Inheritance (29 page)

Soldiers and Varden alike had been tossed sprawling. Nothing remained of the fountain except for a low pile of rubble from which water spurted at erratic intervals. Next to it, where Carn had been, lay a blackened, withered corpse, its smoking limbs clenched tight, like those of a dead spider, the whole thing so charred and pitted and
burned away that it was barely recognizable as anything that had once been alive or human. Inexplicably, the hook-nosed magician still stood in the same place, though the explosion had robbed him of his outer clothes, leaving him wearing nothing but his breeches.

Uncontrollable anger gripped Roran, and without a thought for his own preservation, he staggered toward the center of the square, determined to kill the magician once and for all.

The bare-chested conjurer held his ground even as Roran drew near. Raising his hammer, Roran broke out into a shambling run and shouted a war cry that he could hear but dimly.

And yet the magician made no move to defend himself.

In fact, Roran realized that the spellcaster had not stirred so much as an inch since the explosion. It was as if he were a statue of a man and not the thing itself.

The spellcaster’s seeming indifference to Roran’s approach tempted Roran to ignore the man’s unusual behavior—or lack of behavior, as it was—and simply bash him over the head before he recovered from whatever strange stupor ailed him. However, Roran’s wariness cooled his lust for vengeance and caused him to slow to a stop not five feet from the magician.

He was glad he did.

While the magician had appeared normal from a distance, up close, Roran saw that his skin was loose and wrinkled like that of a man thrice his age, and that it had acquired a coarse, leathery texture. The color of his skin had darkened as well, and was continuing to darken, moment by moment, as if his entire body had been bitten by frost.

The man’s chest was heaving and his eyeballs were rolling in their sockets, showing white, but other than that, he seemed incapable of movement.

As Roran watched, the man’s arms, neck, and chest shriveled, and his bones appeared in sharp relief—from the bowlike curve of his collarbones to the hollow saddle of his hips, where his stomach hung like an empty waterskin. His lips puckered and drew back
farther than they were intended to over his yellow teeth, baring them in a grisly snarl, while his eyeballs deflated as if they were engorged ticks being squished empty of blood, and the surrounding flesh sank inward.

The man’s breathing—a panicked, high-pitched sawing—faltered then, but still did not entirely cease.

Horrified, Roran stepped backward. He felt something slick beneath his boots and looked down to see that he was standing in a spreading puddle of water. At first he thought it was from the broken fountain, but then he realized that the water was flowing outward from the feet of the paralyzed magician.

Roran cursed, revulsion filling him, and jumped to a dry patch of ground. Seeing the water, he understood what it was Carn had done, and his already profound sense of horror increased. Carn, it seemed, had cast a spell that was drawing every single drop of moisture from the magician’s body.

Over the span of only another few seconds, the spell reduced the man to no more than a knobby skeleton wrapped in a shell of hard black skin, mummifying him the same as if he had been left in the Hadarac Desert, exposed to a hundred years of wind and sun and shifting sands. Although he was most certainly dead by then, he did not fall, as Carn’s magic held him upright: a ghastly, grinning specter that was the equal of the most terrible things Roran had ever seen in his nightmares or on the battlefield—both being much the same.

Then the surface of the man’s desiccated body blurred as it dissolved into a fine gray dust, which sifted downward in gauzy curtains and lay floating atop the water below, like ashes from a forest fire. Muscle and bone soon followed, then the stony organs, and then the last parts of the hook-nosed magician crumbled away, leaving behind only a small, conical mound of powder rising out of the pool of water that had once sustained its life.

Roran looked over at Carn’s corpse, then looked away just as quickly, unable to bear the sight.
At least you had your revenge on
him
. Then he put aside thoughts of his slain friend, for they were too painful to dwell on, and instead concentrated upon the most immediate problem at hand: the soldiers at the southern end of the square, who were slowly picking themselves up off the ground.

