Nasuada wet her lips. Even though she knew her boldness might cost her, she said, “It seems to me you protest too much.… If the welfare of your subjects were your main concern, you would have flown out to confront the Varden weeks ago, instead of letting an army roam loose within your borders. That is, unless you are not so sure of your might as you pretend. Or is it you fear the elves will take Urû’baen while you are gone?” As had become her habit, she spoke of the Varden as if she knew no more about them than any random person in the Empire.

Galbatorix shifted, and she could tell he was about to respond, but she was not yet finished.

“And what of the Urgals? You cannot convince me your cause is just when you would exterminate an entire race in order to ease your pain at the death of your first dragon. Have you no answer for that, Oath-breaker? … Speak to me of the dragons, then. Explain why you slew so many that you doomed their kind to a slow and inevitable extinction. And finally, explain your mistreatment of the Eldunarí you captured.” In her anger, she allowed herself that one slip. “You have bent and broken them and chained them to your will. There is no rightness in what you do, only selfishness and a never-ending hunger for power.”

Galbatorix regarded her in silence for a long, uncomfortable while. Then she saw his outline move as he crossed his arms. “I think the irons ought to be sufficiently hot by now. Murtagh, if you would …”

She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her skin, and her muscles began to tremble, despite her best efforts to hold them still. One of the iron rods scraped against the lip of the brazier as Murtagh pulled it free. He turned to face her, and she could not help but stare at the tip of the glowing metal. Then she looked into Murtagh’s eyes, and she saw the guilt and self-loathing they contained, and a sense of profound sorrow overcame her.

What fools we are, she thought. What sorry, miserable fools.

After that, she had no more energy for thinking, and so she fell back to her well-worn rituals, clinging to them for survival even as a drowning man might cling to a piece of wood.

When Murtagh and Galbatorix departed, she was in too much pain to do more than gaze mindlessly at the patterns on the ceiling while she struggled not to cry. She was sweating and shivering at the same time, as if she had a fever, and she found it impossible to concentrate upon any one thing for more than a few seconds. The pain from her burns did not subside as it would have if she had been cut or bruised; indeed, the throbbing from her wounds seemed to grow worse with time.

She closed her eyes and concentrated upon slowing her breathing as she tried to calm her body.

The first time Galbatorix and Murtagh had visited her, she had been far more courageous. She had cursed and taunted them and done all she could to hurt them with her words. However, through Murtagh, Galbatorix had made her suffer for her insolence, and she had soon lost her taste for open rebellion. The iron made her timid; even the memory of it made her want to curl into a tight little ball. During their second, most recent visit, she had said as little as possible until her final, imprudent outburst.

She had tried to test Galbatorix’s claim that neither he nor Murtagh would lie to her. She did this by asking them questions about the Empire’s inner workings, facts that her spies had informed her of but that Galbatorix had no reason to believe she knew. So far as she could determine, Galbatorix and Murtagh had told her the truth, but she was not about to trust anything the king said when there was no way to verify his claims.

As for Murtagh, she was not quite so sure. When he was with the king, she gave no credence to his words, but when he was by himself …

Several hours after her first, agonizing audience with King Galbatorix—when she had at long last fallen into a shallow, troubled sleep—Murtagh had come alone to the Hall of the Soothsayer, bleary-eyed and smelling of drink. He had stood by the monolith upon which she lay, and he had stared at her with such a strange, tormented expression, she had not been sure what he was going to do.

At last he had turned away, walked to the nearest wall, and slid down it to the floor. There he sat, with his knees pulled up against his chest, his long, shaggy hair obscuring most of his face, and blood oozing from the torn skin on the knuckles of his right hand. After what felt like minutes, he had reached into his maroon jerkin—for he was wearing the same clothes as earlier, although without the mask—and drawn forth a small stone bottle. He drank several times and then began to talk.

He talked, and she listened. She had no choice, but she did not allow herself to believe what he said. Not at first. For all she knew, everything he said or did was a sham designed to win her confidence.

Murtagh had started by telling her a rather garbled story about a man named Tornac, which involved a riding mishap and some sort of advice Tornac had given him regarding how an honorable man ought to live. She had been unable to make out whether Tornac was a friend, a servant, a distant relative, or some combination thereof, but whatever he was, it was obvious that he had meant a great deal to Murtagh.

When he concluded his story, Murtagh had said, “Galbatorix was going to have you killed.… He knew Elva wasn’t guarding you as she used to, so he decided it was the perfect time to have you assassinated. I only found out about his plan by chance; I happened to be with him when he gave the orders to the Black Hand.” Murtagh shook his head. “It’s my fault. I convinced him to have you brought here instead. He liked that; he knew you would lure Eragon here that much faster.… It was the only way I could keep him from killing you.… I’m sorry.… I’m sorry.” And he buried his head in his arms.