Inheritance

THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL …

“Stop,” said Elva.

Eragon froze with his foot in the air. The girl waved him back, and he retreated.

“Jump to there,” said Elva. She pointed at a spot a yard in front of him. “By the scrollwork.”

He crouched, then hesitated as he waited for her to tell him whether it was safe.

She stamped her foot and made a sound of exasperation. “It won’t work if you don’t mean it. I can’t tell if something is going to hurt you unless you actually intend to put yourself in danger.” She gave him a smile that he found less than reassuring. “Don’t worry; I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Still doubtful, he flexed his legs again and was just about to spring forward when-

“Stop!”

He cursed and waved his arms as he tried to keep from falling onto the section of floor that would trigger the spikes hidden both above and below.

The spikes were the third trap Eragon and his companions had encountered in the long hallway leading to the golden doors. The first had been a set of hidden pits. The second had been blocks of stone in the ceiling that would have squished them flat. And now the spikes, much like those that had killed Wyrden in the tunnels beneath Dras-Leona.

They had seen Murtagh enter the hallway through the open sally port, but he had made no effort to pursue them without Thorn. After watching for a few seconds, he had disappeared into one of the side rooms where Arya and Blodhgarm had broken the gears and wheels used to open and close the stronghold’s main gate.

It might take Murtagh an hour to fix the mechanisms, or it might take him minutes. Either way, they dared not dawdle.

“Try a little bit farther out,” said Elva.

Eragon grimaced, but did as she suggested.

“Stop!”

This time he would have fallen had Elva not grabbed the back of his tunic.

“Even farther,” she said. Then, “Stop! Farther.”

“I can’t,” he growled, his frustration increasing. “Not without a running start.” But with a running start, it would be impossible to stop himself in time, should Elva determine that the jump was dangerous. “What now? If the spikes go all the way to the doors, we’ll never reach them.” They had already thought of using magic to float over the trap, but even the smallest spell would set it off, or so Elva claimed, and they had no choice but to trust her.

“Maybe the trap is meant for a walking dragon,” said Arya. “If it’s only a yard or two long, Saphira or Thorn could step right over without ever realizing it was there. But if it’s a hundred feet long, it would be sure to catch them.”

Not if I jump, said Saphira. A hundred feet is an easy distance.

Eragon exchanged concerned glances with Arya and Elva. “Just make sure you don’t let your tail touch the floor,” he said. “And don’t go too far, or you might run into another trap.”

Yes, little one.

Saphira crouched and gathered herself in, lowering her head until it was only a foot or so above the stone. Then she dug her claws into the floor and leaped down the hallway, opening her wings just enough to give herself a bit of lift.

To Eragon’s relief, Elva remained silent.

When Saphira had gone two full lengths of her body, she folded her wings and dropped to the floor with a resounding clatter.

Safe, she said. Her scales scraped on the floor as she turned around. She jumped back, and Eragon and the others moved out of the way to give her room to land on her return. Well? she said. Who’s first?

It took her four trips to ferry them all across the bed of spikes. Then they continued forward at a swift trot, Arya and Elva again in the lead. They encountered no more traps until they were three-quarters of the way to the gleaming doors, at which point Elva shuddered and raised her small hand. They immediately stopped.

“Something will cut us in two if we continue,” she said. “I’m not sure where it will come from … the walls, I think.”

Eragon frowned. That meant that whatever would cut them had enough weight or strength behind it to overcome their wards-hardly an encouraging prospect.

“What if we-” he started to say, then stopped as twenty black-robed humans, men and women alike, filed out of a side passageway and formed a line in front of them, blocking the way.

Eragon felt a blade of thought stab into his mind as the enemy magicians began to chant in the ancient language. Opening her jaws, Saphira raked the spellcasters with a torrent of crackling flame, but it passed harmlessly around them. One of the banners along the wall caught fire, and scraps of smoldering fabric fell to the floor.

Eragon defended himself, but he did not attack in turn; it would take too long to subdue the magicians one by one. Moreover, their chanting concerned him: if they were willing to cast spells before they had seized control of his mind-as well as those of his companions-then they no longer cared if they lived or died, only that they stopped the intruders.

He dropped to one knee next to Elva. She was speaking to one of the spellcasters, saying something about the man’s daughter.

“Are they standing over the trap?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

She nodded, never pausing in her speech.

Reaching out, he slapped the palm of his hand against the floor.

