The group stopped, and Eragon slowly straightened his back, wincing as his sore muscles stretched.
“This would not have been part of Erst Graybeard’s plans,” said Arya.
“Which path should we pick?” asked Wyrden.
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked the herbalist. “The left one. It’s always the left one.” And she strode toward that selfsame arch even as she spoke.
Eragon could not help himself. “Left according to which direction? If you were starting from the other side, left—”
“Left would be right and right would be left, yes, yes,” said the herbalist. Her eyes narrowed. “Sometimes you’re too clever for your own good, Shadeslayer.… Very well, we’ll try it your way. But don’t say I didn’t warn you if we end up wandering around here for days on end.”
Eragon would actually have preferred to take the center archway, as it seemed the most likely to lead them up to the streets, but he did not want to get into an argument with the herbalist. Either way, we’ll find stairs soon enough, he thought. There can’t be that many chambers under Dras-Leona.
Holding her werelight aloft, Angela took the lead. Wyrden and Arya followed while Eragon brought up the rear.
The room through the rightmost archway was larger than it had first appeared, for it extended to the side for twenty feet, then turned and continued for another few yards, whereupon it ended at a corridor studded with empty sconces. Down the corridor was another small room lined with three arches, each of which led to rooms with even more archways, and so on.
Who built these and why? Eragon wondered, bewildered. All the rooms they saw were deserted and empty of furnishings. The only things they found within were a two-legged stool that fell apart when he nudged it with the tip of his boot and a pile of broken pottery lying in a corner beneath a veil of spiderwebs.
Angela never hesitated or seemed confused about which direction to go, for without fail, she chose the path to the right. Eragon would have objected, except that he could think of no better alternative to her method.
The herbalist stopped when they arrived at a circular room with seven equally spaced archways placed along the walls. Seven corridors, including the one they had just traversed, stretched out from the archways.
“Mark where we came from, or we’ll get completely turned around,” said Arya.
Eragon went to the corridor and, with the tip of Brisingr’s cross-guard, scratched a line on the stone wall. As he did, he peered into the darkness, searching for a glimpse of Solembum, but he saw not so much as a whisker. Eragon hoped the werecat had not gotten lost somewhere in the maze of rooms. He almost reached out with his mind to find him, but resisted the urge; if anyone else felt him groping around, it might alert the Empire to their location.
“Ah!” exclaimed Angela, and the shadows around Eragon shifted as the herbalist stood on tiptoe and raised her werelight as high as she could.
Eragon hurried to the center of the room, where she stood with Arya and Wyrden. “What is it?” he whispered.
“The ceiling, Eragon,” murmured Arya. “Look at the ceiling.”
He did as he was told, but saw only blocks of ancient, mold-covered stones crazed with so many cracks, it seemed amazing the ceiling had not collapsed long ago.
Then his vision shifted and he gasped.
The lines were not cracks but rather deeply carved runes—rows of them. They were neat and small, with sharp angles and straight stems. Mold and the passage of centuries had obscured parts of the text, but most of it remained legible.
Eragon struggled with the runes for a short while, but he recognized only a few of the words, and those were spelled differently than he was used to. “What does it say?” he asked. “Is it Dwarvish?”
“No,” said Wyrden. “It is the language of your people, but as it was spoken and written long ago, and of a very particular dialect: that of the zealot Tosk.”
The name struck a chord in Eragon. “When Roran and I rescued Katrina, we heard the priests of Helgrind mention a book of Tosk.”
Wyrden nodded. “It serves as the foundation of their faith. Tosk was not the first to offer up prayers to Helgrind, but he was the first to codify his beliefs and practices, and many others have imitated him since. Those who worship Helgrind regard him as a prophet of the divine. And this”—the elf cast his arms out wide—“is a history of Tosk, from his birth to his death: a true history, such as his disciples have never shared with those outside their sect.”
“We could learn much from this,” said Angela, never taking her eyes off the ceiling. “If only we had the time …” Eragon was surprised to see her so enthralled.
Arya glanced at the seven corridors. “A moment, then, but read quickly.”
While Angela and Wyrden perused the runes with avid intensity, Arya walked over to one of the archways and, in an undertone, began to chant a spell for finding and locating. When she finished, she waited a moment with her head cocked, then moved on to the next archway.
Eragon stared at the runes a bit longer. Then he returned to the mouth of the corridor that had brought them to the room and leaned against a wall while he waited. The cold of the stones seeped into his shoulder.
Arya stopped in front of the fourth archway. The now-familiar cadence of her recitation rose and fell like a soft sigh of wind.
Again, nothing.