All across Farthen Dûr, all at once, the sound of digging. The whole mountain echoed with the subtle sound of metal on stone, maces and poleaxes chipping through rock.
The whole Varden heard it all around them. All at once, thousands of Urgals breached in dozens of different places. Still the digging did not stop. Every fragmented party of ten or twelve Urgals also began digging, beginning to breach in hundreds of places.
Within a minute, Farthen Dûr was crawling with them.
The ones beneath the Varden's quickly assembled fortifications struggled for a moment to break through, before the hundreds of splintered cells of warriors came charging into the back of their battle lines, disrupting them long enough for the ones beneath to get a foothold and guard their breaches. The holes that were already made came alive as Urgals surged forth. The sounds of fighting and dying came crashing back at a fever pitch.
"What the hell happened?" Harry demanded.
"He subsumed your friend," Morgan repeated. "Whatever sort of creature Durza is, Fred is now part of the collective."
Harry refused to believe it. "You're dead," he insisted. "Aren't you supposed to be untouchable?"
Morgan shook her head wryly. "You have a lot to learn, Harry."
Her mood angered him. She should not be flippant. "You let this happen," he accused.
Morgan blinked, bewildered. "You're accusing me, a spirit who has never been anything but helpful to you?"
Heat surged across his cheeks and the back of his neck. "No, I just– how could you let this happen?"
Harry glanced around. Annika was watching him and cringing; he'd gotten the attention of the entire medical tent. Great. Now the whole Varden thought he was crazy. He grabbed Durza's sword and stormed outside, jogging back to the command tent. Morgan followed along.
"This is not a storybook," Morgan said coldly. "I did not let anything happen. Given your dealings with Tom Riddle, I understand you may be under the false impression that villains must be stupid and good guys are the only ones allowed to make and execute clever plans, nasty surprises, and other intelligent acts of the sort. Let me assure you that outside of prophetic coincidence and storybooks, the bad guys are every bit as intelligent as the good ones, and they are not hamstrung by morals. Durza caught us both by surprise. I barely managed to escape and warn you."
"So now what?" Harry asked.
"Now?" Morgan asked. "Now, you prepare for the fight of your life, Harry. Stab Durza through the heart, or kiss your friend goodbye."
Harry broke into a run, sprinting across the stone cavern floor, running through the sparse ranks of reserve footmen. Nearly everybody had been deployed.
"Is Misha back?" he asked.
Morgan said nothing.
"Is Misha back!?" Harry demanded, louder. "He should be back by now. Where are the elves?"
Morgan's face remained blank.
Frustrated and angry, he put the question out of his mind. She mustn't know. If she hadn't been back to the afterlife or whatever, there was no way she'd be able to track down a plane in the middle of the Hadarac Desert from under Farthen Dûr.
Weirdly, the moment Harry gave up pressing her, she became frustrated. "Okay. Durza first, elves later," he panted
Morgan did not fade away, rather floating alongside him as he ran. He made it to the command tent in a couple minutes. The twin there was not happy to see him.
"You have been impossible to reach," the twin scowled. "I was about to send a runner."
Harry shrugged. "I was working with the healers. I'm sorry. What happened?"
"See for yourself." The twin stepped aside and gestured to the live map.
Everywhere across Farthen Dûr, dots were vanishing. It took him only moments to figure it out. Horrified, he peered closer.
They were vanishing because they were no longer on the same level. They were vanishing because they were coming to the surface.
"Okay, okay." Harry paced back and forth. "What are we doing?"
"We?" the twin asked silkily. "I wouldn't presume to know what you are doing. I hear that's between you and Ajihad. I am coordinating Du Vrangr Gata and relaying orders between all the commanders on the field."
He gave Harry an infuriatingly calm look. "I also hear you aren't going to fight. If that's the case, I suppose you may stand here with me and do nothing, or go back to the tent and heal the wounded."
Harry knew he was being goaded, but didn't particularly care. "Where is Durza?"
"If I knew that, don't you think I would have told someone?" the twin turned back to the live map. "I have a job to do. Find a way to make yourself useful. Or don't. But don't ask me to hold your hand."
