Kuasta was big. A lot bigger than Teirm, which to Eragon had already been the biggest city he'd ever seen. The city was built into a slope down to the sea. The docks were at the bottom, as expansive as Teirm's. There were warehouses and port authorities, but the real city was up a long road that doubled back on itself until it reached a wall that stretched for miles in either direction. It was only half as tall as Teirm's, made from darker stone than the tan colored bricks of Teirm.
They sailed into port as night fell and the city was lit by sparse torches and candlelight spilling through windows.
The city was at the furthest point of a massive bay that was set into the lower part of the Spine, in a patch of flat land set against the mountain range. There was a short, fat peninsula that stuck out into the bay, and that was where Kuasta stood. The city walls guarded it from attack from the docks, and Eragon assumed there must be another wall to protect it against attack by land.
Eragon threw open his mind as they walked down the gangplank. Saphira! He called across their bond. No clear answer was forthcoming. He sensed she was further east, maybe hiding in the mountains. Why did she hide, when she could fly invisibly over the city with the guards none the wiser?
The city gates were closed for the night, so they stayed with the crew at a cheap inn, little more than rows of bunks for rent built out by the docks outside the city walls. There were far less Empire soldiers patrolling than at Teirm, where the red black and gold uniforms of the imperial soldiers were always somewhere in view. That didn't mean security was lax; Kuasta had plenty of their own men patrolling in white woolly clothes and leather armor.
The next morning, they went up into the city.
Brom skipped over the port authorities office and headed straight up to the gate. Brom greeted the guard at the gate with an accent Eragon had never heard before, so thick he could hardly make it out. The guard answered in kind. Brom gave him their old nicknames from Teirm.
"Why have you come to Teirm?" The guard seemed genuinely interested.
"Visiting family," Brom replied. The vowels felt all wrong, like they were bent around consonants in a strange way that Eragon struggled to decipher. "It's been a while, but I brought my grandson to meet my side of the family."
"I should ask you for more," the guard said. "But you have the look of us. Welcome back."
Brom walked close to the right side of the gate and reached out, tapping the stone thrice on his way in. The guard smiled and nodded to him as they headed further in.
"Some kind of secret code?" Eragon asked.
"Superstition," Brom grunted. He seemed reluctant to talk about it.
Brom reacted to the city unexpectedly. He seemed to know more or less where he was going, yet his gaze lingered on certain buildings, and he seemed surprised occasionally. It took Eragon only a moment to piece the puzzle together.
"You've been here before."
Brom nodded. "I was born here."
Eragon was unused to such forthrightness from the man. "Really?"
"If you harass me for the truth, the least you can do is accept it when I give it to you," the old man snapped. "Yes. Really. It has changed since I've been here."
"When was that? Eragon wondered.
"A long time ago. I doubt anyone will recognize me."
"No family?" Eragon hoped it was not an insensitive question.
"My parents passed a while back, and I was an only child. I was never very close with anyone else, and the ones I knew as children will not recognize me, nor I they." Brom led Eragon up a path towards the southern side of the city. The north seemed more fortified, with more guards peeking up over the taller walls. Eragon spared a thought to wondering why.
They came to a square with a fountain in the middle. Brom scanned the buildings surrounding the paved square and scowled. The buildings in the entire city were impressive. Rare were the buildings with only one floor. They were all made from some smooth white stone, and rather impressive on average. Teirm had few buildings as impressive as the average one in Kuasta.
"They got rid of the old inn," he grumbled. "That one looks fine enough. We'll only stay here one night."
'That one' turned out to be a three floor building with a shingled roof and a cheery tavern on the ground floor. The sign out front was a carved bed, mug, and drumstick mounted over the eaves of the front door.
Brom paid for their stay with a gold coin and got a fistful of change in return. There were not many places where paying a gold crown wouldn't rouse suspicion, and smaller denominations of money were actually more valuable to them for being less suspicious. Naturally, that meant they got the best room in the inn, a large one on the second floor with two real beds with real mattresses, a fireplace, a table, and genuine glass windows looking out on the square.
He handed Eragon a fistful of silver and copper in exchange for a fistful of gold. "I'm going to go break as much of this into change as I can today. Rumors that start here are not likely to spread. This would be the place to spend a lot of gold. Just don't go overboard. We don't need to fill the tent with garbage, nor for you to get pickpocketed or held for ransom."
Eragon decided against leaving Zar'roc in the inn.
"If we can't usually spend much gold because we don't look rich enough to have that much, how would we go about changing that?" Eragon wondered.
Brom paused. "You know, that is a remarkably sharp idea. There are three major parts to being rich. Clothes, cleanliness, and demeanor. You and I already keep clean enough. We will have to work on your demeanor on the road. Be back here by midday and I will take you to a tailor."
They went their separate ways then. Brom disappeared towards the north side of the city while Eragon explored the area around the inn.
Everywhere he went, people recognized him as foreign. The accents were obviously giving him away, but he thought there was more than that. On every doorframe, there were worn spots in the varnish or paint on the right side at shoulder height. Everytime a person came or went, they tapped the spot thrice, just as Brom had at the gate.
There were other superstitions too, behaviors Eragon caught as being unusual. A strange gesture the people made to ward off bad luck, a dropped phrase, an unusual greeting, it was impossible to avoid being labeled a foreigner.
Most people were a bit frosty towards him. It made exploring tougher. Some things, Eragon observed independent of the people living there. There were iron grates set in the cobbled roads and gutters. Mounted Urgal horns were downright common over doorframes, like good luck charms. Eragon had never seen so many before.
To the north side of the city, the walls grew thicker and taller, the houses larger, and the clothing finer. He walked a circuit around some of the larger roads, just watching the houses go by before returning to the square where he'd started. Then he headed west towards the markets.
The market square made all the traders that came to Carvahall combined look like a little swap meet. Teirm's market had seemed more perfunctory, more interested in trade than customers. Here, all the people in the very large city of Kuasta came to buy things. Stalls were set out in aisles, roughly clumped by types of wares. Around the square, stores for the rich or especially prosperous stores were set into shopfronts under two or three storey buildings of a strange, smooth white stone and wooden shingles.
Eragon plucked up his courage to ask a passerby what the strange smooth stone was.
The man instantly clocked him as a foreigner. He looked positively ancient with wispy snow white hair and deeply creased wrinkles. "Plaster," the man said. He seemed to be making an effort to tone down the Kuastan accent. Eragon still had to strive to understand him. "They bake limestone in ovens and sell the white powder. Adding water makes it like clay. Bakes into shape. Where are you from?"
"A little village up north," Eragon said vaguely. "We make our houses out of timber and masonry."
The man grinned. "Plaster is cheap here. The limestone comes from a quarry at the edge of the mountains. Easy to build with, and looks nice, doesn't it? Any news from up north?"
Eragon picked what information was safe to give him. He glanced at the mounted Urgal horns over a nearby building.
"Urgals have been on the move. A lot of them. I passed a village – Yazuac – that had been killed to the last child by a roving party of them. And I've seen evidence that they're not the only group."
The man's visage darkened. He'd caught Eragon's glance towards the mounted horns. "We have our own issues with the beasts. We must be the city that suffers the most Urgal attacks in Alagaesia. Yet as of the last year, they have been silent. Where have you been staying?"
"The Inn on the square with the fountain," Eragon said. "I heard it's new."
The old man frowned. "It's not new."
Eragon supposed it had been at least ten years since Brom visited Kuasta. "What was the old inn before that one?"
His brows crept up. "That inn was torn down when I was a little kid. That had to be seventy years ago."
Eragon choked. "Seventy years?"
""You're not going deaf, are you?" The man asked. "Yes. That was before the fountain was built. What brings you here?"
"Passing through," Eragon said vaguely.
The man gave him a challenging look. "Kuasta is the only place worth visiting this side of the Spine. Nobody comes or goes save by ship."
Eragon shrugged. "I want to hike across the Spine."
He gave Eragon a look like he was crazy. "Good luck with that. Though now that I think about it, you might just have a chance if all the Urgals are busy rampaging across the Great Plains. They don't make clean kills lad, if you understand what I mean. And they take a team of men to slay. I hope you know what you're doing."
Eragon swallowed. "I do. Thanks for the warning."
