Inheritance (111 page)

He sprang to his feet, drawing Brisingr from its sheath.

Then, in his open window, he saw a small three-masted ship, woven from stalks of grass. He smiled and sheathed his sword. He held out his hand, and the ship sailed across the room and landed upon his palm, where it listed to one side.

The ship was different from the one Arya had made during their travels together in the Empire, after he and Roran rescued Katrina from Helgrind. It had more masts, and it also had sails fashioned from the blades of grass. Though the grass was limp and browning, it
had not dried out entirely, which led him to think that it had been picked only a day or two earlier.

Tied to the middle of the deck was a square of folded paper. Eragon carefully removed it, his heart pounding, then unfolded the paper on the floor. It read, in glyphs of the ancient language:

Eragon smiled without meaning to. Her timing had been perfect; the ship had arrived exactly when she intended. Then his smile faded, and he reread the letter several more times. She was hiding something; that much was obvious. But what? Why meet in secret?

Maybe Arya doesn’t approve of the elves’ next ruler
, he thought.
Or maybe there’s some other problem
. And though Eragon was eager to see her again, he could not forget how she had ignored him and Saphira. He supposed that, from Arya’s point of view, the intervening months were a trifling amount of time, but he could not help feeling hurt.

He waited until the first hint of sunlight appeared in the sky, then hurried down to wake Saphira and tell her the news. She was as curious as he, if not quite as excited.

He saddled her, and then they left the city and set off to the northeast, having told no one of their plans, not even Glaedr or the other Eldunarí.

t was early in the afternoon when they arrived at the location Arya had designated: a gentle curve in the Ramr River that marked its farthest excursion eastward.

Eragon strained to look over Saphira’s neck as he searched for a glimpse of anyone below. The land appeared empty, save for a herd of wild oxen. When the animals caught sight of Saphira, they fled, lowing and kicking up plumes of dust. They and a few other, smaller animals scattered about the countryside were the only living creatures Eragon could sense. Disappointed, he shifted his gaze to the horizon but saw no sign of Arya.

Saphira landed on a slight rise fifty yards from the banks of the river. She sat, and Eragon sat with her, resting his back against her side.

On the top of the rise was an outcropping of soft, slatelike rock. While they waited, Eragon amused himself by grinding a thumb-sized flake into the shape of an arrowhead. The stone was too soft for the arrowhead to be anything other than decorative, but he enjoyed the challenge. When he was satisfied with the simple, triangular point, he set it aside and began to grind a larger piece into a leaf-bladed dagger, similar to those the elves carried.

They did not have to wait as long as he first thought.

An hour after their arrival, Saphira lifted her head from the ground and peered across the plains in the direction of the not-so-distant Hadarac Desert.

Her body stiffened against his, and he felt a strange emotion within her: a sense of impending momentousness.

Look
, she said.

Keeping hold of his half-finished dagger, he clambered to his feet and peered eastward.

He saw nothing but grass, dirt, and a few lone, windswept trees between them and the horizon. He broadened his area of scrutiny but still saw nothing of interest.

What
—he started to ask, then cut himself off as he looked up.

High in the eastern sky, he saw a wink of green fire, like an emerald glimmering in the sun. The point of light arced through the blue mantle of the heavens, approaching at a rapid pace, bright as a star at night.

Eragon dropped the stone dagger and, without taking his eyes off the glittering spark, climbed onto Saphira’s back and strapped his legs into her saddle. He wanted to ask her what she thought the point of light was—to force her to put into words what he suspected—but he could not bring himself to speak any more than she could.

Saphira held her position, although she unfolded her wings and, keeping them bent nearly in half, lifted them in preparation to take off.

As it grew larger, the spark proliferated, dividing into a cluster of dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of tiny points of light. After a few minutes, the true shape of it became visible, and they saw that it was a dragon.

Saphira could wait no longer. She uttered a resonant trumpet, leaped off the rise, and flapped downward.

Eragon clutched the neck spike in front of him as she ascended at a nearly vertical angle, desperate to intercept the other dragon as quickly as possible. Both he and she alternated between elation and a wariness born of too many battles. In their caution, it pleased them that they had the sun to their backs.

Saphira continued to climb until she was slightly above the green dragon, whereupon she leveled off and concentrated upon speed.

Closer, Eragon saw that the dragon, while well built, still had some of the gangly look of youth—his limbs had yet to acquire the stocky weight of Glaedr’s or Thorn’s—and he was smaller than Saphira.
The scales upon his sides and back were a dark forest green, while those upon his belly and the pads of his feet were lighter, with the smallest ones verging upon white. When against his body, his wings were the color of holly leaves, but when the light shone through them, they were the color of oak leaves in the spring.

At the juncture between the dragon’s neck and back was a saddle much like Saphira’s, and on the saddle sat a figure that looked to be Arya, her dark hair streaming from her head. The sight filled Eragon’s heart with joy, and the emptiness he had labored under for so long vanished like the darkness of night before the rising sun.

As the dragons swooped past each other, Saphira roared, and the other dragon roared in response. They turned and began to circle—as if chasing each other’s tails—Saphira still slightly above the green dragon, who made no attempt to climb above her. If he had, Eragon would have feared he was attempting to gain the advantage before attacking.

He grinned and shouted into the wind. Arya shouted back and raised an arm. Then Eragon touched her mind, just to be sure, and he
knew
in an instant that it really was Arya, and that she and the dragon meant them no harm. He withdrew a moment later, for it would have been rude to prolong the mental contact without her consent; she would answer his questions when they spoke on the ground.

