Inheritance

THE TORMENT OF UNCERTAINTY

Nasuada opened her eyes.

Tiles covered the dark, vaulted ceiling, and upon the tiles were painted angular patterns of red, blue, and gold: a complex matrix of lines that trapped her gaze for a mindless while.

At last she mustered the will to look away.

A steady orange glow emanated from a source somewhere behind her. The glow was just strong enough to reveal the shape of the octagonal room, but not so bold as to dispel the shadows that clung like gauze to the corners above and below.

She swallowed and found her throat was dry.

The surface she lay on was cold, smooth, and uncomfortably hard; it felt like stone against her heels and the pads of her fingers. A chill had crept into her bones, and it was that which caused her to realize the only thing she wore was the thin white shift she slept in.

Where am I?

The memories returned all at once, without sense or order: an unwelcome cavalcade that thundered into her mind with a force almost physical in its intensity.

She gasped and tried to sit upright-to bolt, to flee, to fight if she had to-but found she was unable to move more than a fraction of an inch in any direction. There were padded manacles around her wrists and ankles, and a thick leather belt held her head firmly against the slab, preventing her from lifting or turning it.

She strained against her bonds, but they were too strong for her to break.

Letting out her breath, she went limp and stared at the ceiling again. Her pulse hammered in her ears, like a maddened drumbeat. Heat suffused her body; her cheeks burned, and her hands and feet felt as if they were filled with molten tallow.

So this is how I die.

For a moment, despair and self-pity bedeviled her. She had barely begun her life, yet now it was about to end, and in the vilest, most miserable manner possible. What was worse, she had accomplished none of the things she had hoped to. Not war, not love, not birth, not life. Her only offspring were battles and corpses and trundling supply trains; stratagems too numerous to remember; oaths of friendship and fealty now worth less than a mummer’s promise; and a halting, fractious, all-too-vulnerable army led by a Rider younger than she was herself. It seemed a poor legacy for the memory of her name. And a memory would be all that remained. She was the last of her line. When she died, there would be no one left to continue her family.

The thought pained her, and she berated herself for not having borne children when she could.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, seeing the face of her father before her.

Then she disciplined herself and put aside her despair. The only control she had over the situation was self-control, and she was not about to relinquish it for the dubious pleasure of indulging her doubts, fears, and regrets. As long as she was the master of her thoughts and feelings, she was not entirely helpless. It was the smallest of freedoms-that of one’s own mind-but she was grateful for it, and knowing that it might soon be torn away made her all the more determined to exercise it.

In any event, she still had one final duty to perform: to resist her interrogation. To that end, she would need to be in full command of herself. Otherwise, she would break quickly.

She slowed her breathing and concentrated on the regular flow of air through her throat and nostrils, letting that sensation crowd out all others. When she felt appropriately calm, she set about deciding what was safe to think about. So many subjects were dangerous-dangerous to her, dangerous to the Varden, dangerous to their allies, or dangerous to Eragon and Saphira. She did not review the things she ought to avoid, which might have given her jailers the information they wanted then and there. Instead, she picked a handful of thoughts and memories that seemed benign and strove to ignore the rest-strove to convince herself that everything she was, and had ever been, consisted of only those few elements.

In essence, she attempted to create a new and simpler identity for herself so that, when asked questions about this or that, she could, with complete honesty, plead ignorance. It was a dangerous technique; for it to work, she had to believe her own deception, and if she was ever freed, it might be difficult to reclaim her true personality.

But then, she had no hope of rescue or release. All she dared hope for was to frustrate the designs of her captors.

Gokukara, give me the strength to endure the trials before me. Watch over your little owlet, and should I die, carry me safely from this place … carry me safely to the fields of my father.

Her gaze wandered about the tile-covered room as she studied it in greater detail. She guessed she was in Uru’baen. It was only logical that Murtagh and Thorn would have taken her there, and it would explain the elvish look of the room; the elves had built much of Uru’baen, the city they called Ilirea, either before their war with the dragons-long, long ago-or after the city had become the capital of the Broddring Kingdom and the Riders had established a formal presence therein.

Or so her father had told her. She remembered nothing of the city herself.

Still, she might be somewhere else entirely: one of Galbatorix’s private estates, perhaps. And the room might not even exist as she perceived it. A skilled magician could manipulate everything she saw, felt, heard, and smelled, could distort the world around her in ways she would never notice.

Whatever happened to her-whatever seemed to happen to her-she would not allow herself to be tricked. Even if Eragon broke down the door and cut her loose, she would still believe that it was a ruse of her captors. She dared not trust the evidence of her senses.

The moment Murtagh had taken her from the camp, the world had become a lie, and there was no telling when the lie would end, if ever it did. The only thing she could be certain of was that she existed. All else was suspect, even her own thoughts.