The man bade him farewell. Eragon wandered back through the aisles of the market while he digested the new information.
Brom was at least seventy years old.
He could not be much older than fifty. For all that he acted like a crotchety old man, complete with the cane and pipe and grouchiness, Brom had plenty of color left in his hair. He was stronger than Eragon, still quick as a whip with his sword, and had the constitution to walk from sunup to sundown.
Was it magic?
Theories ruminated in his head as he walked up and down the aisles. Baubles drew his attention, but nothing jumped out at him. Despite having a heavy pocket of gold to burn, Eragon found there was not much he needed that was worth the space they had in the magic tent.
He bought a stack of woven blankets with unusual patterns on them, courtesy of the Hadarac's wandering tribes. He paid a gold crown and received half that back in silvers. There was bedding already on the beds in the tent, but it was plain, and Eragon supposed the new blankets could serve as mementos.
He did not need tools, Zar'roc was a finer blade than anything a human could make without magic, his quiver was enchanted with unlimited perfect arrows. His bow was sentimental and did not need replacing. As he wandered, he ticked off all the things he didn't need.
Arrows, bows, a saw, an axe, a tinderbox, doilies, silken handkerchiefs, carved cutlery and real silverware, porcelain dishes, jewelry, no, no, didn't need one, already had a set, magic served the same purpose, and so on.
Eragon bought a generous amount of sturdy rope – never knew when he might need it, and his pack was bottomless anyways – a few different varieties of meats and cheeses and breads to supplement the largely vegetarian supplies Harry had provided, and a lot of spices. Finally something expensive enough to spend more than a few crowns and get back a fair bit of silver.
Eragon enjoyed the practice of haggling. It was worth it to barter for every last silver coin the vendor might return. Secretly, negotiating for silver and the spices was trading something worth little for two things he needed more than gold. He did not often get a chance to haggle, and the exercise was fun.
He wanted to hurry back to the inn to get his produce into the boxes that would keep them fresh as quickly as possible, but Eragon had noticed that his generous spending had caught some attention. Some vendors hailed him before he spoke with them, like his description and fat purse had been circulated through the market.
It was time to leave.
But on his way out, one last stall caught his interest. It was a stupid whim, really. But they had the room and Eragon was curious.
Brom would hate it.
…that made him want to buy it even more.
"How much for it?" Eragon asked.
The man at the stall's eyes gleamed. He knew Eragon had money.
"And if you're going to rip me off, you had better give me the best one you've ever made," Eragon added, before he could quote a price.
"Of course," the vendor grinned. "Three crowns and it's all yours."
Eragon counted out the coins and handed them to the man, taking the wooden neck of the offered item in turn. "And suppose I had a friend who also wanted one?"
The vendor, gleeful at his new windfall, gestured to another, somewhat rougher product. "One more crown and it's yours."
Eragon handed it over silently.
The luthier saluted Eragon. "If you've no one to teach you, I urge you to keep at it. Music is a rare treat, and a musician is never without it."
Handling the two guitars was awkward. Eragon wrestled their cases under his arm. Somehow, he doubted Brom would be thrilled. "Thanks."
Eragon headed straight back to the inn. He kept to the broad streets with foot traffic and kept his distance from passersby to avoid getting pickpocketed. The guitars were heavy and their cases clacked against each other as he walked. Eragon was glad to have Zar'roc visible on his hip discouraging any pickpockets. He knew he was a mark now. Brom would not be happy. He'd spent too much money too easily.
He made it back to the square and into the lobby without being mugged. Eragon had been on high alert with his hand on Zar'roc's pommel the whole time, sending glares at anyone who looked like they might try to brush up against him.
Against all odds, he managed to make it with his purse still tied to his belt accosted into the lobby, whereupon he headed straight up to the room to put everything away.
Brom wasn't back yet and Eragon was hungry for lunch. He set to getting his perishable purchases stuffed into those magic food boxes in the tent. Many of them were still dirty, so the chore turned into dishwashing in the magic sink. Eragon made a note to go back to the market and buy a bunch of soap.
He set out the spices he'd gotten on the counter of the kitchenette and shelved the boxes full of produce for later. He deposited the rope as well as the blankets next to his bed before exiting the tent and packing it back up. The guitars and their cases remained propped up against the beds in their room in the inn.
Eragon stretched and headed back outside, still as acutely aware that he was a target as before. He moved his purse to the inside of his jerkin and kept a hand on Zar'roc. Nobody bothered him.
Upon returning to the market, Eragon bought a woven basket and some soap to fill it before spending a copper on a hot meal. He found vendors selling the remnants of the morning's pastries or candy or sweetmeats and bought some of those, too.
The tension of waiting for an attack wore on Eragon's nerves. He was tempted to deliberately walk into an alley and discourage anyone who appeared with Zar'roc. But Saphira and Brom were both sure to excoriate him for doing something so stupid as picking a fight with neither of them nearby to help. And the way Zar'roc had felt buried in that pirate's chest a few days ago at sea, it held him back.
Eragon went back to the inn.
Brom was there waiting for him, staring at the pair of guitar cases like they were dead bodies.
"What are those?" he demanded.
Eragon shifted sheepishly. "I saw them at the market and I was interested."
"Who, pray tell, is going to teach you how to use one?" Brom pressed. "And why have you purchased two?"
Eragon looked down at his feet. "I was hoping you would."
"Why are you so sure I know how?" Brom wondered acidly.
He shrugged. "You're Carvahall's entertainer."
"Storyteller," Brom stressed. "Not minstrel or bard. I tell stories. I do not sing them."
"Are you telling me you don't know any music? You have no idea how to play a guitar?" Eragon challenged.
Brom regarded Eragon with a long look. He sighed in exasperation. "No. I am not telling you that. You understand this will not get you out of your lessons? You will still practice magic and swordplay and reading every evening."
Eragon nodded, a grin widening on his face.
"Stop that," Brom snapped.
His smile broadened.
Brom scowled and looked away. "I found us a tailor who's discrete and works quickly. Wash up quickly and we'll leave as soon as possible."
Eragon pitched the tent in the middle of their room and did just that. Brom went after him. While he waited for Brom to get clean, he thought about what he'd learned.
Brom was at least seventy years old. That was beyond what aging kindly could do. No man at seventy was as spry as Brom, nor as youthful. Eragon was nearly certain: it had to be magic.
He wanted to share his thoughts with Saphira, but she was out of his range. He wanted to share the day he'd had with her, relay the story of the attack at sea, and go flying with her. It had only been a few days and already his heart ached with her absence.
The tailor's looked as Eragon was coming to associate with wealth. Inside the shopfront it was wood paneling, glass lamps, carpet and wallpaper, incense and quiet. Eragon had been coached to keep silent and let Brom do the talking.
At the front desk, the receptionist regarded Eragon's and Brom's clothing and asked for payment upfront. Brom handed over the golden crowns without complaint, following them with a dirty look. When he spoke, his accent was completely different, both from Kuastans and from the villagers of Carvahall. Brom's vocabulary was suddenly much larger, and delivered with faint politeness that seemed somewhat insincere.
"Our attire is unsuitable for presentation," Brom told the receptionist. "My time in Kuasta is limited. This must be done by tomorrow morning."
"Hvelwryn's time is valuable, and he has many clients not worth offending–" the receptionist paused as Brom stacked a couple more crowns on the counter.
"I am not interested in Hvelwryn's schedule beyond tomorrow morning," Brom said haughtily. "My nephew and I have naught but traveling clothes." He curled his hand around the stack of gleaming golden coins and pulled them back a bit closer to himself. "I came here for the best. There will be a tailor willing to work quickly in the city. If I must, I will go and find him."
"Peace," the receptionist placated. "I will go speak with him. Wait here."
He disappeared deeper into the store for a minute before returning with a much less presentable man. He had a wild grey beard and rough, creased hands, and he wore a belt from which a variety of scissors, needles, wedges, and fabric scraps stuck out.
The pile of gold did Brom's speaking for him and soon enough, Eragon lounged in a chair in a small room while Brom stood upon a stool, fine fabrics hanging off his body as Hvelwryn sewed and fitted a blouse, trousers, and a coat over him. All the pins stuck in the nascent clothing made Brom look a bit like a porcupine. Despite his lingering wounds, Brom managed to stand upright and with dignity.
