Brisingr [en]

personal night.

Eragon said, “Here, eat this.” He thrust the remaining half of his lizard toward Sloan, who, although he could not see it, surely must have smelled the food.

“Where am I?” asked Sloan. With trembling hands, he began to explore the rocks and plants in front of him. He touched his torn wrists and ankles and appeared confused to discover that his fetters were gone.

“The elves — and also the Riders in days gone by — called this place Mirnathor. The dwarves refer to it as Werghadn, and humans as the Gray Heath. If that does not answer your question, then perhaps it will if I say we are a number of leagues southeast of Helgrind, where you were imprisoned.”

Sloan mouthed the word Helgrind. “You rescued me?”

“I did.”

“What about—”

“Leave your questions. Eat this first.”

His harsh tone acted like a whip on the butcher; Sloan cringed and reached with fumbling fingers for the lizard. Releasing it, Eragon retreated to his place next to the rock oven and scooped handfuls of dirt onto the coals, blotting out the glow so that it would not betray their presence in the unlikely event that anyone else was in the vicinity.

After an initial, tentative lick to determine what it was Eragon had given him, Sloan dug his teeth into the lizard and ripped a thick gobbet from the carcass. With each bite, he crammed as much flesh into his mouth as he could and only chewed once or twice before swallowing and repeating the process. He stripped each bone clean with the efficiency of a man who possessed an intimate understanding of how animals were constructed and what was the quickest way to disassemble them. The bones he dropped into a neat pile on his left. As the final morsel of meat from the lizard’s tail vanished down Sloan’s gullet, Eragon handed him the other reptile, which was yet whole. Sloan grunted in thanks and continued to gorge himself, making no attempt to wipe the fat from his mouth and chin.

The second lizard proved to be too large for Sloan to finish. He stopped two ribs above the bottom of the chest cavity and placed what was left of the carcass on the cairn of bones. Then he straightened his back, drew his hand across his lips, tucked his long hair behind his ears, and said, “Thank you, strange sir, for your hospitality. It has been so long since I had a proper meal, I think I prize your food even above my own freedom... If I may ask, do you know of my daughter, Katrina, and what has happened to her? She was imprisoned with me in Helgrind.” His voice contained a complex mixture of emotions: respect, fear, and submission in the presence of an unknown authority; hope and trepidation as to his daughter’s fate; and determination as unyielding as the mountains of the Spine. The one element Eragon expected to hear but did not was the sneering disdain Sloan had used with him during their encounters in Carvahall.

“She is with Roran.”

Sloan gaped. “Roran! How did he get here? Did the Ra’zac capture him as well? Or did—”

“The Ra’zac and their steeds are dead.”

“You killed them? How?... Who—” For an instant, Sloan froze, as if he were stuttering with his entire body, and then his cheeks and mouth went slack and his shoulders caved in and he clutched at a bush to steady himself. He shook his head. “No, no, no... No... It can’t be. The Ra’zac spoke of this; they demanded answers I didn’t have, but I thought ... That is, who would believe...?” His sides heaved with such violence, Eragon wondered if he would hurt himself. In a gasping whisper, as if he were forced to speak after being punched in the middle, Sloan said, “You can’t be Eragon.”

“A sense of doom and destiny descended upon Eragon. He felt as if he were the instrument of those two merciless overlords, and he replied in accordance, slowing his speech so each word struck like a hammer blow and carried all the weight of his dignity, station, and anger. “I am Eragon and far more. I am Argetlam and Shadeslayer and Firesword. My dragon is Saphira, she who is also known as Bjartskular and Flametongue. We were taught by Brom, who was a Rider before us, and by the dwarves and by the elves. We have fought the Urgals and a Shade and Murtagh, who is Morzan’s son. We serve the Varden and the peoples of Alagaesia. And I have brought you here, Sloan Aldensson, to pass judgment upon you for murdering Byrd and for betraying Carvahall to the Empire.”

“You lie! You cannot be—”

“Lie?” roared Eragon. “I do not lie!” Thrusting out with his mind, he engulfed Sloan’s consciousness in his own and forced the butcher to accept memories that confirmed the truth of his statements. He also wanted Sloan to feel the power that was now his and to realize that he was no longer entirely human. And while Eragon was reluctant to admit it, he enjoyed having control over a man who had often made trouble for him and also tormented him with gibes, insulting both him and his family. He withdrew a half minute later.

Sloan continued to quiver, but he did not collapse and grovel as Eragon thought he might. Instead, the butcher’s demeanor became cold and flinty. “Blast you,” he said. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Eragon Son of None. Understand this, though: I did what I did for Katrina’s sake and nothing else.”

“I know. That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

“Do what you want with me, then. I don’t care, so long as she’s safe... Well, go on! What’s it to be? A beating? A branding? They already had my eyes, so one of my hands? Or will you leave me to starve or to be recaptured by the Empire?”

“I have not decided yet.”

Sloan nodded with a sharp motion and pulled his tattered clothes tight around his limbs to ward off the night cold. He sat with military precision, gazing with blank, empty eye sockets into the shadows that ringed their camp. He did not beg. He did not ask for mercy. He did not deny his acts or attempt to placate Eragon. He but sat and waited, armored by his perfect stoic fortitude.

His bravery impressed Eragon.

The dark landscape around them seemed immense beyond reckoning to Eragon, and he felt as if the entire hidden expanse was converging upon him, a notion that heightened his anxiety over the choice that confronted him. My verdict will shape the rest of his life, he thought.

Abandoning for the moment the question of punishment, Eragon considered what he knew about Sloan: the butcher’s overriding love for Katrina — obsessive, selfish, and generally unhealthy as it was, although it had once been something wholesome — his hate and fear of the Spine, which were the offspring of his grief for his late wife, Ismira, who had fallen to her death among those cloud-rending peaks; his estrangement from the remaining branches of his family; his pride in his work; the stories Eragon had heard about Sloan’s childhood; and Eragon’s own knowledge of what it was like to live in Carvahall.

Eragon took that collection of scattered, fragmented insights and turned them over in his mind, pondering their significance. Like the pieces of a puzzle, he tried to fit them together. He rarely succeeded, but he persisted, and gradually he traced a myriad of connections between the events and emotions of Sloan’s life, and thereby he wove a tangled web, the patterns of which represented who Sloan was. Throwing the last line of his web, Eragon felt as if he finally comprehended the reasons for Sloan’s behavior. Because of that, he empathized with Sloan.

More than empathy, he felt he understood Sloan, that he had isolated the core elements of Sloan’s personality, those things one could not remove without irrevocably changing the man. There occurred to him, then, three words in the ancient language that seemed to embody Sloan, and without thinking about it, Eragon whispered the words under his breath.

The sound could not have reached Sloan, yet he stirred — his hands gripping his thighs — and his expression became one of unease.

A cold tingle crawled down Eragon’s left side, and goosebumps appeared on his arms and legs as he watched the butcher. He considered a number of different explanations for Sloan’s reaction, each more elaborate than the last, but only one seemed plausible, and even it struck him as being unlikely. He whispered the trio of words again. As before, Sloan shifted in place, and Eragon heard him mutter, “... someone walking on my grave.”

Eragon released a shaky breath. It was difficult for him to believe, but his experiment left no room for doubt: he had, quite by accident, chanced upon Sloan’s true name. The discovery left him rather bewildered. Knowing someone’s true name was a weighty responsibility, for it granted you absolute power over that person. Because of the inherent risks, the elves rarely revealed their true names, and when they did, it was only to those whom they trusted without reservation.