After her initial shock subsided, the tedium of waiting began to wear on her. She had no way to tell time other than her hunger and thirst, and her hunger waxed and waned at seemingly irregular intervals. She tried marking off the hours by counting numbers, but the practice bored her, and she always seemed to forget her place once she reached the tens of thousands.

Despite the horrors she was sure awaited her, she wished her captors would hurry up and show themselves. She shouted for minutes on end, but heard only plaintive echoes in response.

The dull light behind her never wavered, never dimmed; she assumed it was a flameless lantern similar to those the dwarves made. The glow made it hard to sleep, but eventually exhaustion overcame her and she dozed off.

The prospect of dreaming terrified her. She was most vulnerable when asleep, and she feared that her unconscious mind would conjure up the very information she was trying to keep hidden. She had little choice in the matter, however. Sooner or later, she had to sleep, and forcing herself to stay awake would only end up making her feel worse.

So she slept. But her rest was fitful and unsatisfying, and she still felt tired when she woke.

A boom startled her.

Somewhere above and behind her, she heard a latch being lifted, and then the creak of a door swinging open.

Her pulse quickened. As best she could tell, over a day had passed since she had first regained consciousness. She was painfully thirsty, her tongue felt swollen and sticky, and her entire body ached from being confined in one position for so long.

Footsteps descending stairs. Soft-soled boots shuffling against stone.… A pause. Metal clinked. Keys? Knives? Something worse? … Then the footsteps resumed. Now they were approaching her. Drawing closer … closer …

A portly man dressed in a gray woolen tunic entered her field of vision, carrying a silver platter with an assortment of food: cheese, bread, meat, wine, and water. He stooped and placed the platter by the base of the wall, then turned and walked over to her, his stride short, quick, and precise. Dainty, almost.

Wheezing slightly, he leaned against the edge of the slab and stared down at her. His head was like a gourd: bulbous at the top, bulbous at the bottom, and narrow in the middle. He was clean-shaven and mostly bald, except for a fringe of dark, close-cropped hair that ran about his skull. The upper part of his forehead was shiny, his fleshy cheeks were ruddy, and his lips were as gray as his tunic. His eyes were unremarkable: brown and close-set.

He smacked his tongue, and she saw that his teeth met on end, like the jaws of a clamp, and that they protruded farther than normal from the rest of his face, giving him a slight but noticeable muzzle.

On his warm, moist breath hung the smell of liver and onions. In her famished condition, she found the odor nauseating.

She was acutely aware of her state of undress as the man’s gaze roamed over her body. It made her feel vulnerable, as if she were a toy or a pet laid out for his enjoyment. Anger and humiliation brought a hot flush to her cheeks.

Determined not to wait for him to make his intentions known, she tried to speak, to ask him for water, but her throat was too parched; all she could do was croak.

The gray-suited man tutted and, to her astonishment, began to undo her restraints.

The moment she was free, she sat up on the slab, formed a blade with her right hand, and swung it toward the side of the man’s neck.

He caught her wrist in midair, seemingly without effort. She growled and jabbed at his eyes with the fingers of her other hand.

Again he caught her wrist. She wrenched back and forth, but his grip was too strong to break; her wrists might as well have been encased in stone.

Frustrated, she lunged forward and sank her teeth into the man’s right forearm. Hot blood gushed into her mouth, salty and coppery. She choked but kept biting down even as blood leaked out from under her lips. Between her teeth and against her tongue, she could feel the muscles of the man’s forearm flexing like so many trapped snakes trying to escape.

Other than that, he failed to react.

At last she released his arm, drew back her head, and spat his blood onto his face.

Even then the man continued to regard her with the same flat expression, neither blinking nor showing any sign of pain or anger.

She wrenched at his hands once more, then swung her hips and legs around on the slab to kick him in the stomach.

Before she could land the blow, he let go of her left wrist and slapped her across the face, hard.

A white light flashed behind her eyes, and a soundless explosion seemed to erupt around her. Her head snapped to one side, her teeth clacked together, and pain lanced down her spine from the base of her skull.

When her sight cleared, she sat glaring at the man, but she made no move to attack him again. She understood she was at his mercy.… She understood she needed to find something to cut his throat or stab him through the eye if she was going to overpower him.

He let go of her other wrist and reached into his tunic to retrieve a dull white kerchief. He dabbed at his face, wiping off every drop of blood and spittle. Then he tied the kerchief around his injured forearm, using his clamplike teeth to hold one end of the cloth.

She flinched as he reached out and grasped her by the upper arm, his large, thick fingers encircling her limb. He pulled her off the ash-colored slab, and her legs gave way as she struck the floor. She hung like a doll from the man’s grip, her arm twisted at an awkward angle above her head.