Eragon did his best not to laugh or stare; he knew he was next up on the stool. He hid an evil smile as he realized he had a captive audience in Brom stuck in place, unable to speak on sensitive topics next to the tailor.
In a mildly curious, conversational voice, Eragon said, "I spoke with an old man today, Neil. In the market. I asked him about the old inn you mentioned. Did you know it was torn down over seventy years ago?"
Brom froze, his eyes sliding to meet Eragon's.
"Fascinating," he bit out.
"It must have been impressive," Eragon continued, "For your parents to tell you of an inn that must've been gone before you were born."
"Must have been," Brom said tightly. His Kuastan accent was beginning to come out in his anger.
"How old would you have been then?" Eragon wondered airily. "Ten or so?"
"It was a long time ago," Brom ground out.
"You still look very spry," Hvelwryn assured, taking in the cuff of Brom's right sleeve.
"Still?" Brom murmured with a raised brow. The tailor cleared his throat and refocused on the hem of Brom's cuff.
The fitting room fell into tense silence.
"You're done," Hvelwryn broke the quiet, indicating Brom's clothing. He removed the fabric carefully, held together by a network of pins. Towards the end, it had begun to properly resemble actual clothes.
Brom shrugged on his overclothes and stalked out of the tailor's. Without speaking, Eragon unbuckled Zar'roc and left it propped against the chair. He assumed his spot on the stool and did his best to stare straight ahead silently while Hvelwryn finished his work.
Eragon bought street food for dinner, and candy and pastries for dessert. He wandered around the market as the sun went down, his mind far from the stalls as they closed down. He wondered what Harry was up to.
He wished the wizard had sent word of what happened. Was the elf safe? Was he safe? Where had he gone if not to return to them?
His thoughts circled back to the revelation about Brom's age. Maybe Harry was right. Eragon could imagine reasons to keep such a secret to himself. When he took a step back and thought about it, Brom had a right to his own secrets. Eragon wasn't entitled to the details of his past just because he traveled and trained with him.
He was annoyed because he wanted to know. Curiosity was like a burr in his mind he couldn't shake, an itch that never abated. Everything new he gleaned of Brim's past made him want to know more.
What was his connection with the Varden? How did Jeod fit into the story? Did anyone from Kuasta still know Brom? How old was he really? Where had he learned magic? Why was he really helping him?
Every question, Eragon played out dozens of pretend answers in his mind, each more fantastical than the last. Maybe Brom had learned from an old hermit himself, maybe even a Rider. He was certainly old enough for it. Maybe he was the secret son of Galbatorix himself, devoted to toppling his evil father. Maybe he was an elf who'd cut off the points of his ears and chosen to live among humans. Maybe Jeod was Brom's secret son, and Brom had passed on his wealth to him so he could live a simple life in exile. He'd have learned magic from a tutor then.
Eragon had to know. But because he didn't, he couldn't help but imagine.
Careless in his thoughts, Eragon was not paying attention as a trap was laid at his feet. He wandered too close to an alleyway when a pile of rope dropped over his head.
A critical moment passed where Eragon was merely annoyed that something had fallen on his head, rather than alerted by the opening move of an attack. He pushed at the ropes over his head and shoulders mistakenly and got his arms tangled as the net was yanked taut. A loop had fallen over his neck by chance and garroted him, preventing him from voicing any spells.
Eragon tried to reach for Zar'roc but his arm was pinned to his side as the net was dragged into the alley. A group of three men wearing masks beset him.
Frustrated and helpless, Eragon noted that he was not prevented from casting spells without his voice. He knit his brows.
Relashio!
His intent had been inexact, nonspecific in his urge to be free. The pent up energy in his head yanked the rope outwards from his body, but snagged on his arms and neck and pulled. Eragon staggered and stumbled back as the net was yanked and he fell to his back.
A couple of men were suddenly standing in the alleyway blocking off the main street, another guy bracketing him in on the inner side of the alley. Up on the roof, a silhouette held the rope tied to the net around his shoulders.
The man by the street drew a knife and brandished it, his face covered by a dark bandana. "We're here for your gold, not your life," the man growled. "But everybody here's fine with taking both. Stop wiggling."
Eragon changed tactics. If freeing himself from the net with magic was impossible, he needed either to escape while the net was on him or fight with magic alone. He glanced up again.
He was capable of climbing that high with the right footholds. Did that not mean he could lift himself up to the roof with magic without killing himself? But the silhouette up there headed that idea off.
On the ship, Brom had somehow killed all the people on two sloops without as much effort as he'd put into guiding Eragon's arrows. How had he done it? Breaking necks took too much effort–
The thief approaching him with a knife gave him the idea.
"Kverst," Eragon muttered. Cut.
It was super effective.
All three men on the ground dropped everything and cried out, their hands going up to clutch their necks as they found their throats slit. Eragon saw terror in their eyes as they fell to the ground, blood pooling in the dirt.
Overhead, the silhouette disappeared, probably horrified by how his friends were just instantly killed. Eragon stepped over the pooling blood of the men now laying dead in his way towards the thoroughfare. He shrugged off the net and cast an uncomfortable backwards glance at the three men he'd killed.
It had been way too easy.
He'd ended their lives without getting a drop of blood on himself. Zar'roc had never left its sheath.
He got back to the inn and shrugged off his bags and weapons for bed. Brom sat on his bed writing a letter. The storyteller glanced up at him and seemed about to say something, but stopped at Eragon's hollow expression.
"Did something happen?"
"A few bandits tried to rob me," Eragon muttered, kneeling upon his bed. The wick of the lamp on the nightstand flickered with orange-yellow candlelight. The adrenaline from the fight was fading. He yawned.
"You seem to have escaped unscathed. Mostly," Brom noted, glancing at his neck. "What happened?"
"They threw a net on me from the roof," Eragon said, crawling beneath the blankets. "I couldn't draw Zar'roc or run away, so I had to fight with magic."
Brom waited for him to continue.
"I was going to just use jierda to break their necks, but I remembered what happened on the ship. Somehow, you killed everybody on two ships without killing yourself."
Eragon recounted his thought process dully, detached. "I knew you couldn't have broken a hundred necks at once, at a distance. You had to have been…efficient. One of them had a knife. Usually robbers try to get behind you and hold a knife to your throat, don't they? Cutting throats seems like an easy way to kill someone – physically, at least. So I used kverst and killed the three of them at once."
He remembered the outflow of energy required to complete the spell. "It took almost nothing. It was less effort than carrying the bag of stuff I bought today back here. Is it really so easy to kill with magic?"
Brom gave a deep, weary sigh. "Occasionally you give me reason to revise my estimation of your intelligence, Eragon. This is a grave secret that every great magic user knows, yet guards jealously despite knowing the others know it too. Magicians in Alagaesia are rare, but not that rare. Can you imagine if it was common knowledge how magicians could become one man armies?"
Eragon closed his eyes in the dim room. He could. Discovering the talent would be like suddenly ascending to godhood. It was uncomfortable to know with certainty that every person he crossed paths with who didn't have the gift, he held their lives in his hands. At any moment he could take it, and there was absolutely nothing they could do.
How could the world work if power like that was handed out at random to people?
For the first time, Eragon really grasped how unfair magic was. The greatest swordmaster in the world was as vulnerable as a baby to him. A man could train with arms for his entire life and yet, without this random gift he could not learn or control, he would always be helpless to the lucky.
The fear people had of magic was completely justified. The superstitious of Carvahall had no idea how right they were to want it far, far away from them. The only thing that could protect them from magic was more magic, or to be beneath the notice of anyone who had it.
He tried for a moment to put himself in the shoes of whoever had been on the rooftop, watching all three of his friends die in an instant to a spoken word.
Eragon imagined laying a clever trap, being confident in his swordplay, coordinating with his friends to spring an ambush, and then finding in the rudest way possible that he was facing down certain, invisible, unstoppable, immediate death. None of his skills or tactics mattered in that instant, because the person he'd attacked could kill him without lifting a finger or opening his eyes.
"Magic is a big problem, isn't it?" Eragon muttered into the room.
He heard the rustle of parchment. A creasing noise, then a flurry of noise as Brom leaned back and slipped under the covers of his own bed.
