3-Brisingr-3 (39 page)

Eager to escape before the lot of them could descend upon him, Eragon slipped away between the rows of tents, pleased with what he had accomplished.
It might take me a while
, he thought,
but I always
settle my debts
.

Before long, he arrived at another tent, close to the eastern edge of the camp. He knocked on the pole between the two front flaps.

With a sharp sound, the entrance was yanked aside to reveal Jeod’s wife, Helen, standing in the opening. She regarded Eragon with a cold expression. “You’ve come to talk with
him,
I suppose.”

“If he’s here.” Which Eragon knew perfectly well he was, for he could sense Jeod’s mind as clearly as Helen’s.

For a moment, Eragon thought Helen might deny the presence of her husband, but then she shrugged and moved aside. “You might as well come in, then.”

Eragon found Jeod sitting on a stool, poring over an assortment of scrolls, books, and sheaves of loose papers that were piled high on a cot bare of blankets. A thin shock of hair hung across Jeod’s forehead, mimicking the curve of the scar that stretched from his scalp to his left temple.

“Eragon!” he cried as he saw him, the lines of concentration on his face clearing. “Welcome, welcome!”

He shook Eragon’s hand and then offered him the stool. “Here, I shall sit on the corner of the bed. No, please, you are our guest. Would you care for some food or drink? Nasuada gives us an extra ration, so do not restrain yourself for fear that we will go hungry on your account. It is poor fare compared with what we served you in Teirm, but then no one should go to war and expect to eat well, not even a king.”

“A cup of tea would be nice,” said Eragon.

“Tea and biscuits it is.” Jeod glanced at Helen.

Snatching the kettle off the ground, Helen braced it against her hip, fit the nipple of a waterskin in the end of the spout, and squeezed. The kettle reverberated with a dull roar as a stream of water struck the bottom. Helen’s fingers tightened around the neck of the waterskin, restricting the flow to a languorous trickle. She remained thus, with the detached look of a person performing an unpleasant task, while the water droplets drummed out a maddening beat against the inside of the kettle.

An apologetic smile flickered across Jeod’s face. He stared at a scrap of paper beside his knee as he waited for Helen to finish. Eragon studied a wrinkle in the side of the tent.

The bombastic trickle continued for over three minutes.

When the kettle was finally full, Helen removed the deflated waterskin from the spout, hung it on a hook on the center pole of the tent, and stormed out.

Eragon raised an eyebrow at Jeod.

Jeod spread his hands. “My position with the Varden is not as prominent as she had hoped, and she blames me for the fact. She agreed to flee Teirm with me, expecting, or so I believe, that Nasuada would vault me into the inner circle of her advisers, or grant me lands and riches fit for a lord, or some other extravagant reward for my help stealing Saphira’s egg those many years ago. What Helen did not bargain on was the unglamorous life of a common swordsman: sleeping in a tent, fixing her own food, washing her own clothes, and so on. It’s not that wealth and status are her only concerns, but you have to understand, she was born into one of the richest shipping families of Teirm, and for most of our marriage, I was not unsuccessful in my own ventures. She is unused to such privations as these, and she has yet to reconcile herself to them.” His shoulders rose and fell a fraction of an inch. “My own hope was that this adventure—if it deserves such a romantic term—would narrow the rifts that have opened between us in recent years, but as always, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.”

“Do
you
feel that the Varden ought to show you greater consideration?” asked Eragon.

“For myself, no. For Helen . . .” Jeod hesitated. “I want her to be happy. My reward was in escaping from Gil’ead with my life when Brom and I were attacked by Morzan, his dragon, and his men; in the satisfaction of knowing that I had helped strike a crippling blow against Galbatorix; in being able to return to my previous life and yet still help further the Varden’s cause; and in being able to marry Helen. Those were my rewards, and I am more than content with them. Any doubts I had vanished the instant I saw Saphira fly out of the smoke of the Burning Plains. I do not know what to do about Helen, though. But I forget myself. These are not your troubles, and I should not lay them upon you.”

Eragon touched a scroll with the tip of his index finger. “Then tell me, why so many papers? Have you become a copyist?”