Morgan, however, apparently did. She hovered invisibly in the middle of the room, flying over the map and reaching down to tap a ghostly finger on the dead center of the map.
Right in the middle of Tronjheim.
Harry bent over and examined the scribbles of overlapping names. The twin scowled at the back of his head. Harry paid him no mind, scrutinizing all the loopy handwritten names. Most were two or more words. A name, then a tribe. He searched for the odd one out, the short banner among the long ones, the single name.
"There," he muttered under his breath, satisfied. "Gotcha."
He stood up and strode to the exit. At the flap, he turned back. "Somebody tell the rest that Durza is directly beneath Tronjheim and about to break through."
The stunned silence lasted only a moment before a dwarf cursed.
"Barzul. He's right. Look!"
"You will fight him?" the twin asked. Harry snarled at him. "I will send the others over." The slightest look of satisfaction played about the corner of his lips. Harry ignored him and broke into a sprint.
Outside of the tent, Morgan kept up again. He ran through the guarded port through the outer wall of Tronjheim and through the abandoned hallways, further and further in towards the massive, cathedral-like center of the mountain city, the gigantic hollow core beneath Isidar Mithrim.
"If you are going to fight him, you will not be able to hold back," Morgan warned. "There may no longer be a point in hiding our sort of magic."
Harry patted Durza's sword at his side in response.
Morgan wasn't convinced. "Only a fool tries to beat a master at his own game. If the collective shares all the knowledge of the individuals, Durza will know your abilities anyways. If he shares the abilities…"
Harry swallowed. "We'll get there when we get there."
Morgan descended to eye level and floated backwards in front of him. He focused on the hall through her transparent form, running as she spoke.
"Durza has been humiliated by you. He will not play with his food. You shouldn't either. It will be you and your friends versus him and a horde of Urgals the Varden is going to slaughter anyways."
Harry reached the massive room to find he'd been beaten there.
"Eragon!" he sighed in relief. "Did you hear?"
Isidar Mithrim glittered half a mile overhead, ruby red and lit by thousands of flameless lanterns.
Pale, the Rider nodded. Saphira looked terrifying in her battle armor, bloodied and scratched with red talons and jaws. "One of the twins said Brom and Arya would be here as soon as they could. Won't be more than a few minutes–"
At that moment, a blast rang out in the center of the massive room. Rubble flew everywhere, ejected from the polished floor. Harry and Eragon both ducked and covered their heads. Eragon and Saphira both moved immediately to attack the first troops out, but the first one to emerge from the massive hole was no Urgal.
Durza struck as menacing a figure as he'd been in Gil'ead, maroon cloak, blood red hair, crimson eyes. Harry's hand made an aborted instinctual gesture towards the Elder Wand in his robes before he corrected and forced it to land on the pommel of Durza's old sword.
The Shade had a new sword, one which he gripped now with a sharp smile. He fended off Saphira's first strike with a lazy swipe, then held out a hand behind him, uttering "Kausta" and summoning a battle axe from an Urgal behind him. He ducked under another attack and stepped between Saphira's paws. With a mighty strike, the axe lodged deep in the dwarven breastplate.
Harry knew instinctively with a chill that the armor had just saved the dragon's life. Saphira roared in animalistic pain, the ear splitting sound echoing a thousand times over the hundreds of layers of balcony, all the way up Tronjheim and back.
She took off, flapping over Durza's head. The Shade contented himself watching her ascend while the Urgals behind him poured out into the city, encircling the massive room and covering the entrances and exits.
They left Harry standing alone in the center of the circle with Durza. All the horned, grey faces and yellow eyes were eerily blank.
"Whatever happened to that bowyer?" Durza asked mildly, circling to the left. Harry backed up and put the crater between himself and the Shade, circling along with him to keep his distance. "Mordrin, wasn't he?"
"Perfectly fine," Harry said.
"I had thought you'd used the transport spell," Durza admitted. "The whole time. But I could never figure out where he went. Why would you waste so much energy on a nobody? Either the elves or some other secret sect had devised a cheaper way to cast it, or else you had gems full of energy to burn. It seemed odd to waste a casting on a bystander. You don't trust your human transfiguration to fix him, do you?"
Harry scowled.
"Or was it apparition?"