Saphira and the green dragon roared again, and the green dragon lashed his whiplike tail; then they chased each other through the air until they reached the Ramr River. There Saphira took the lead and spiraled down until she landed upon the same rise where she and Eragon had been waiting.

The green dragon landed a hundred feet away, settling into a low crouch while Arya freed herself from her saddle.

Eragon tore the straps off his legs and jumped to the ground, banging the sheath of Brisingr against his leg. He ran over to Arya, and she to him, and they met in the middle between the two dragons, who followed at a more sedate pace, their steps weighing heavily on the ground.

As he drew near, Eragon saw that, in place of the leather strip that Arya usually wore to keep her hair back, a circlet of gold rested upon her brow. In the center of the circlet, a teardrop-shaped diamond flashed with light that came not from the sun but from within its own depths. At her waist hung a green-hilted sword in a green sheath, which he recognized as Támerlein, the same sword the elf lord Fiolr had offered him as a replacement for Zar’roc and that had once belonged to the Rider Arva. However, the hilt looked different than he remembered, lighter and more graceful, and the sheath appeared narrower.

It took Eragon a moment to realize what the diadem meant. He looked at Arya with astonishment. “You!”

“Me,” she said, and inclined her head. “Atra esterní ono thelduin, Eragon.”

“Atra du evarínya ono varda, Arya … Dröttning?” It did not escape him that she had chosen to greet him first.

“Dröttning,” she confirmed. “My people chose to give me my mother’s title, and I chose to accept.”

Above them, Saphira and the green dragon brought their heads close together and sniffed one another. Saphira was taller; the green dragon had to stretch his neck to reach her.

As much as Eragon wanted to talk with Arya, he could not help staring at the green dragon. “And him?” he asked, motioning upward.

Arya smiled, and then she surprised him by taking his hand and leading him forward. The green dragon snorted and lowered his head until it hung just above them, smoke and steam rising from the depths of his crimson nostrils.

“Eragon,” she said, and she placed his hand on the dragon’s warm snout, “this is Fírnen. Fírnen, this is Eragon.”

Eragon looked up into one of Fírnen’s brilliant eyes; the bands of muscle within the dragon’s iris were the pale green and yellow of new blades of grass.

I am glad to meet you, Eragon-friend-Shadeslayer
, said Fírnen. His
mental voice was deeper than Eragon expected, deeper even than that of Thorn or Glaedr or any of the Eldunarí from Vroengard.
My Rider has told me much about you
. And the dragon blinked once, with a small, sharp sound like a shell bouncing against a stone.

In Fírnen’s wide, sunlit mind, planked as it was with transparent shadows, Eragon could feel the dragon’s excitement.

Wonder swept through Eragon, wonder that such a thing had come to pass. “I am glad to meet you as well, Fírnen-finiarel. I never thought that I would live to see you hatched and free of Galbatorix’s spells.”

The emerald dragon snorted softly. He looked proud and full of energy, like a stag in fall. Then he returned his gaze to Saphira. Between the two of them, much passed; through Saphira, Eragon could feel the flow of thoughts, emotions, and sensations, slow at first, but then swelling into a torrent.

Arya smiled slightly. “They seem to have taken to each other.”

“That they have.”

A mutual understanding guiding them, he and Arya walked out from under Saphira and Fírnen, leaving the dragons to themselves. Saphira did not sit as she normally did, but remained crouched, as if she were about to spring onto a deer. Fírnen did the same. The tips of their tails twitched.

Arya looked well: better, Eragon thought, than she had since their time together in Ellesméra. For lack of a more suitable word, he would have said she looked happy.

Neither of them spoke for a while as they watched the dragons. Then Arya turned toward him and said, “I apologize for not contacting you sooner. You must think badly of me for ignoring you and Saphira for so long and for keeping such a secret as Fírnen.”

“Did you receive my letter?”

“I did.” To his surprise, she reached inside the front of her tunic and removed a square of battered parchment that, after a few seconds, he recognized. “I would have answered, but Fírnen had already hatched and I did not want to lie to you, even by omission.”

“Why keep him hidden?”

“With so many of Galbatorix’s servants still on the loose, and so few dragons remaining, I did not want to risk anyone finding out about Fírnen until he was large enough to defend himself.”

“Did you really think a human could have snuck into Du Weldenvarden and killed him?”

“Stranger things have happened. With the dragons yet on the brink of extinction, it was not a risk worth taking. If I could, I would keep Fírnen in Du Weldenvarden for the next ten years, until he is so large that none would dare attack him. But he wished to leave, and I could not deny him. Besides, the time has come for me to meet with Nasuada and Orik in my new role.”

Eragon could feel Fírnen showing and telling Saphira about the first time he caught a deer in the elves’ forest. He knew that Arya was aware of the exchange as well, for he saw her lip twitch in response to an image of Fírnen hopping in pursuit of a startled doe after he tripped over a branch.

“And how long have you been queen?”

“Since a month after my return. Vanir doesn’t know, however. I ordered the information kept from him and our ambassador to the dwarves so that I could concentrate on raising Fírnen without having to worry about the affairs of state that otherwise would have fallen to me.… You might like to know: I raised him on the Crags of Tel’naeír, where Oromis lived with Glaedr. It seemed only right.”

Silence fell between them. Then Eragon gestured at Arya’s diadem and at Fírnen and said, “How did all of this happen?”