Inheritance (45 page)

The remaining priests extricated themselves and resumed their charge. Stepping forward, Eragon blocked a clumsy slash from the foremost priest; then—with a shout of
“Ha!”
—he drove his fist into the man’s gut and sent him flying into a pew, which the priest struck with a nasty crack.

Eragon killed the next man in a similar manner. A green and yellow dart buried itself in the throat of the priest to his right, and there was a tawny blur as Solembum leaped past him and tackled another of the group.

That left but one of Tosk’s followers standing before him. With her free hand, Arya grabbed the woman by the front of her leather robes and threw her screaming thirty feet over the pews.

Four novitiates had lifted up the High Priest’s bier and were carrying it at a quick trot along the east side of the cathedral as they headed toward the front entrance of the building.

Seeing them escaping, Eragon uttered a roar and bounded onto the altar, knocking a plate and goblet to the floor. From there, he jumped out over the bodies of the fallen priests. He landed lightly in the aisle and sprinted to the end of the cathedral, heading off the novitiates.

The four young men stopped when they saw Eragon arrive at the doors. “Turn around!” shrieked the High Priest. “Turn around!” Its servants obeyed, only to be confronted by Arya standing behind them, one of their own slung over her right shoulder.

The novitiates yelped and turned sideways, darting between two rows of pews. Before they had gone more than a few feet, Solembum stepped around the end of the pews and began to pad toward them. The werecat’s ears were pressed flat against his skull, and the constant low rumble of his growl made Eragon’s neck prickle. Close behind him came Angela, striding down the cathedral from the altar, her poniard in one hand and a green and yellow dart in the other.

Eragon wondered how many weapons she had about herself.

To their credit, the novitiates did not lose their courage or abandon their master. Instead, the four shouted and ran even faster at Solembum, presumably because the werecat was the smallest and the closest of their opponents, and because they believed he would be the easiest to overcome.

They were mistaken.

In a single lithe movement, Solembum crouched, jumped from the floor to the top of a pew. Then, without stopping, he leaped toward one of the two lead novitiates.

As the werecat sailed through the air, the High Priest shouted something in the ancient language—Eragon did not recognize the word, but the sound of it was unmistakably that of the elves’ native language. Whatever the spell was, it seemed to have no effect on Solembum, although Eragon saw Angela stumble as if she had been struck.

Solembum collided with the novitiate at whom he had flung
himself, and the young man tumbled to the floor, screaming as Solembum mauled him. The rest of the novitiates tripped over their companion’s body, and the lot of them fell in a tangled heap, spilling the High Priest off its bier and onto one of the pews, where the creature lay squirming like a maggot.

Eragon caught up with them a second later, and with three swift strokes, he slew all of the novitiates, save the one whose neck Solembum held clamped between his jaws.

Once Eragon was sure the men were dead, he turned to strike down the High Priest once and for all. As he started toward the limbless figure, another mind invaded his, probing and grasping at the most intimate parts of his self, seeking to control his thoughts. The vicious attack forced Eragon to stop and concentrate on defending himself from the intruder.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Arya and Solembum also appeared immobilized. The herbalist was the sole exception. She paused for a moment when the attack commenced, but then she continued to walk with slow, shuffling steps toward Eragon.

The High Priest stared at Eragon, its deep-set, dark-ringed eyes burning with hate and fury. If the creature had had arms and legs, Eragon was convinced that it would have tried to tear out his heart with its bare hands. As it was, the malevolence of its gaze was so intense, Eragon half expected the priest to wiggle off the pew and start biting at his ankles.

The assault on his mind intensified as Angela drew near. The High Priest—for it
had
to be the High Priest who was responsible—was far more skilled than any of its underlings. To engage in mental combat with four different people at once, and to present a credible threat to each of the four, was a remarkable feat, especially when the enemies were an elf, a Dragon Rider, a witch, and a werecat. The High Priest had one of the most formidable minds Eragon had ever encountered; if not for the help of his companions, Eragon suspected that he would have succumbed to the creature’s onslaughts.
The priest did things the likes of which Eragon had never experienced before, such as binding Eragon’s stray thoughts to Arya’s and Solembum’s, wrapping them into a knot of such confusion that for brief moments Eragon lost track of his own identity.

At last Angela turned in to the space between the pews. She picked her way around Solembum—who crouched next to the novitiate he had killed, every hair on his body standing on end—and then carefully made her way over the corpses of the three novitiates Eragon had slain.

As she approached, the High Priest began to thrash like a hooked fish in an attempt to push itself farther up the pew. At the same time, the pressure on Eragon’s mind lessened, although not enough for him to risk moving.

The herbalist stopped when she reached the High Priest, and the High Priest surprised Eragon by giving up its struggle and lying panting on the seat of the bench. For a minute, the hollow-eyed creature and the short, stern-faced woman glared at each other, an invisible battle of wills taking place between them.

