I do not own the Inheritance Cycle.
I always felt as if Selena's story never had the chance to shine. I enjoy the version of her I've created and I hope it does justice
Edited 1/30/22
Enjoy,
Selena's Tale
The tale began when she was a child with a fateful happening that changed her life completely.
She was born just outside a small village in the Spine to the cobbler Cadoc and his lovely wife. Even now she could still remember the bitter smell of leather that infested their small home.
She had been alive through eight, maybe nine, summers, when her mother was heavy with a coming child. This child made her mother weak, and many of the woman's duties fell onto her. At this time her mother's brother lived with her father and mother, her brother and her. Nele was a good man, who worked hard in the fields with her father, and when her father had to work in his cobbler's stall Nele would work alone. All memories that she had of her Uncle Nele were wholesome, filled his joking wide toothy grin, expect for one.
"My mother and I were sitting at the table snapping beans," the woman told Rose as they rode down the road side-by-side. "I remember because I was disappointed that I couldn't go outside and play."
Rose glanced at her almost humoredly, then turned forward, choosing to say nothing.
Her brother, his name was Garrow, ran into the house, damp from the day's work under the sun. He had been very upset. Her mother simply looked at him, she had been worrying about him moments before, as he blurted that Elis' father was there. The man had come to the house seeking justice for the loss of his son, his only son, but he had come to a place where none was to be found. There had been an accident weeks before, one that both she and her brother were involved in, one that Elis had lost his life over, and his father was very drunk and very angry. Her mother had told her and Garrow to stay in the house, not to leave and to continue snapping beans, before she ran out the home herself. She and Garrow hadn't listened to their mother's instructions.
"It had been a mistake not to continue snapping those beans," she said. "We should have, both Garrow and I knew that, but we did not. We ran to the window and looked out, wanting to know what was happening. We heard my father yell at my mother to go back inside, but she refused to do so instead yelling at him, her brother and that man. I never learned his name. I don't remember what she said but it made the man very upset."
Elis' father grabbed ahold of her mother, and though it should have been her husband who defended her, Nele was faster. Nele attacked the man, and the man attacked back until they were in a fully blown brawl. Somehow, she hadn't seen how, the man pulled out a knife and stabbed her uncle. "I don't remember screaming or crying, though Garrow said I had," the woman continued. "According to him I had tried to run outside and get to my uncle Nele, and he had fought me down to kept me from doing so. Which was something that he could easily do, me being four summers younger than him."
Her mother had hurried in then and behind her, was her father. Her father was dragging Nele behind him, he was alive and awake, dripping with blood and begging for death. Her father had yelled, in his panic (her father was not a yelling man), at her and her brother, telling them to get back. He then told her to get water and clean rags, and told Garrow to take their horse and run it into town and to call for help. Garrow was first to move, running out of the house like there were rabid dogs snapping at his heels, but it took her a moment to move and do as her father asked her to. By this time her father had returned outside, in a task that she never found out about but afterwards she never saw Elis' father again. They, she and her mother, tried to lessen the bleeding but found they could not and her uncle bled to his death moments before Garrow returned with a healer.
Months passed and soon her mother birthed a son, he lived only months before he joined his uncle in the Void. Her mother and father were devastated. Two years afterward her mother left this world also during, yet another, childbirth.
"I hold very few memories of my mother but what I have I cherish," she said. "She was a patient woman, always smiling. She had a beautiful smile, it lit up her whole face and made her seem ageless. She taught me much but not enough. She was always tender, even when I caused mischief. You would have liked her, I think. The two of you are alike in many ways. When she left to journey into the next life, it was a hard time for my family. I was but child still and yet I was expected to fill in my mother's shoes. It was a demanding task, one I more failed more often than not."
The demands of her chores made her rebellious and reckless, and she soon began to long for a life away from her father's demands. It was around this time that she met Morzan. She and Garrow were in the tavern, running an errand for their father when she first saw him, she was perhaps fifteen years of age.
Morzan was a handsome man, tall and tanned. He was talking to a local and as he talked his fingers painted the air with worldly images. It was very little wonder that she was immediately enthralled by him, soon finding herself watching him, listening to the enchanting sound of his voice.
The son of the man running the tavern, said that he needed assistance with the package, and Garrow had told her to stay, that he'd be only a moment. She hadn't been happy with him, commanding her about like she were a naughty dog but she listened and stayed put.
