Inheritance (51 page)

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 barehanded, 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 that 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.

Eragon was confident that they would be able to defeat the magicians, just as he was confident that Angela and Elva were perfectly capable of defending themselves from the rest of the soldiers. Saphira, however, was already wounded in several places, and she was hard-pressed to keep Thorn from attacking the rest of the camp.

Eragon glanced at the Dauthdaert in Arya’s hand, then back at the massive shapes of the dragons.
We have to kill him
, Eragon thought, and his heart grew heavy. Then his eye fell on Elva, and a new idea took root in his mind. The girl’s words were more powerful than any weapon; no one, not even Galbatorix, could withstand them. If she could but speak to Thorn, she could drive him away.

No!
growled Glaedr.
You waste time, youngling. Go to your dragon—now! She needs your help. You must kill Thorn, not scare him into fleeing! He is broken, and there is nothing you can do to save him
.

Eragon looked at Arya, and she looked at him.

“Elva would be faster,” he said.

“We have the Dauthdaert—”

“Too dangerous. Too difficult.”

Arya hesitated, then nodded. Together they started toward Elva.

Before they reached her, Eragon heard a muffled scream. He turned and, to his horror, saw Murtagh striding out of the pavilion, dragging Nasuada by her wrists.

Nasuada’s hair was disheveled. A nasty scratch marred one of her cheeks, and her yellow dressing gown was torn in several places. She kicked at Murtagh’s knee, but her heel bounced off a ward, leaving Murtagh untouched. He pulled her closer with a cruel tug, then struck her on the temple with the pommel of Zar’roc, knocking her unconscious.

Eragon yelled and swerved toward them.

Murtagh gave him a brief look. Then he sheathed his sword, hoisted Nasuada onto a shoulder, and knelt on one knee, where he bowed his head, as if in prayer.

A spike of pain from Saphira distracted Eragon, and she cried,
Beware! He’s escaped me!

As Eragon leaped over a mound of corpses, he risked a quick glance upward and saw Thorn’s glittering belly and velvet wings blotting out half the stars in the sky. The red dragon spun slightly as he drifted downward, like a large, weighted leaf.

Eragon dove to the side and rolled behind the pavilion, trying to put distance between himself and the dragon. A rock dug into his shoulder as he landed.

Without slowing, Thorn reached down with his right foreleg, which was as thick and knotted as a tree trunk, and closed his enormous paw around Murtagh and Nasuada. His claws sank into the
earth, excavating a plug of dirt several feet deep as he picked up the two humans.

Then, with a triumphant roar and the bone-jarring
thuds
of flapping wings, Thorn arched upward and started to climb away from the camp.

From where she and Thorn had been grappling, Saphira took off in pursuit, streamers of blood unfurling from bites and claw marks along her limbs. She was faster than Thorn, but even if she caught him, Eragon could not imagine how she could rescue Nasuada without injuring her.

A breath of wind tugged at his hair as Arya sped past him. She ran up a pile of barrels and jumped, and her leap carried her high into the air, higher than any elf could jump without assistance. Reaching out, she grabbed hold of Thorn’s tail and hung dangling from it like an ornament.

Eragon took a half step forward, as if to stop her, then cursed and growled, “Audr!”

The spell launched him into the sky, like an arrow from a bow. He reached out to Glaedr, and the old dragon fed him energy to sustain his ascension. Eragon burned the energy without heed, not caring the price, only wanting to reach Thorn before something horrible happened to Nasuada or Arya.

As he hurtled past Saphira, Eragon watched as Arya began to climb up Thorn’s tail. She clung to the spikes along his spine with her right hand, using them like the rungs on a ladder. With her left, she plunged the Dauthdaert into Thorn, anchoring herself with the blade of the spear even as she pulled herself higher and higher up his heaving body. Thorn wriggled and twisted and snapped at her, like a horse irritated by a fly, but he could not reach her.

Then the blood-red dragon drew in his wings and legs, and with his precious cargo cradled close against his chest, he dove toward the ground, spinning round and round in a death spiral. The Dauthdaert tore loose from Thorn’s flesh, and Arya stretched out at
an angle to him as she held on to a spike with only her right hand—her weak hand, the hand she had injured in the catacombs under Dras-Leona.

Ere long, her fingers loosened and she fell away from Thorn, her arms and legs flung outward like the spokes of a wagon wheel. No doubt the result of a spell she had cast, her gyrations slowed and then ceased, as did her downward trajectory, until at last she floated upright in the night sky. Illuminated by the glow of the Dauthdaert, which she still held, she appeared to Eragon like a green firefly hovering in the darkness.

Thorn flared his wings and looped back toward her. Arya’s head swiveled as she looked over at Saphira; then she rotated in the air to face Thorn.

A malefic light sprang into existence between Thorn’s jaws an instant before an ever-expanding wall of flames billowed out of his maw and rolled over Arya, obscuring her form.

By then, Eragon was less than fifty feet away—close enough that the heat stung his cheeks.

The flames cleared to reveal Thorn turning away from Arya, doubling back on himself as quickly as his bulk would allow. As he did, he swung his tail, whipping it through the air faster than she could hope to evade.

“No!” shouted Eragon.

There was a
crack
as the tail struck Arya. It knocked her into the darkness, like a stone loosed from a sling, and the Dauthdaert separated from her and arced downward, its glow dwindling to a faint point that soon vanished altogether.

Iron bands seemed to tighten around Eragon’s chest, squeezing the breath out of him. Thorn was pulling away, but Eragon might still be able to overtake the dragon if he drew even more energy from Glaedr. However, his connection with Glaedr was growing tenuous and Eragon could not hope to best Thorn and Murtagh alone and high above the ground, not when Murtagh had dozens or more Eldunarí at his disposal.

Eragon swore, cut off the spell that was propelling him through the air, and dove headfirst after Arya. The wind screamed in his ears and tore at his hair and clothes, and mashed the skin on his cheeks flat, and forced him to narrow his eyes to slits. An insect struck him on the neck; the impact stung as fiercely as if he had been hit by a pebble.

As he fell, Eragon searched with his mind for Arya’s consciousness. He had just sensed a glimmer of awareness somewhere in the gloom below when Saphira shot out beneath him, her scales muted in the light of the stars. She turned upside down, and Eragon saw her reach out and catch a small, dark object with her forepaws.

A jolt of pain went through the mind Eragon had touched; then all thought ceased within it and he felt no more.

I have her, little one
, said Saphira.