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 Nïdhwal, said Glaedr.

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

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 Nïdhwal are closer to us than are the screeching Fanghur. They are intelligent, and they even have a structure similar to the Eldunarí 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 Nïdhwalar. 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 Nïdhwal’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 Alagaësia.

Then there are other things like the Nïdhwal 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.