This is when Morzan took notice to her, as his previous listening ear had excused himself and left. He turned to her, and for a time they talked on a subject, that she no longer remembered, until her brother returned and they said their farewells. But that was not the last she saw of Morzan. He came again weeks later in the early in the months of that summer.
Upon his return, he sent a message for her on a day her father and brother were spending the day hours hunting for meat, and so they were not home. She did not think to go at first, but in the end she did, perhaps out of loneliness or perhaps not.
"We met in a valley in the forest near evening," she said emotionlessly. "It was a very long walk from my father's home to that valley, and I was very tired after walking all that way. He was sitting on a rock, poking at the fire, I had thought it to be a very normal thing to do. When I saw him I thought my insides were to about burst, my heart was beating so fast and my head felt as if it were about roll off my shoulders. I thought he was prefect; brilliant, clever, funny, magnificent, and charming. He seemed to give off a light, in a way, as if there was something special about him, that he had access to a brilliantly illuminated part of the world and if I was lucky he would share it with me. Like before, I was instantly enchanted."
They talked for a short time before Morzan requested for her to leave with him. He told her that he hadn't stopped thinking about her over the months they'd been apart, he could not stop thinking about her, and that without her he was nothing.
Rose looked doubtfully at the woman then, and shook her head. "It seems doubtful that Morzan would say such a thing," she said. "It sounds to the very opposite of everything thing I heard about him."
"You've heard that he is cunning, haven't you?" the woman asked, her focus on the road.
Rose nodded, and then realizing that the action wouldn't be seen, she said, "Yes, I have. However, for him to say anything to make himself seem vulnerable, it seems very unlikely."
The woman looked her with a mixed between a smile and a grimace. "He was baiting me," she said, "and I took it. Morzan was a clever a man, he knew how to get what he wanted. He was perhaps the only reason why Galbatorix rose to power so quickly and was able to bring out the downfall of the Riders. The King is a brilliant man himself, do not misunderstand, but he does not see things the way Morzan did; like everything is some brilliant puzzle that can be solved with the right understanding. I think that without Morzan, Galbatorix would still be hiding out in the wild." She shook herself. "As I was saying, Morzan for whatever reasons he had, he wanted me. I was drawn to him, his knowledge of the world, his brilliance, and I said I would go."
She didn't wish to carry on with her life under her father's reign; to soon get married to the man he picked, and have his children, and care for him and his aching back every night and every day until they grew old. When she agreed, he called down his dragon. The dragon landed in front of them, and she nearly ran away in fright.
"He, I always thought of Morzan's dragon as being a he, was the largest creature I had ever seen. At first I thought it to be a monster," she said. "In some ways I was correct in my thinking, in others I was not. The dragon was big and red, darker in color than Thorn, with shining golden eyes, and there was a small tear on one of his wings, I remember seeing that and feeling bad for him."
Morzan then told her who he was, that he was a Rider, a Forsworn, and she had thought that only added to his grandness. He helped her onto the dragon then, and they stopped very briefly at her father's home, where she left a hasty note in farewell and grabbed a few things she held dear, and warmer clothing which she dressed herself in, per Morzan's request, before leaving the place that had always been her home.
They flew over the mountains where it was very cold, and she knew then why she was dressed so warmly. She thought it to be a beautiful sight, unlike any that could be imagined or described. They camped at night, and talked by firelight- it was then that she began to care for him.
They reached his castle two days after leaving Carvahall, the town she had grown up in, and she was shocked to see such grandeur. Morzan landed in the courtyard and the next morning he left, saying he'd be back very soon.
She felt out of place living in that castle, there was so little for her to do there, wearing soft gowns and silk slippers, being taught the refineries of womankind, and she began to hate it. Before she always had a purpose, there she had none: she was to sit and look pretty, and this didn't sit well with her. The moment Morzan returned, a very long week later, he told her she was to come with him, and once again she did, eager to leave his fortress.
He took her to the capital, where she felt even more graceless and awkward, and there she met Galbatorix for the first time. The king had said many thing, he and Morzan talked for ages, and she felt very put out by the formalities at play.
"The King is almost as charming as Morzan was," she said, "but he has a vehemence about him that cannot be hidden behind pretty words. Despite this Morzan was loyal to him, like a dog to its master which had, and still does, puzzle me."
They stayed there for a long time, and she found that she could not talk to the women there as she had in Carvahall, and she made no friends. As time went by, she turned more and more to Morzan as company, and began to love him. "He had done this, I think, on purpose," she said. "Isolating me. Forcing me to come to him more and more for companionship. I think he knew I wouldn't get on with the women of Court, perhaps if I had we wouldn't have stayed there for such a long time."
