Eragon rose and said to Glaedr, I’m going to gather some firewood. I’ll be back in a few minutes.

The dragon acknowledged him, and Eragon carefully made his way across the meadow to the forest, doing his best to be quiet so as not to disturb Saphira. Once he was at the trees, he quickened his pace. Although there were plenty of dead branches along the verge of the forest, he wanted to stretch his legs and, if he could, find the source of the chattering.

Shadows lay heavy under the trees. The air was cool and still, like that of a cave deep underground, and it smelled of fungus, rotting wood, and oozing sap. The moss and lichen that trailed from the branches were like lengths of tattered lace, stained and sodden but still possessed of a certain delicate beauty. They partitioned the interior of the woods into cells of varying size, which made it difficult to see more than fifty feet in any direction.

Eragon used the burbling of the brook to determine his bearings as he worked his way deeper into the forest. Now that he was close to them, he saw that the evergreens were unlike those from the Spine or even from Du Weldenvarden; they had clusters of seven needles instead of three, and though it might have been a trick of the fading light, it seemed to him as if darkness clung to the trees, like a cloak wrapped around their trunks and branches. Also, everything about the trees, from the cracks in the bark to their protruding roots to their scaled cones—everything about them had a peculiar angularity and a fierceness of line that made them appear as if they were about to pull themselves free of the earth and stride down to the city below.

Eragon shivered and loosened Brisingr in its scabbard. He had never before been in a forest that felt so menacing. It was as if the trees were angry and—as with the apple grove earlier—as if they wanted to reach out and rend his flesh from his bones.

With the back of his hand, he brushed aside a swath of yellow lichen as he cautiously made his way forward.

So far he had seen no sign of game, nor had he found any evidence of wolves or bears, which puzzled him. That close to the stream, there should have been trails leading to the water.

Maybe the animals avoid this part of the woods, he thought. But why?

A fallen log lay across his path. He stepped over it, and his boot sank ankle-deep into a carpet of moss. An instant later, the gedwëy ignasia on his palm began to itch, and he heard a tiny chorus of skree-skree! and skree-skra! as a half-dozen white, wormlike grubs—each the size of one of his thumbs—burst out of the moss and began to hop away from him.

Old instincts took hold, and he stopped as he would if he had chanced upon a snake. He did not blink. He did not even breathe as he watched the fat, obscene-looking grubs flee. At the same time, he racked his memory for any mention of them during his training in Ellesméra, but he could recall no such thing.

Glaedr! What are these? And he showed the dragon the grubs. What is their name in the ancient language?

To Eragon’s dismay, Glaedr said, They are unknown to me. I have not seen their like before, nor have I ever heard tell of them. They are new to Vroengard, and new to Alagaësia. Do not let them touch you; they may be more dangerous than they appear.

Once they had put several feet between them and Eragon, the nameless grubs hopped higher than usual and with a skree-skro! dove back into the moss. As they landed, they split, dividing into a swarm of green centipedes, which quickly disappeared within the tangled strands of moss.

Only then did Eragon allow himself to breathe.

They should not be, said Glaedr. He sounded troubled.

Eragon slowly lifted his boot off the moss and retreated behind the log. Examining the moss with greater care, he saw that what he had originally taken as the tips of old branches poking out of the blanket of vegetation were actually pieces of broken ribs and antlers—the remains, he thought, of one or more deer.

After a moment’s consideration, Eragon turned around and began to retrace his steps, this time making sure to avoid every scrap of moss along the way, which was no easy task.

Whatever had been chattering in the forest was not worth risking his life to find—especially since he suspected that there was worse than the grubs lurking among the trees. His palm kept itching, and from experience, he knew that meant there was still something dangerous close by.

When he could see the meadow and the blue of Saphira’s scales between the trunks of the evergreens, he turned aside and walked to the brook. Moss covered the bank of the stream, so he stepped from log to stone until he was standing on a flat-topped rock in the midst of the water.

There he squatted, removed his gloves, and washed his hands, face, and neck. The touch of the icy water was bracing, and within moments his ears flushed and his whole body began to feel warm.

A loud chattering rang forth over the stream as he wiped the last few droplets from his neck.

Moving as little as possible, he looked toward the top of the trees on the opposite bank.

Thirty feet up, four shadows sat on a branch. The shadows had large barbed plumes that extended in every direction from the black ovals of their heads. A pair of white eyes, slanted and slit-like, glowed within the middle of each oval, and the blankness of their gaze made it impossible to determine where they were looking. Most disconcerting yet, the shadows, like all shadows, had no depth. When they turned to the side, they disappeared.

Without taking his eyes off them, Eragon reached across his body and grasped Brisingr’s hilt.

The leftmost shadow ruffled its plumes and then uttered the same shrieking chatter he had mistaken for a squirrel. Two more of the wraiths did likewise, and the forest echoed with the strident clamor of their cries.