He had expected something to happen, but still he recoiled when a horizontal sheet of metal-thirty feet long and four inches thick-shot out of each wall with a terrible screech. The plates of metal caught the magicians between them and cut them in two, like a pair of giant tin snips, then just as quickly retreated back into their hidden slots.

The suddenness of it shocked Eragon. He averted his eyes from the shambles before them. What a horrible way to die.

Next to him, Elva gurgled, then slumped forward in a faint. Arya caught her before her head hit the floor. Cradling her with one arm, Arya began to murmur to her in the ancient language.

Eragon consulted with the other elves about how best to bypass the trap. They decided that the safest way would be to jump over it, as they had with the bed of spikes.

Four of them climbed onto Saphira, and she was just about to spring forward when Elva cried out in a weak voice: “Stop! Don’t!”

Saphira flicked her tail but remained where she was.

Elva slid out of Arya’s grasp, staggered a few feet away, leaned over, and was sick. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, then stared at the mangled bodies that lay before them, as if fixing them in her memory.

Still staring at them, she said, “There is another trigger, halfway across, in the air. If you jump”-she clapped her hands together, a loud, sharp sound, and made an ugly face-“blades come out from high on the walls, as well as lower.”

A thought began to bother Eragon. “Why would Galbatorix try to kill us? … If you weren’t here,” he said, looking at Elva, “Saphira might be dead right now. Galbatorix wants her alive, so why this?” He gestured at the bloody floor. “Why the spikes and the blocks of stone?”

“Perhaps,” said the elf woman Invidia, “he expected the pits to capture us before we reached the rest of the traps.”

“Or perhaps,” said Blodhgarm in a grim voice, “he knows that Elva is with us and what she is capable of.”

The girl shrugged. “What of it? He can’t stop me.”

A chill crept through Eragon. “No, but if he knows of you, then he might be scared, and if he’s scared-”

Then he might really be trying to kill us, Saphira finished.

Arya shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We still have to find him.”

They spent a minute discussing how to get past the blades, whereupon Eragon said, “What if I used magic to transport us over there, the way Arya sent Saphira’s egg to the Spine?” He gestured toward the area past the bodies.

It would require too much energy, said Glaedr.

Better to conserve our strength for when we face Galbatorix, Umaroth added.

Eragon gnawed on his lip. He looked back over his shoulder and was alarmed to see, far behind them, Murtagh running from one side of the hallway to the other. We don’t have long.

“Maybe we could put something into the walls, to keep the blades from coming out.”

“The blades are sure to be protected from magic,” Arya pointed out. “Besides, we don’t have anything with us that could hold them back. A knife? A piece of armor? The plates of metal are too big and heavy. They would tear past whatever was in front of them as if it were not there.”

Silence fell upon them.

Then Blodhgarm licked his fangs and said, “Not necessarily.” He turned and placed his sword on the floor in front of Eragon, then motioned for the elves under his command to do the same.

Eleven blades in total they laid before Eragon. “I can’t ask you to do this,” he said. “Your swords-”

Blodhgarm interrupted with a raised hand, his fur glossy in the soft light of the lanterns. “We fight with our minds, Shadeslayer, not our bodies. If we encounter soldiers, we can take what weapons we need from them. If our swords are of more use here and now, then we would be foolish to retain them merely for reasons of sentiment.”

Eragon inclined his head. “As you wish.”

To Arya, Blodhgarm said, “It should be an even number, if we are to have the best chance of success.”

She hesitated, then drew her own thin-bladed sword and placed it among the others. “Consider carefully what you are about to do, Eragon,” she said. “These are storied weapons all. It would be a shame to destroy them and gain nothing by it.”

He nodded, then frowned, concentrating as he recalled his lessons with Oromis. Umaroth, he said, I’ll need your strength.

What is ours is yours, the dragon replied.

The illusion that hid the slots from which the sheets of metal slid out was too well constructed for Eragon to pierce. This was as he expected-Galbatorix was not one to overlook such a detail. On the other hand, the enchantments responsible for the illusion were easy enough to detect, and by them he was able to determine the exact placement and dimensions of the openings.

He could not tell exactly how far back the sheets of metal lay within the slots. He hoped it was at least an inch or two from the outer surface of the wall. If they were closer, his idea would fail, for the king was sure to have protected the metal against outside tampering.

