Inheritance i-4

by Christopher Paolini

  She resisted the urge to pull away when he stepped forward, put his weighty hands on her head, and combed through her hair with his fingers. When he did not find the spoon, his face drooped. He grabbed her arm then and walked her over to the slab and again placed her in the manacles.

  Then, his expression sullen, he picked up the tray and shuffled out of the room.

  She waited until she was absolutely sure he was gone before she reached out with the fingers of her left hand and, inch by inch, pulled up the edge of her shift.

  A broad smile passed across her face as she felt the bowl of the spoon with the tip of her index finger.

  Now she had a weapon.

  A CROWN OF ICE AND SNOW

  When the first pale rays of light streaked across the surface of the dimpled sea, illuminating the crests of the translucent waves-which glittered as if carved from crystal-then Eragon roused himself from his waking dreams and looked to the northwest, curious to see what the light revealed of the clouds building in the distance.

  What he beheld was disconcerting: the clouds encompassed nearly half the horizon, and the largest of the dense white plumes looked as tall as the peaks of the Beor Mountains, too tall for Saphira to climb over. The only open sky lay behind her, and even that would be lost to them as the arms of the storm closed in.

  We shall have to fly through it, Glaedr said, and Eragon felt Saphira’s trepidation.

  Why not try to go around? she asked.

  Through Saphira, Eragon was aware of Glaedr examining the structure of the clouds. At last the golden dragon said, I do not want you flying too far off course. We still have many leagues to cover, and if your strength fails you-

  Then you can lend me yours to keep us aloft.

  Hmph. Even so, it is best to be cautious in our recklessness. I have seen the likes of this storm before. It is larger than you think. To skirt it, you would have to fly so far to the west that you would end up beyond Vroengard, and it would probably take another day to reach land.

  The distance to Vroengard isn’t that great, she said.

  No, but the wind will slow us. Besides, my instincts tell me that the storm extends all the way to the island. One way or another, we shall have to fly through it. However, there’s no need to go through its very heart. Do you see the notch between those two small pillars off to the west?

  Yes.

  Go there, and perhaps we can then find a safe path through the clouds.

  Eragon grasped the front of the saddle as Saphira dropped her left shoulder and turned westward, aiming herself toward the notch Glaedr had indicated. He yawned and rubbed his eyes as she leveled out; then he twisted round and dug out an apple and a few strips of dried beef from the bags strapped behind him. It was a meager breakfast, but his hunger was slight, and eating a large meal while riding Saphira often made him queasy.

  While he ate, he alternated between watching the clouds and gazing at the sparkling sea. He found it unsettling that there was nothing but water beneath them and that the nearest solid ground-the mainland-was, by his estimate, over fifty miles away. He shivered as he imagined sinking down and down into the cold, clutching depths of the sea. He wondered what lay at the bottom, and it occurred to him that with his magic, he could likely travel there and find out, but the thought held no appeal. The watery abyss was too dark and too dangerous for his liking. It was not, he felt, a place where his sort of life ought to venture. Better, instead, to leave it to whatever strange creatures already lived there.

  As the morning wore on, it became apparent that the clouds were farther away than they had first seemed and that, as Glaedr had said, the storm was larger than either Eragon or Saphira had originally imagined.

  A light headwind sprang up, and Saphira’s flight became somewhat more labored, but she continued to make good progress.

  When they were still some leagues from the leading edge of the storm, Saphira surprised Eragon and Glaedr by slipping into a shallow dive and flying down close to the surface of the water.

  As she descended, Glaedr said, Saphira, what are you about?

  I’m curious, she replied. And I would like to rest my wings before entering the clouds.

  She skimmed over the waves, her reflection below and her shadow in front mirroring her every move like two ghostly companions, one dark and one light. Then she swiveled her wings on edge and, with three quick flaps, slowed herself and landed upon the water. A fan of spray shot up on either side of her neck as her chest plowed into the waves, sprinkling Eragon with hundreds of droplets.

