“I don’t know,” said Eragon. “Saphira once took me out of my body and let me see the world through her eyes. . . . Itseemed like I was no longer connected to my body. And if the wraiths that a sorcerer calls upon can exist, then maybe our consciousness is independent of flesh as well.”

Extending the needle-sharp tip of his foreclaw, Glaedr flipped over a rock to expose a woodrat cowering in its nest. He snapped up the rat with a flash of his red tongue; Eragon winced as he felt the animal’s life extinguished.

When the flesh is destroyed, so is the soul,said Glaedr.

“But an animal isn’t a person,” protested Eragon.

After your meditations, do you truly believe that any of us are so different from a woodrat? That we are gifted with a miraculous quality that other creatures do not enjoy and that somehow preserves our beings after death?

“No,” muttered Eragon.

I thought not. Because we are so closely joined, when a dragon or Rider is injured, they must harden their hearts and sever the connection between them in order to protect each other from unnecessary suffering, even insanity. And since the soul cannot be torn from the flesh, you must resist the temptation to try to take your partner’s soul into your own body and shelter it there, as that will result in both your deaths. Even if it were possible, it would be an abomination to have multiple consciousnesses in one body.

“How terrible,” said Eragon, “to die alone, separate even from the one who is closest to you.”

Everyone dies alone, Eragon. Whether you are a king on a battlefield or a lowly peasant lying in bed among your family, no one can accompany you into the void. . . . Now I will have you practice separating your consciousnesses. Start by . . .

Eragon stared at the tray of dinner left in the anteroom of the tree house. He cataloged the contents: bread with hazelnut butter, berries, beans, a bowl of leafy greens, two hard-boiled eggs—which, in accordance with the elves’ beliefs, were unfertilized—and a stoppered jug of fresh spring water. He knew that each dish was prepared with the utmost care, that the elves lavished all of their culinary skill upon his meals, and that not even Islanzadí ate better than him.

He could not bear the sight of the tray.

I want meat,he growled, stomping back into the bedroom. Saphira looked up at him from her dais.I’d even settle for fish or fowl, anything besides this never-ending stream of vegetables. They don’t fill up my stomach. I’m not a horse; why should I be fed like one?

Saphira unfolded her legs, walked to the edge of the teardrop gap overlooking Ellesméra, and said,I have needed to eat these past few days. Would you like to join me? You can cook as much meat as you like and the elves will never know.

That I would,he said, brightening.Should I get the saddle?

We won’t go that far.

Eragon fetched his supply of salt, herbs, and other seasonings from his bags and then, careful not to overexert himself, climbed into the gap between the spikes along Saphira’s spine.

Launching herself off the ground, Saphira let an updraft waft her high above the city, whereupon she glided off the column of warm air, slipping down and sideways as she followed a braided stream through Du Weldenvarden to a pond some miles thence. She landed and hunched low to the ground, making it easier for Eragon to dismount.

She said,There are rabbits in the grass by the edge of the water. See if you can catch them. In the meantime, I go to hunt deer.

What, you don’t want to share your own prey?

No, I don’t,she replied grumpily.Though I will if those oversized mice elude you.

He grinned as she took off, then faced the tangled clumps of grass and cow parsnip that surrounded the pond and set about procuring his dinner.

Less than a minute later, Eragon collected a brace of dead rabbits from their nest. It had taken him but an instant to locate the rabbits with his mind and then kill them with one of the twelve death words. What he had learned from Oromis had drained the challenge and excitement from the chase.I didn’t even have to stalk them, he thought, remembering the years he had spent honing his tracking abilities. He grimaced with sour amusement.I can finally bag any game I want and it seems meaningless to me. At least when I hunted with a pebble with Brom, it was still a challenge, but this . . . this is slaughter.

The warning of the sword-shaper Rhunön returned to him then: “When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it.”

I should have paid more attention to her,realized Eragon.

With practiced movements, he drew his old hunting knife, skinned and gutted the rabbits, and then—putting aside the hearts, lungs, kidneys, and livers—buried the viscera so that the scent would not attract scavengers. Next he dug a pit, filled it with wood, and lit a small blaze with magic, since he had not thought to bring his flint and steel. He tended the fire until he had a bed of coals. Cutting a wand of dogwood, he stripped the bark and seared the wood over the coals to burn off the bitter sap, then spitted the carcasses on the wand and suspended them between two forked branches pounded into the ground. For the organs, he placed a flat stone upon a section of the coals and greased it with fat for a makeshift frying pan.

Saphira found him crouched by the fire, slowly turning the wand to cook the meat evenly. She landed with a limp deer hanging from her jaws and the remains of a second deer clutched in her talons. Measuring her length out in the fragrant grass, she proceeded to gorge upon her prey, eating the entire deer, including the hide. Bones cracked between her razor teeth, like branches snapping in a gale.