Brisingr

DIVERGENCE
The butcher sat slumped against the left-hand wall, both arms chained to an iron ring
above his head.
His ragged clothes barely covered his pale, emaciated body; the corners of his bones
stood out in sharp relief underneath his translucent skin. His blue veins were also
prominent. Sores had formed on his wrists where the manacles chafed. The ulcers oozed
a mixture of clear fluid and blood. What remained of his hair had turned gray or white
and hung in lank, greasy ropes over his pockmarked face.
Roused by the clang of Roran’s hammer, Sloan lifted his chin toward the light and, in a
quavering voice, asked, “Who is it? Who’s there?” His hair parted and slid back,
exposing his eye sockets, which had sunk deep into his skull. Where his eyelids should
have been, there were now only a few scraps of tattered skin draped over the raw cavities
underneath. The area around them was bruised and scabbed.
With a shock, Eragon realized that the Ra’zac had pecked out Sloan’s eyes.
What he then should do, Eragon could not decide. The butcher had told the Ra’zac that
Eragon had found Saphira’s egg. Further -more, Sloan had murdered the watchman,
Byrd, and had betrayed Carvahall to the Empire. If he were brought before his fellow
villagers, they would undoubtedly find Sloan guilty and condemn him to death by
hanging.
It seemed only right, to Eragon, that the butcher should die for his crimes. That was not
the source of his uncertainty. Rather, it arose from the fact that Roran loved Katrina, and
Katrina, whatever Sloan had done, must still harbor a certain degree of affection for her
father. Watching an arbitrator publicly denounce Sloan’s offenses and then hang him
would be no easy thing for her or, by extension, Roran. Such hardship might even create
enough ill will between them to end their engagement. Either way, Eragon was convinced
that taking Sloan back with them would sow discord between him, Roran, Katrina, and
the other villagers, and might engender enough anger to distract them from their struggle
against the Empire.
The easiest solution, thought Eragon, would be to kill him and say that I found him dead
in the cell. . . . His lips trembled, one of the death-words heavy upon his tongue.
“What do you want?” asked Sloan. He turned his head from side to side in an attempt to
hear better. “I already told you everything I know!”
Eragon cursed himself for hesitating. Sloan’s guilt was not in dispute; he was a murderer
and a traitor. Any lawgiver would sentence him to execution.
Notwithstanding the merit of those arguments, it was Sloan who was curled in front of
him, a man Eragon had known his entire life. The butcher might be a despicable person,
but the wealth of memories and experiences Eragon shared with him bred a sense of
intimacy that troubled Eragon’s conscience. To strike down Sloan would be like raising
his hand against Horst or Loring or any of the elders of Carvahall.
Again Eragon prepared to utter the fatal word.
An image appeared in his mind’s eye: Torkenbrand, the slaver he and Murtagh had
encountered during their flight to the Varden, kneeling on the dusty ground and Murtagh
striding up to him and beheading him. Eragon remembered how he had objected to
Murtagh’s deed and how it had troubled him for days afterward.