  The water was cold, but after so long aloft, the air felt pleasantly warm-so warm, in fact, that Eragon unwrapped his cloak and pulled off his gloves.

  Saphira folded her wings and floated along peacefully, bobbing up and down with the motion of the waves. Eragon spotted several clumps of brown seaweed off to the right. The plants were branched like scrub brush and had berry-sized bladders at joints along the stems.

  Far overhead, near the height Saphira had been, Eragon spotted a pair of albatrosses with black-tipped wings flying away from the massive wall of clouds. The sight only deepened his unease; the seabirds reminded him of the time he had seen a pack of wolves running alongside a herd of deer as the animals fled a forest fire in the Spine.

  If we had any sense, he said to Saphira, we would turn around.

  If we had any sense, we would leave Alagaesia and never return, she rejoined.

  Arching her neck, she dipped her muzzle into the seawater, then shook her head and ran her crimson tongue in and out of her mouth several times, as if she had tasted something unpleasant.

  Then Eragon felt a sense of panic from Glaedr, and the old dragon roared in his mind: Take off! Now, now, now! Take off!

  Saphira wasted no time on questions. With a sound like thunder, she opened her wings and began to beat them as she reared out of the water.

  Leaning forward, Eragon grabbed the edge of the saddle to keep from being thrown backward. The flapping of Saphira’s wings threw up a screen of mist that half blinded him, so he used his mind to search for whatever had alarmed Glaedr.

  From deep below, rising toward Saphira’s underside faster than Eragon would have believed possible, he felt something that was cold and huge … and filled with a ravenous, insatiable hunger. He tried to frighten it, tried to turn it away, but the creature was alien and implacable and seemed not to notice his efforts. In the strange, lightless caverns of its consciousness, he glimpsed memories of uncounted years spent lurking alone in the icy sea, hunting and being hunted.

  His own panic mounting, Eragon groped for the hilt of Brisingr even as Saphira wrenched herself free from the grasp of the water and began to climb into the air. Saphira! Hurry! he silently shouted.

  She slowly gained speed and altitude, and then a fountain of white water erupted behind her, and Eragon saw a pair of shiny gray jaws emerge from within the plume. The jaws were large enough for a horse and rider to pass through unscathed and were filled with hundreds of glinting white teeth.

  Saphira was aware of what he saw, and she twisted violently to the side in an attempt to escape the gaping maw, clipping the water with the tip of her wing. An instant later, Eragon heard and felt the creature’s jaws snap shut.

  The needle-like teeth missed Saphira’s tail by inches.

  As the monster fell back into the water, more of its body became visible: The head was long and angular. A bony crest jutted out over the eyes, and from the outer part of each crest grew a ropy tendril that Eragon guessed to be over six feet in length. The neck of the creature reminded him of a giant, rippling snake. What was visible of the creature’s torso was smooth and powerfully built and looked incredibly dense. A pair of oar-shaped flippers extended from the sides of its chest, flailing helplessly in the air.

  The creature landed upon its side, and a second, even larger burst of spray flew toward the sky.

  Just before the waves closed over the monster’s shape, Eragon looked into its one upward-facing eye,
which was as black as a drop of tar. The malevolence contained therein-the sheer hate and fury and frustration that he perceived in the creature’s unblinking gaze-was enough to make Eragon shiver and wish he were in the center of the Hadarac Desert. For only there, he felt, would he be safe from the creature’s ancient hunger.

  Heart pounding, he relaxed his grip on Brisingr and slumped over the front of the saddle. “What was that?”

  A Nidhwal, said Glaedr.

  Eragon frowned. He did not remember reading about any such thing in Ellesmera. And what is a Nidhwal?!

  They are rare and not often spoken about. They are to the sea what the Fanghur are to the air. Both are cousins to the dragons. Though the differences in our appearance are greater, the Nidhwal are closer to us than are the screeching Fanghur. They are intelligent, and they even have a structure similar to the Eldunari within their chest, which we believe enables them to remain submerged for extended periods of time at great depth.