"Muffliato," Harry snapped.
Durza looked delighted. "Keeping that one close to the chest, are you?" his sharp smile widened.
"You told me you allowed Galbatorix to think you were his servant," Harry shot back. "If you have Fred's magic, that's an ace we both want to hold onto."
Durza's smile widened even further. "Do I?"
Harry drew Durza's old sword and pointed it at him. "Should we find out?"
The Shade grinned in a way that was unsettlingly Fred. "Ickle Harrikins, so eager to get to the point."
"Keep that name out of your mouth," Harry snarled, ugly hatred swelling in his chest.
"Voldemort had a habit of offering you chances to join him. I see why you kept turning him down. And why you turned me down in Gil'ead. It must grate on your morality to even entertain the offer of an obvious 'bad guy,'" Durza reasoned. "Fred– well, me, I suppose," he paused to smile tauntingly, "we'd call it cliche to even offer."
"To join you?" Harry snorted derisively. He supposed it was in the villain handbook.
"Of course," Durza murmured. Urgals kept pouring from the breach and joining the layers of troops encircling the massive room, now half a dozen layers deep. Thousands in all, filing out and heading to the edge with blank faces.
"I do put on that sort of air, don't I?" Durza mused. "The villain. I'm not all bad, you know. I don't eat babies or kill people for fun – usually."
"Yazuac?" Harry asked.
Durza gestured to the crowd of Urgals assembled around them. "I didn't keep as tight a leash on them when they were marching through the Empire. You can blame their worst nature for that. Not like now. When I tell them to jump…"
Several thousand Urgals jumped at once, a low chant from thousands of throats echoing back. "HOW HIGH?"
The flow of Urgals coming from the pit between them finally stopped. Harry worked his fingers on the hilt of his sword, unsettled.
"Most of them weren't worth fetching in your hellish maze," Durza said easily. "Still, it's fitting, isn't it? The big bad at the middle of the moving maze? I'm sorry I didn't bring a cup. No portkey here for you to slip away."
"I didn't know how to apparate back then," Harry pointed out.
Durza laughed and spoke a string of complicated words in the Ancient Language. Harry felt the weight of an anti-apparition ward fall over his shoulders like a blanket. He'd had time to get out first, but Durza knew he'd stay and fight.
"I don't need your magic for that," Durza said. "As for my offer–"
"Go fuck yourself," Harry snarled.
"So crass," Durza chided. "I stand by my assertion that you would rather have me as a master than Galbatorix. You may want to consider it, if you're alive after this."
"You won't leave here alive," Harry vowed. Rage simmered in his gut. Not yet, he told it, leashing his temper. Not just yet. Soon.
They kept circling.
Durza clicked his tongue. "Negotiations are over?"
Harry spared a moment to think if he should continue to stall for Eragon, Arya, Brom, and Saphra. He glanced at the circle of Urgals behind Durza and thought it unlikely anyone but a dragon could reach them. And if Durza really wanted a proper duel, the Urgals would make sure he got what he wanted.
Harry flicked Durza's sword through the air and stood on guard. "If you're done with that?" He pointed a finger at the gaping hole in the floor. "Reparo."
The rubble strewn across the polished floor mosaic reassembled itself over the hole, sealing the breach into the tunnels. "Colloportus."
The many massive doors around Tronjheim slammed shut and sealed. Durza laughed loudly, the noise echoing off the stone.
"No witnesses? Don't tell me you've grown a spine."
I'll obliviate them, Harry promised himself. Just – he glanced about – just about five thousand stunners.
Durza drew his sword and sprinted across the floor. Harry pointed again and barked "Bombarda!" at the floor. With catlike agility, Durza leapt off the ground as the spell struck and rode the blast wave over top of him, falling to the ground with a vicious strike Harry had plenty of time to block, yet still nearly blew through his magically-strengthened sword anyway.
Harry sealed the hole again. He struck out at Durza with his own sword. Durza caught it on the flat of his blade and stepped into Harry's guard, sliding his sword up Harry's blade to the guard, locking their swords and swinging a gauntleted fist.
Ducking, Harry flung a barehanded stunner at Durza's chest.
