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.
532
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.