Murtagh watched with a fixed gaze as the valley unfolded beneath them. It was as much family history as geography. If events had played out only a little differently, Palancar Valley would have been his home, same as for Eragon. He wondered what it had been like to grow up in such an isolated place.
It made him wish he could talk to his mother, ask her about her childhood and her reasons for abandoning Palancar Valley to follow Morzan into the wider world. And also why, why, she had chosen to save Eragon from Morzan but not him, her eldest son. Had it been a matter of ability and opportunity or one of preference? The question had tormented him from the moment he’d learned of his relation to Eragon. How could a mother sacrifice one child for another?
How? It was true that Eragon had been in mortal danger. He was not Morzan’s son, and had Morzan discovered the truth…Murtagh shuddered to imagine his wrath. So there was that. Still, Murtagh couldn’t help but wonder if it had been choice rather than necessity that kept his mother from bringing him to Palancar Valley.
What was worse, to see Eragon hailed as the hero of the age made Murtagh fear that she’d been right to choose Eragon, and that there was some irreparable wrongness or inadequacy in himself, some flaw that their mother had perceived in him.
Perhaps it was the scar on his back. He was marked by Morzan’s darkness in a manner that Eragon never had been.
Gently, Thorn said, You do not know her reasons or situation. And regardless, I chose you.
The words softened Murtagh’s mood and dispelled some of his bitterness, though it lingered like a poisonous pool at the back of his mind. He scratched the scales along Thorn’s spine and leaned forward to give the dragon a quick embrace.
Then he sat tall in the saddle and strove to bury his dark contemplations.
Halfway through the valley, Murtagh saw what he was looking for: a burnt husk of a farmhouse standing near the river, perhaps a day’s walk from Therinsford. A chill crept down his back, for he knew he was looking at the house where Eragon had lived and that the Ra’zac had burned after questioning—or rather, torturing—his uncle Garrow.
So much from so little, said Thorn.
Indeed.
Murtagh was surprised the farm was still abandoned. He’d thought that Roran or one of the other villagers from Carvahall would have rebuilt it.
Lifting his gaze, he saw Carvahall itself, nestled between river and foothills at the northern end of Palancar Valley. The village looked different than Murtagh expected. A thick wood palisade surrounded a cluster of thatched cottages, rustic and newly raised amid the sooty outlines of what Murtagh realized must have been the original village, before Galbatorix’s forces had razed it. The thought was an uncomfortable reminder of his and Thorn’s actions in Gil’ead. The western flank of Carvahall butted against the Anora, and a sturdy bridge extended across the rushing water. On the far side, a wide, rutted path led to a tall hill that overlooked the rest of the valley, and upon the crown of the hill were the stone foundations and partially built walls of what appeared to be a small castle.
With his mind, Murtagh drew Thorn’s attention to the unfinished castle. It seems Eragon’s cousin has been busy. He learned the hard way that safety can only be ensured through force of arms.
Roran is your cousin as well.
Mmm. I wonder how similar we really are.
Thorn angled downward slightly. Do you wish to land?
Murtagh nearly said yes. He did want to talk with Roran and meet his family—he had a baby daughter, or so Murtagh had heard—for they were Murtagh’s only remaining relatives, aside from Eragon. But if they did, there would be shouting and pointing of weapons and all sorts of difficult emotions. Even imagining it was exhausting.
You could go by yourself, said Thorn. And Murtagh knew how much it cost the dragon to suggest such a thing after the events of Ceunon and Gil’ead.
No…no, I think not. But thank you. If nothing else, he didn’t want to take the time. Visiting Carvahall would delay them by at least a day, probably more, and Murtagh felt an increasing urgency to find the witch-woman Bachel.
“Someday,” he muttered as Carvahall and the unfinished castle passed under them. Someday he and Roran would have a reckoning. Even though they’d never met, the bonds of blood could not be ignored.
Murtagh took one last look over the full scope of Palancar Valley, doing his best to remember every detail of the place where his mother had grown up, and Eragon too. A lonely pain formed in his heart, and then he turned his back on the vista and held on to Thorn even tighter.
Palancar Valley was the last large valley they saw. Thereafter, the mountains grew closer together and only allowed for small rifts and gaps between their forested flanks: narrow, deeply shadowed vales where, during the winter months, the sun never touched the bottom.
As they flew, Murtagh had a sense they were leaving behind the last vestiges of civilization. As rough and isolated as Carvahall was, it at least shared some connection with the rest of Nasuada’s realm. Now they were entering lands that belonged to no country or race.
By late afternoon, the Bay of Fundor was visible to their right, butted up against the edge of the Spine. The mountains plunged to the water’s edge, with hardly a buffer of open land, and the air acquired the taste of salt, and the cries of gulls and terns followed them along the jagged range.
Look for a wharf or a jetty. Any sort of building, said Murtagh, even though he knew they were probably still several days away from the village they sought.
Thorn coughed in agreement.
Before long, a harsh wind sprang up from the north, and Thorn’s flight slowed until they were barely moving relative to the ground.
Enough, said Murtagh, and Thorn descended to a small island—no more than a hundred feet across—just off the shore. There they camped, and the wind bore down on them with unrelenting ferocity while flurries of snow obscured the mountains.
By morning, the clouds had vanished.
We should make haste, said Thorn. The weather will not last.
Whitecapped water to the right, mountains beneath and to the left. A domed expanse of sky ahead. The landscape was beautiful and forbidding in equal measure, and Murtagh felt the loneliness of their position with physical force.
He kept an eye on the bay, but no ships appeared. If anyone were making the trip to visit Bachel, they were steering well away from the bay’s western shore.
That day they saw great numbers of wildlife along the edge of the bay. Vast herds of bugling red elk, the animals far larger than those Murtagh had hunted on the plains by Gil’ead. Giant brown bears that trundled their solitary way through the forest. Packs of shaggy grey wolves. Hawks that screamed, and ravens and crows that cawed, and fish vultures that wheeled above the shallows and occasionally dove for the silvery bergenhed that darted through the leaden water.
Even high in the air, Murtagh felt the need to stay alert. The mountains were stark and savage, and the slightest mistake might cost them their lives, despite all their strength, spells, and experience. It was not lost on him or Thorn that Galbatorix’s first dragon, Jarnunvösk, had died in the frozen reaches of the Spine.