The Shade laughed as the red light splashed against an invisible barrier. They disengaged. Harry shook the impact out of his arms. Magic strength or not, Durza was still inhumanly strong. "That didn't work back in Gil'ead. And you're still trying to stun me? I suppose I should be grateful you aren't trying to disarm me."
Harry feinted a slice towards Durza's shins, then transitioned into a vicious uppercut slash at his left armpit. Durza interposed his sword to block, stabbing forth. Harry gasped as the tip of his blade struck his breastplate, forcing him back a step.
"Is this what I have to look forward to from the Rider, too?" They began trading blows in earnest. Harry slashed, Durza parried and counterattacked with a blinding feint. Harry wove spells in between his strikes, but he could rarely spare the focus to throw a hex or curse without catching a warning blow.
"Expecto Patronum!" Harry shouted, slashing across Durza's chest. The Shade stepped out of his reach. White light shone on the edge of Harry's blade, but it refused to coalesce into a recognizable creature, koala, dragonfly, stag, or other.
Nevertheless, Durza avoided the white mist like it burned. The amusement faded from his pale expression, the smile on his blood red lips thinning. The blows came heavier and faster, forcing Harry on the defense. He stepped back and back and back. He knew soon he would be pressed up against the circle of Urgals, he tried to back up to the left, but Durza kept herding him back.
"Protego," Harry cast with his left hand, holding the field of magic like a shield. He used it to block Durza's strikes and gained a bit of respite. The shield charm did not transfer the force of the Shade's blows into his body, thus blocking did not exhaust him like it had before.
Ventus, he thought, shoving a torrent of wind at Durza. The Shade leaned into the gale with his sword on guard to break through the air. Trudging on, he forced himself close enough to stab at Harry.
Glissando!
Durza lost his footing and the gust shoved him away, sliding on his back. He kicked his feet and got to his stomach, driving his sword into the granite floor like an ice pick.
"Bombarda!" Harry yelled.
Durza growled, turning away from the explosion's granite shrapnel. A mental attack slammed into Harry, ten times stronger than the twins had been. A grasping, piercing presence that smothered the borders of his mind with a million wriggling tendrils searching for a crack to bear down upon.
Harry employed the same technique he'd beaten the twins with.
Here and now. We fight here, and now.
He erased his identity and lived entirely in the moment. With singular focus, Harry devoted every iota of willpower to a spell, an attack he was utterly insistent would pierce straight through Durza's wards. He poured his focus and intent into a massive bolt of magic.
"Stupefy!" he shouted.
A dazzling red javelin of energy hurtled towards the Shade, crackling and shedding sparks as it raced to close the distance. Durza rolled out of the way, casting off the cape, his expression wild. Harry's lips curved. At least he wasn't certain his wards would stop that.
Durza looked a bit disheveled, a bit less in control than he'd been at the beginning. The mental attack redoubled in intensity. Harry groaned and clutched his head. The Shade took the moment to get to his feet and wrench his sword from the stone floor.
"Slytha," the Shade tried.
Harry risked letting the attack land on his enchanted robes to buy time to heal a cut on his shoulder. Durza leapt at him again with his sword.
Expelliarmus!
He knew the spell like the back of his hand. The disarming charm ripped Durza's sword from his hands and flung him backwards. Harry sprinted ahead with an incarcerous to bind him. Durza snarled. "Brisingr!"
The ropes burned away. Harry cast incarcerous again, this time with chains.
"Jierda," Durza bit out. The chains broke into strands that pushed weakly against him. He leapt onto Harry and forced his hand away from him. Harry felt the mental attack intensify again, fuelled by hatred and fury.
This time, Durza's attack was different. This one knew exactly who he was and where his weak spots were. Durza heaved him back into his memories.
Harry was at Grimmauld Place, freshly out of breath from ranting after a summer of awful isolation. The twins (the Weasley ones) cracked into existence in his room. George looked blurred, as if he was seeing him without glasses. Fred was in razor sharp detail, his ginger hair a darker, crimson red with matching malevolent eyes.
"Isolation gets to you, doesn't it?" Fred-Durza said with a jolly smile. The cruel gleam in his eyes betrayed him.
