Cuaroc set off in pursuit of Saphira, for the eggs were still with her, and it was his duty to protect them.

Through the great boles of the city, Roran and Katrina led Eragon until they arrived at a clearing edged with dogwood and hollyhocks, where tables sat laden with a vast assortment of food. Many elves, garbed in their finest tunics, greeted Eragon with soft cries, mellifluous laughter, and snatches of song and music.

Arya took her place at the head of the banquet, and the white raven, Blagden, rested upon a carved perch nearby, croaking and spouting occasional scraps of verse. Eragon sat by Arya’s side, and they ate and drank and made merry until late in the night.

When the feast began to draw to a close, Eragon snuck away for a few minutes and ran through the darkened forest to the Menoa tree, guided more by his senses of smell and hearing than by sight.

The stars appeared overhead as he emerged from beneath the angled boughs of the great pine trees. He paused, then, to slow his breathing and collect himself before picking his way across the bed of roots that surrounded the Menoa tree.

He stopped at the base of the immense trunk and placed his hand against the creviced bark. Reaching out with his mind toward the slow consciousness of the tree that had once been an elf woman, he said:

Linnëa … Linnëa … Awake! I must needs speak with you! He waited but detected no response from the tree; it was as if he were attempting to communicate with the sea or the air or the earth itself. Linnëa, I must speak to you!

A sigh of wind seemed to pass through his mind, and he felt a thought, faint and distant, a thought that said, What, O Rider …?

Linnëa, when last I was here, I said that I would give you whatever you wanted in exchange for the brightsteel under your roots. I am about to leave Alagaësia, so I have come to fulfill my obligation ere I go. What would you have of me, Linnëa?

The Menoa tree did not answer, but its branches stirred slightly, needles fell pattering onto the roots about the clearing, and a sense of amusement emanated from its consciousness.

Go …, whispered the voice, and then the tree withdrew from Eragon’s mind.

He stood where he was for another few minutes, calling her name, but the tree refused to respond. In the end, Eragon left, feeling as if the matter was still unsettled, although the Menoa tree obviously thought otherwise.

The next three days, Eragon spent reading books and scrolls—many of which had come from Galbatorix’s library and which Vanir had sent onward to Ellesméra at Eragon’s request. In the evenings, he dined with Roran, Katrina, and Arya, but otherwise he kept to himself and did not see even Saphira, for she remained with Fírnen on the Crags of Tel’naeír and showed little interest in anything else. At night, the roars and bellows of the dragons often echoed across the forest, distracting him from his studies and making him smile when he touched Saphira’s thoughts. He missed Saphira’s companionship, but he knew that she had only a short time to spend with Fírnen, and he begrudged her not her happiness.

On the fourth day, when he had learned all he could from his reading, he went to Arya and presented his plan to her and her advisers. It took him the better part of the day to convince them that what he had in mind was necessary and, moreover, that it would work.

Once he had, they broke to eat. As dusk began to creep across the land, they assembled in the clearing around the Menoa tree: he, Saphira and Fírnen, Arya, thirty of the elves’ oldest and most accomplished spellcasters, Glaedr and the other Eldunarí that Eragon and Saphira had brought with them, and the two Caretakers: the elf women Iduna and Nëya, who were the living embodiment of the pact between the dragons and the Riders.

The Caretakers disrobed, and—in accordance with the ancient rituals—Eragon and the others began to sing, and as they sang, Iduna and Nëya danced, moving together so that the dragon tattooed across them seemed to become a single, unified creature.

At the height of the song, the dragon shimmered, and then it opened its jaws and stretched its wings and leaped forward, pulling itself off the elves’ skin and rising above the clearing until only its tail remained touching the intertwined Caretakers.

Eragon called to the glowing creature, and when he had its attention, he explained to it what he wanted and asked if the dragons would agree.

Do as you will, Kingkiller, said the spectral creature. If it will help ensure peace throughout Alagaësia, we do not object.

Then Eragon read from one of the books of the Riders, and he spoke the name of the ancient language in his mind. The elves and the dragons who were present lent him the strength of their bodies, and the energy from them coursed through him like a great whirling tempest. With it, Eragon cast the spell he had spent days perfecting, a spell such as had not been cast for hundreds of years: an enchantment like unto the great old magics that ran deep within the veins of the earth and the bones of the mountains. With it, he dared to do what had been done only once before.

With it, he forged a new compact between the dragons and the Riders.

He bound not just the elves and the humans to the dragons, but also the dwarves and the Urgals, making it so that any one of them could become a Rider.

As he spoke the final words of the mighty enchantment, and thus sealed it into place, a tremor seemed to run through the air and the earth. He felt as if everything around them—and everything in the world perhaps—had shifted ever so slightly. The spell exhausted him, Saphira, and the other dragons, but upon its conclusion, a sense of elation filled him, and he knew that he had accomplished a great good, the greatest, perhaps, of his entire life.