One day, a month after first setting foot into Galbatorix's castle, Morzan requested her to marry him, to make, as he claimed, their love known and everlasting. She agreed, how could she not? He was, as she thought, everything in a man that she ever wanted.
They were wedded on a lovely summer's day, the sky was clear of all clouds and the purest of blues and the sun glittered in the sky like a giant jewel. It was a grand and happy event, there was dancing and a feast and music unlike any she had ever heard. She was happy.
The woman paused, then and looked at Rose, for a moment, in silence. "Let's rest for a moment, shall we?" she said, steering them off the road.
Rose followed her in uneasy silence. "What I do not understand," she said, tightening her grip on leather of Eowyn's reigns, "is how you didn't see Morzan for what he was."
"And what was he?" She turned around and gave Rose a questioning look.
Rose was silent for a time as she thought this over. "A dipsomaniac bedlamite," said she, at last, in a matter-of-fact tone.
The woman laughed, but it was muffled by the wind. "Don't be rude, Rose. I guess that in some ways that it very true. But love is a blinding thing, Rose, it makes you overlook another's faults," she said stopping near a sputtering stream filled with flat, round rocks. She dismounted and led Lanorgrim to the water, allowing him to drink from its flowing water. Then she sat down, as Rose did the same with Eowyn, and pulled out the traveling biscuits and tough meat, she handed Rose her share when she seated herself close to her. "We left Urû'baen that next morning, and returned again to his castle, and again he left me there."
He was away for well over a month, leaving her to be feeling rather jaded. She felt again quite useless, being stuck inside that castle with no real use, and she began to devise a plan.
"When Morzan returned, at last, I asked to enter his service, and he agreed to test me. He taught me basic magic and simplest words of the Ancient Language. When he was content with my knowledge he pitted me against a dozen of his finest solders." She paused for short moment and carved asideways cross into the dirt. "I healed them of their loyalties to Morzan and then I slaughtered them, there's no better way to describe it. I told myself it was no different than killing livestock, I've done that hundreds of times before, but it was still hard thing to allow myself to live with. After that Morzan trained me further in magic and telepathy, these I took quickly to, in my credulity I was eager to please."
For many months he trained her, and when he was pleased her knowledge and abilities, he began taking her with him on his trips. For the first few voyages, which she would not speak of, she was beside him always, and he continued to coach her, and then he sent her off on her own. By then violence had become something normal in her life, and acting on it no longer bothered her, and she did as she was told and returned to him.
This continued for two more years, and a name was made for her, one that brought about fear. When she had heard of it, it humored her, and how could it not? She was in a way exactly what people thought her to be, an extension of Morzan's hands. She was able to go places and gain trust of those he could not.
In those years she saw what she had once only dreamed of witnessing, the sights of the world around her. She saw mountains that reached into the sky, big and purple with mist, and endless spans of water which threw back fragments of sunlight, and pieces of land that seemed to stretch before her ceaselessly, and villages filled with oddities and people. None of these things she would have saw if she had stayed in Carvahall. And through her life was violent, she was often in danger, and she rarely saw her husband, she was very content.
And then, she found out that she was with child.
She felt many emotions at that time, the most prominent of those was fear. It was out of that fear that she ran from Morzan, he made it very well known that he had no desire for children, nor did she. She spent three days in the plains before she returned to her husband with news of her state. He did not respond as he expected him to, he reacted pleasantly enough before whisking her away to his castle. There she hid for nine months.
"Over this time I thought much and I grew to look forward to becoming a mother, to seeing my child grow into an adult. These were ideas I had by no account ever believing I would reflect on. Over this time I began to change and so did Morzan's hold on me though he did not know it," the woman said, standing up, signaling for Rose to do the same. They mounted the horses before continuing on the trail.
"When you were born-" she began, but her voice faulted- "When you were born I believed I could have a family with Morzan as I've been dreaming over for all those months. But at the time Morzan was not there, he was away at Urû'baen, and so for three days I was able to be your mother. Only three days. The moment Morzan came back, he looked at you from the doorway and said that your name was to be 'Muirgheal,' before he forced a wet nurse to care for you. He then demanded I leave on another of his missions. I went through the motions and did the job quickly, eager to get home. Only when I did get back he sent me away once more. It went this way for over five months before I was able to see my baby, you, again."
