Eldest: Book Two (The Inheritance cycle 2)

Eragon was alone when he woke.

He opened his eyes to stare at the carved ceiling in the tree house he and Saphira shared. Outside, night still reigned and the sounds of the elves’ revels drifted from the glittering city below.

Before he noticed more than that, Saphira leaped into his mind, radiating concern and anxiety. An image passed to him of her standing beside Islanzadí at the Menoa tree, then she asked, How are you?

I feel … good. Better than I’ve felt in a long time. How long have I—

Only an hour. I would have stayed with you, but they needed Oromis, Glaedr, and me to complete the ceremony. You should have seen the elves’ reaction when you fainted. Nothing like this has occurred before.

Did you cause this, Saphira?

It was not my work alone, nor Glaedr’s. The memories of our race, which were given form and substance by the elves’ magic, anointed you with what skill we dragons possess, for you are our best hope to avoid extinction.

I don’t understand.

Look in a mirror, she suggested. Then rest and recover and I shall rejoin you at dawn.

She left, and Eragon got to his feet and stretched, amazed by the sense of well-being that pervaded him. Going to the wash closet, he retrieved the mirror he used for shaving and brought it into the light of a nearby lantern.

Eragon froze with surprise.

It was as if the numerous physical changes that, over time, alter the appearance of a human Rider—and which Eragon had already begun to experience since bonding with Saphira—had been completed while he was unconscious. His face was now as smooth and angled as an elf’s, with ears tapered like theirs and eyes slanted like theirs, and his skin was as pale as alabaster and seemed to emit a faint glow, as if with the sheen of magic. I look like a princeling. Eragon had never before applied the term to a man, least of all himself, but the only word that described him now was beautiful. Yet he was not entirely an elf. His jaw was stronger, his brow thicker, his face broader. He was fairer than any human and more rugged than any elf.

With trembling fingers, Eragon reached around the nape of his neck in search of his scar.

He felt nothing.

Eragon tore off his tunic and twisted in front of the mirror to examine his back. It was as smooth as it had been before the battle of Farthen Dûr. Tears sprang to Eragon’s eyes as he slid his hand over the place where Durza had maimed him. He knew that his back would never trouble him again.

Not only was the savage blight he had elected to keep gone, but every other scar and blemish had vanished from his body, leaving him as unmarked as a newborn babe. Eragon traced a line upon his wrist where he had cut himself while sharpening Garrow’s scythe. No evidence of the wound remained. The blotchy scars on the insides of his thighs, remnants from his first flight with Saphira, had also disappeared. For a moment, he missed them as a record of his life, but his regret was short-lived as he realized that the damage from every injury he had ever suffered, no matter how small, had been repaired.

I have become what I was meant to be, he thought, and took a deep breath of the intoxicating air.

He dropped the mirror on the bed and garbed himself in his finest clothes: a crimson tunic stitched with gold thread; a belt studded with white jade; warm, felted leggings; a pair of the cloth boots favored by the elves; and upon his forearms, leather vambraces the dwarves had given him.

Descending from the tree, Eragon wandered the shadows of Ellesméra and observed the elves carousing in the fever of the night. None of them recognized him, though they greeted him as one of their own and invited him to share in their saturnalias.

Eragon floated in a state of heightened awareness, his senses thrumming with the multitude of new sights, sounds, smells, and feelings that assailed him. He could see in darkness that would have blinded him before. He could touch a leaf and, by touch alone, count the individual hairs that grew upon it. He could identify the odors wafting about him as well as a wolf or a dragon. And he could hear the patter of mice in the underbrush and the noise a flake of bark makes as it falls to earth; the beating of his heart was as a drum to him.

His aimless path led him past the Menoa tree, where he paused to watch Saphira among the festivities, though he did not reveal himself to those in the glade.

Where go you, little one? she asked.

He saw Arya rise from her mother’s side, make her way through the gathered elves, and then, like a forest sprite, glide underneath the trees beyond. I walk between the candle and the dark, he replied, and followed Arya.

Eragon tracked Arya by her delicate scent of crushed pine needles, by the feathery touch of her foot upon the ground, and by the disturbance of her wake in the air. He found her standing alone on the edge of a clearing, poised like a wild creature as she watched the constellations turn in the sky above.

As Eragon emerged in the open, Arya looked at him, and he felt as if she saw him for the first time. Her eyes widened, and she whispered, “Is that you, Eragon?”

“Aye.”

“What have they done to you?”

“I know not.”

He went to her, and together they wandered the dense woods, which echoed with fragments of music and voices from the festivities. Changed as he was, Eragon was acutely conscious of Arya’s presence, of the whisper of her clothes over her skin, of the soft, pale exposure of her neck, and of her eyelashes, which were coated with a layer of oil that made them glisten and curl like black petals wet with rain.

They stopped on the bank of a narrow stream so clear, it was invisible in the faint light. The only thing that betrayed its presence was the throaty gurgle of water pouring over rocks. Around them, the thick pines formed a cave with their branches, hiding Eragon and Arya from the world and muffling the cool, still air. The hollow seemed ageless, as if it were removed from the world and protected by some magic against the withering breath of time.

In that secret place, Eragon felt suddenly close to Arya, and all his passion for her sprang to the fore of his mind. He was so intoxicated with the strength and vitality coursing through his veins—as well as the untamed magic that filled the forest—he ignored caution and said, “How tall the trees, how bright the stars … and how beautiful you are, O Arya Svit-kona.” Under normal circumstances, he would have considered his deed the height of folly, but in that fey, madcap night, it seemed perfectly sane.

She stiffened. “Eragon …”

He ignored her warning. “Arya, I’ll do anything to win your hand. I would follow you to the ends of the earth. I would build a palace for you with nothing but my bare hands. I would—”

“Will you stop pursuing me? Can you promise me that?” When he hesitated, she stepped closer and said, low and gentle, “Eragon, this cannot be. You are young and I am old, and that shall never change.”

“Do you feel nothing for me?”

“My feelings for you,” she said, “are those of a friend and nothing more. I am grateful to you for rescuing me from Gil’ead, and I find your company pleasant. That is all.… Relinquish this quest of yours—it will only bring you heartache—and find someone your own age to spend the long years with.”

His eyes brimmed with tears. “How can you be so cruel?”

“I am not cruel, but kind. You and I are not meant for each other.”

In desperation, he suggested, “You could give me your memories, and then I would have the same amount of experience and knowledge as you.”

“It would be an abomination.” Arya lifted her chin, her face grave and solemn and brushed with silver from the glimmering stars. A hint of steel entered her voice: “Hear me well, Eragon. This cannot, nor ever shall be. And until you master yourself, our friendship must cease to exist, for your emotions do nothing but distract us from our duty.” She bowed to him. “Goodbye, Eragon Shadeslayer.” Then she strode past and vanished into Du Weldenvarden.

Now the tears spilled down Eragon’s cheeks and dropped to the moss below, where they lay unabsorbed, like pearls strewn across a blanket of emerald velvet. Numb, Eragon sat upon a rotting log and buried his face in his hands, weeping that his affection for Arya was doomed to remain unrequited, and weeping that he had driven her further away.

Within moments, Saphira joined him. Oh, little one. She nuzzled him. Why did you have to inflict this upon yourself? You knew what would happen if you tried to woo Arya again.

I couldn’t stop myself. He wrapped his arms around his belly and rocked back and forth on the log, reduced to hiccuping sobs by the strength of his misery. Putting one warm wing over him, Saphira drew him close to her side, like a mother falcon with her offspring. He curled up against her and remained huddled there as night passed into day and the Agaetí Blödhren came to an end.