Murtagh

Murtagh stopped by a mound of mushrooms and gasped as if he’d taken a blow to the stomach. He clenched his jaw and stared at the rocky ceiling for a time as tears spilled from his unblinking eyes. “That’s not for you,” he muttered to whatever force inhabited the caves. Why had he been compelled to relive that particular moment? He went to great lengths to not think about it, although the knotted scar on his back had been reminder enough: a memento of both his father’s cruelty and his mother’s love. The latter part was why he’d kept the mark. Removing the scar would be easy enough with a spell, but to do so felt like repudiating his past to such a degree, he might as well have declared himself nameless and kinless. Perhaps he should have. Morzan’s legacy had brought him nothing but pain. But his mother’s…was more complicated. From her he had life and love, and just because his life had been difficult, that did not negate her love.

Quick tip-taps circled him in the shadowed distance. He heard, but he did not care.

Murtagh looked at Zar’roc. He scowled with barely contained disgust, and his hand shook. Scar or not, he hated the sword, hated what it represented. Zar’roc. Misery. His father’s choice of name, and a fitting one, given Morzan’s history. That wasn’t what Murtagh wanted for his life, and yet he had taken the blade from Eragon, to claim it as his own, as if somehow it would protect him.

Instead of it protecting, he felt as if it were defining him. Zar’roc. Misery

. Names were important, even for the smallest thing. By naming, one might gain understanding. Even more, one might recast the very nature of a thing. Had he not experienced that himself in the citadel of Urû’baen when his true name had changed?

An idea occurred to him. A bright, promising idea that brought with it fierce determination. He knew the Name of Names, the very key to the ancient language and its arcane power. By it he could use or define or even change the words of the language.

Which meant…he could rename Zar’roc. If he so wanted.

Murtagh did not have to stop to consider. He wanted.

But rename to what? If not Misery, then Happiness? Hardly the right meaning for his or any sword. Besides, Murtagh had never tended toward happiness—he wasn’t sure he knew what it really was—and he would have felt ridiculous carrying a blade called Happiness.

Even though time was short, he stood still in the dark and let his mind range wide as he sorted through dozens of possible names. At its core, the question was simple: What did he want Zar’roc to represent? That was, what value did he want to give pride of place in the center of his being?

All around, he continued to hear the tip-taps of the marauding shadow spiders. But they held their distance, and he paid them little attention, for the problem he was wrestling with was all-encompassing and, he felt, crucial to his survival.

In the end, the answer came from within, as it must—from his memory of Morzan hurting him, and from his own true name, which he saw with new clarity: what it had been, and what it now was. For he was a changed person. The pain he had clung to so assiduously no longer held sway over him; he had new cares and new values, and he was determined to pursue them.

Fired by inspiration, Murtagh opened the pouch on his belt, took out the compendium, and, one-handed, flipped through the parchment pages until he found that which he sought.

He studied the short line of runes. Was he sure? Yes. More than ever before.

The spell required energy he did not have to spare, but nonetheless, he drew upon his body and, soft as a falling feather, spoke the Word and, with it, renamed the sword:

“Ithring”…Freedom.

As he spoke, the barbed glyph stamped upon blade and sheath shimmered and shifted into a new shape, a new understanding. And he recognized the glyph as that which the elves used for the sword’s new name.

The hate and anger that had been boiling inside of him cooled into calm determination. He nodded. Freedom. His father had chosen to spread misery through life and land. Perhaps Murtagh could do better.

A crooked smile crossed his lips. He had no delusions. He knew he had responsibilities that bound him. To Thorn, if nobody else. But they were responsibilities he had accepted for himself, not ones imposed from the outside. Freedom had always been what he aspired to, and what he would always cherish. His blade could stand as a symbol for that. And when he fought, as he knew he would soon need to, then it would fall to him to grant his foes their final release. And besides, he might use Ithring to help those, like Alín, who could not help themselves. To cut their bonds and set them loose, even as he and Thorn had freed themselves of Galbatorix’s oaths.

His mother, he thought, would have been proud of him for it.

“Ithring.”