She was shocked by how much her child had grown and how little the baby wanted her, crying for the wetnurse each time she was held by her mother. The mother soon became bitter and angry, and that was when she first began to resent Morzan. Little over a week after her return she was, again, sent away. While she traveled, it began troubling her knowing that this would now be her life, to be sent away for countless months only to come home briefly to see her child grown and unwanting.
"Despite this I was still enthralled with Morzan," the woman said, "and it took extreme measures for me to finally see his hatred and cruelty but by then it was too late." She shook her head, her brown tresses swaying around her.
One day, four or so years after she first met Morzan, she met a man and they quickly fell in love. This was true and pure, untainted by abhorrence and war, though those were the very reasons for their meeting. He was bent on vengeance and for this reason he had found a way into Morzan's stronghold by pretending to be a maimed gardener by the name of Donet. Sometime after they met and began to love each other she learned of his past and her hatred for Morzan grew.
"I will not convey his past to you for it is not my story to tell," she said, pausing as she though carefully over her next words. "Know only that he had a reason to hate Morzan, more than I do."
She began to do all she could to defy her husband, giving away the Empire's secrets to the Varden, as she was one of the few individuals Morzan trusted she knew almost all there was to know. She did all she could not to flourish when she did Morzan's missions as she had before, without him noticing. He noticed at times, and others he did not.
After five years of marriage to Morzan she found that she was again with child, and she was petrified of her discovery.
"Why hadn't you left before this?" Rose asked, rubbing her arms, knowing what was to come. "You could have taken me and run from him, why hadn't you?"
The woman looked at her, and shook her head. "I didn't because I knew I couldn't. If I'd run away from Morzan with you, he would have moved the heavens to get us back. He would have followed to me the ends of the earth, because I belonged to him and he would have never willingly let you go. I would have taken my chances and let him come after me, but I would never let him come after you."
"I was a nuisance to Morzan," said Rose. She looked at her hands, as she twisted them in the reigns. "Why would he come after me?"
"You're full of questions tonight, aren't you?" the woman said jokingly. "You were important to him, and he cared you in his own way though he let no one see it. In his eyes you belonged to him as much as I did, that is why he would come after you. His enemies could use you against him, and he didn't want a chance of that, not in the least."
Nodding, Rose fell silent.
She had been carrying another child and had known it for weeks, when Morzan sent her away once more. It was about this time she had met Padern and Voirrey.
"I was sitting in a tree, watching them," she said, "when one of their dogs startled me. I fell from the tree and hit my head on the ground, knocking myself senseless. When I woke up, I was in a soft bed and Padern's mother was standing over me, tending to me. My first thought was the child, and I panicked. He was unharmed, but I was not. My leg was injured, a bone had been broken, and I could not walk on it for a time. They took care of me and befriended me as I recovered. I couldn't tell them who I truly was so I told them my name was Ailis. When I had healed I left for Carvahall."
She took a route through the Spine, one that took months, and when she arrived she was heavy with child. Garrow hadn't been happy to see her and they fought for hours before he relented and embraced her, seemly having forgiven her without notice. He allowed her to live with him, his wife, and their son. During this time she found out that her father had passed into the Void, something she was disappointed in learning as she was looking to receive his forgiveness. Then she birthed a son, who she named 'Eragon.' She stayed only long enough to recover from childbirth and ensure that her son would be raised by Garrow and his wife and live out his life in peace, and then she left to return to Morzan's castle.
Upon her return, she was ambushed by a group of highwaymen and they nearly killed her, having caught her by surprise. She did to them the same justice they would have dealt to her, and then, wounded she continued forward. During all her time in Carvahall, she had worked on a plan to free herself and her daughter from Morzan completely and she was ready to do it, but then she crossed paths with the man she called Donet.
"Can you not tell me this Donet's given name?" Rose asked breathlessly. "Surely there is not a reason to hide that about him also."
"Rose…" the woman said warningly.
"I'm only trying to understand, that is all," she said looking at the evening sky. "If you're to tell me you loved a man while you were married to Morzan, the least you could tell was this man's name."
The woman took a deep breath as if she were about to dive into water. "His name is Brom."
Rose nearly fell from Eowyn's back, thoroughly startled. Brom was once a Dragon Rider whose dragon was slain during the Uprising. He had killed Morzan and his dragon in Gil'ead not long ago. Is there no end to this ludicrousness? she said to Thorn.
Listen to what she has to say, the dragon growled back. It may sound like absurdity to you, but it's her past. She is not telling you about it lightly.
