. He blinked slowly, all thoughts of pain and agony gone. His hands twitched in front of his face, and he groaned as the day began for his tired body. His head popped up, and suddenly the memory of lying on the floor of the main hall was swept from his memory as the sight of the pitiful man holding him gently was laid out before him. So much like a young cub, going to see if their father was alright, he raised an tiny paw and placed it on the man's cheek. Dark eyes opened and looked at the tiny blue ones that were staring so loveingly at him.
"Papa? Why are you crying?" The man held his son's gaze for a momment longer, as tears continued to fall from his eyes. Then he pulled the child from his lying down position, with his head resting on his lap, up so the boy was being cradeled close to his chest.
"Oh child...I'm sorry...I'm so sorry..." If the boy knew what he was talking about, then perhaps he would have cared, but for now he simply wrapped his tiny paws around the man's neck and snuggled his head to the broad chest.
"It's okay Papa. It'll be fine. Dont worry! Why are you sad papa?" he asked gently, as the man held him close. Taking his two little paws, he cupped the older man's face and smiled happily. "It's okay papa, dont worry, whatever you did it shall be fine. Everything always turns out better, in the end." If possible, the man cried harder now, gripping the child closer to his chest as he wept more and more.
"Child-mine, now can you ever forgive me? After what I have done? Do you not remember child?" The little boy looked up at him with truthful eyes and simply smiled large.
"Papa, if you cry like this every time you loose my ball then we shall have to collect your tears and make a river!" Now the man simply was broken to shreds. Confirming that the boy did not remember the incident was almost worse then the incident itself. It showed how much damage he had done. Poor little boy believed that this was about that silly game of catch where Morzan had thrown the ball out one of the tower windows by accident - succesfully loosing the child's second out of four balls that his mother had given him only one week before. He simply had no concept of the monstrosity that took place so soon after that event. Still, how could he tell this babe...this child so young and innocent that he honestly accepted all around him. He could not...
Murtagh closed his eyes, allowing his body to be held so gently by this man that he had every faith in. However as the lids opened again, the dream was gone. He was not in his beautiful room at the top of the tower, that oversaw all the beauty of the mountains around him. He was in Uru'baen. And it was not his father whom he had loved so much who held him, no...it was the king.
As Murtagh lay motionless in the man's arms, he thought more of his father. The memories that were locked inside his mind, now unlocked. For before there was hate...hate for the man who placed the scar on his back, hate for the man who marked his existance for the rest of his life...there was love. An unyeilding love for a gentle father who wanted nothing more then his son to be happy. How clearly he could see it back then, back when it was only them on the mountainside, back before his mother found the scar on his back. Back before she and his father fought. Back before he struck her down and yelled for her to mind her own buisness and to stay out of his. Back before he stood in the doorway, watching as his father became The Monster. Back before his father looked up from his mother's weeping form to lock eyes with him. Back before his mask had shattered. Back before he left...before his mother left...before he was all alone...with a scar...that he didn't even remember getting.
Windstar: After doing some research, I uncovered that the name 'Murtagh' litterally translates to 'Sea Warrior' in gaelic. I then translated that into 'Aear ohtar' literally meaning sea warrior. However Aear ohtar did not sound as beautiful as I wished it to be, and so I translated the word for 'silver' and added it to the name. Then I pondered further coming to the realization that the name itself did not fit. Murtagh was not a sea warrior, he was meant to be a 'sky' warrior. One who lives in the air, and fights by it. I further delved into my studies, and decided that instead of my origional choosing of his 'true name' litterally as: Silver Sea Warrior, or Calebaearohtar (pronounced): kehl-ehb eye-are oh-tar.
I decided on this: Mith-hwesta o nar (pronounced): meeth - hwe-stah oh nahr. Which litterally translates to: Grey Breeze of Fire. It seemed appropriate.
From this point onward, whenever something is mentioned in the Ancient Language, it will not be translated in the text itself. If you wish to read the translation, please see the below font in the "author's note" section of the chapter.
If you are miffed by the exact translation of his name, then I apologize. However, the name itself seemed appropriate.
Also, it has come to my great displeasurable attention that a large quantity of people who read this story do not have the energy to write a review for it. All I ask is for one word. "good" or "bad." Preferably good. If you so desire to write more, then please do. For looking at the story's stats and seeing i'm getting over 100 hits for a chapter, and several alerts - but no reviews only makes me wonder if you really want me to continue.
I have a bad habit of loosing intrest in a story. It would be, in your best intrest if you review. It makes me a happy person. Also, if you dont, then I write crappy because I have no desire to write well for an unresponsive audience.
This is the first of many stories that I'm begging for a review. Please aquiest to my request.