He hoisted her onto her feet. This time her legs held. Half supporting her, he guided her around to a small side door she had been unable to see from where she lay on her back. Next to it was a short flight of stairs that led to a second, larger door-the same door through which her jailer had entered. It was closed, but there was a small metal grate in the middle, and through it she glimpsed a well-lit tapestry hanging against a smooth stone wall.

The man pushed open the side door and escorted her into a narrow privy chamber. To her relief, he left her there alone. She searched the bare room for anything she could use as a weapon or a means to escape but, to her disappointment, found only dust, wood shavings, and, more ominously, dried bloodstains.

So she did what she was expected to do, and when she emerged from the privy chamber, the sweating, gray-suited man took her arm again and walked her back to the slab.

As they neared it, she began to kick and struggle; she would rather be hit than allow him to restrain her as before. For all her efforts, however, she could not stop or slow the man. His limbs were like iron beneath her blows, and even his seemingly soft paunch gave but little when she struck it.

Handling her as easily as if she were a small child, he lifted her onto the slab, pressed her shoulders flat against the stone, and then locked the manacles around her wrists and ankles. Lastly, he pulled the leather belt over her forehead and cinched it down, hard enough to hold her head in place but not so hard as to cause her pain.

She expected him to go and eat his lunch-or supper, or whatever meal it was-but instead he picked up the platter, carried it over to her, and offered her a drink of watered wine.

It was difficult to swallow while lying on her back, so she had to quickly sip the liquid from the silver chalice he pressed to her mouth. The feeling of the diluted wine coursing down her dry throat was one of cool, soothing relief.

When the chalice was empty, the man put it aside, cut slices of bread and cheese, and held them out toward her.

“What …,” she said, her voice finally responding to her commands. “What is your name?”

The man gazed at her without emotion. His bulbous forehead gleamed like polished ivory in the light of the flameless lantern.

He pushed the bread and cheese toward her.

“Who are you? … Is this Uru’baen? Are you a prisoner like me? We could help each other, you and I. Galbatorix isn’t all-knowing. Together we could find a way to escape. It may seem impossible, but it isn’t, I promise.” She continued to speak in a low, calm voice, hoping to say something that would either gain the man’s sympathy or appeal to his self-interest.

She knew she could be persuasive-long hours of negotiating on the Varden’s behalf had proven that to her satisfaction-but her words seemed to have no effect on the man. Save for his breathing, he might as well have been dead as he stood there, bread and cheese extended. That he was deaf occurred to her, but he had noticed when she tried to ask for water, so she dismissed the possibility.

She talked until she exhausted every argument and appeal she could think of, and when she stopped-pausing to find a different approach-the man placed the cheese and bread against her lips and held it there. Furious, she willed him to take it away, but his hand never budged, and he continued to stare at her with the same blank, disinterested look.

The nape of her neck prickled as she realized his manner was not an affectation; she really did mean nothing to him. She would have understood if he hated her, or if he had taken a perverse pleasure in tormenting her, or if he had been a slave reluctantly carrying out Galbatorix’s orders, but none of those things seemed true. Rather, he was indifferent, devoid of even the slightest shred of empathy. He would, she had no doubt, kill her just as readily as he would tend to her, and with no more concern than one might have for crushing an ant.

Silently cursing the necessity of it, she opened her mouth and allowed him to place the pieces of bread and cheese on her tongue, despite the urge she felt to bite his fingers.

He fed her. Like a child. By hand, putting each morsel of food into her mouth as carefully as if it were a hollow orb of glass that might shatter at any sudden movement.

A deep sense of loathing gathered within her. To go from being the leader of the greatest alliance in the history of Alagaesia to-No, no, none of that existed. She was her father’s daughter. She had lived in Surda in the dust and the heat, among the echoing calls of the merchants in the bustling marketplace streets. That was all. She had no reason to be haughty, no reason to resent her fall.

Nevertheless, she hated the man looming over her. She hated that he insisted on feeding her when she could have done so herself. She hated that Galbatorix, or whoever was overseeing her captivity, was trying to strip her of her pride and dignity. And she hated that, to a degree, they were succeeding.

She was, she decided, going to kill the man. If she could accomplish only one more thing in her life, she wanted it to be the death of her jailer. Short of escape, nothing else would give her as much satisfaction. Whatever it takes, I’ll find a way.

The idea pleased her, and she ate the rest of the meal with relish, all the while plotting how she might arrange the man’s demise.

When she was finished, the man took the tray and left.

She listened to his footsteps recede, to the door opening and closing behind her, to the snick of the latch snapping shut, and then to the heavy, doom-laden sound of a beam falling into place across the outside of the door.

Then once again she was alone, with nothing to do but wait and dwell upon the ways of murder.

For a while, she amused herself by tracing one of the lines painted on the ceiling and attempting to determine whether it had a beginning or an end. The line she chose was blue; the color appealed to her because of its associations with the one person whom, above all else, she dared not think of.