Summoning the words he needed, Eragon cast the first of the twelve spells he intended to use. One of the elves’ swords-Laufin’s, he thought-disappeared with a faint breath of wind, like a tunic being swung through the air. A half second later, a solid thud emanated from the wall to their left.

Eragon smiled. It had worked. If he had tried to send the sword through the sheet of metal, the reaction would have been substantially more dramatic.

Speaking faster than before, he cast the rest of the spells, embedding six swords within each wall, each sword five feet from the next. The elves watched him intently as he spoke; if the loss of their weapons upset them, they did not show it.

When he had finished, Eragon knelt by Arya and Elva-who were both once more holding the Dauthdaert-and said, “Get ready to run.”

Saphira and the elves tensed. Arya had Elva climb onto her back while still maintaining her hold on the green lance; then Arya said, “Ready.”

Reaching forward, Eragon again slapped the floor.

A jarring crash sounded from each wall, and threads of dust fell from the ceiling, blossoming into hazy plumes.

The moment he saw that the swords had held, Eragon dashed forward. He had barely taken two steps when Elva screamed, “Faster!”

Roaring with the effort, he forced his feet to strike the ground even harder. To his right, Saphira ran past, head and tail low, a dark shadow at the edge of his vision.

Just as he reached the far side of the trap, he heard the snap of breaking steel and then the cringe-inducing shriek of metal scraping against metal.

Behind him, someone shouted.

He twisted as he flung himself away from the noise, and he saw that everyone had crossed the space in time, save the silver-haired elf woman Yaela, who had been caught between the last six inches of the two pieces of metal. The space around her flared blue and yellow, as if the air itself was burning, and her face contorted with pain.

“Flauga!” shouted Blodhgarm, and Yaela flew out from between the sheets of metal, which snapped together with a ringing clang. Then they retreated into the walls with the same terrible shrieking that had accompanied their appearance.

Yaela had landed on her hands and knees close to Eragon. He helped her to her feet; to his surprise, she seemed unharmed. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, but … my wards are gone.” She lifted her hands and stared at them with an expression close to wonder. “I’ve not been without wards since … since I was younger than you are now. Somehow the blades stripped them from me.”

“You’re lucky to be alive,” said Eragon. He frowned.

Elva shrugged. “We would have all died, except for him”-she pointed at Blodhgarm-“if I hadn’t told you to move faster.”

Eragon grunted.

They continued on their way, expecting with every step to find another trap. But the rest of the hallway proved to be free of obstacles, and they reached the doors at the end without further incident.

Eragon looked up at the shining expanse of gold. Embossed across the doors was a life-sized oak tree, the leaves of which formed an arching canopy that joined with the roots below to inscribe a great circle about the trunk. Sprouting from either side of the trunk’s midsection were two thick bundles of branches, which divided the space within the circle into quarters. In the top-left quarter was a carving of an army of spear-bearing elves marching through a thick forest. In the top-right quarter were humans building castles and forging swords. In the bottom left, Urgals-Kull, mostly-burning down a village and killing the inhabitants. In the bottom right, dwarves mining caves filled with gems and veins of ore. Amid the roots and branches of the oak, Eragon spotted werecats and the Ra’zac, as well as a few small strange-looking creatures that he failed to recognize. And coiled in the very center of the bole of the tree was a dragon that held the end of its tail in its mouth, as if biting itself. The doors were beautifully crafted. Under different circumstances, Eragon would have been content to sit and study them for most of a day.

As it was, the sight of the shining doors filled him with dread as he contemplated what might lie on the other side. If it was Galbatorix, then their lives were about to change forever and nothing would ever be the same-not for them, and not for the rest of Alagaesia.

I’m not ready, Eragon said to Saphira.

When will we ever be ready? she replied. She flicked out her tongue, tasting the air. He could feel her nervous anticipation. Galbatorix and Shruikan must be killed, and we are the only ones who might be able to do it.

What if we can’t?

Then we can’t, and what will be will be.

He nodded and took a long breath. I love you, Saphira.

I love you too, little one.

Eragon stepped forward. “Now what?” he asked, trying to hide his uneasiness. “Should we knock?”

“First, let’s see if it’s open,” said Arya.

They arranged themselves in a formation suitable for battle. Then Arya, with Elva next to her, grasped a handle set within the left-hand door and prepared to pull.

As she did, a column of shimmering air appeared around Blodhgarm and each of his ten spellcasters. Eragon shouted with alarm, and Saphira released a short hiss, as if she had stepped upon something sharp. The elves seemed unable to move within the columns: even their eyes remained motionless, fixed upon whatever they had been looking at when the spell took effect.

