To Murtagh’s surprise, the man bowed in a formal manner and said, “Welcome, Dragon. Welcome, Rider.” His accent reminded Murtagh more of an Urgal’s speech than any human tongue. “Come. This way. Bachel awaits.” And then the rawboned man turned and walked back into the village, heading up the main road. As if at an unseen signal, the rest of the group dispersed among the buildings.
“Blast it,” Murtagh muttered. He was no lapdog to be summoned at Bachel’s convenience, and yet he and Thorn were the intruders here. Or, if he were being charitable, they were the guests. To expect Bachel to come out to meet them might be unreasonable, depending on the customs of her people.
And he wasn’t prepared to be unreasonable. Not yet.
Still, he hated to enter the village. It would be the perfect place for an ambush, if the Dreamers were so inclined. There was also the matter of Thorn: the buildings looked uncomfortably close for him.
I will be all right, said Thorn. Do not worry about me.
How can I not? Maybe I should go alone.
Thorn growled. No! I would rather bite off my own tail. We stay together.
Are you sure? Absolutely sure?
Yes!
Fine. But if you need to leave, we leave, no matter what. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
I promise, said Thorn, and hummed his appreciation.
Murtagh tapped Zar’roc’s blade against his thigh as he studied the village a moment more. Let the witch play her little games. It mattered not, and he refused to wait outside her doors, like a supplicant peasant seeking a favor. Now she might see them enter her domain, proud and unafraid. “After him, then.”
Thorn pressed his wings close against his sides and started forward. His claws clacked loudly against the mossy flagstones that paved the road as they entered the village.
As Murtagh had feared, there was little space for them between the buildings, and Thorn grew tense beneath him. Murtagh could feel his apprehension as if it were his own. Still, for the time, the dragon kept himself under control.
Murtagh had never seen buildings such as the ones in the village. The stonework was dwarven in quality, but with an elven grace, and there were strange runes—neither dwarven nor elven—cut into the frames and lintels of the arched doorways. Sculptures of dragon-like beasts adorned the cornices, and their frozen snarls gave Murtagh an uneasy sense of being watched, as if the entire village were a living creature crouched close to the earth, waiting for its prey.
The most unusual feature of the village was the raised patterns covering walls, set into mosaics, and painted onto shutters—swirling, branching, crystalline patterns that seemed to repeat themselves as they diminished: variations on a common theme. The patterns were dangerously fascinating; Murtagh felt as if he could stare into them for the rest of his life and still find new things to see. They contained an obsessive, seemingly impossible amount of detail, and the longer Murtagh looked, the more his vision swirled and swayed. The decorations reminded him of the involuted depths of an Eldunarí…or of shapes that appeared only in the deepest of dreams.
With an effort, he focused elsewhere.
The curious craftsmanship of the village disturbed him. To find such accomplished, well-formed creations in such an isolated place didn’t make sense. There ought to be a long lineage of like works elsewhere, but there wasn’t. Not in Alagaësia, at least, and if the tradition came from across the ocean, well, that was hardly more explicable.
Murtagh shifted in his seat, feeling as if the ground had tilted beneath them. There was a deeper mystery here than he had anticipated.
Careful now, he said.
A sense of terse acknowledgment came from Thorn.
The goateed man was waiting for them halfway through the village. Seeing them, he turned and continued walking at a steady pace, long arms swinging, oversized hands nearly at his knees. Each step, he put his whole foot flat on the flagstones—a firm, unwavering stamp, heel and toes landing as one—and then pushed off in a similar fashion. Stamp, lift. Stamp, lift.
The street ascended at a steep incline toward the far side of the village. As they went, Murtagh kept a close watch on the rooflines, the alleys, the corners: anywhere that foes might be waiting. But no one showed their face, and he didn’t want to risk opening his mind to search the area. That was a good way to invite a mental attack.
The more Murtagh saw of the settlement, the more he gathered an impression of extreme age. The sculptures were weathered, the steps hollowed; walls bowed from centuries of weight, and more than a few structures had collapsed on themselves and remained as crumbling, lichen-covered ruins.
I do not like this place, said Thorn.
No. Murtagh reset his grip on sword and shield. Maybe he should have contacted Eragon before entering the village. There were many secrets in the world, and some of them were older than even the Riders. Nasuada has to be told of this, he thought.
The man led them into a modest square in front of the temple-like building. A fountain stood in the center of the yard, but it was dry and full of dust and overgrown with moss, and the fluted finial atop had cracked and split sideways, leaving a chisel tip of stone pointing toward the dismal sky.
The temple—for so Murtagh had decided it was—had a two-tiered roof, with the topmost roof a ribbed dome the same as the other buildings in the village. A double row of columns guarded the shadowed entrance, while a line of dragon sculptures loomed outward from between the slitted windows. And wrapped around the columns and pedestals and the scaled statues were the same crystalline patterns seen elsewhere: a membrane of eroded veins, rotten and raveled and pocked by time.
Even new, the temple would have possessed a grim and disagreeable presence. In its current state of decay, the building’s gloom-ridden bulk was all the more daunting; it projected an ancient and enduring strength—ironhard, obdurate, and devoid of forgiveness.
The goateed man stopped and took up position beside one of the pillars that framed the recessed entrance. He clasped his heavy hands in front of himself.
A horn sounded within the temple, a long, wavering note with a haunting quality, and the sound echoed with dire effect off the walls of the buildings and the flanks of the mountains. The nape of Murtagh’s neck prickled, and he lifted Zar’roc to the ready. Remember who you are, he told himself.
Footsteps approached from inside the temple: tromping boots marching in matching time. From the shadowed entrance, a double line of fourteen armored men emerged, shields and spears held upright. Their helmets and breastplates were dented and tarnished and of an unfamiliar design. But the blades of their spears were sharp and free of rust, and they wore arming swords at their waists.
The formation parted in half, and the warriors arranged themselves on either side of the entrance. They displayed admirable discipline, moving with an alert precision that told Murtagh they weren’t just ceremonial guards but warriors with actual fighting experience.
Behind them came another fourteen figures: these white-robed, with hoods pulled low over their faces so nothing could be seen of their features. Men and women alike, and each held a metal frame set with rods of iron from which hung open-mouthed bells. They shook the frames with every step, and the tongues of the bells wagged in a discordant chorus.
There was an air of ancient ritual about the procession, as if such a thing had been done for a thousand years or more.