  Can they breathe fire?

  No, but like the Fanghur, they often use the power of their minds to incapacitate their prey, which more than one dragon has discovered to their dismay.

  They would eat their own kind! Saphira said.

  To them, we are nothing alike, Glaedr replied. But they do eat their own, which is one reason there are so few Nidhwalar. They have no interest in happenings outside their own realm, and every attempt to reason with them has met with failure. It is odd to encounter one so close to shore. There was a time when they were only found several days’ flight from land, where the sea is the deepest. It seems they have grown either bold or desperate since the fall of the Riders.

  Eragon shivered again as he remembered the feel of the Nidhwal’s mind. Why did neither you nor Oromis ever teach us of them?

  There is much we did not teach you, Eragon. We had only so much time, and it was best spent trying to arm you against Galbatorix, not every dark creature that haunts the unexplored regions of Alagaesia.

  Then there are other things like the Nidhwal that we don’t know about?

  A few.

  Will you tell us of them, Ebrithil? Saphira asked.

  I will make a pact with you, Saphira, and with you, Eragon. Let us wait a week, and if we are still alive and still possessed of our freedom, I will happily spend the next ten years teaching you about every single race I know of, including every variety of beetle, of which there are multitudes. But until then, let us concentrate upon the task before us. Are we agreed?

  Eragon and Saphira reluctantly agreed, and they spoke of it no more.

  The headwind strengthened into a blustery gale as they neared the front of the storm, slowing Saphira until she was flying at half her normal speed. Now and then, powerful gusts rocked her and sometimes stopped her dead in her course for a few moments. They always knew when the gusts were about to strike, for they could see a silvery, scalelike pattern rushing toward them across the surface of the water.

  Since dawn, the clouds had only increased in size, and up close, they were even more intimidating. Near the bottom, they were dark and purplish, with curtains of driving rain connecting the storm with the sea like a gauzy umbilical cord. Higher up, the clouds were the color of tarnished silver, while the very tops were a pure, blinding white and appeared as solid as the flanks of Tronjheim. To the north, over the center of the storm, the clouds had formed a gigantic flat-topped anvil that loomed over all else, as if the gods themselves intended to forge some strange and terrible instrument.

  As Saphira soared between two bulging white columns-beside which she was no more than a speck-and the sea vanished beneath a field of pillow-like clouds, the headwind abated and the air grew rough and choppy, swirling about them without an identifiable direction. Eragon clenched his teeth to keep them from clacking, and his stomach lurched as Saphira dropped a half-dozen feet and then, just as quickly, rose more than twenty feet straight up.

  Glaedr said, Have you any experience storm-flying other than the time you were caught in a thunderstorm between Palancar Valley and Yazuac?

  No, said Saphira, short and grim.

  Glaedr seemed to have expected her answer, for without hesitation he began to instruct her about the intricacies of navigating the fantastic cloudscape. Look for patterns of movement and take note of the formations around you, he said. By them, you may guess where the wind is strongest and the direction it is blowing.

  Much of what he said Saphira already knew, but as Glaedr kept talking, the old dragon’s calm demeanor steadied both her and Eragon. Had they felt alarm or fear in the old dragon’s mind, it would have caused them to doubt themselves, and perhaps Glaedr was aware of that.

  A stray, wind-torn scrap of cloud lay across Saphira’s path. Instead of flying around it, she went straight through, piercing the cloud like a glittering blue spear. As the gray mist enveloped them, the sound of the wind grew muted, and Eragon squinted and held a hand before his face to keep his eyes clear.

  When they shot out of the cloud, millions of tiny droplets clung to Saphira’s body, and she sparkled as if diamonds had been affixed to her already dazzling scales.

