Paolini, Christopher - Inheritance Trilogy, Book 2 - Eldest (v1.5) (83 page)

At first, as Roran watched, the positions of the four ships remained un-

changed. Then he sensed a shift in the Dragon Wing ’s speed, as if the

ship had crossed some crucial point and the forces restraining her had

diminished. It was a subtle difference and amounted to little more than a

few additional feet per minute—but it was enough that the distance be-

tween the Dragon Wing and the sloops began to increase. With every

stroke of the oars, the Dragon Wing gained momentum.

The sloops, however, could not overcome the whirlpool’s dreadful

strength. Their oars gradually slowed until, one by one, the ships drifted

backward and were drawn toward the veil of mist, beyond which waited

the gyrating walls of ebony water and the gnashing rocks at the bottom of

the ocean floor.

They can’t keep rowing, realized Roran. Their crews are too small and

they’re too tired. He could not help but feel a pang of sympathy for the

fate of the men on the sloops.

At that precise instant, an arrow sprang from the nearest sloop and

burst into green flame as it raced toward the Dragon Wing. The dart

must have been sustained by magic to have flown so far. It struck the

mizzen sail and exploded into globules of liquid fire that stuck to what-

ever they touched. Within seconds, twenty small fires burned along the

mizzenmast, the mizzen sail, and the deck below.

“We can’t put it out,” shouted one of the sailors with a panicked ex-

pression.

“Chop off whatever’s burning an’ throw it overboard!” roared Uthar in

reply.

Unsheathing his belt knife, Roran set to work excising a dollop of green

fire from the boards by his feet. Several tense minutes elapsed before the

unnatural blazes were removed and it became clear that the conflagra-

tions would not spread to the rest of the ship.

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Once the cry of “All clear!” was sounded, Uthar relaxed his grip on the

steering wheel. “If that was the best their magician can do, then I’d say

we have nothing more to fear of him.”

“We’re going to get out of the Eye, aren’t we?” asked Roran, eager to

confirm his hope.

Uthar squared his shoulders and flashed a quick grin, both proud and

disbelieving. “Not quite this cycle, but we’ll be close. We won’t make real

progress away from that gaping monster until the tide slacks off. Go tell

Bonden to lower the tempo a bit; I don’t want them fainting at the oars

if’n I can help it.”

And so it was. Roran took another shift rowing and, by the time he re-

turned to the deck, the whirlpool was subsiding. The vortex’s ghastly

howl faded into the usual noise of the wind; the water assumed a calm,

flat quality that betrayed no hint of the habitual violence visited upon

that location; and the contorted fog that had writhed above the abyss

melted under the warm rays of the sun, leaving the air as clear as oiled

glass. Of the Boar’s Eye itself—as Roran saw when he retrieved the spy-

glass from among the rowers—nothing remained but the selfsame disk of

yellow foam rotating upon the water.

And in the center of the foam, he thought he could discern, just barely,

three broken masts and a black sail floating round and round and round

in an endless circle. But it might have been his imagination.

Leastways, that’s what he told himself.

Elain came up beside him, one hand resting on her swollen belly. In a

small voice, she said, “We were lucky, Roran, more lucky than we had

reason to expect.”

“Aye,” he agreed.

533

TO ABERON

Underneath Saphira, the pathless forest stretched wide to each white

horizon, fading as it did from the deepest green to a hazy, washed-out

purple. Martins, rooks, and other woodland birds flitted above the

gnarled pines, uttering shrieks of alarm when they beheld Saphira. She

flew low to the canopy in order to protect her two passengers from the

arctic temperatures in the upper reaches of the sky.

Except for when Saphira fled the Ra’zac into the Spine, this was the

first time she and Eragon had had the opportunity to fly together over a

great stretch of distance without having to stop or hold back for compan-

ions on the ground. Saphira was especially pleased with the trip, and she

delighted in showing Eragon how Glaedr’s tutelage had enhanced her

strength and endurance.

After his initial discomfort abated, Orik said to Eragon, “I doubt I could

ever be comfortable in the air, but I can understand why you and Saphira

enjoy it so. Flying makes you feel free and unfettered, like a fierce-eyed

hawk hunting his prey! It sets my heart a-pounding, it does.”

To reduce the tedium of the journey, Orik played a game of riddles

with Saphira. Eragon excused himself from the contest as he had never

been particularly adept at riddles; the twist of thought necessary to solve

them always seemed to escape him. In this, Saphira far exceeded him. As

most dragons are, she was fascinated by puzzles and found them quite

easy to unravel.

Orik said, “The only riddles I know are in Dwarvish. I will do mine best

to translate them, but the results may be rough and unwieldy.” Then he

asked:

Tall I am young.

Short I am old.

While with life I do glow,

Urûr’s breath is my foe.

Not fair, growled Saphira. I know little of your gods. Eragon had no need

534

to repeat her words, for Orik had granted permission for her to project

them directly into his mind.

Orik laughed. “Do you give up?”

Never. For a few minutes, the only sound was the sweep of her wings,

until she asked, Is it a candle?

“Right you are.”

A puff of hot smoke floated back into Orik’s and Eragon’s faces as she

snorted. I do poorly with such riddles. I’ve not been inside a house since the

day I hatched, and I find enigmas difficult that deal with domestic subjects.

Next she offered:

What herb cures all ailments?

This proved a terrible poser for Orik. He grumbled and groaned and

gnashed his teeth in frustration. Behind him, Eragon could not help but

grin, for he saw the answer plain in Saphira’s mind. Finally, Orik said,

“Well, what is it? You have bested me with this.”

By the black raven’s crime, and by this rhyme,

the answer would be thyme.

Now it was Orik’s turn to cry, “Not fair! This is not mine native

tongue. You cannot expect me to grasp such wordplay!”