"You have no idea kid."
Eragon could tell through his eyelids when Brom extinguished the lamp and laid down.
"What happened on the ship?" he asked. "You were standing on the deck next to Tarence when you suddenly froze up. I thought maybe it was an enemy magician's spell?"
"Not a spell," Brom murmured. "A magician's duel. Perhaps the most dangerous minute of your life. You killed someone with magic today. What do you suppose would have happened if it had been a magician you fought?"
Eragon considered it. "He would have been warded against throat cutting? I need to ward myself against throat cutting." In an instant, he realized how vulnerable he was. "How could you let me wander around without wards?!"
"Peace," Brom said. "You haven't finished your line of thought. Continue."
Frustrated, Eragon kept guessing. "I suppose he could have cut my throat the moment I cast a spell to kill him."
"Mmh. Go on."
"So every magician's duel, both combatants should always die?" Eragon surmised.
"One would think that," Brom agreed. "I didn't die. Both of their magicians did. How?"
"You have better wards," Eragon decided.
"That's true," Brom said, "but not the only reason. Why risk it? And how could I kill them so easily? Shouldn't I have had to overcome the strength of their wards? And I'm much farther from them than they are from themselves, so the tax on distance works in their favor. In a straight contest of strength, I lose. Not only were there two of them, I had to pay extra energy to kill them from a distance."
"You had an attack that their wards didn't block," Eragon guessed.
"How did I know what their wards wouldn't block?" Brom prodded.
Eragon sat with the question for a moment, turning it over in his mind and playing with the angles. Brom encountered those magicians for the first time right then. He never saw their faces, he couldn't have known anything about them. Much less something as secret as how their wards were worded.
So how did he know?
Eragon grappled with the question now. It should have been impossible.
"Do you have an especially creative secret attack that often gets through wards?"
Brom chuckled. "I should come up with one of those. No, I would not leave my life to chance. I knew my attacks would kill them."
Eragon wished Saphira was with him. She had the cunning to solve this problem, he was sure of it. And he wanted her company anyways, and for her to know these things Brom was teaching him.
He tried to sound it out like a riddle, searching for the twist in the question, the reasoning beyond the obvious.
Frustrated, he gave up. "I don't know. You should have had no way of knowing."
"How do you know Saphira is alright?" Brom asked. "Right now."
In a stroke of insight, Eragon connected it all together. "You went into their minds!"
"Aye." Brom's covers rustled as he shifted in his bed. "A magician's duel is governed by one simple rule; nobody casts a spell until it's over. What would you do if an enemy magician cast a kill spell at you? You've got a few seconds before you're dead. What will you do with them?"
"Cast a kill spell back," Eragon realized.
"Exactly. If anybody breaks the rules, everybody dies."
"But wards–"
"Are a really shitty thing to bet your life on when everybody involved is casting their most creative spell to murder each other and paying no heed to how much energy it will cost them since they're about to be dead anyways," Brom rebutted. "If a magician's duel goes wrong, everybody dies ninety-nine times out of a hundred."
Eragon rubbed his forehead. "So there's a truce. Then what? Everybody starts rooting around in everyone's heads for each other's favorite spells and wards, and then tries to figure out what spells they should use and if their wards will stop certain ones? They race to find a cheap, quick kill spell that will get their enemies before they have time to retaliate?"
Magician's duels were sounding incredibly difficult. Like trying to solve an entire puzzle in his mind while seeing only one piece at a time, not knowing which one would end the fight or when the other guy would find his weakness and deliver instant death.
Eragon shuddered at the terrifying notion of it all.
"That's not a sure enough way to win," Brom disagreed. "You could simply not engage in the mental battle and wait to hear a word in the Ancient Language before instantly shouting out your attack."
"I don't think I could react in time to cast a lethal spell in the time it takes someone else to say 'kverst,'" Eragon said.
"You need more than that," Brom agreed. "The mental battle is everything. You have thus far communicated with only Saphira?"
"A couple of animals," Eragon admitted. "To see if I could."
"Nevertheless, animals do not usually resist the intrusion. Has Saphira ever blocked you out?"
Eragon remembered even just when he'd convinced Saphira to fly back to shore in the face of the storm on the ship. She'd seemed to shut him out.
"So you can defend your mind," Eragon surmised.
"Aye. And you may consider yourself fortunate to have never been on the receiving end of a true mental attack. Once you breach an enemy's mind, it is possible to pin them in place, so to speak. I assure you, the experience is distracting enough to prevent you from putting together a coherent spell." Brom seemed to speak from experience.
"Then find a cheap kill spell that their wards won't stop?" Eragon guessed. "Because you can see what their wards will stop in their mind. And you can stop them from casting their spells, or at least know how their attack works so you have a chance to cast a counterspell. And all this happens at the speed of thought…" he rubbed his forehead. "Hellfire. If you do anything wrong and they escape your mental grasp, they'll kill you. How are there any magicians left?"
"I told you it was dangerous," Brom said humorlessly. "Most magicians will take any opportunity to turn the duel around and break into your mind. Casting a spell means death, and most everyone fears death enough not to accept it until they are cornered. But even novice magicians are terrifyingly dangerous because if they know they can't win and they get a chance to cast a spell, they will choose to drag you with them into the void."
Eragon laid back with newfound respect for the old storyteller. The ancient storyteller, apparently. To win not one but two duels simultaneously while injured on a heaving ship in a storm as enemy men boarded–
The unfathomable focus awed him. And terrified him.
"Is Galbatorix good at this?" Eragon asked.
Brom laughed hollowly. "He's the best at this. He was the best anyone had ever seen at this when he was a Rider, and now he's ten thousand times better. If he ever found me, I'd be dead in an instant, and I've been doing this for a long time."
"Seventy years," Eragon said quietly.
"Something like that," Brom allowed. He fell into silence.
Overhead, the floorboards creaked rhythmically. It didn't take much imagination to know what must be happening above them. Droplets of rain began hitting the glass windows of the room. Soon it became a downpour, the sound of a million droplets falling on the shingled roof a few storeys up, as well as the cobbled road down below.
Footsteps rushed splashing across the street as someone sprinted from building to building in the rain.
Eragon kept thinking about the absurdity of the notion of rules in fighting, especially one as seemingly counterintuitive as 'cast no spells' in a magician's duel. What if someone didn't know– what if they didn't care?
"How do you stop a suicidal magician?" Eragon asked. "Or a magician assassin? One who just sneaks up and casts a kill spell without anyone knowing? They could have a super creative kill spell too, one that they know usually works against wards."
"You pray to whatever gods exist that your wards are better," Brom said flatly. "I hope you understand why secrecy is paramount. When nobody knows who is or isn't a magician, some semblance of sanity is brought to a world of madness. You can't know who you can kill with your cheap spells for killing dozens of people, or who needs the creative one that probably kills warded magicians. And magicians can cast wards on other people, so you can't be sure if someone doesn't die to your cheap kill spell that they actually are a magician. You might out yourself only to die to the true threat unseen."
Brom's eyes were barely visible in the moonlight that filtered through the rainy windows. "If an enemy magician knows who you are and you don't know they're coming or who they are, they can just cast that kill spell and you probably won't even be able to find them in the crowd to retaliate before you're dead. Secrecy is paramount. Secrecy takes place over hurt feelings, over dignity and friendship–" he hesitated for half an instant. "-over family. Secrecy takes place over everything. It is a matter of life and death, Eragon. Secrecy is how a magician survives in this world."
The next morning, Brom gave him leave to wander the city again until noon while he checked in at the tailor's. They were to meet back at the inn and prepare to leave. Eragon had been mugged once already; he was not to draw attention to himself.
Eragon walked through the streets of Kuasta with newly opened eyes. It was like the masks had come off in the masquerade, and the invisible struggle was revealed to him. He no longer saw clear weather. Everywhere he looked, he saw the calm before the storm.
Which merchant, which peasant, which guard or woman or child was the assassin, the secret magician, the secret god amongst mortals?
Who would hear if he spoke in the Ancient Language and react in fear? Who would hear a word and remain perfectly at ease, now knowing who Eragon was beneath his mask? Who was the black ball amongst the marbles, the hidden dagger, the needle in the haystack?
Eragon had no idea, and neither did anyone else.
