Free 3-Brisingr-3 by Unknown

tunnel, the smaller supporting the larger. Closing his eyes, Eragon located the minds of the prisoners in Helgrind, muttered a burst of the ancient language, then said to Roran, “I sealed off Katrina’s cell so the Ra’zac can’t use her as a hostage. Only you and I can open the door now.”
    “Good,” said Roran through clenched teeth. “Can you do something about this?” He jerked his chin toward the spot he had clamped his right hand over. Blood welled between his fingers. Eragon probed the wound. As soon as he touched it, Roran flinched and recoiled.
    “You’re lucky,” said Eragon. “The sword hit a rib.” Placing one hand on the injury and the other on the twelve diamonds concealed inside the belt of Beloth the Wise strapped around his waist, Eragon drew upon the power he had stored within the gems. “Waíse heill!” A ripple traversed Roran’s side as the magic knit his skin and muscle back together again.
    Then Eragon healed his own wound: the gash on his left knee.
    Finished, he straightened and glanced in the direction that Saphira had gone. His connection with her was fading as she chased the Lethrblaka toward Leona Lake. He yearned to help her but knew that, for the time being, she would have to fend for herself.
    “Hurry,” said Roran. “They’re getting away!”
    “Right.”
    Hefting his staff, Eragon approached the unlit tunnel and flicked his gaze from one stone protrusion to another, expecting the Ra’zac to spring out from behind one of them. He moved slowly in order that his footsteps would not echo in the winding shaft. When he happened to touch a rock to steady himself, he found it coated in slime.
    After a score of yards, several folds and twists in the passageway hid the main cavern and plunged them into a gloom so profound, even Eragon found it impossible to see.
    “Maybe you’re different, but I can’t fight in the dark,” whispered Roran.
    “If I make a light, the Ra’zac won’t come near us, not when I now know a spell that works on them.
    They’ll just hide until we leave. We have to kill them while we have the chance.”
    “What am I supposed to do? I’m more likely to run into a wall and break my nose than I am to find those two beetles. . . . They could sneak around behind us and stab us in the back.”
    “Shh. . . . Hold on to my belt, follow me, and be ready to duck.”
    Eragon could not see, but he could still hear, smell, touch, and taste, and those faculties were sensitive enough that he had a fair idea of what lay nearby. The greatest danger was that the Ra’zac would attack from a distance, perhaps with a bow, but he trusted that his reflexes were sharp enough to save Roran and himself from an oncoming missile.
    A current of air tickled Eragon’s skin, then paused and reversed itself as pressure from the outside waxed and waned. The cycle repeated itself at inconsistent intervals, creating invisible eddies that brushed against him like fountains of roiling water.
    His breathing, and Roran’s, was loud and ragged compared with the odd assortment of sounds that propagated through the tunnel. Above the gusts of their respiration, Eragon caught the tink, clink, clatter of a stone falling somewhere in the tangle of branching tubes and the steady doink . . . doink . . . doink of condensed droplets striking the drumlike surface of a subterranean pool. He also heard the grind of pea-sized gravel crushed underneath the soles of his boots. A long, eerie moan wavered somewhere far ahead of them.
    Of smells, none were new: sweat, blood, damp, and mold.
    Step by step, Eragon led the way as they burrowed farther into the bowels of Helgrind. The tunnel slanted downward and often split or turned, so that Eragon would have soon been lost if he had not been able to use Katrina’s mind as a reference point. The various knobby holes were low and cramped. Once, when Eragon bumped his head against the ceiling, a sudden flare of claustro -phobia unnerved him.
    I’m back,