Arya

Eragon smiled without meaning to. Her timing had been perfect; the ship had arrived exactly when she intended. Then his smile faded, and he reread the letter several more times. She was hiding something; that much was obvious. But what? Why meet in secret?

Maybe Arya doesn’t approve of the elves’ next ruler, he thought. Or maybe there’s some other problem. And though Eragon was eager to see her again, he could not forget how she had ignored him and Saphira. He supposed that, from Arya’s point of view, the intervening months were a trifling amount of time, but he could not help feeling hurt.

He waited until the first hint of sunlight appeared in the sky, then hurried down to wake Saphira and tell her the news. She was as curious as he, if not quite as excited.

He saddled her, and then they left the city and set off to the northeast, having told no one of their plans, not even Glaedr or the other Eldunarí.

FÍRNEN

t was early in the afternoon when they arrived at the location Arya had designated: a gentle curve in the Ramr River that marked its farthest excursion eastward.

Eragon strained to look over Saphira’s neck as he searched for a glimpse of anyone below. The land appeared empty, save for a herd of wild oxen. When the animals caught sight of Saphira, they fled, lowing and kicking up plumes of dust. They and a few other, smaller animals scattered about the countryside were the only living creatures Eragon could sense. Disappointed, he shifted his gaze to the horizon but saw no sign of Arya.

Saphira landed on a slight rise fifty yards from the banks of the river. She sat, and Eragon sat with her, resting his back against her side.

On the top of the rise was an outcropping of soft, slatelike rock. While they waited, Eragon amused himself by grinding a thumb-sized flake into the shape of an arrowhead. The stone was too soft for the arrowhead to be anything other than decorative, but he enjoyed the challenge. When he was satisfied with the simple, triangular point, he set it aside and began to grind a larger piece into a leaf-bladed dagger, similar to those the elves carried.

They did not have to wait as long as he first thought.

An hour after their arrival, Saphira lifted her head from the ground and peered across the plains in the direction of the not-so-distant Hadarac Desert.

Her body stiffened against his, and he felt a strange emotion within her: a sense of impending momentousness.

Look, she said.

Keeping hold of his half-finished dagger, he clambered to his feet and peered eastward.

He saw nothing but grass, dirt, and a few lone, windswept trees between them and the horizon. He broadened his area of scrutiny but still saw nothing of interest.

What—he started to ask, then cut himself off as he looked up.

High in the eastern sky, he saw a wink of green fire, like an emerald glimmering in the sun. The point of light arced through the blue mantle of the heavens, approaching at a rapid pace, bright as a star at night.

Eragon dropped the stone dagger and, without taking his eyes off the glittering spark, climbed onto Saphira’s back and strapped his legs into her saddle. He wanted to ask her what she thought the point of light was—to force her to put into words what he suspected—but he could not bring himself to speak any more than she could.

Saphira held her position, although she unfolded her wings and, keeping them bent nearly in half, lifted them in preparation to take off.

As it grew larger, the spark proliferated, dividing into a cluster of dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of tiny points of light. After a few minutes, the true shape of it became visible, and they saw that it was a dragon.

Saphira could wait no longer. She uttered a resonant trumpet, leaped off the rise, and flapped downward.

Eragon clutched the neck spike in front of him as she ascended at a nearly vertical angle, desperate to intercept the other dragon as quickly as possible. Both he and she alternated between elation and a wariness born of too many battles. In their caution, it pleased them that they had the sun to their backs.

Saphira continued to climb until she was slightly above the green dragon, whereupon she leveled off and concentrated upon speed.

Closer, Eragon saw that the dragon, while well built, still had some of the gangly look of youth—his limbs had yet to acquire the stocky weight of Glaedr’s or Thorn’s—and he was smaller than Saphira. The scales upon his sides and back were a dark forest green, while those upon his belly and the pads of his feet were lighter, with the smallest ones verging upon white. When against his body, his wings were the color of holly leaves, but when the light shone through them, they were the color of oak leaves in the spring.

At the juncture between the dragon’s neck and back was a saddle much like Saphira’s, and on the saddle sat a figure that looked to be Arya, her dark hair streaming from her head. The sight filled Eragon’s heart with joy, and the emptiness he had labored under for so long vanished like the darkness of night before the rising sun.

As the dragons swooped past each other, Saphira roared, and the other dragon roared in response. They turned and began to circle—as if chasing each other’s tails—Saphira still slightly above the green dragon, who made no attempt to climb above her. If he had, Eragon would have feared he was attempting to gain the advantage before attacking.

He grinned and shouted into the wind. Arya shouted back and raised an arm. Then Eragon touched her mind, just to be sure, and he knew in an instant that it really was Arya, and that she and the dragon meant them no harm. He withdrew a moment later, for it would have been rude to prolong the mental contact without her consent; she would answer his questions when they spoke on the ground.