Then the High Priest flinched, and a smile appeared on Angela’s lips. She dropped her poniard and, from within her dress, drew forth a tiny dagger with a blade the color of a ruddy sunset. Leaning over the High Priest, she whispered, ever so faintly, “You ought to know my name, tongueless one. If you had, you never would have dared oppose us. Here, let me tell it to you.…”

Her voice dropped even lower then, too low for Eragon to hear, but as she spoke, the High Priest blanched, and its puckered mouth opened, forming a round black oval, and an unearthly howl emanated from its throat, and the whole of the cathedral rang with the creature’s baying.

“Oh, be quiet!” exclaimed the herbalist, and she buried her sunset-colored dagger in the center of the High Priest’s chest.

The blade flashed white-hot and vanished with a sound like a far-off thunderclap. The area around the wound glowed like burning wood; then skin and flesh began to disintegrate into a fine, dark soot
that poured into the High Priest’s chest. With a choked gargle, the creature’s howl ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

The spell quickly devoured the rest of the High Priest, reducing its body to a pile of black powder, the shape of which matched the outline of the priest’s head and torso.

“And good riddance,” said Angela with a firm nod.

ragon shook himself as if waking from a bad dream.

Now that he no longer had to fight off the High Priest, he gradually became aware that the priory bell was tolling—a loud, insistent sound that reminded him of when the Ra’zac had chased him from the cathedral during his first visit to Dras-Leona, with Brom.

Murtagh and Thorn will be here soon
, he thought.
We have to leave before then
.

He sheathed Tinkledeath and handed it to Angela. “Here,” he said, “I think you’ll want this.” Then he pulled the corpses of the novitiates aside until he uncovered Brisingr. As his hand closed around the hilt, a sense of relief swept through him. Though the herbalist’s sword was a good and dangerous blade, it was not
his
weapon. Without Brisingr, he felt exposed, vulnerable—the same as he did whenever he and Saphira were apart.

It took him another few moments of searching to find his ring, which had rolled under one of the pews, and his necklace, which was wrapped around one of the handles of the bier. Among the pile of bodies, he also discovered Arya’s sword, which she was pleased to recover. But of his belt, the belt of Beloth the Wise, there was no sign.

Eragon looked under all the nearby pews, and he even ran back to the altar and inspected the area around it.

“It’s not here,” he finally said, despairing. He turned toward the freestanding wall that hid the entrance to the underground chambers. “They must have left it in the tunnels.” He cast his gaze in the direction of the priory. “Or maybe …” He hesitated, torn between the two options.

Muttering the words under his breath, he cast a spell designed to find and lead him to the belt, but the only result he received was an image of smooth gray emptiness. As he had feared, there were wards around the belt that protected it from magical observation or interference, just as similar wards protected Brisingr.

Eragon scowled and took a half step toward the freestanding wall.

The bell tolled louder than ever.

“Eragon,” called Arya from the other end of the cathedral, shifting the unconscious novitiate from one shoulder to the other. “We have to go.”

“But—”

“Oromis would understand. It’s not your fault.”

“But—”

“Leave it! The belt has been lost before. We will find it again. But for now, we must fly. Hurry!”

Eragon cursed, spun around, and ran to join Arya, Angela, and Solembum at the front of the cathedral.
Of all the things to lose …
It seemed almost sacrilegious to abandon the belt when so many creatures had died to fill it with energy. Besides, he had a horrible feeling that he might have need of that energy before the day was out.

Even as he and the herbalist pushed open the heavy doors that led out of the cathedral, Eragon sent his mind questing for Saphira, who he knew would be circling high above the city, waiting for him to contact her. The time for discretion had long since passed, and Eragon no longer cared if Murtagh or some other magician sensed his presence.

He soon felt the familiar touch of Saphira’s consciousness. As their thoughts melded together once again, a certain tightness in Eragon’s chest vanished.

What took you so long?
exclaimed Saphira. He could taste her worry, and he knew she had been considering descending upon Dras-Leona and tearing it to pieces in search of him.

He poured his memories into her, sharing everything that had
happened to him since they parted. The process took a few seconds, by which time he, Arya, Angela, and the werecat had exited the cathedral and were running down the front steps.

Without pausing to give Saphira an opportunity to make sense of his jumbled recollections, Eragon said,
We need a distraction—now!

She acknowledged his statement, and he could feel her tip into a steep dive.

Also, tell Nasuada to start her attack. We’ll be at the south gate in a few minutes. If the Varden aren’t there when we open it, I don’t know how we’re going to escape
.

he cool, moist, morning-air-off-water whistled past Saphira’s head as she dove toward the rat-nest-city half lit by the rising sun. The low rays of light made the smelly-wood-eggshell-buildings stand out in high relief, their western sides black with shadow.