Almost all the buildings were damaged, some more severely than others. The damage seemed to radiate outward from a single point near the southern edge of the city, where a wide crater sank more than thirty feet into the ground. A copse of birch trees had taken root in the depression, and their silvery leaves shook in the gusts of the directionless breeze.

The open areas within the city were overgrown with weeds and brush, while a fringe of grass surrounded each of the flagstones that formed the streets. Where the buildings had sheltered the Riders’ gardens from the blast that had ravaged the city, dull-colored flowers still grew in artful designs, their shapes no doubt governed by the dictates of some long-forgotten spell.

Altogether, the circular valley presented a dismal picture.

Behold the ruins of our pride and glory, said Glaedr. Then: Eragon, you must cast another spell. The wording of it goes thus—And he uttered several lines in the ancient language. It was an odd spell; the phrasing was obscure and convoluted, and Eragon was unable to determine what it was supposed to accomplish.

When he asked Glaedr, the old dragon said, There is an invisible poison here, in the air you breathe, in the ground you walk upon, and in the food you may eat and the water you may drink. The spell will protect us against it.

What … poison? asked Saphira, her thoughts as slow as the beats of her wings.

Eragon saw from Glaedr an image of the crater by the city, and the dragon said, During the battle with the Forsworn, one of our own, an elf by the name of Thuviel, killed himself with magic. Whether by design or by accident has never been clear, but the result is what you see and what you cannot see, for the resulting explosion rendered the area unfit to live in. Those who remained here soon developed lesions upon their skin and lost their hair, and many died thereafter.

Concerned, Eragon cast the spell—which required little energy—before he said, How could any one person, elf or not, cause so much damage? Even if Thuviel’s dragon helped him, I can’t think how it would be possible, not unless his dragon was the size of a mountain.

His dragon did not help him, said Glaedr. His dragon was dead. No, Thuviel wrought this destruction by himself.

But how?

The only way he could have: he converted his flesh into energy.

He made himself into a spirit?

No. The energy was without thought or structure, and once unbound, it raced outward until it dispersed.

I had not realized that a single body contained so much force.

It is not well known, but even the smallest speck of matter is equal to a great amount of energy. Matter, it seems, is merely frozen energy. Melt it, and you release a flood few can withstand.… It was said that the explosion here was heard as far away as Teirm and that the cloud of smoke that followed rose as high as the Beor Mountains.

Was it the blast that killed Glaerun? Eragon asked, referring to the one member of the Forsworn who he knew had died on Vroengard.

It was. Galbatorix and the rest of the Forsworn had a moment of warning, and so were able to shield themselves, but many of our own were not as fortunate and thus perished.

As Saphira glided downward from the underside of the low-slung clouds, Glaedr instructed her where to fly, so she altered her course, turning toward the northwestern part of the valley. Glaedr named each of the mountains that she flew past: Ilthiaros, Fellsverd, and Nammenmast, along with Huildrim and Tírnadrim. He also named many of the holds and fallen towers below, and he gave something of their history to Eragon and Saphira, although only Eragon paid heed to the old dragon’s narration.

Within Glaedr’s consciousness, Eragon felt an ancient sorrow reawaken. The sorrow was not so much for the destruction of Doru Araeba as for the deaths of the Riders, the near extinction of the dragons, and the loss of thousands of years of knowledge and wisdom. The memory of what had been—of the companionship he had once shared with the other members of his order—exacerbated Glaedr’s loneliness. That, along with his sorrow, created a mood of such desolation, Eragon began to feel saddened as well.

He withdrew slightly from Glaedr, but still the valley seemed gloomy and melancholy, as if the land itself were mourning the fall of the Riders.

The lower Saphira flew, the larger the buildings appeared. As their true size became evident, Eragon realized that what he had read in Domia abr Wyrda was no exaggeration: the grandest of them were so enormous, Saphira would be able to fly within them.

Near the edge of the abandoned city, he began to notice piles of giant white bones upon the ground: the skeletons of dragons. The sight filled him with revulsion, and yet he could not bring himself to look elsewhere. What struck him most was their size. A few of the dragons had been smaller than Saphira, but most had been far larger. The biggest he saw was a skeleton with ribs that he guessed were at least eighty feet long and perhaps fifteen wide at their thickest. The skull alone—a huge, fierce thing covered with blotches of lichen, like a rough crag of stone—was longer and taller than the main part of Saphira’s body. Even Glaedr, when he was still clothed in flesh, would have appeared diminutive next to the slain dragon.

There lies Belgabad, greatest of us all, said Glaedr as he noticed the object of Eragon’s attention.

Eragon vaguely remembered the name from one of the histories he had read in Ellesméra; the author had written only that Belgabad had been present at the battle and that he perished in the fighting, as so many had.

Who was his Rider? he asked.

He had no Rider. He was a wild dragon. For centuries, he lived alone in the icy reaches of the north, but when Galbatorix and the Forsworn began to slaughter our kind, he flew to our aid.