Anyone except the shadowed figure on the rooftop. The one who'd ran after witnessing Eragon's secret, beheld him cutting down his fellows. That person knew.
And Eragon had no idea who he was.
He wanted to find that old man again. He wanted to know more about Kuasta. The hidden metropolis was fascinating in its differences. But he was not lucky enough to find him. There were less people out on the damp streets from the rain that blew through last night. No muddy ditches or puddles remained. The city had some way to get the water to run off the streets and out to sea.
Soon enough the sun rose high enough in the sky and Eragon made his way back to the inn. Brom had a pair of folded bags with him. The rest of the room was packed up, except for the guitars in their cases.
"The rest of this can go in the tent," Brom told him. "We're burning daylight. I'd like to be into the mountains by nightfall. The day after, we'll fly the rest of the way."
Eragon packed the bag containing his fine clothes in the backpack and helped clean up the rest of the room. It had been nice to sleep in a building for once. He was keenly aware of how outrageously luxurious their traveling had been with the magical tent, but even that did not replace the charm of being in a real city surrounded by people, in a building with history (if only seventy years of it) and a purpose.
The guards at the front gate didn't question their departure and soon they were walking up the road headed to the north side of Kuasta's valley.
Finally, they were somewhere relevant to Eragon's expertise.
The fields around Kuasta had been recently harvested. Eragon spotted bales of wheat rolled in the fields, and the replanting effort was already underway. All across the landscape, little irrigation ditches and creeks snaked across the fertile soil, guiding the mountain rainwater back through the fields.
"They get two harvests a year!" Eragon exclaimed. That was unheard of in Carvahall. That Harry's magic had done it had been miraculous.
"Three," Brom grunted. "We're not yet at the midsummer harvest. They'll reap again about a month after the solstice, and the final crop when the first freeze comes. The mountains make the rain fall on our side of the Spine, and the farmers collect guano fertilizer from along the shore. In my time– well, I'll tell you later."
Kuasta felt very idyllic. Eragon was hit with a bit of nostalgia as he walked past the fields. This had been his life not a year ago. He wondered what might've happened if Saphira's egg had never come to him. Roran still would have left, the summer would have been quiet this year. Eragon would've spent his free time practicing magic in secret at home or traveling to the castle in the Spine whenever he could get away for a while.
Eventually Roran would have returned to Carvahall and things would not go back to normal, but they'd get close enough. Katrina definitely seemed to reciprocate Roran's feelings; Eragon bet it would not be long after Roran's return before they were married. The ensuing drama with Sloan would have fuelled gossip in the village for weeks or months.
Eragon's unfocused gaze rested on rows of sprouts on dark soil, farmers out in the fields weeding or rolling hay bales in to thresh, leading livestock or planting seeds.
Kuasta seemed as Carvahall was not: untouched.
The Ra'zac had not come here to attack anyone's uncle, a dragon egg had not mysteriously appeared here to a farm boy. For Kuasta, the ordinary was more exciting, but nothing was out of the ordinary.
"What did your family do?" Eragon asked Brom. "Were they farmers?"
"Carpenters," Brom disagreed. He tapped his fingers on his carved walking stick. "Nelda was my mother, and Holcomb my father."
"Did you live in the city then?"
Brom glanced over his shoulder at the slowly receding city walls. "Not far outside of it."
Then, a question Eragon felt more keenly; "why did you leave?"
Brom's eyes were lost in far off, bittersweet memories. "I'll tell you when we get to Morzan's castle."
They crossed most of the valley in a day. Towards the evening, watchtowers began popping up. Farms grew sparser. There was a real sense of alertness in the far reaches of Kuasta, the Spine being monitored with suspicion.
When they pitched the tent for the night, Brom was wary that they did not have Harry's wards to hide the campsite. Brom raised a brow when Eragon prepared food for the night, proper food with meat that had not been on the table for them since briefly, Teirm, and not at all before that.
Eragon cleaned up the kitchenette and portioned half of the oversized meal into stasis boxes. He slid a plate of food over to Brom.
"What do you think?"
The old man chewed for a moment on the chicken. "Not bad. Could use a bit more salt."
Eragon cast a glance towards the pair of guitars in the corner.
"Oh no," Brom grinned. "We've still to do magic lessons, swordplay, and reading first."
Eragon groaned.
Brom set him to the task of mastering a variation of the scrying spell that allowed him to hear as well as see across vast distances. Despite the enormous implications of the spell, Eragon's mind was elsewhere, on a different sort of magic. Since learning of magician's duels, Eragon had spent long hours approaching it like a puzzle to crack, a way to break the counterintuitive rules.
"Since Harry apparently pays no price for his magic, can't he just kill anyone by overwhelming their wards with brute force?"
"One would think that," Brom agreed. "It is an alarming notion. But I have a few points to the contrary. His magicians clearly do not fight in the same way as ours. He was canny to my intrusion, but nowhere near the skill of any magician accustomed to mental combat. And yet did you notice his fighting spells? They shoot little bolts of light that do not activate their effect until they touch their targets. They could presumably even miss. He has a shield spell that used a simple word. Protego. It sounds a lot like 'protect.' However his magic works, it has defenses good enough to let wizards attack each other with reckless abandon and not both die. There is time to get out of the way of one of those spell shots."
Eragon hunched over the bowl on the little table in the tent and repeated the scrying spell, focusing on Harry. The spell refused to complete, and the water in the bowl remained as it had been when it came out of the magic tap in the kitchenette.
"His magic is an unknown," Brom concluded. "There are probably glaring weaknesses and incredible strengths to it. Since it is unique and since we do not know how it stacks up to Alagaesia's magic, it is as terrifying as an untrained magician who does not yet know the rules. Now guard Zar'roc and get up. We need to scrub the rust from your swordplay."
To avoid aggravating his injuries, Brom had Eragon practice mostly by himself, going through his forms under his watchful eyes. When it came time to actually spar, they were both restrained in their fighting.
Reading lessons were skipped over that night, though Brom looked like he regretted his decision when Eragon brought out the guitars. Eragon built a fire for their campsite outside the tent in the pleasantly warm evening. Brom went back into the tent and brought out his pipe, tamping down a bit of weed and lighting it with a cupped hand and a murmured "brisingr."
He took his guitar out of its case and marveled for a bit over the fine craftsmanship, the detailing, the quality of the wood, and the smoothness of the lacquer.
"How much did you pay for these?" Brom asked.
Eragon quoted the price.
"A fine bargain," Brom said, plucking the strings. To Eragon's ear, it sounded a bit discordant. But as Brom fiddled with the knobs at the end of the handle, the tunes of the strings harmonized until he was able to stroke down the full set of strings at once, producing a silky sort of sound, wherein each string fit perfectly with the others.
"I will tune yours tonight. Watch and listen carefully, for you will do this every time hereafter." Brom took Eragon's guitar and repeated the process.
"Developing the ear for music takes some time. Be careful that you do not overtighten the strings; buying more is not so simple if they snap."
Brom strummed his guitar a few times before handing it back, satisfied. "Now, when I pluck a string and a single tone sounds, that is called a note." He demonstrated. "When I play several at once and they all harmonize, that is called a chord." Again, that rich, pleasant sound played over the campsite. Brom took a drag of his pipe and played the first bits of a slow sort of song, not exactly sad, but not folksy or happy, either.
"If we are to be an ensemble, I shall teach you notes first, then chords, then we will learn songs. The ridges along the neck here? They are called frets. By pressing your finger behind it, the string is shortened and thus plays a higher note. The strings themselves are tuned as well, so each fret of each string plays a different note. There are some complicated numbers behind why the notes are the way they are, and it has to do with ratios of the frequency at which the string vibrates. For now, you need only know how they are called and how to play each one."
Brom plucked the fattest string. "This is low E. No fingers on the frets, or open string. And this is F." He pressed his finger down on the first, widest fret. The instrument played a slightly higher note.
Soon Eragon's mind swam with slightly different tones, letters, and places to place his fingers on the fretboard.
Yet by the end of the lesson, he was able to haltingly pluck his way through a little ditty while Brom played the chords, patient as Eragon worked out where to put his fingers, backtracking on mistakes and locating the right notes.
