“Do not feel bad because of it. It’s impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.”
“Angela said something similar about enemies—that if you didn’t make them, you were a coward or worse.”
Arya nodded. “There is some truth to that.”
They continued to talk and laugh as the night wore on. Instead of weakening, the effects of the altered faelnirv continued to strengthen. A giddy haze settled over Eragon, and he noticed that the pockets of shadow in the tent looked as if they were swirling, and strange, flashing lights—like those he normally saw when he closed his eyes at night—floated across his field of vision. The tips of his ears were burning fever-hot, and the skin on his back itched and crawled, as if ants were marching over it. Also, certain sounds had acquired a peculiar intensity—the rhythmic chirping of the lakeside insects, for example, and the crackle of the torch outside his tent; they dominated his hearing to the point where he had difficulty singling out any other noise.
Have I been poisoned? he wondered.
“What is it?” asked Arya, noticing his alarm.
He wet his mouth, which had become incredibly, painfully dry, and told her what he was experiencing.
Arya laughed and leaned back, her eyes heavy and half-lidded. “That is as it should be. The sensations will wear off by dawn. Until then, relax and allow yourself to enjoy them.”
Eragon struggled with himself for a moment as he debated whether to use a spell to clear his mind—if indeed he could—but then he decided to trust Arya and follow her advice.
As the world bent around him, it occurred to Eragon how dependent he was on his senses to determine what was real and what was not. He would have sworn that the flashing lights were there, though the rational part of his mind knew they were only faelnirv-induced apparitions.
He and Arya continued to talk, but their conversation became increasingly disjointed and incoherent. Nevertheless, Eragon was convinced that everything they said was of paramount importance, although he could not have explained why, nor could he remember what they had discussed only moments before.
Some time later, Eragon heard the low, throaty sound of a reed pipe being played somewhere in the camp. At first he thought he was imagining the lilting tones, but then he saw Arya cock her head and turn in the direction of the music, as if she too had noticed it.
Who was playing and why, Eragon could not tell. Nor did he care. It was as if the melody had sprung out of the blackness of the night itself, like a wind, lonely and forsaken.
He listened with his head tilted back and his eyelids nearly closed while fantastical images roiled within his mind, images that the faelnirv had induced but that the music shaped.
As it progressed, the melody grew ever more wild, and what had been plaintive became urgent, and the notes trilled up and down in a manner so fast, so insistent, so complicated, so alarming that Eragon began to fear for the safety of the musician. To play that quickly and that skillfully seemed unnatural, even for an elf.
Arya laughed as the music reached a particularly fevered pitch, and she leaped to her feet and struck a pose, lifting her arms over her head. She stamped her foot against the ground and clapped her hands—once, twice, three times—and then, much to Eragon’s astonishment, she began to dance. Her movements were slow at first, almost languorous, but soon her pace increased until she matched the frenzied beat of the music.
The music soon peaked, then began to gradually subside as the piper restated and resolved the themes of the melody. But before the music ceased, a sudden itch made Eragon grab his right hand and scratch at the palm. At the same moment, he felt a twinge in the back of his mind as one of his wards flared to life, warning him of some danger.
A second later, a dragon roared overhead.
Cold fear stabbed through Eragon.
The roar did not belong to Saphira.
THE WORD OF A RIDER
ERAGON GRABBED BRISINGR, and then he and Arya dashed from the tent.
Outside, Eragon staggered and fell to one knee as the ground seemed to pitch underneath him. He clutched at a tuft of grass, using it as an anchor while he waited for the dizziness to abate.
When he dared look up, he squinted. The light from the nearby torches was painfully bright; the flames swam before him like fish, as if detached from the oil-soaked rags that fed them.
Balance is gone, thought Eragon. Can’t trust my vision. Have to clear my mind. Have to—
A patch of motion caught his eye, and he ducked. Saphira’s tail swept over him, passing only inches above his head, then struck his tent and flattened it, breaking the wooden poles like so many dry twigs.
Saphira snarled, snapping at the empty air as she struggled to her feet. Then she paused, confused.