The question amused Jeod. “Hardly, although the work is often as tedious. Since it was I who discovered the hidden passageway into Galbatorix’s castle, in Urû’baen, and I was able to bring with me some of the rare books from my library in Teirm, Nasuada has set me to searching for similar weaknesses in the other cities of the Empire. If I could find mention of a tunnel that led underneath the walls of Dras-Leona, for example, it might save us a great deal of bloodshed.”

“Where are you looking?”

“Everywhere I can.” Jeod brushed back the lock of hair that was hanging over his forehead. “Histories; myths; legends; poems; songs; religious tracts; the writings of Riders, magicians, wanderers, madmen, obscure potentates, various generals, anyone who might have knowledge of a hidden door or a secret mechanism or something of that ilk that we might turn to our advantage. The amount of material I have to sift through is immense, for all of the cities have stood for hundreds of years, and some antedate the arrival of humans in Alagaësia.”

“Is it likely you will actually find anything?”

“No, not likely. It is never likely that you will succeed in ferreting out the secrets of the past. But I may still prevail, given enough time. I have no doubt that what I am searching for exists in each of the cities; they are too old
not
to contain surreptitious ways in and out through their walls. However, it is another question entirely whether
records
of those ways exist and whether we possess those records. People who know about concealed trapdoors and the like usually want to keep the information to themselves.”

Jeod grasped a handful of the papers next to him on the cot and brought them closer to his face, then snorted and tossed the papers away. “I’m trying to solve riddles invented by people who didn’t want them to be solved.”

He and Eragon continued talking about other, less important matters until Helen reappeared, carrying three mugs of steaming-hot red-clover tea. As Eragon accepted his mug, he noted that her earlier anger seemed to have subsided, and he wondered if she had been listening outside to what Jeod had said about her. She handed Jeod his mug and, from somewhere behind Eragon, procured a tin plate laden with flat biscuits and a small clay pot of honey. Then she withdrew a few feet and stood leaning against the center pole, blowing on her own mug.

As was polite, Jeod waited until Eragon had taken a biscuit from the plate and consumed a bite of it before saying, “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Eragon? Unless I am mistaken, this is no idle visit.”

Eragon sipped his tea. “After the Battle of the Burning Plains, I promised I would tell you how Brom died. That is why I have come.”

A gray pallor replaced the color in Jeod’s cheeks. “Oh.”

“I don’t have to, if that’s not what you want,” Eragon quickly pointed out.

With an effort, Jeod shook his head. “No, I do. You merely caught me by surprise.”

When Jeod did not ask Helen to leave, Eragon was uncertain whether he should continue, but then he decided that it did not matter if Helen or anyone else heard his story. In a slow, deliberate voice, Eragon began to recount the events that had transpired since he and Brom had left Jeod’s house. He described their encounter with the band of Urgals, their search for the Ra’zac in Dras-Leona, how the Ra’zac had ambushed them outside the city, and how the Ra’zac had stabbed Brom as they fled from Murtagh’s attack.

Eragon’s throat constricted as he spoke of Brom’s last hours, of the cool sandstone cave where he had lain, of the feelings of helplessness that had assailed Eragon as he watched Brom slipping away, of the smell of death that had pervaded the dry air, of Brom’s final words, of the sandstone tomb Eragon had made with magic, and of how Saphira had transformed it into pure diamond.

“If only I had known what I know now,” Eragon said, “then I could have saved him. Instead . . .”

Unable to summon words past the tightness in his throat, he wiped his eyes and gulped at his tea. He wished it were something stronger.

A sigh escaped Jeod. “And so ended Brom. Alas, we are all far worse off without him. If he could have chosen the means of his death, though, I think he would have chosen to die like this, in the service of the Varden, defending the last free Dragon Rider.”

“Were you aware that he had been a Rider himself?”

Jeod nodded. “The Varden told me before I met him.”

“He seemed as if he was a man who revealed little about himself,” observed Helen.