Slowly, Eragon went back over the song until he could play it with some confidence. When he started back at the top, Brom tapped his feet and slapped a sort of drum beat against the face of his guitar. In a rough voice, he sang.
The words were in the Ancient Language. Eragon picked out more than he'd expected to. It was a song about traveling, and the sea of passing faces never seen again.
The music made Eragon feel light, like a bubble in his chest that grew to fill his whole body out to his sore fingers pressing against the frets and plucking at the strings. He felt companionship with Brom; here they were working in sync to make something greater than either of them could produce alone.
In Brom's eyes, Eragon saw melancholy and happiness in equal measure. Brom was enjoying himself. He grinned as they took the song again from the top. Across their bond, Eragon felt Saphira listening in. Though he could not spare the focus to speak with her, he opened his mind to let her listen through him, and pushed her his feelings of missing her.
By some unspoken agreement, Eragon and Brom brought their unused bedrolls outside and slept under the stars.
The next day was a lot of walking that made Eragon wish he'd bought a couple of horses. Unfortunately, there'd be nowhere to put them when they got back to flying, so they were forced to take the hike on foot, all the way to the northern edge of the valley.
The roads, paths, and trails more or less ended at that point. It was clear that Morzan only ever reached his castle on dragonback. It looked highly unlikely that any staff or supplies came in from Kuasta; they'd have to leg everything over rough, wild mountain terrain.
They reached the foothills of the northern mountains by evening. It was then that Saphira finally showed herself, appearing from invisibility on the ground at their campsite to watch Eragon and Brom spar.
Eragon didn't say anything and neither did Saphira. He knew she was due an apology, he just wasn't sure she wanted it right now.
When they were done eating after swordplay practice, Saphira spoke up.
You are being followed.
Alarmed, Eragon sat up. "What do you mean?"
Saphira sent him an aerial image of a man on a grey horse following their trail, keeping his distance.
He has avoided getting close enough to give himself away. He left the city the same time as you, but waited for you to build a lead.
Suspicion nagged at him. He recounted what had happened the other night when that group of robbers had tried to mug him, lingering on the figure who got away in his recollection. Saphira's lips tightened for a moment as she agreed it was possible they were the same person.
It seems unusual to pursue someone who killed all of your friends with magic. You'd expect him to run the other way.
Eragon agreed with the sentiment, but couldn't help but be suspicious. He told Brom about their pursuer.
"Would've been convenient to have Harry's wards with us. Nevertheless, we can replicate something with our own magic. How would you accomplish this?"
Eragon frowned. "Can the Ancient Language distract someone?"
"Magic involving the mind is incredibly esoteric and inconsistent. It is certainly not reliable enough to protect us while we sleep."
I could just watch the campsite while you sleep, Saphira offered.
"Saphira says she'd be willing to keep watch."
Brom grunted. "The offer is appreciated, but you're ruining my teachable moment, Saphira. You may need this while separated from each other, or when both of you are too exhausted to keep watch."
Eragon considered the challenge. How to guard an area while asleep with magic.
"Can I physically block other people from entering?"
"That will have energy cost implications," Brom reminded him. "This pursuer could pick up a rock and start banging on the wards until you die of exhaustion in your sleep."
"Could I make the campsite invisible?"
Brom tilted his hand back and forth. "Maybe. It'd be extremely complicated and it'd have to be perfect. And even then, our pursuer could get lucky. What is actually required to be safe from our pursuer?"
"Covering our trail?" Eragon guessed. "Killing him?"
Brom raised a brow. Eragon blushed and shrank a bit. "Just a hypothetical."
"All that is required is for us to be alert." Brom tapped the hilt of his sword. "Your swordplay is fairly good and out here in the wilderness, we may use our magic at will."
"So the ward just has to wake us up if he gets close," Eragon realized. Brom nodded. With that in mind, it was not too hard to come up with a phrase that Brom was happy with, nor to cast it over their campsite.
The next day was more of the same, though they took it a bit easier in anticipation of flying the rest of the way once the sun went down. They skipped training in the name of staying rested for the flight.
When the sun had well and truly set over the ocean to the west, Brom kicked off. "I would prefer you fly close so we do not lose each other, but Morzan's castle is not particularly hidden from dragonback. Meet me there if we lose each other.
Saphira sniffed and Eragon got the impression she was mildly offended by Brom's insinuation that she could lose him in the night. Eragon strapped into the saddle for the first time since he tried it out in Teirm. The sense of weightlessness stole over him as Saphira took wing. Before long they had climbed high into the air.
Being invisible was a novel experience. It was unsettling in ways Eragon could not begin to quantify. Parts of his body that were always visible yet never remarked on, he felt their absence keenly. He had always been able to see his nose, even if it was usually beneath his notice.
The position of his limbs were off, too. He was clumsy, and found himself bumping into the handles of the saddle often on accident. When he tried to close his eyes and master himself by mentally cataloging their locations, the world did not become dark as he was accustomed to.
Instead, Eragon felt his eyelids on his eyes, yet saw straight through them as if they were made of glass. Unsettled, he opened them again, only to feel the wind of flight drying his eyes. He was a bit surprised to find that since he could see through his eyelids and having them closed was no impediment, he preferred it to leaving his eyes unprotected against the cold, thin air.
Looking down, Eragon had to quickly master the vertigo of seeing nothing between him and the mountains far below, a drop lethal many times over.
You can see the world as a dragon does, Saphira remarked. She sent him a sense of touch, her own inner eyelids closed. They were not as transparent and worsened her vision a bit. She opened them again and Eragon saw through her eyes the tiny form of Brom on his broomstick below, hugging the treetops and contours of the land on his ascent.
Eragon forced himself to look down at his invisible body, grapple with, and overcome the oddity of it, and the vertigo of his seemingly unsupported flight. He was wearing clothes that kept his legs and body warm and insulated from the wind. Only his face was exposed to the breeze, and his eyes were protected. Though the night was fair, the saddle warmed his legs and back, the cushioning magic doing away with any discomfort or saddle sores. From his strange, disembodied vantage point, Eragon felt like a spirit.
He was nothing but a pinprick of thought, somehow able to see and smell and hear without eyes or ears or a nose. He glided through the air on nothing at all, accompanied only by Saphira's mind.
What wonderful things magic wrought, when it was not being used as a weapon.
Eragon and Saphira lapsed into silence.
Eragon knew there were things unsaid between them. The unnamed tension of him begging Saphira to leave during the storm, as well as the sense that this issue was compounding. It was the same in Teirm, and would be the same anywhere they went in the Empire.
In Eragon's ears, the world was quiet save for the wind past his ears and beneath Saphira's invisible wings, a soft thwiffffft what picked up only when she flapped every minute or so. The moon and stars had come out in all their divine glory that night. The sky was clear save for clouds hugging the peaks of the eastern mountains, a gentle crossbreeze pushing the foggy shapes up against the slopes.
It was tranquil. Eragon abandoned his limbs and the cushioning magic that kept them comfortable in the saddle. He relaxed and let his back rest against the saddle's enchantments. He abandoned any sense of being attached to a body and let himself be free. His mind was an island, floating next to Saphira, far from the noisy crowd of trees and wildlife below.
Thusly they flew under the stars and over the mountains, suspended between heaven and earth.
Are you angry with me?
Saphira flapped, pushing them on. Brom was their north star, cruising on below.
It was a minute before she answered.
I was never angry with you. I am tired of being a burden.
You are no burden. Eragon felt it fiercely, and pushed on Saphira his certainty in his assertion.
Your feelings will not gainsay the truth of the fact: everywhere we go, I must hide. I am slower than Harry's broomsticks, so you might have covered more distance without me.
Eragon rejected her line of reasoning. I love you, Saphira. I don't care if you crashed and lost both your wings tomorrow and had to crawl everywhere. I would be right there with you. I do not love you for what you can do for me, I love you for who you are.
He poured his feelings into her, all of his love, all of his fond memories of her early days, watching her grow from an egg, flying with her in friendly competition with Harry, flying with her now. Her perspective, her companionship, her wisdom, all of it.
I feel useless.
As did I, Eragon assured. When Brom duelled a pair of magicians on those sloops. I stood there and watched and waited. By himself, he defeated the only two credible threats and then slew everybody on two of the three sloops. I stood there and watched without a clue what was happening. It's no fun when it's your turn to wait and let someone else be the focus of the moment. Your time will come.