With a heavy clank, a door in the wall to the left slid open, and the elves began to move toward it, like a procession of statues gliding across ice.

Arya lunged toward them, barbed spear extended before her, in an attempt to cut through the enchantments binding the elves, but she was too slow, and she could not catch them.

“Letta!” shouted Eragon. Stop! The simplest spell he could think of that might help. However, the magic that imprisoned the elves proved too strong for him to break, and they disappeared within the dark opening, the door slamming shut behind them.

Dismay swept through Eragon. Without the elves …

Arya pounded on the door with the butt of the Dauthdaert, and she even tried to find the seam between the door and the wall with the tip of the blade-as she had with the sally port-but the wall seemed solid, immovable.

When she turned around, her expression was one of cold fury. Umaroth, she said. I need your help to open this wall.

No, said the white dragon. Galbatorix is sure to have hidden yourcompanions well. Trying to find them will only waste energy and place us in even greater danger.

Arya’s slanting eyebrows drew closer as she scowled. Then we play into his hand, Umaroth-elda. He wants to divide us and make us weaker. If we continue without them, it will be that much easier for Galbatorix to defeat us.

Yes, little one. But think you not also that the Egg-breaker might want us to pursue them? He might want us to forget him in our anger and concern, and thus to rush blindly into another of his traps.

Why would he go to so much trouble? He could have captured Eragon, Saphira, you, and the rest of the Eldunari, even as he captured Blodhgarm and the others, but he didn’t.

Perhaps because he wants us to exhaust ourselves before we confront him or before he attempts to break us.

Arya lowered her head for a moment, and when she looked up, her fury had vanished-at least on the surface-replaced by her usual controlled watchfulness. What, then, should we do, Ebrithil?

We hope that Galbatorix will not kill Blodhgarm or the others-not immediately, at least-and we continue on until we find the king.

Arya acquiesced, but Eragon could tell that she found it distasteful. He could not blame her; he felt the same.

“Why didn’t you sense the trap?” he asked Elva in an undertone. He thought he understood, but he wanted to hear it from her.

“Because it didn’t hurt them,” she said.

He nodded.

Arya strode back to the golden doors and again grasped the handle on the left. Joining her, Elva wrapped her small hand around the shaft of the Dauthdaert.

Leaning away from the door, Arya pulled and pulled, and the massive structure slowly began to swing outward. No one human, Eragon was sure, could have opened it, and even Arya’s strength was barely sufficient.

When the door reached the wall, Arya released it, and then she and Elva joined Eragon in front of Saphira.

On the other side of the cavernous archway was a huge, dark chamber. Eragon was unsure of its size, for the walls lay hidden in velvet shadows. A line of flameless lanterns mounted on iron poles ran straight out from either side of the entranceway, illuminating the patterned floor and little else, while a faint glow came from above through crystals set within the distant ceiling. The two rows of lanterns ended over five hundred feet away, near the base of a broad dais, upon which rested a throne. On the throne sat a single black figure, the only figure in the whole room, and on his lap lay a bare sword, a long white splinter that seemed to emit a faint glow.

Eragon swallowed and tightened his grip on Brisingr. He gave Saphira’s jaw a quick rub with the edge of his shield, and she flicked out her tongue in response. Then, by unspoken consent, the four of them started forward.

The moment they were all in the throne room, the golden door swung shut behind them. Eragon had expected as much, but still, the noise of it closing made him start. As the echoes faded to dusky silence within the high presence chamber, the figure upon the throne stirred, as if waking from sleep, and then a voice-a voice such as Eragon had never heard before: deep and rich and imbued with authority greater than that of Ajihad or Oromis or Hrothgar, a voice that made even the elves’ seem harsh and discordant-rang forth from the far side of the throne room.

And it said, “Ah, I have been expecting you. Welcome to my abode. And welcome to you in particular, Eragon Shadeslayer, and to you, Saphira Brightscales. I have much desired to meet with you. But I am also glad to see you, Arya-daughter of Islanzadi, and Shadeslayer in your own right-and you as well, Elva, she of the Shining Brow. And of course, Glaedr, Umaroth, Valdr, and those others who travel with you unseen. I had long believed them to be dead, and I am most glad to learn otherwise. Welcome, all! We have much to talk about.”