Little one, what—
A sound like a mighty wind interrupted her, and from out of the blackness of the sky, there emerged Thorn, red as blood and glittering like a million shifting stars. He landed close to Nasuada’s pavilion, and the earth shook from the impact of his weight.
Eragon heard Nasuada’s guards shouting; then Thorn swung his right forepaw across the ground, and half the shouts went silent.
From rigging strapped to the sides of the red dragon, several dozen soldiers leaped down and spread outward, stabbing into tents and cutting down the watchmen who ran at them.
Horns blared along the perimeter of the camp. At the same time, the sounds of combat erupted near their outer defenses, marking, Eragon thought, a secondary attack, from the north.
How many soldiers are there? he wondered. Are we surrounded? Panic blossomed within him so strongly that it almost overrode his sense of reason and sent him running blindly into the night. Only the knowledge that the faelnirv was responsible for his reaction held him in place.
He whispered a quick healing spell, hoping it might counteract the effects of the liqueur, but to no avail. Disappointed, he carefully stood, drew Brisingr, and joined Arya to stand shoulder to shoulder with her as five soldiers ran toward them. Eragon was not sure how he and Arya could fight them off. Not in their condition.
The men were less than twenty feet away when Saphira growled and slapped the ground with her tail, knocking the soldiers over. Eragon—who had sensed what Saphira was about to do—grabbed Arya, and she grabbed him, and by supporting each other, they were able to remain upright.
Then Blödhgarm and another elf, Laufin, sprinted out of the maze of tents and slew the five soldiers before they could regain their footing. The other elves followed close behind.
Another group of soldiers, this one over twenty strong, ran toward Eragon and Arya, almost as if the men knew where to find them.
The elves arranged themselves in a line in front of Eragon and Arya. But before the soldiers came within reach of the elves’ swords, one of the tents burst open and Angela charged howling into the midst of the soldiers, catching them by surprise.
The herbalist was wearing a red nightgown, her curly hair was in disarray, and in each hand she wielded a wool comb. The combs were three feet long and had two rows of steel tines mounted at an angle on the ends. The tines were longer than Eragon’s forearm and were sharpened to needle-like points—he knew that if you pricked yourself, you could catch blood poisoning from the unwashed wool they had been drawn through.
Two of the soldiers fell as Angela buried the wool combs in their sides, driving the tines right through their hauberks. The herbalist was more than a foot shorter than some of the men, but she showed no sign of fear as she bounded among them. To the contrary, she was the picture of ferocity, with her wild hair and her shouting and her dark-eyed expression.
The soldiers encircled Angela and closed in around her, hiding her from sight, and for a moment, Eragon feared they would overwhelm her.
Then, from elsewhere in the camp, he saw Solembum racing toward the knot of soldiers, the werecat’s ears pressed flat against his skull
. More werecats trailed him: twenty, thirty, forty—a whole pack, and all in their animal forms.
A cacophony of hisses, yowls, and screams filled the night as the werecats sprang upon the soldiers and pulled them to the ground, tearing at them with claws and teeth. The soldiers fought back as best they could, but they were no match for the large, shaggy cats.
The whole sequence, from Angela’s appearance to the intervention of the werecats, transpired with such speed, Eragon barely had time to react. As the werecats swarmed the soldiers, he blinked and wet his parched mouth, feeling a sense of unreality about everything around him.
Then Saphira said, Quick, onto my back, and she crouched so he could climb onto her.
“Wait,” said Arya, and put a hand on his arm. She murmured a few phrases in the ancient language. An instant later, the distortion of Eragon’s senses vanished and he again found himself in full command of his body.
He gave Arya a grateful glance, then tossed Brisingr’s scabbard onto the remains of his tent, scrambled up Saphira’s right foreleg, and settled into his usual position at the base of her neck. Without a saddle, the sharp edges of her scales dug into the insides of his legs, a feeling he well remembered from their first flight together.
“We need the Dauthdaert,” he shouted down to Arya.
She nodded and ran toward her own tent, which was several hundred feet away, on the eastern side of the camp.