Wisdom from a seventeen year old human, Saphira remarked, straining for some humor. I suppose I must be patient.
I'm still mastering that too.
You learned about magician's duels afterwards, didn't you?
Aye. Brom was unusually forthright that evening. He said magician's duels only work because of the cardinal rule. Nobody casts a spell until it's over.
Saphira sniffed. A foolish rule.
One would think. I said the same, but Brom laid out some brilliant, terrifying reasons why. It's all about how fast you can actually kill someone with magic, and if they'll have time to retaliate, as well as how hard it is to block magic attacks…
No magician survives their head being bitten off, Saphira replied, a bit disdainful of the complexity.
Eragon shook his head. They might have wards against that very thing. Physical danger is easy to predict and prevent. The enemy magicians were able to stop Brom from magically guiding arrows to kill rowers and cut ropes and lines holding up their sails. Something like fire is probably harder to guard against.
Saphira was pleased with that answer. One day she would have fire of her own to cut through those duels. Eragon wasn't so sure even that would be enough, but he didn't push the point.
Will Brom teach you to win magician's duels?
I haven't asked, Eragon admitted. It's all about the mental battle. Neither Brom nor I want each other rooting around in our heads.
Then you and I shall practice, Saphira declared. We may both attack a magician at once, even if you must cast the spells.
Eragon was reminded just how much faster flying was than traveling on land or sea. Ship, horseback, carriage, on foot, nothing came close.
Even as the eastern horizon began to brighten, Brom pushed on. Eragon was hungry and tired in a way that reminded him that even though he could not see his own body, it still exisxted and needed maintenance.
Brom's aim soon became clear as a castle came into view.
It was built into the side of the tallest mountain visible for miles, three slanted turrets jutting out from the stone brick walls over a courtyard large enough for a dozen Saphiras. The implications were sobering. The castle was dark, like nobody was home. The compound wall was sprawling and encompassed enough space for that courtyard as well as a lawn and stables.
Brom flew low beneath the walls around to the back of the mountain, then climbed back up to level with the highest tower and dismounted on a jutting rock that provided just enough room to stand on. Eragon watched as he stood still for a few minutes before mounting the broom again and descending into the courtyard.
Eragon felt a presence touch his mind. It was not Saphira, so there was only one other it could be. He allowed it in.
Nobody home, Brom's mental presence said. The tone and feeling of it was unusual/ A bit lower pitched than his real voice, and tinged with nerves. Saphira can land in the courtyard.
Saphira appeared moments before her claws touched the flagstones of the darkened courtyard, emerging from invisibility so she wouldn't crash into the ground trying to land without being able to see herself.
Eragon felt an odd sense of reverse-vertigo from being suddenly able to see himself again. He was aware of the irritation of his nose and arms and body obstructing his full field of vision. It took a moment for his mind to reconnect to his limbs and remember how to move and walk without tripping. It was unpleasant.
Brom touched down a moment later, dismounting smoothly. He'd gotten very comfortable with his broomstick. "Come on. I'll show you where we can stay."
Eragon followed him inside. Brom was familiar with Morzan's castle. He had said he'd been a gardener here for some time.
The place was definitely abandoned, but did not look derelict at all. The gardens were overgrown and the lawn was half wild with weeds and shrubs, but the castle itself was in good repair, the wood was still strong and the stone was all intact. Nothing was crumbling or rotting or falling apart. It looked as if its owner had simply taken his staff on vacation and that was all. He'd be back soon and the castle would wake up again and carry on its business.
Saphira made herself comfortable in the courtyard while Brom led Eragon inside, up a grand staircase and under a grand archway on the landing. Brom held up a hand and conjured a source of light to walk by. The soft blob of bluish green light cast eerie illumination and odd shadows on the details of the arches and balustrades. It was almost as if they were walking underwater. The shadows of the banisters slid backwards as they passed like the bars of a jail cell, hiding from Brom's light.
The blue light made it tough to see details beyond the shapes of things – the stairs doubling back on the sides of the grand staircase to levels above, the halls that curved away deeper into the mountain on either side, the arch, and the darkness beyond it.
Unhappy with the illumination Brom was providing, Eragon held up his own hand. "Garjzla," he uttered. Light.
Warm white-yellow light sprang into being, falling vaguely from above without an obvious source. Eragon envisioned the light like an aura surrounding them, enough to see all of the room they were in without trying to light up the whole castle.
The spell had a sudden and acute drain on him as the air began to warm up. Brom noticed immediately. "Light is cheap to make," he said. "But only if you make light only. You are not conjuring fire or the effects of it, which includes heat and demands a lot of energy. You are making nothing but light itself, cold light."
Eragon ended the spell and tried again, this time visualizing an aura of light in the cold, drafty hall. The color of the light could be warm, but Eragon would still feel the chill of a building in the Spine that had not seen a fireplace in at least a decade.
This time, it worked much better. Brom checked that he was not feeling undue drain, then nodded. "Good."
Despite the grandiose effect of the sudden luminance, Eragon was surprised by how little casting light drained him. With the hall illuminated, a breath of life had been given back to the castle, and Eragon could see what the castle used to look like when its candelabras and chandeliers were full of burning wicks and flickering candlelight, when guests walked up and down the grand staircases, what it had looked like in its heyday, when Morzan had lived here.
Brom stood for a moment in the past, gazing at the gold leaf designs on the bannister railings and the mural paintings on the walls leading up to the second level. It took half a moment for Eragon to recognize what they were depicting.
Snarling dragons and faceless Riders falling upon fourteen men and women and their noble dragons. The painting was very dramatic, the fourteen 'good guys' painted in flowing robes with handsome features and iridescent swords brandished heroically. In the center, a man on a black dragon held his hand up high, a white star supported on his upturned palm, rays of white light spilling out over the mural.
At his right hand was a man in crimson robes with an eerily familiar sword on guard, his hair jet black with a neat goatee and a heroically defiant expression, looking out on the storm of snarling dragons as they fell to beams of white light from the man in black's hand.
"Does Galbatorix really look like that?"
Eragon studied the mural. Saphira paid keen attention through his eyes at the face of their ultimate foe.
"It is dramatized," Brom said. "He has a more prominent nose, and his eyebrows are a bit off. Then again, it's been a long, long time since I've seen him in the flesh."
Eragon tried not to reel from the revelation that he'd seen the King in person. Brom had promised the truth once they got here. Eragon could wait just a bit longer.
"Morzan?"
Brom nodded. "I haven't seen that expression on his face in a long time. You'd think he'd forgotten how to wear human emotions." His own expression was conflicted, torn between a hundred furiously powerful feelings.
What were their dragons' names? Saphira asked. Her attention lingered on the red dragon that must have once rested in the courtyard where she now lounged.
Eragon repeated the question.
Brom's expression was again conflicted. "In case you had not already gotten the notion, dragons are no mean enemies. For betraying their race, the dragons imposed their vengeance on those wayward thirteen that sided with Galbatorix. Du Namar Aurboda, it has been named. The Banishing of Names. They stripped the Forsworn's dragons of their names."
"They lost their given names, their true names, they could no longer be referred to with pronouns like 'he' or 'she,' and they could no longer refer to themselves as 'I,' for even that is a name of sorts, a name the dragons tore away from them for their treachery. Their names slip from everyone's memories. The symbols that made up the names they were once called can be written and copied on paper, but they are meaningless. They were every bit as intelligent as Saphira, yet they could not so much as think 'I like hunting deer,' for that would be naming themselves, if only in their own minds, where even there the dragons' magic reached."
Eragon stood horrified as Brom described that unholy vengeance. To be without a name…it was to be dead while your heart still beat.
"The dragons stripped them of their dignity as thinking creatures and left them intelligent animals imprisoned in their own minds, forgotten by history and suffering until death," Brom finished grimly. There was a hint of regret in his expression.
Eragon glanced at the black dragon Galbatorix rode upon. "But everybody knows the King's dragon is named Shruikan."
Brom nodded. "Shruikan never chose to betray the dragons, so he was spared. Just as Jarnunvosk was dead and gone before Galbatorix ever embarked on his monstrous campaign. So they were spared. Only these thirteen who chose it were stripped of their identity."
