To Eragon’s relief, Elva remained silent.

When Saphira had gone two full lengths of her body, she folded her wings and dropped to the floor with a resounding clatter.

Safe, she said. Her scales scraped on the floor as she turned around. She jumped back, and Eragon and the others moved out of the way to give her room to land on her return. Well? she said. Who’s first?

It took her four trips to ferry them all across the bed of spikes. Then they continued forward at a swift trot, Arya and Elva again in the lead. They encountered no more traps until they were three-quarters of the way to the gleaming doors, at which point Elva shuddered and raised her small hand. They immediately stopped.

“Something will cut us in two if we continue,” she said. “I’m not sure where it will come from … the walls, I think.”

Eragon frowned. That meant that whatever would cut them had enough weight or strength behind it to overcome their wards—hardly an encouraging prospect.

“What if we—” he started to say, then stopped as twenty black-robed humans, men and women alike, filed out of a side passageway and formed a line in front of them, blocking the way.

Eragon felt a blade of thought stab into his mind as the enemy magicians began to chant in the ancient language. Opening her jaws, Saphira raked the spellcasters with a torrent of crackling flame, but it passed harmlessly around them. One of the banners along the wall caught fire, and scraps of smoldering fabric fell to the floor.

Eragon defended himself, but he did not attack in turn; it would take too long to subdue the magicians one by one. Moreover, their chanting concerned him: if they were willing to cast spells before they had seized control of his mind—as well as those of his companions—then they no longer cared if they lived or died, only that they stopped the intruders.

He dropped to one knee next to Elva. She was speaking to one of the spellcasters, saying something about the man’s daughter.

“Are they standing over the trap?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

She nodded, never pausing in her speech.

Reaching out, he slapped the palm of his hand against the floor.

He had expected something to happen, but still he recoiled when a horizontal sheet of metal—thirty feet long and four inches thick—shot out of each wall with a terrible screech. The plates of metal caught the magicians between them and cut them in two, like a pair of giant tin snips, then just as quickly retreated back into their hidden slots.

The suddenness of it shocked Eragon. He averted his eyes from the shambles before them. What a horrible way to die.

Next to him, Elva gurgled, then slumped forward in a faint. Arya caught her before her head hit the floor. Cradling her with one arm, Arya began to murmur to her in the ancient language.

Eragon consulted with the other elves about how best to bypass the trap. They decided that the safest way would be to jump over it, as they had with the bed of spikes.

Four of them climbed onto Saphira, and she was just about to spring forward when Elva cried out in a weak voice: “Stop! Don’t!”

Saphira flicked her tail but remained where she was.

Elva slid out of Arya’s grasp, staggered a few feet away, leaned over, and was sick. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, then stared at the mangled bodies that lay before them, as if fixing them in her memory.

Still staring at them, she said, “There is another trigger, halfway across, in the air. If you jump”—she clapped her hands together, a loud, sharp sound, and made an ugly face—“blades come out from high on the walls, as well as lower.”

A thought began to bother Eragon. “Why would Galbatorix try to kill us? … If you weren’t here,” he said, looking at Elva, “Saphira might be dead right now. Galbatorix wants her alive, so why this?” He gestured at the bloody floor. “Why the spikes and the blocks of stone?”

“Perhaps,” said the elf woman Invidia, “he expected the pits to capture us before we reached the rest of the traps.”

“Or perhaps,” said Blödhgarm in a grim voice, “he knows that Elva is with us and what she is capable of.”

The girl shrugged. “What of it? He can’t stop me.”

A chill crept through Eragon. “No, but if he knows of you, then he might be scared, and if he’s scared—”

Then he might really be trying to kill us, Saphira finished.

Arya shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We still have to find him.”

They spent a minute discussing how to get past the blades, whereupon Eragon said, “What if I used magic to transport us over there, the way Arya sent Saphira’s egg to the Spine?” He gestured toward the area past the bodies.

It would require too much energy, said Glaedr.

Better to conserve our strength for when we face Galbatorix, Umaroth added.

Eragon gnawed on his lip. He looked back over his shoulder and was alarmed to see, far behind them, Murtagh running from one side of the hallway to the other. We don’t have long.

“Maybe we could put something into the walls, to keep the blades from coming out.”

“The blades are sure to be protected from magic,” Arya pointed out. “Besides, we don’t have anything with us that could hold them back. A knife? A piece of armor? The plates of metal are too big and heavy. They would tear past whatever was in front of them as if it were not there.”

Silence fell upon them.

Then Blödhgarm licked his fangs and said, “Not necessarily.” He turned and placed his sword on the floor in front of Eragon, then motioned for the elves under his command to do the same.