Rose fell silent again. Thorn was correct once more, but how could she push aside the knowledge she grew up knowing and accept what was being said? Truth or not, this woman was telling her something she obviously rarely spoke of. But it seemed so very unlikely that any of this was true, though as the woman spoke she began to feel more and more that the words were ones of truth. She shook herself and listened intently.
Brom, or Donet as he was called moments before, had healed her of her injuries. He had reached Morzan's castle before she had, and when she insisted on continuing there, he told of what he learned while there. "I don't think he wished to be the one to tell me my daughter- you- had died, murdered while Morzan was in a rage," she said. She stopped for a time unable to continue. "I think in a way it hurt him to tell me as much as it killed me to hear it from him."
She wanted to kill Morzan, but knew she could not. Even when Brom told her Morzan was dead she felt nothing, there was no justice in that, and she just continued as she had before mourning her lost child. The morning after that night they did go to Morzan's castle, and she packed what was hers, magicked the servants to believing that she had died there, that very day, and left the castle forever.
She and Brom went to Padern's and Voirrey's farm estate where they were allowed to stay. They remained there for a month, before Brom and she separated. He went to Du Weldenvarden, for reasons she would not say, and she remained there. Brom returned, almost a whole year later, and they left for the Varden.
"While at the estate I decided to become Ailis, not wanting Galbatorix to know of my existence," the woman said. "It was an escape for me, also, to leave my mistakes and deeds behind and pretend to be someone else. I could function better, thinking of my past as if it belonged to someone else."
They reached the Varden, and Brom left once more. She sent him away, it was safer for him not to be discovered by Galbatorix's spies, and though he did not wish to, he did as she said. After that, she continued forward in her life, letting the years pass by, doing all she could to, as she said, to redeem herself.
"For years the only thing that kept me going was the drive to bring down the Empire and I worked vigorously on raids and war plans. Then eleven long years had passed one of the spies in Galbatorix's palace informed the Varden leader that you were in fact alive and not died as I had been deceived to believe," the woman said. "Your death had been Morzan's final ploy, the greatest trick he played on me yet. I had never despised him as much as I did then. Feeling that way towards a dead man, Rose, does you no good because you can do nothing to them."
After finding out that her daughter was not dead, she worked ferociously to come up with a way to get to her. She did research for years, until she thought of a way to get into the capital, and then with the assistance of countless intelligent minds something was devised. The simple answer was to deceive those around her, in the Varden, into believing she was after the dragon eggs and wished to free them. She couldn't just leave, if she had, she would have no place safe to return to. And so she worked on her problems until they were solved and then left to find Tornac.
"It was around the time that his brother had passed from this world, if I remember correctly, and he was already distraught over that," said the woman. "He cared for you, very much, and he was not happy to see me in the least. I thought at first he wished to kill me where I stood."
They talked for a very long time, and at last, he agreed to help her, he agreed also to not tell Rose. Then she left to return to the Varden, and did not see him again until they met in Urû'baen.
When she returned to the Varden she worked even harder than before, until it was time to leave.
"Cordelia retired on her own accord," she said, "I will let you know that her leaving was not my doing. If she hadn't things would have been a little more difficult, still workable just harder."
Her days in Urû'baen were stressful. She worked very hard to keep out of trouble and from the notice of the king, though she thought he knew she was there but she was not certain of it. She slept very little at night. She collected what news she could, and explored parts of the castle she hadn't the chance to before, and worked very hard on gaining Rose's trust.
"I thought that I might die there, and I wondered how I would withstand torture," the woman said. "I thought that my chances did not seem good. I don't know what made it possible, but I think Tornac had a hand in it, for me to get the eggs from the treasury and escape with you. After that I tried countless times to tell you, and Tornac tried to corner me into doing so a handful of times but I could not and I do not know why."
Rose looked at her, and studied her truly for the first time. This woman was unlike what she had thought she would be, and she had her doubts but her words rung true to her. No person would work this hard and create such a tale to deceive her, and speak about it with such emotion as she had. She didn't like it, part of her wished it wasn't so, but it seemed as if it was. She swallowed and turned away.
"And now we find your son?"
Selena nodded. "Now we find Eragon."
Rose continued to look ahead at the land that bowed before them, the mingling gold from the setting sun that reflected off the snow, to the west the lake glittered on colorful hues. It was truly a beautiful sight, unlike any she had ever seen before. She continued to watch the landscape fade of colors as the sky darkened and the shadows lengthened. They continued forward on the road.