In time, she grew bored with the lines and with her fantasies of revenge, and she closed her eyes and slipped into an uneasy half sleep, where the hours seemed, with the paradoxical logic of nightmares, to pass both faster and slower than normal.

When the man in the gray tunic returned, she was almost glad to see him, a reaction for which she despised herself, considering it a weakness.

She was not sure how long she had been waiting-could not be sure unless someone told her-but she knew it had been a shorter period than before. Still, the wait had felt interminable, and she had feared that she was to be left strapped down and isolated-though not ignored, surely not that-for the same drawn-out stretch. To her disgust, she found herself grateful that the man was going to visit her more often than she had originally thought. Lying motionless on a flat piece of stone for so many hours was painful enough, but to be denied contact with any other living creature-even one as lumpish and abhorrent as her jailer-was a torture in and of itself and was by far the harder trial to bear.

As the man unlocked her from her restraints, she noted that the wound on his forearm had been healed; the skin was as smooth and pink as a suckling pig’s.

She refrained from fighting, but on the way to the privy room, she pretended to stumble and fall, hoping to get near enough to the platter that she might steal the small paring knife the man used to cut the food. However, the platter proved too far away, and the man was too heavy for her to drag toward it without alerting him to her intentions. Her ploy having failed, she forced herself to submit calmly to the rest of the man’s ministrations; she needed to convince him that she had given up so he would grow complacent and, if she was lucky, careless.

While he fed her, she studied his fingernails. Previously, she had been too angry to pay them heed, but now that she was calmer, the oddity of them fascinated her.

His nails were thick and highly arched. They were set deep within the flesh, and the white moons by the cuticles were large and broad. In all, no different from the nails of many of the men and dwarves she had dealt with.

When had she dealt with them? … She did not remember.

What set his nails apart was the care with which they had been cultivated. And cultivated seemed the right description to her, as if the nails were rare flowers a gardener had devoted long hours to tending. The cuticles were neat and trim, with no sign of tears, while the nails themselves had been cut straight across-not too long, not too short-and the edges smoothly beveled. The tops of the nails had been polished until they shone like glazed pottery, and the skin surrounding them looked as if oil or butter had been rubbed into it.

Except for elves, she had never seen a man with such perfect nails.

Elves? She shook off the thought, irritated with herself. She knew no elves.

The nails were an enigma; a strangeness in an otherwise understandable setting; a mystery that she wanted to solve, even though it was probably futile to try.

She wondered who was responsible for the nails’ exemplary condition. Was it the man himself? He seemed overly fastidious, and she could not imagine he had a wife or daughter or servant or anyone else close to him who would lavish so much attention on the caps of his fingers. Of course, she realized she might be mistaken. Many a battle-scarred veteran-grim, close-mouthed men whose only loves seemed to be wine, women, and war-had surprised her with some facet of their character that was at odds with their outward guise: a knack for wood carving, a tendency to memorize romantic poems, a fondness for hounds, or a fierce devotion to a family that they kept hidden from the rest of the world. It had been years before she had learned that Jor-

She cut off the thought before it went any further.

In any event, the question she kept turning over in her mind was a simple one: why? Motivation was telling, even when such small things as fingernails were concerned.

If the nails were the work of someone else, then they were a labor of either great love or great fear. But she doubted that was the case; somehow it felt wrong.

If, instead, they were the work of the man himself, then any number of explanations were possible. Perhaps his nails were a way for him to exert a modicum of control over a life that was no longer his own. Or perhaps he felt they were the only part of himself that was or could be attractive. Or perhaps caring for them was merely a nervous tic, a habit that served no other purpose except to while away the hours.

Whatever the truth might be, the fact remained that someone had cleaned and trimmed and buffed and oiled his fingernails, and it had not been a casual or inattentive effort.

She continued to ponder the matter while she ate, barely tasting her food. Occasionally, she glanced up to search the man’s heavy face for one clue or another, but always without success.

Upon feeding her the last piece of bread, the man pushed himself off the edge of the slab, picked up the platter, and turned away.

She chewed and swallowed the bread as fast as she could without choking; then, her voice hoarse and creaky from disuse, she said, “You have nice fingernails. They’re very … shiny.”

The man paused in midstep, and his large, ponderous head swiveled toward her. For a moment, she thought he might strike her again, but then his gray lips slowly split and he smiled at her, showing both his upper and lower rows of teeth.

She suppressed a shudder; he looked as if he were about to bite the head off a chicken.

Still with the same unsettling expression, the man continued out of her range of sight, and a few seconds later, she heard the door to her cell open and close.

Her own smile crept across her lips. Pride and vanity were weaknesses that she could exploit. If there was one thing she was skilled at, it was the ability to bend others to her will. The man had given her the tiniest of handholds-no more than a fingerhold, really, or rather a fingernail-hold, as it were-but it was all she needed. Now she could begin to climb.