The hall seemed to chill. Eragon tried and failed to imagine the horror of such a punishment. It was…inhuman.
"What was Morzan's dragon's name?" Eragon wondered without thinking.
Brom raised a brow. "I do not know. Or rather, it does not have one. It is probably written down somewhere, a string of syllables that once meant something. It would mean nothing to you, nothing more than if glorble mankshin handry forgrin and expected you to understand me." Brom's gaze lingered on Morzan far more than Galbatorix.
Eragon's eyes flicked to the sword in Morzan's hand once more. He drew Zar'roc from its sheath and held it up to the mural, comparing the black glyph on the blade just above the hilt.
They matched.
Eragon looked at Brom and raised a brow.
Brom shrugged. "It is a Rider's blade. The only one I had, and you are the only one worthy of it."
While Eragon was somewhat discomforted by the idea of wielding the old sword of Morzan, the most infamous Rider save Galbatorix himself, Eragon was much, much more curious with the question of how the fuck Brom had gotten it.
Morzan was the first and last of the Forsworn, the King's right hand man, feared and hated across the breadth of the Empire.
Brom was a man who looked about fifty years old, a storyteller who liked to play infirm, and a man who'd been sitting around in Carvahall since Eragon had been born doing nothing more impressive than blowing smoke rings and telling old stories.
You know he is more than he seems, Saphira said.
I know, Eragon said. But just how much more?
Saphira had no answer for that.
Brom led them under the grand arch. The light of Eragon's aura light spell did not reach nearly far enough to light up the hall, but enough of it dispersed to let him see the important bits, if not all the fine details. The hall was carved into the mountain. The roof and walls were bare stone, accompanied by pillars and facades that dressed the smooth grey rock with color and opulence.
To the right side of the hall, long tables had been pushed up against the wall, their chairs stacked up on the tables upside down, their seats resting on the edge. The floor had been swept clean. At the far end, a raised dais held a small table with a large chair in the center, presiding over the hall. Eragon imagined the man from the mural sitting there eating dinner while his dragon suffered outside in silence, unnamed, too big to fit inside, reduced to an animal – an especially unremarkable animal unworthy of even a name.
He felt Saphira's discomfort over their bond and sent her his reassurances. We are fighting to undo what they wrought. Maybe when we beat Galbatorix and bring back the dragons, they'll give you more names. Saphira, empress of the sky, most beautiful–
Stop it, Saphira protested.
–Most humble, most modest, most brilliant, Eragon grinned.
Saphira sent him her exasperation.
It was somewhat perverse to see a mural glorifying the slaughter of dragons. Of course, it was Morzan's castle and of course he'd have murals glorifying himself instead of accurately reflecting the villain he was.
He wondered how Galbatorix saw himself. Did he too feel he was the hero of the story? Eragon found it hard to grasp for a justification for wiping out an entire race that did not fall flat in the face of his true knowledge of dragons, given his bond with Saphira. A true knowledge Galbatorix had to have too, being a Rider himself.
"Did Galbatorix kill wild dragons too?" Eragon asked.
Brom nodded. "No dragon escaped him. Except, ironically, for the Forsworn. The King makes a habit of forcing people to swear to obey him in the Ancient Language, which binds your behavior unbreakably. While the Forsworn humans and elves were made to swear their binding loyalty, the dragons literally could not, because they could not name themselves to bind themselves."
Brom unslung his bags and dropped them by a corner near a hearth. "Set out the tent here. Tonight we can sleep here and tomorrow, I'll go see if there are any quarters still suitable to live in."
Eragon pitched the tent and announced he was going to go exploring.
Bemused, Brom gestured for him to carry on. "Stay away from the lower levels; they may still be protected by lingering magic. Everywhere else should be safe, save perhaps Morzan's quarters in the easternmost tower."
Eragon left him to let his feet wander where they would, taking him back under the arch. He dimmed his light spell. Something about turning the gloomy castle into daylight felt jarring as he walked through the empty halls. The place reminded him of Harry's castle. It was less artistically impressive, but much more historically significant.
Harry's castle told his story from his world. These murals and paintings were Eragon's history, seen through the lens of the victors.
He wandered through the halls for some time before the emptiness became monotonous, then made his way outside to the courtyard.
Saphira cracked open an eye to greet him. He walked the grounds for a while, stepping through the high grass and weeds and wondering where exactly Brom had worked. Towards the west side of the compound behind the garden, Eragon spotted a shed.
Eragon unlocked the door to the shed with a whispered "ládrin," and raised his palm. "Garjzla," he muttered, casting luminance in the dark hut.
Organized tools were all in their places on pegboards. Whatever had happened, the castle was abandoned in no hurry. Everything had been put away just so.
He rubbed his finger on an abandoned countertop. It came away covered in a film of dust. He shook it off. What do you think happened here?
I think only Brom knows the whole story now, Saphira responded. She was introspective, musing on the past. She thought it was curious how time and information went hand-in-hand, and how all of known history came from a deliberate defiance of both.
The question is: will he tell us?
Maybe. Maybe not. How odd is it that Brom is a piece of this place, and this place is a piece of him? Funny how that works, people, time, and places.
Eragon understood the notion she was getting at. He ran his fingers over the smooth wooden handles of a set of trowels. Brom had said he'd been a gardener, hadn't he? He might have used one of these very same tools. He took a medium-sized trowel off the rack.
He imagined a younger Brom doing the same, picking up the very same trowel and working with it all day. Did he have colleagues? Was he any good at gardening? How did Morzan treat his castle staff?
There was a story here in this room, he was sure of it. There was history he was utterly blind to. He saw only the shallowest details: the condition of the tools, the layer of dust, the organization, hints and clues. Brom could see much deeper. He knew stories of the people who worked there, what the dent on this trowel meant and how it got there, who liked which tools, which gardeners were the best at flowerbeds or grass lawns.
And even he did not know who built the shed or wrought the tools. Those stories, that history, it was all lost the moment the last person who remembered forgot them. It made every person's death a greater tragedy to think of how much history died with them. The secret details of untold stories were suddenly permanently beyond reach.
It made him wonder about the three robbers he killed with magic.
What had their stories been? People were not born robbers. Maybe they were born beggars, maybe misfortune fell upon them. Maybe they were motivated by simple greed. In any case, Eragon had snuffed out a great deal of history when he killed those three.
Unremarkable history, Saphira sniffed. I doubt they had tales of legend to tell.
Just so, Eragon supposed. But it was history nonetheless. If they had living parents, friends, children, tiny bits and pieces of who they were would live on. But every private thing they kept to themselves was wiped clean the moment they died. And if they were friendless, or perhaps friends only with each other, the world would have forgotten their names.
Well, except for the survivor.
Eragon went back into the main hall. Brom had set to waking the sleepy castle back up, rekindling life in just a tiny corner of the quiet old place as he lit a hearth and pitched the tent, bringing out hot dinner to eat on one of the tables in the main hall.
He put back the fireplace's poker in its spot and beckoned Eragon over to eat.
"Lots of memories?" Eragon asked.
Brom smiled fondly. "Three years of them. I came here angry and bent on revenge. It was good for me to cool off while hiding under a simple guise. Take it from one who has been rich and poor, weak and strong, famous, infamous, and unremarkable; a simple life has greater charm than any story or song gives credit."
"Will you tell me some?"
The request fell upon Brom's shoulders like a leaden blanket.
"I did promise," he murmured. "You ask me to bare my soul to you, Eragon. But you are owed answers, and so I will do it. The truth is this," he pulled off the glove of his right hand and cupped his wineskin, pouring a bit of wine on his right palm. He scrubbed deeply, muttering a word in the Ancient Language Eragon had not yet learned.
"I came here for revenge. You see, Eragon," Brom held up his hand. Eragon gaped at the silvery oval marking on his palm. He pulled off his own glove and looked down at his matching Gedwey Ignasia. "I was once a Rider."
AN: I'm pretty happy with this chapter. Let me know what you think. It's longer than usual which is why it took longer than usual. I set out to write Kuasta as a minor stop and have the focus be on Morzan's castle, but skipping over Brom's hometown seemed wrong and the chapter just kept growing, and now it's huge. I usually post these on Friday but you've been waiting so I'm just posting it the moment it's done.