Jeod and Eragon laughed. “That he was,” said Jeod. “I still have not recovered from the shock of seeing him and you, Eragon, standing on our doorstep. Brom always kept his own counsel, but we became close friends when we were traveling together, and I cannot understand why he let me believe he was dead for what, sixteen, seventeen years? Too long. What’s more, since it was Brom who delivered Saphira’s egg to the Varden after he slew Morzan in Gil’ead, the Varden couldn’t very well tell me they had her egg without revealing that Brom was still alive. So I’ve spent the better part of two decades convinced that the one great adventure of my life had ended in failure and that, as a result, we had lost our only hope of having a Dragon Rider to help us overthrow Galbatorix. The knowledge was no easy burden, I can assure you. . . .”

With one hand, Jeod rubbed his brow. “When I opened our front door and realized whom I was looking at, I thought that the ghosts of my past had come to haunt me. Brom said he kept himself hidden to ensure that he would still be alive to train the new Rider when he or she should appear, but his explanation has never entirely satisfied me. Why was it necessary for him to cut himself off from nearly everyone he knew or cared about? What was he afraid of? What was he protecting?”

Jeod fingered the handle of his mug. “I cannot prove it, but it seems to me that Brom must have discovered something in Gil’ead when he was fighting Morzan and his dragon, something so momentous, it moved Brom to abandon everything that was his life up until then. It’s a fanciful conjecture, I admit, but I cannot account for Brom’s actions except by postulating that there was a piece of information he never shared with me nor another living soul.”

Again Jeod sighed, and he drew a hand down his long face. “After so many years apart, I had hoped Brom and I might ride together once more, but fate had other ideas, it seems. And then to lose him a second time but a few weeks after discovering he was still alive was a cruel joke for the world to play.”

Helen swept past Eragon and went to stand by Jeod, touching him on the shoulder. He offered her a wan smile and wrapped an arm around her narrow waist. “I’m glad that you and Saphira gave Brom a tomb even a dwarf king might envy. He deserved that and more for all he did for Alagaësia. Although once people discover his grave, I have a horrible suspicion they will not hesitate to break it apart for the diamond.”

“If they do, they will regret it,” muttered Eragon. He resolved to return to the site at the earliest opportunity and place wards around Brom’s tomb to protect it from grave robbers. “Besides, they will be too busy hunting gold lilies to bother Brom.”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s not important.” The three of them sipped their tea. Helen nibbled on a biscuit. Then Eragon asked, “You met Morzan, didn’t you?”

“They were not the friendliest of occasions, but yes, I met him.”

“What was he like?”

“As a person? I really couldn’t say, although I’m well acquainted with tales of his atrocities. Every time Brom and I crossed paths with him, he was trying to kill us. Or rather, capture, torture, and
then
kill us, none of which are conducive to establishing a close relationship.” Eragon was too intent to respond to Jeod’s humor. Jeod shifted on the bed. “As a warrior, Morzan was terrifying. We spent a great deal of time running away from him, I seem to remember—him and his dragon, that is. Few things are as frightening as having an enraged dragon chasing you.”

“How did he look?”

“You seem inordinately interested in him.”

Eragon blinked once. “I’m curious. He was the last of the Forsworn to die, and Brom was the one who slew him. And now Morzan’s son is my mortal enemy.”

“Let me see, then,” said Jeod. “He was tall, he had broad shoulders, his hair was dark like a raven’s feathers, and his eyes were different colors. One was blue and one was black. His chin was bare, and he was missing the tip of one of his fingers; I forget which. Handsome he was, in a cruel, haughty manner, and when he spoke, he was most charismatic. His armor was always polished bright, whether mail or a breastplate, as if he had no fear of being spotted by his enemies, which I suppose he hadn’t. When he laughed, it sounded as if he were in pain.”

“What of his companion, the woman Selena? Did you meet her as well?”

Jeod laughed. “If I had, I would not be here today. Morzan may have been a fearsome swordsman, a formidable magician, and a murderous traitor, but it was that woman of his who inspired the most terror in people. Morzan only used her for missions that were so repugnant, difficult, or secretive that no one else would agree to undertake them. She was his Black Hand, and her presence always signaled imminent death, torture, betrayal, or some other horror.” Eragon felt sick hearing his mother described thusly. “She was utterly ruthless, devoid of either pity or compassion. It was said that when she asked Morzan to enter his service, he tested her by teaching her the word for
heal
in the ancient language—for she was a spellcaster as well as a common fighter—and then pitting her against twelve of his finest swordsmen.”