Another consciousness, not Saphira’s, pressed against Eragon’s mind, and he drew in his thoughts to protect himself. Then he realized the being was Glaedr, and he allowed the golden dragon past his guard.
I will help, said Glaedr. Behind his words, Eragon sensed a terrible, seething anger directed at Thorn and Murtagh, an anger that seemed powerful enough to burn the world to cinders. Join your minds with me, Eragon, Saphira. And you as well, Blödhgarm, and you, Laufin, and the rest of your kind. Let me see with your eyes, and let me listen with your ears, so that I can advise you as to what to do, and so that I can lend you my strength when needed.
Saphira leaped forward, half flying, half gliding over the rows of tents toward the huge ruby mass of Thorn. The elves followed below, killing what soldiers they encountered.
Saphira had the advantage of height, as Thorn was still on the ground. She angled toward him—intending, Eragon knew, to alight on Thorn’s back and fix her jaws upon his neck—but as he saw her coming, the red dragon snarled and twisted to face her, crouching like a smaller dog confronting a larger one.
Eragon just had time to notice that Thorn’s saddle was empty, and then the dragon reared and batted at Saphira with one of his thick, muscular forelegs. His heavy paw swung through the air with a loud rushing sound. In the gloom, his claws appeared startlingly white.
Saphira veered to the side, contorting her body to avoid the blow. The ground and the sky tilted around Eragon, and he found himself looking up at the camp as the tip of Saphira’s right wing tore apart someone’s tent.
The force of the turn tugged on Eragon, pulling him away from Saphira. Her scales started to slip out from between his legs. He clenched his thighs and tightened his hold on the spike in front of him, but Saphira’s motion was too violent to withstand, and a second later, his grip gave way and he found himself tumbling through the air, without a clear idea of which direction was up and which was down.
Even as he fell, he made sure to maintain his grasp on Brisingr and to keep the blade well away from his body; wards or no wards, the sword could still injure him, due to Rhunön’s spellwork.
Little one!
“Letta!” Eragon shouted, and with a jolt, he stopped dead in the air, no more than ten feet above the ground. While the world seemed to keep spinning for another few seconds, he glimpsed Saphira’s sparkling outline as she circled around to retrieve him.
Thorn bellowed and sprayed the rows of tents between him and Eragon with a layer of white-hot flames that leaped up toward the sky. Screams of agony swiftly followed as the men within burned to death.
Eragon raised a hand to shield his face. His magic protected him from serious injury, but the heat was uncomfortable. I’m fine. Don’t turn back, he said, not only to Saphira but also to Glaedr and the elves. You have to stop them. I’ll meet you by Nasuada’s pavilion.
Saphira’s disapproval was palpable, but she altered her course to resume her attack on Thorn.
Eragon released his spell and dropped to the ground. He landed lightly on the balls of his feet, then set off at a run between the burning tents, many of which were already collapsing, sending up pillars of orange sparks.
The smoke and the stench of burnt wool made it hard for Eragon to breathe. He coughed, and his eyes began to water, blurring the lower part of his vision.
Several hundred feet ahead, Saphira and Thorn tussled, two giants in the night. Eragon felt a sense of primal fear. What was he doing running toward them, toward a pair of snapping, snarling creatures, each larger than a house—larger than two houses in Thorn’s case—and each with claws, fangs, spikes larger than his whole body? Even after the initial surge of fear subsided, a small amount of trepidation remained as he raced ahead.
He hoped Roran and Katrina were safe. Their tent was on the opposite side of the camp, but Thorn and the soldiers might turn in that direction at any moment.
“Eragon!”
Arya loped through the burning debris, carrying the Dauthdaert in her left hand. A faint green nimbus surrounded the barbed blade of the lance, although the glow was hard to see against the backdrop of flames. Trotting alongside her was Orik, who barreled through the tongues of fire as if they were no more dangerous than wisps of vapor. The dwarf was shirtless and helmetless. He held the ancient war hammer Volund in one hand and a small round shield in the other. Blood smeared both ends of the hammer.