Harry tried to shut him out. (Clear your mind!)
He felt a minor slip, like he'd pushed something useful and his vision flickered, two worlds superimposed on each other like looking at a reflection on a sheet of clear glass. Durza swinging for a strike. Harry let his instincts guide him rather than his conscious mind.
Durza's sword stopped mid-strike under Harry's wandless protego.
The vision overtook his conscious mind again. Fred-Durza was walking with him down the grimy stairs of old, pre-helpful-Kreacher Grimmauld Place. Ginny, Ron, Hermione, and George were all a flight below, ignorant of their presence.
"You were very close," Fred-Durza said, sounding sincere. "I extend my offer once more: the two of us could surely find a way to return you to your world."
"Like you're not trying to kill me right now outside this vision." Harry shoved Fred-Durza over the railing.
Another flash of clarity. Harry used it to fling Durza away with a knockback jinx. Time had to be different in the visions, or else Durza was stuck in them too, and couldn't use the time they were standing there to just reach out and kill him with his sword.
Fred-Durza was behind the wheel of Mr. Weasley's flying car this time, peering in through the bars on Harry's window the first summer back from Hogwarts. Fred-Durza didn't seem interested in the bars; he was taking in Privet Drive.
"You grew up in luxury," Fred-Durza noted.
Harry had never really gotten that impression. He'd grown up in an ordinary household. That was it. He supposed that compared to Eragon growing up in Carvahall, he did grow up in luxury. Even if the Dursleys made it clear they saw him as an annoyance they were saddled with, and to not expect anything more than they had to do, Harry still had three square meals a day, a warm bed, running water, public education, and safe stomping grounds to grow up in.
That was more than most could claim in Alagaesia.
Rather than try to claw himself back into the presence, Harry heaved himself into Durza's mind.
And how did you grow up? His mental probe demanded.
The smallest bedroom of Number 4, Privet Drive flickered. Harry grit his teeth and pushed harder. All at once, the vision flipped and he was standing in a desert.
"You didn't," Harry remarked.
He walked alongside two figures. An older man with a thick, sandy beard and a turban rode a camel next to a boy who was obviously Durza. He had the same build and features, though his skin tone was dark, nearly black rather than nearly white.
Though the vision was a simple one of them walking across the sloping dunes of the Hadarac, memories flew through Harry's mind. Years of learning from the older man, wandering the desert, speaking with the other nomadic tribes, moving from oasis to oasis, learning magic under him.
"Carsaib," Harry murmured, staring at the boy's red eyes. Durza turned to sneer at him. He was hungry, thirsty, and his feet were sore, but that was not unusual. It was life.
Durza's sneer filled his vision. They were wrenched back into the present.
Harry barely got his sword up in time. Durza's sword struck like a boulder, jarring his arms and forcing him back a step. He bared his teeth.
Now Harry was curious. He forced his way back into Durza's mind intuitively.
More, he demanded. What happened? What turned you from Carsaib into…this.
The older man with the turban was back, speaking in a different language, words from the Ancient Language mixed in. Somehow, Harry understood the language they were speaking.
"From the moment they appear, you must be on guard. Your strictures must be perfect, for the spirits are brilliant. And you ask for only one. Only one, Carsaib. ONLY ONE. Promise me. One may be outsmarted. Two will put their heads together and outsmart you. If you fail–"
"I understand," Carsaib's young voice said. "Only one."
The older man nodded.
Time flew by with a sense of vertigo. Months later, at an oasis in the Hadarac. The older man thought the matter was resolved, a drunken dispute.
In the middle of the night, a group of the same men came back with knives drawn. Carsaib woke up with a knife at his throat. A choked word broke the man's neck. His mentor shouted a phrase. The night flashed a brilliant orange. All but one of the men died.
Carsaib recognized the chants they both made, the last man and his mentor. Their voices overlapped with hateful urgency, a discordant choir of the Ancient Language.
He felt the whole world hold its breath, even the wind stopped in apprehension of their coming.
Three spots of light came speeding towards them. One for his mentor, two for the enemy. The enemy bared his teeth in a grin and spoke another spell. His mentor's wards caught it, but the enemy paid no heed. Seconds ticked on as he waited for his power advantage to kill the other man.
