With some difficulty, Eragon swallowed his curiosity and nodded.
He stripped a tunic and a padded jerkin off one of the fallen men, and after donning the clothes, he led the way down the hall and through the archway at the far end.
They encountered no one else in the complex of rooms and corridors thereafter, nor did they find any sign of their stolen possessions. Although Eragon was glad to avoid notice, the absence of even servants worried him. He hoped that he and his companions had not triggered alarms that had warned the priests of their escape.
Unlike the abandoned chambers they had seen before the ambush, those they passed through now were filled with tapestries, furniture, and strange devices made of brass and crystal, the purpose of which Eragon could not fathom. More than once, a desk or a bookcase tempted him to pause and inspect its contents, but he always resisted the urge. They did not have time to read musty old papers, no matter how intriguing.
Angela chose the path they took whenever there was more than one option, but Eragon remained in the lead, clutching the wire-wrapped hilt of Tinkledeath with a grip so hard, his hand began to cramp.
Soon enough, they arrived at a passageway ending in a flight of stone steps that narrowed as it rose. Two novitiates stood by the stairs, one on either side, each holding a rack of bells such as Eragon had seen earlier.
He ran at the two young men and managed to stab one novitiate through the neck before he could shout or ring his bells. The other, however, had time to do both before Solembum leaped on him and bore him to the ground, tearing at his face, and the whole of the passageway rang with the clamor.
“Hurry!” Eragon cried as he bounded up the stairs.
At the top of the steps was a freestanding wall some ten feet wide, covered with ornate scrollwork and carvings that seemed vaguely familiar to Eragon. He dodged around the wall and came out into a beam of rose-tinted light of such intensity that he faltered, confused. He lifted Tinkledeath’s scabbard to shade his eyes.
Not five feet in front of him, the High Priest sat on its bier, blood dripping from a cut on its shoulder. Another of the priests—a woman missing both her hands—sat kneeling by the side of the bier, catching the fall of blood in a golden chalice that she held clamped between her forearms. Both she and the High Priest stared at Eragon with astonishment.
Then Eragon looked past them and saw, as if in a series of lightning flashes: Massive ribbed columns rising toward a vaulted ceiling that vanished into shadow. Stained-glass windows set within towering walls—the windows on the left burning with light from the rising sun; those on the right dull and flat, lifeless. Pale statues standing between the windows. Rows of granite pews, dappled with different colors, extending all the way to the far-off entrance to the nave. And, filling the first four rows, a flock of leather-garbed priests, their faces upturned and their mouths opened in song, like so many hatchlings begging for food.
He was, Eragon belatedly realized, standing in the great cathedral of Dras-Leona, on the other side of the altar he had once knelt before in reverence, long ago.
The handless woman dropped the chalice and stood, throwing her arms out wide as she shielded the High Priest with her body. Behind her, Eragon glimpsed the blue of Brisingr’s sheath lying near the leading edge of the bier, and he thought he saw Aren next to it.
Before he could chase after his sword, two guards rushed toward him from either side of the altar, slashing at him with engraved, red-tasseled pikes. He sidestepped the first guard and sliced the shaft of the man’s pike in half, sending the blade flying through the air. Then Eragon sliced the man himself in half; Tinkledeath passed through his flesh and bones with shocking ease.
Eragon dispatched the second guard just as quickly and turned to face a pair approaching from behind. The herbalist joined him, brandishing her poniard, and somewhere off to his left, Solembum growled. Arya hung back from the fighting, still carrying the young man.
The spilled blood from the chalice had coated the floor around the altar. The guards slipped in the puddle and the rear man fell and knocked his companion off his feet. Eragon shuffled toward them—never lifting his feet off the floor so as to avoid losing his balance—and before the guards could react, he slew them both, taking care to control the herbalist’s enchanted blade as it effortlessly cut through the two men.
As he did, Eragon was aware that the High Priest was screaming, as if at a great distance, “Kill the infidels! Kill them! Don’t let the blasphemers escape! They must be punished for their crimes against the Old Ones!”
The congregation of priests began to howl and stamp their feet, and Eragon felt their minds clawing at his, like a pack of wolves tearing at a weakened deer. He retreated deep within himself, warding off the attacks with techniques he had been practicing under Glaedr’s tutelage. It was difficult to defend himself from so many foes, however, and he feared that he would not be able to maintain his barriers for long. His one advantage was that the panicked, disorganized priests attacked him as individuals, not as a unit; their combined might would have overwhelmed him.
Then Arya’s consciousness was pressing against his—a familiar, comforting presence amid the clutch of enemies scrabbling against his inner self. Relieved, he opened himself to her, and they joined their minds, even as he and Saphira would do, and for a time their identities merged and he lost the ability to determine where many of their shared thoughts and feelings came from.
Together they stabbed with their minds at one of the priests. The man struggled to evade their grasp, like a fish wriggling through their fingers, but they tightened their grip and refused to let him escape. He was reciting a stilted, oddly worded phrase in an attempt to keep them out of his consciousness; Eragon assumed it was a scrap of scripture from the Book of Tosk.
The priest lacked discipline, however, and his concentration soon wavered as he thought, The infidels are too close to Master. We have to kill them before—Wait! No! No …!
Eragon and Arya seized upon the priest’s weakness and quickly subjugated the man’s thoughts to their will. Once they were certain he could not retaliate against them with mind or body, Arya cast a spell that, from examining the priest’s memories, she knew could slip past his wards.
In the third row of pews, a man screamed and burst into flame, green fire pouring from his ears, mouth, and eyes. The flames ignited the clothes of several priests close to him, and the burning men and women began to thrash and run about wildly, further disrupting the attacks against Eragon. The rippling flames sounded like branches snapping in a storm.
The herbalist ran down from the altar and moved among the priests, stabbing here and there. Solembum followed close at her heels, finishing off those she felled.
After that, it was easy for Eragon and Arya to invade and seize control of their enemies’ minds. Continuing to work together, they killed four more priests, at which point the rest of the congregation broke and scattered. Some fled through the vestibule that Eragon remembered led to the priory next to the cathedral, while others crouched behind the pews and wrapped their arms around their heads.
Six of the priests, however, neither fled nor hid, but rather charged Eragon, brandishing curved knives with what hands they still possessed. Eragon cut at the first priest before she could strike at him. To his annoyance, the woman was protected by a ward that stopped Tinkledeath half a foot from her neck, causing the sword to turn in his hand and a shock to run up his arm. With his left hand, Eragon swung at the woman. For whatever reason, the spell did not stop his fist, and he felt the bones in her chest give way as he knocked her sprawling into the people behind her.