Eragon greeted them with a raised hand and a cry, glad to have his friends with him. When she caught up, Arya offered him the lance, but Eragon shook his head. “Keep it!” he said. “We’ll have a better chance of stopping Thorn if you use Niernen and I use Brisingr.”
Arya nodded and tightened her grip on the lance. For the first time, Eragon wondered if, as an elf, she would be able to bring herself to kill a dragon. Then he put the thought aside. If there was one thing he knew about Arya, it was that she always did what was necessary, no matter how difficult.
Thorn clawed Saphira’s ribs, and Eragon gasped as he felt her pain through their bond. From Blödhgarm’s mind, he gathered that the elves were close to the dragons, busy fighting the soldiers. Not even they dared move any nearer to Saphira and Thorn, for fear of being crushed underfoot.
“Over there,” said Orik, and pointed with his hammer toward a cluster of soldiers moving through the rows of destroyed tents.
“Leave them,” said Arya. “We have to help Saphira.”
Orik grunted. “Right, then, off we go.”
The three of them dashed forward, but Eragon and Arya soon left Orik far behind. No dwarf could hope to keep up with them, not even one as strong and fit as Orik.
“Go on!” shouted Orik from behind. “I’ll follow as fast as I can!”
As Eragon dodged scraps of burning fabric that were floating through the air, he spotted Nar Garzhvog amid a knot of ten soldiers. The horned Kull appeared grotesque by the ruddy light of the flames; his lips were drawn back from his fangs, and the shadows on his heavy brow ridge gave his face a crude, brutal look, as if his skull had been hacked out of a boulder with a dull chisel. Fighting bare-handed, he grabbed a soldier and tore him limb from limb as easily as Eragon might tear apart a roast chicken.
A few paces later, the burning tents ended. On the other side of the flames, all was confusion.
Blödhgarm and two of his spellcasters stood facing four black-robed men, who Eragon assumed were magicians of the Empire. Neither the men nor the elves stirred, though their faces displayed immense strain. Dozens of soldiers lay dead on the ground, but others still ran free, some bearing wounds so horrendous tha
t Eragon knew at once the men were immune to pain.
He could not see the rest of the elves, but he could sense their presence on the other side of Nasuada’s red pavilion, which stood in the center of the havoc.
Groups of werecats chased soldiers back and forth throughout the clearing around the pavilion. King Halfpaw and his mate, Shadowhunter, led two of the groups; Solembum led a third.
Close to the pavilion stood the herbalist, dueling with a large, burly man—she fighting with her wool combs, he with a mace in one hand and a flail in the other. The two seemed fairly matched, despite their differences in sex, weight, height, reach, and equipment.
To Eragon’s surprise, Elva was there as well, sitting on the end of a barrel. The witch-child had her arms wrapped around her stomach and appeared deathly ill, but she too was participating in the battle, albeit in her own unique way. Clustered before her were a dozen soldiers, and Eragon saw that she was speaking rapidly to them, her small mouth moving in a blur. As she spoke, each man reacted differently: one stood fixed in place, seemingly unable to move; one cringed and covered his face with his hands; one knelt and stabbed himself in the chest with a long dagger; another flung down his weapons and ran off through the camp; and still another babbled like a fool. None lifted their swords against her, and none went on to attack anyone else.
And looming above the mayhem, like two living mountains, were Saphira and Thorn. They had moved off to the left of the pavilion and were circling each other, trampling row after row of tents. Tongues of flames flickered in the pits of their nostrils and in the gaps between their saber-like teeth.
Eragon hesitated. The welter of sounds and motions was hard to take in, and he was uncertain where he was needed most.
Murtagh? he asked Glaedr.
We’ve yet to find him, if he’s even here. I can’t feel his mind, but it’s hard to know for sure with so many people and spells in one place. Through their link, Eragon could tell that the golden dragon was doing far more than just talking to him; Glaedr was listening simultaneously to the thoughts of Saphira and the elves, as well as helping Blödhgarm and his two companions in their mental struggle against the Empire’s magicians.