Roran saw the Varden doing much the same. “Oi!” he shouted. “With me! We’ll never have a better chance than now.” He pointed at some of his men who were obviously wounded. “Help them up and put them in the center of the formation. No one gets left behind. No one!” His lips and mouth throbbed as he spoke, and his head ached as if he had been up all night drinking.

The Varden rallied at the sound of his voice and hurried to join him. As the men gathered into a broad column behind him, Roran took his place in the foremost rank of warriors, between Baldor and Delwin, both of whom bore bloody scrapes from the explosion.

“Carn is dead?” Baldor asked.

Roran nodded and lifted his shield, as did the other men, so that they formed a solid, outward-facing wall.

“Then we better hope Halstead doesn’t have another magician hidden away somewhere,” Delwin muttered.

When the Varden were all in place, Roran shouted, “Forward march!” and the warriors tramped across the remainder of the courtyard.

Whether because their leadership was less effective than the Varden’s or because the blast had dealt them a more severe blow, the Empire soldiers had failed to recover as quickly and so were still disorganized when the Varden drove into their midst.

Roran grunted and staggered back a step as a spear embedded itself in his shield, numbing his arm and dragging it down through sheer weight. Reaching around, he swept his hammer across the face of the shield. It bounced off the haft of the spear, which refused to budge.

A soldier in front of him, perhaps the very one who had thrown the spear, seized the opportunity to run at him and swing his sword at Roran’s neck. Roran started to lift his shield, along with the spear
lodged in it, but it was too heavy and cumbersome for him to protect himself with. So he used his hammer instead, lashing out at the descending sword.

On edge, however, the blade was almost impossible for him to see, and he timed his parry badly and missed the sword with his hammer. He would have died then, except that his knuckles clipped the flat of the blade, deflecting it several inches to the side.

A line of fire cut through Roran’s right shoulder. Jagged bolts of lightning shot down his side, and his vision flashed bright yellow. His right knee buckled and he fell forward.

Stone underneath him. Feet and legs around him, hemming him in so he could not roll away to safety. His whole body sluggish and unresponsive, as if he were trapped in honey.

Too slow, too slow
, he thought as he struggled to free his arm from the shield and get his feet back under him. If he stayed on the ground, he would be either stabbed or trampled.
Too slow!

Then he saw the soldier collapse in front of him, clutching at his belly, and a second later, someone pulled Roran up by the collar of his hauberk and held him upright while he regained his footing. It was Baldor.

Twisting his neck, Roran looked at where the soldier had struck him. Five links in his mail shirt had split open, but other than that, the armor had held. Despite the blood oozing out of the rent, and the pain that racked his neck and arm, he did not think the wound was life-threatening, nor was he about to stop and find out. His right arm still worked—at least enough to continue fighting—and that was all he cared about at the moment.

Someone passed him a replacement shield. He grimly shouldered it and pressed onward with his men, forcing the soldiers to retreat along the wide street that led from the square.

The soldiers soon broke and ran in the face of the Varden’s overwhelming strength, fleeing down the myriad side streets and alleys that branched off the thoroughfare.

Roran paused then and sent fifty of his men back to close the
portcullis and sally port and to guard them against any foes who might seek to follow the Varden into the heart of Aroughs. Most of the soldiers in the city would be stationed close to the outer wall to repel besiegers, and Roran had no desire to face them in open battle. To do so would be suicidal, given the size of Halstead’s forces.

The Varden met little resistance thereafter as they progressed through the inner city to the large, well-appointed palace where Lord Halstead ruled.

A spacious courtyard with an artificial pond—wherein swam geese and white swans—lay before the palace, which towered several stories above the rest of Aroughs. The palace was a beautiful, ornate structure of open arches, colonnades, and wide balconies intended for dancing and parties. Unlike the castle in the heart of Belatona, it had obviously been built with pleasure in mind, not defense.

They must have assumed no one could get past their walls
, thought Roran.

Several dozen guards and soldiers in the courtyard charged haphazardly at the Varden when they caught sight of them, shouting war cries the whole while.

“Stay in formation!” Roran ordered as the men rushed toward them.