In a near silent whisper, Carsaib began reciting the chant. It was long and full of complicated words he had to pronounce perfectly. His attention lapsed on the fight as he spoke.
Halfway through, he nearly released the unfinished spell when he heard a scream. His teacher had fallen to the ground, his skin flayed off with sand pressed into the raw flesh beneath. Carsaib saw the enemy banish his mentor's spirit. Overcome with rage and heedless of the consequences, he hurried through the rest of the chant.
The enemy heard him, but it was too late.
Carsaib summoned four.
Four spots of light arrived at his summons. They were too much, they were too strong, they–
Durza screamed with rage. They were both wrenched out of their visions.
The Shade attacked him with reckless fury, his sword a blur. Harry threw hexes as often as sword strikes back at him, giving constant ground.
With a mighty roar, Durza struck his sword from his grasp and kicked him to the ground, holding him at swordpoint. Quick as the speed of thought, Harry hurled an instinctual hex at him.
Durza's sword spun out of his hands, plucked away by a bolt of red light. Harry tried to get to his feet. Durza abandoned his sword and socked him right in the eye. Dazed, Harry stopped trying to stand for a moment. Durza calmed himself and knelt down, leaning over Harry's chest. He reached for his right arm and pinned it against the stone floor by his wrist.
Head pounding, Harry kicked him as hard as he could. Durza had the constitution of an elf and hardly felt it. He pinned Harry down by the neck with a hand and reached for a knife at his waist. Harry couldn't breathe, he could feel himself growing light-headed.
Desperately, he imagined conjuring a ball of ten atmospheres of air between them and fed his desire a bunch of magic.
It was as if the sky had fallen on Harry's prone form. Like he'd strapped a bomb to his chest and blown it up. A murderous pain stabbed at his chest as his lungs nearly forced themselves through his throat. He felt like he'd been flattened into the ground. His eardrums ruptured instantly, and he was certain he'd bruise all across his front.
It took nearly a minute for Harry to become coherent enough to start healing himself, aware that he was unable to breathe and with agony blooming across his whole body. Aspectum corpus.
He glanced down and saw his lungs an angry purple. Mungo had taught him this one just hours ago, pulmonis vacuefacio. The blood cleared from his lungs. Harry put a hand on his chest and sent a vulnera sanentur through. It wouldn't fix the crushed alveoli, but it would stop the bleeding from drowning him. He stuck his fingers into his ears and fixed his eardrums as well, hearing coming back to him all at once.
"Less…than ten…atmospheres next time," Harry panted, flopping back on the floor. Every breath hurt like his lungs were full of needles and sand. He could hardly take half a breath before the agony became too much and he flinched away from breathing deeper.
Harry staggered to his feet clutching his head. The stone floor wobbled beneath him. He searched the room for Durza. The Shade wasn't in the enormous hall. All around him, some five thousand Urgals staggered to their feet, disoriented and irritable. They stopped standing in neat lines and began looking at each other, then spotting Harry in the middle of Tronjheim.
Confundus.
The Urgals stopped considering Harry much of a threat and started talking to each other, shuffling around, and casting each other dirty looks. Seeing them this disoriented gave Harry even more second thoughts about the Varden mowing the lot of them down. How much convincing Durza had done, he wasn't sure.
Hominem revelio.
There. Up on the third level balcony. Harry pointed his hand. Ascendio. Magic flung him through the air. Dizziness made his awkward attempt at broomless flight clumsy. He arrested his momentum just before hitting the ground, then stumbled and sprawled onto the floor. Harry gritted his teeth and got to his knees. He forced himself to stand, enduring the pounding in his skull.
Durza was in significantly better shape, but healing slower. Harry hobbled over. Both their swords were somewhere on the ground. Harry conjured a new one and threw his Cloak over himself. He silenced himself and snuck up to the Shade.
Durza struggled to his feet. Harry drew back his sword when they both spotted a shape hurtling down to the floor at terminal velocity. Durza frowned and got up, struggling to the balcony to peer down.
Harry followed Durza from behind, trying to guess at exactly where his heart was. As soon as he stopped moving, Harry decided he would risk it. Memories of Durza's reaction to Arya attempting the same thing replayed in his mind.