  Her flight continued to be unsettled; one moment she would be level, but the next the unruly air might shove her sideways, or an unexpected updraft might lift one wing and send her slewing off in the opposite direction. Just sitting on her back as she fought against the turbulence was tiring, while for Saphira herself, it was a miserable, frustrating struggle made all the more difficult by knowing that it was far from over and that she had no choice but to continue on.

  After an hour or two they still had not sighted the far side of the tempest. Glaedr said, We have to turn. You’ve gone as far west as is prudent, and if we’re to dare the full wrath of the storm, we had best do it now, before you are any more exhausted.

  Without a word, Saphira wheeled north toward the vast, towering cliff of sunlit clouds that occupied the heart of the giant storm. As they neared the ridged face of the cliff-which was the largest single thing Eragon had ever seen, larger even than Farthen Dur-blue flashes illuminated the folds within as lightning crawled upward, toward the top of the anvil head.

  A moment later, a clap of thunder shook the sky, and Eragon covered his ears with his hands. He knew that his wards would protect them from the lightning, but he still felt apprehensive about venturing near the crackling bolts of energy.

  If Saphira was frightened, he did not sense it. All he could feel was her determination. She quickened the beat of her wings, and a few minutes later they arrived at the face of the cliff and then plunged through it and into the center of the storm.

  Twilight surrounded them, gray and featureless.

  It was as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist. The clouds made it impossible for Eragon to judge any distance past the tips of Saphira’s nose, tail, and wings. They were effectively blind, and only the constant pull of their weight let them differentiate up from down.

  Eragon opened his mind and allowed his consciousness to expand as far as he could, but he felt no other living thing besides Saphira and Glaedr, not even a single stray bird. Fortunately, Saphira retained her sense of direction; they would not get lost. And by continuing to search with his mind for other beings, whether plant or animal, Eragon could ensure that they would not fly straight into the side of a mountain.

  He also cast a spell that Oromis had taught him, a spell that informed him and Saphira exactly how close they were to the water-or the ground-at any given moment.

  From the moment they entered the cloud, the ever-present moisture began to accumulate on Eragon’s skin and soak into his woolen clothes, weighing them down. It was an annoyance he could have ignored had not the combination of water and wind been so chilling, it would have soon drained the heat from his limbs and killed him. Therefore, he cast another spell, which filtered the air around him of any visible droplets, as well as-at her request-the air around Saphira’s eyes, for the moisture kept collecting on their surface, forcing her to blink
all too frequently.

  The wind inside the anvil head was surprisingly gentle. Eragon made a comment to that effect to Glaedr, but the old dragon stayed as grim as ever. We have yet to encounter the worst of it.

  The truth of his words soon became evident when a ferocious updraft slammed into Saphira’s underside and carried her thousands of feet higher, where the air was too thin for Eragon to breathe properly and the mist froze into countless tiny crystals that stung his nose and cheeks and the webbing of Saphira’s wings like so many razor-sharp knives.

  Pinning her wings against her sides, Saphira dove forward, trying to escape the updraft. After a few seconds, the pressure underneath her vanished, only to be replaced by an equally powerful downdraft, which shoved her toward the waves at a frightful speed.

  As they fell, the ice crystals melted, forming large, globular raindrops that seemed to float weightlessly alongside Saphira. Lightning flared nearby-an eerie blue glow through the veil of clouds-and Eragon shouted with pain as the thunder boomed around them. His ears still ringing, he ripped two small pieces off the edge of his cloak, then rolled up the scraps of cloth and screwed them into his ears, forcing them in as far as he could.

  Only near the bottom of the clouds did Saphira manage to break free of the fast-flowing stream of air. As soon as she did, a second updraft seized hold of her and, like a giant hand, pushed her skyward.

  Then and for a long while after, Eragon lost all track of time. The raging wind was too strong for Saphira to resist, and she continued to rise and fall in the cycling air, like a piece of flotsam caught in a whirlpool. She made some headway-a few scant miles, dearly won and with great effort retained-but every time she extricated herself from one of the looping currents, she found herself trapped in another.