For a minute or two, the sound of clashing arms filled the courtyard. The geese and the swans honked with alarm at the commotion and beat the water with their wings, but none of them dared leave the confines of their pond.

It did not take long for the Varden to rout the soldiers and guards. Then they stormed the entryway of the palace, which was so richly decorated with paintings on the walls and ceilings—as well as gilt moldings, carved furniture, and a patterned floor—that Roran found it difficult to take in all at once. The wealth required to build and maintain such an edifice was more than he could comprehend. The entire farm where he had grown up had not been equal the worth of a single chair in that grand hall.

Through an open doorway, he saw three servingwomen running down another long corridor as fast as their skirts would allow.

“Don’t let them get away!” he exclaimed.

Five swordsmen broke off from the main body of the Varden and dashed after the women, catching them before they reached the end of the passageway. The women uttered piercing screams and struggled ferociously, clawing at their captors, as the men dragged them back to where Roran was waiting.

“Enough!” shouted Roran when they were in front of him, and the women ceased fighting, although they continued to whimper and moan. The oldest of the three, a stout matron who had her silver hair pulled back in an untidy bun and who carried a ring of keys at her waist, appeared the most reasonable, so Roran asked her, “Where is Lord Halstead?”

The woman stiffened and lifted her chin. “Do with me what you will, sir, but I’ll not betray my master.”

Roran moved toward her until they were only a foot apart. “Listen to me, and listen well,” he growled. “Aroughs has fallen, and you and everyone else in this city are at my mercy. Nothing you can do will change that. Tell me where Halstead is, and we’ll let you and your companions go. You can’t save him from his doom, but you can save yourselves.” His torn lips were so swollen, he was barely able to make himself understood, and with every word, flecks of blood flew from his mouth.

“My own fate doesn’t matter, sir,” said the woman, her expression as determined as any warrior’s.

Roran cursed and slapped his hammer against his shield, producing a harsh crash that echoed loudly in the cavernous hall. The women flinched at the sound. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Is Halstead worth your life? Is the Empire? Is Galbatorix?”

“I don’t know about Galbatorix or the Empire, sir, but Halstead has always been kind enough to us serving folk, and I’ll not see him strung up by the likes of you. Filthy, ungrateful
muck
, that’s what you are.”

“Is that so?” He stared at her fiercely. “How long do you think you can hold your tongue if I decide to let my men wring the truth out of you?”

“You’ll never make me talk,” she declared, and he believed her.

“What about them?” He nodded toward the other women, the youngest of whom could not have been more than seventeen. “Are you willing to let them be cut into pieces just to save your master?”

The woman sniffed disdainfully, then said, “Lord Halstead is in the east wing of the palace. Take the corridor over there, go through the Yellow Room and Lady Galiana’s flower garden, and you’ll find him sure as rain.”

Roran listened with suspicion. Her capitulation seemed too quick and too easy given her earlier resistance. Also, while she spoke, he noticed that the other two women reacted with surprise and some other emotion he could not identify.
Confusion?
he wondered. In any event, they did not react the way he would have expected if the silver-haired woman had just delivered their lord into the arms of their enemies. They were too quiet, too subdued, as if they were hiding something.

Of the two, the girl was the less skilled at masking her feelings, so Roran turned on her with all the savagery he could muster. “You there, she’s lying, isn’t she? Where is Halstead?
Tell me!
”

The girl opened her mouth and shook her head, speechless. She tried to back away from him, but one of the warriors held her in place.

Roran stomped over to her, jammed his shield flat against her chest, knocking the air out of her, and leaned his weight against it, pinning her between him and the man behind her. Lifting his hammer, Roran touched it to the side of her cheek. “You’re rather pretty, but you’ll have a hard time finding anyone but old men to court you if I knock out your front teeth. I lost a tooth myself today, but I managed to put it back in. See?” And he spread his lips in what he was sure was a gruesome approximation of a smile. “I’ll keep your
teeth, though, so you won’t be able to do the same. They’ll make a fine trophy, eh?” And he made a threatening motion with the hammer.