Having completed his assignment, Garven returned to his post beside Nasuada. He was, she thought, a changed man. His original determination and fierceness of spirit had faded into the dreamy air of a sleepwalker, and while he looked at her when she asked if he was well, and he answered in an even enough tone, she felt as if his spirit was far away, ambling among dusty, sunlit glades somewhere in the elves’ mysterious forest. Nasuada hoped he would soon recover. If he did not, she would ask Eragon or Angela, or perhaps the two of them together, to attend to Garven. Until such time as his condition improved, she decided that he should no longer serve as an active member of the Nighthawks; Jörmundur would give him something simple to do, so she would not suffer guilt at causing him any further injury, and he might at least have the pleasure of enjoying whatever visions his contact with the elves had left him with.

Bitter at her loss, and furious with herself, with the elves, and with Galbatorix and the Empire for making such a sacrifice necessary, she had difficulty maintaining a soft tongue and good manners. “When you spoke of peril, Blödhgarm, you would have done well to mention that even those who return to their bodies do not escape entirely unscathed.”

“My Lady, I am fine,” said Garven. His protestation was so weak and ineffectual, hardly anyone noticed, and it only served to strengthen Nasuada’s sense of outrage.

The fur on Blödhgarm’s nape rippled and stiffened. “If I failed to explain myself clearly enough before, then I apologize. However, do not blame us for what has happened; we cannot help our nature. And do not blame yourself either, for we live in an age of suspicion. To allow us to pass unchallenged would have been negligent on your part. It is regrettable that such an unpleasant incident should mar this historic meeting between us, but at least now you may rest easy, confident that you have established our origins and that we are what we seem to be: elves of Du Weldenvarden.”

A fresh cloud of his musk drifted over Nasuada, and even though she was hard with anger, her joints weakened and she was assailed by thoughts of bowers draped in silk, goblets of cherry wine, and the mournful dwarf songs she had often heard echoing through the empty halls of Tronjheim. Distracted, she said, “I would Eragon or Arya were here, for they could have looked at your minds without fear of losing their sanity.”

Again she succumbed to the wanton attraction of Blödhgarm’s odor, imagining what it would feel like to run her hands through his mane. She only returned to herself when Elva pulled on her left arm, forcing her to bend over and place her ear close to the witch-child’s mouth. In a low, harsh voice, Elva said, “Horehound. Concentrate upon the taste of horehound.”

Following her advice, Nasuada summoned a memory from the previous year, when she had eaten horehound candy during one of King Hrothgar’s feasts. Just thinking about the acrid flavor of the candy dried out her mouth and counteracted the seductive qualities of Blödhgarm’s musk. She attempted to conceal her lapse in concentration by saying, “My young companion here is wondering why you look so different from other elves. I must confess to some curiosity on the subject as well. Your appearance is not what we have come to expect from your race. Would you be so kind as to share with us the reason for your more animalistic features?”

A shiny ripple flowed through Blödhgarm’s fur as he shrugged. “This shape pleased me,” he said. “Some write poems about the sun and the moon, others grow flowers or build great structures or compose music. As much as I appreciate those various art forms, I believe that true beauty only exists in the fang of a wolf, in the pelt of the forest cat, in the eye of an eagle. So I adopted those attributes for myself. In another hundred years, I may lose interest in the beasts of the land and instead decide that the beasts of the sea embody all that is good, and then I will cover myself with scales, transform my hands into fins and my feet into a tail, and I will vanish beneath the surface of the waves and never again be seen in Alagaësia.”

If he was jesting, as Nasuada believed, he showed no indication of it. Quite to the contrary, he was so serious, she wondered if he was mocking her. “Most interesting,” she said. “I hope the urge to become a fish does not strike you in the near future, for we have need of you on dry ground. Of course, if Galbatorix should decide to also enslave the sharks and the rockfish, why, then, a spellcaster who can breathe underwater may be of some use.”

Without warning, the twelve elves filled the air with their clear, bright laughter, and birds for over a mile in every direction burst into song. The sound of their mirth was like water falling on crystal. Nasuada smiled without meaning to, and around her she saw similar expressions on the faces of her guards. Even the two Urgals seemed giddy with joy. And when the elves fell silent and the world became mundane again, Nasuada felt the sadness of a fading dream. A film of tears obscured her vision for a clutch of heartbeats, and then that too was gone.

Smiling for the first time, and thereby presenting a visage both handsome and terrifying, Blödhgarm said, “It will be an honor to serve alongside a woman as intelligent, capable, and witty as yourself, Lady Nasuada. One of these days, when your duties permit, I would be delighted to teach you our game of Runes. You would make a formidable opponent, I’m sure.”

The elves’ sudden shift in behavior reminded her of a word she had occasionally heard the dwarves use to describe them: capricious. It had seemed a harmless enough description when she was a girl—it reinforced her concept of the elves as creatures who flitted from one delight to another, like fairies in a garden of flowers—but she now recognized that what the dwarves really meant was Beware! Beware, for you never know what an elf will do. She sighed to herself, depressed by the prospect of having to contend with another group of beings intent on controlling her for their own ends. Is life always this complicated? she wondered. Or do I bring it upon myself?