Durza climbed over the balcony and let himself drop. Harry heard him say "letta" right before touching the ground. Like him, he stumbled upon landing. Silently, Harry followed him.
The Shade cocked his head, but focused on the form that had fallen from the sky.
"The Rider," Durza said mildly. "Eragon is your name, is it not?"
Eragon drew his sword. "It is. You are Durza, servant of Galbatorix, torturer of elves?"
"So they say," Durza allowed. He opened a hand and with a word, summoned his sword to his hand.
Eragon took in his injured, disheveled appearance. "I see you've met Harry. Where is he?"
"I'm not sure," Durza admitted. "It seems he fled. He was always a coward, you know. I recently learned a lot about him. I'm sure he told you some things."
"Some," Eragon said guardedly. Harry felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Durza touched his forehead and murmured a healing spell. "Did he tell you how he got here?"
Eragon shook his head. Harry stood petrified, rooted to the spot.
"Did he tell you he was running from something?"
A nod.
Durza sheathed his sword. "And did he tell you what that thing is?"
Eragon shook his head.
"Harry Potter ran away from a fight just like this," Durza said, shaking his head as if disappointed. "Many people, people he considered friends and family, died to get him to a confrontation with his world's great villain. And when it came time to fight him, Harry Potter ran away. As he seems to have done once more."
Harry's hands shook with fury.
Durza was limping now, his torso moving up and down. Eragon shifted uneasily. "He wouldn't."
"How well do you really know him?" Durza asked. "He runs from everything. Even his name. He goes by Harry Evans here, doesn't he? A coward through and through. I have seven years of memories of him now. I have been to the funerals of the men and women whose sacrifices he spat upon–"
Harry stabbed as hard as he could.
Durza twisted in an instant, striking the invisible blade away with his right arm's vambrance and digging his fingers into the Cloak, tearing it away from him with a triumphant light in his red eyes.
Harry stumbled. He barely caught the glint of steel before Durza was bringing a knife up on his right hand, intent on chopping it off at the wrist. He managed to think the shield charm just in time for the knife to strike an invisible barrier, jarring the Shade's arm.
He brought his conjured sword up to stab again, but this one lacked the enchantments he'd prepared the other one with. Durza batted it away easily, lunging forward and tearing the blade out of his hands.
It was then that Durza dropped the knife from his left hand and caught Harry's wrist. "Crucio!" Durza crowed in triumph.
Eragon began running towards the fight. Whatever was happening between them, it had gone horribly wrong. Harry was shrieking in agony, writhing on the floor while Durza leaned over him. The Shade had his knife in hand and was reaching for Harry's right hand, pinning his writhing limbs down for an easy cut. Eragon drew Zar'roc and took aim.
Durza caught his lunge with the heel of his foot, kicking him away mid-thrust and driving the wind out of his lungs. Harry stopped screaming.
But he didn't get back up.
From the moment their swords met, Eragon knew he was outclassed. Even with the strength his enchanted armor gave him, Durza was too fast. He read Eragon with ease, fighting several moves in advance. Eragon kept finding that he'd been maneuvered into a losing position after a string of blows that came too quick to keep up.
If there was any consolation, it was that with his armor, Durza could not finish the fight. No blow harmed him. He could not pierce the armor, the gaps seemed impossible for him to hit, and no matter how much blunt force he put behind a strike, his armor made the impact tolerable.
Eragon endured the blows, maneuvering himself between Durza and Harry, then forcing the Shade back by fighting like a berserker, taking hit after hit and shrugging them off, relentlessly hacking and slashing to keep him back.
All around them, the Urgals were still recovering from whatever explosion Harry had caused earlier. Harry was also stirring, struggling to his knees. Durza realized he was about to be outnumbered and began maneuvering Eragon away from Harry. The Shade whipped a knife at the downed wizard.
"Letta!" Eragon barked, stopping the weapon inches from Harry's chest.
He redoubled his efforts to keep Durza away, but it was a losing game. If Arya and Brom didn't show up soon, they'd get here to find a couple of bodies.
Coming, Saphira sent, her mental voice colored by pain and strain. Soon.