Fair is fair. It was a proper riddle.

Eragon watched the muscles at the back of Orik’s neck bunch and knot

as the dwarf jutted his head forward. “If that is your stance, O Irontooth,

then I’d have you solve this riddle that every dwarf child knows.”

I am named Morgothal’s Forge and Helzvog’s Womb.

I veil Nordvig’s Daughter and bring gray death,

535

And make the world anew with Helzvog’s Blood.

What be I?

And so they went, exchanging riddles of increasing difficulty while Du

Weldenvarden sped past below. Gaps in the thatched branches often re-

vealed patches of silver, sections of the many rivers that threaded the for-

est. Around Saphira, the clouds billowed in a fantastic architecture: vault-

ing arches, domes, and columns; crenelated ramparts; towers the size of

mountains; and ridges and valleys suffused with a glowing light that made

Eragon feel as if they flew through a dream.

So fast was Saphira that, when dusk arrived, they had already left Du

Weldenvarden behind and entered the auburn fields that separated the

great forest from the Hadarac Desert. They made their camp among the

grass and hunkered round their small fire, utterly alone upon the flat face

of the earth. They were grim-faced and said little, for words only empha-

sized their insignificance in that bare and empty land.

Eragon took advantage of their stop to store some of his energy in the

ruby that adorned Zar’roc’s pommel. The gem absorbed all the power he

gave it, as well as Saphira’s when she lent her strength. It would, con-

cluded Eragon, be a number of days before they could saturate both the

ruby and the twelve diamonds concealed within the belt of Beloth the

Wise.

Weary from the exercise, he wrapped himself in blankets, lay beside

Saphira, and drifted into his waking sleep, where his night phantasms

played out against the sea of stars above.

Soon after they resumed their journey the following morning, the rip-

pling grass gave way to tan scrub, which grew ever more scarce until, in

turn, it was replaced by sunbaked ground bare of all but the most hardy

plants. Reddish gold dunes appeared. From his vantage on Saphira, they

looked to Eragon like lines of waves forever sailing toward a distant

shore.

As the sun began its descent, he noticed a cluster of mountains in the

distant east and knew he beheld Du Fells Nángoröth, where the wild

dragons had gone to mate, to raise their young, and eventually to die. We

536

must visit there someday, said Saphira, following his gaze.

Aye.

That night, Eragon felt their solitude even more keenly than before, for

they were camped in the emptiest region of the Hadarac Desert, where

so little moisture existed in the air that his lips soon cracked, though he

smeared them with nalgask every few minutes. He sensed little life in the

ground, only a handful of miserable plants interspersed with a few insects

and lizards.

As he had when they fled Gil’ead through the desert, Eragon drew wa-

ter from the soil to replenish their waterskins, and before he allowed the

water to drain away, he scryed Nasuada in the pool’s reflection to see if

the Varden had been attacked yet. To his relief, they had not.

On the third day since leaving Ellesméra, the wind rose up behind

them and wafted Saphira farther than she could have flown on her own,

carrying them entirely out of the Hadarac Desert.

Near the edge of the waste, they passed over a number of horse-

mounted nomads who were garbed in flowing robes to ward against the

heat. The men shouted in their rough tongue and shook their swords and

spears at Saphira, though none of them dared loose an arrow at her.

Eragon, Saphira, and Orik bivouacked for the night at the southernmost

end of Silverwood Forest, which lay along Lake Tüdosten and was named

so because it was composed almost entirely of beeches, willows, and

trembling poplars. In contrast to the endless twilight that lay beneath the

brooding pines of Du Weldenvarden, Silverwood was filled with bright

sunshine, larks, and the gentle rustling of green leaves. The trees seemed

young and happy to Eragon, and he was glad to be there. And though all

signs of the desert had vanished, the weather remained far warmer than

he was accustomed to at that time of year. It felt more like summer than

spring.

From there they flew straight to Aberon, the capital of Surda, guided

by directions Eragon gleaned from the memories of birds they encoun-

tered. Saphira made no attempt to conceal herself along the way, and

they often heard cries of amazement and alarm from the villages she

537

swept over.

It was late afternoon when they arrived at Aberon, a low, walled city

centered around a bluff in an otherwise flat landscape. Borromeo Castle

occupied the top of the bluff. The rambling citadel was protected by

three concentric layers of walls, numerous towers, and, Eragon noted,

hundreds of ballistae made for shooting down a dragon. The rich amber

light from the low sun cast Aberon’s buildings in sharp relief and illumi-

nated a plume of dust rising from the city’s western gate, where a line of

soldiers sought entrance.

As Saphira descended toward the inner ward of the castle, she brought

Eragon into contact with the combined thoughts of the people in the

capital. The noise overwhelmed him at first—how was he supposed to

listen for foes and still function at the same time?—until he realized that,

as usual, he was concentrating too much on specifics. All he had to do

was sense people’s general intentions. He broadened his focus, and the

individual voices clamoring for his attention subsided into a continuum

of the emotions surrounding him. It was like a sheet of water that lay

draped over the nearby landscape, undulating with the rise and fall of

people’s feelings and spiking whenever someone was racked by extremes

of passion.

Thus, Eragon was aware of the alarm that gripped the people below as

word of Saphira spread. Careful, he told her. We don’t want them to at-

tack us.

Dirt billowed into the air with each beat of Saphira’s powerful wings as

she settled in the middle of the courtyard, sinking her claws into the bare

ground to steady herself. The horses tethered in the yard neighed with

fear, creating such an uproar that Eragon finally inserted himself in their

minds and calmed them with words from the ancient language.

Eragon dismounted after Orik, eyeing the many soldiers that lined the

parapets and the drawn ballistae they manned. He did not fear the weap-

ons, but he had no desire to become engaged in a fight with his allies.