The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm

CHAPTER IV Rhymes and Riddles

Eragon stared across his desk at Angela the herbalist, studying her.

She was sitting in the dark pinewood chair the elves had sung for him, still clad in her furs and travel cloak. Flakes of melted snow beaded the tips of the rabbit-hair trim, bright and shiny by the light of the lanterns.

On the floor next to the herbalist lay the werecat, Solembum, in his feline form, licking himself dry. His tongue rasped loudly against his shaggy coat.

Billows of snow swirled past the open windows of the eyrie, blocking the view. Some slipped in and dusted the sills, but for the most part, the wards Eragon had set kept out the snow and cold.

The storm had settled on Mount Arngor two days past, and it still showed no signs of letting up. Nor was it the first. Winter on the eastern plains had been far harsher than Eragon expected. Something to do with the effects of the Beor Mountains on the weather, he suspected.

Angela and Solembum had arrived with the latest batch of traders: a group of bedraggled humans, travel-worn and half frozen to death. Accompanying the herbalist had also been the dragon-marked child Elva—she who carried the curse of self-sacrifice Eragon had inadvertently laid upon her. A curse instead of a blessing, and every time he saw her, he still felt a sense of responsibility.

They’d left the girl on the lower levels, eating with the dwarves. She’d grown since Eragon had last seen her, and now she looked to be nearly ten, which was at least six years in advance of her actual age.

“Now then, where’s the clutch of bouncing baby dragons I was expecting?” said Angela. She pulled off her mittens and then folded her hands over her knee and matched his gaze. “Or have they still not hatched?”

Eragon resisted the urge to grimace. “No. The main part of the hold is far from finished—as you’ve seen—and stores are tight. To quote Glaedr, the eggs have already waited for a hundred years; they can wait one more winter.”

“Mmm, he might be right. Be careful of waiting too long, though, Argetlam. The future belongs to those who seize it. What about Saphira, then?”

“What about her?”

“Has she laid any eggs?”

Eragon shifted, uncomfortable. The truth was Saphira hadn’t, not yet, but he didn’t want to admit as much. The information felt too personal to share. “If you’re so interested, you should ask her yourself.”

The herbalist cocked her head. “Oh, touchy, are we? I suppose I will, then.”

“What brings you here, and in the middle of winter, no less?”

She produced a small copper flask from under her cloak and took a sip before offering it to Eragon. He shook his head. “Now, now, Kingslayer, you almost sound as if you’re not happy to see us.”

“You are always welcome at our hearth,” said Eragon, choosing his words with care. The last thing he wanted to do was offend this quicksilver-like woman. “But you can’t deny it’s odd, venturing out across the plains in the dead months of the year. I’m just curious. You of all people should understand that.”

“My, how far we’ve come from that day in Teirm,” Angela murmured. Then she raised her voice again: “Two reasons. First, because I’m currently on a take-around with Elva. I thought it would do both her and me some good to leave the human parts of Alagaësia for a time. Especially seeing as how Nasuada’s pet spellcasters in Du Vrangr Gata are making life difficult for harmless, innocent hedge witches such as myself.”

“Harmless? Innocent?” Eragon raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” said Angela, and her lips quirked with a smile, “perhaps not so harmless as all that. In any case, we’ve been to Du Weldenvarden. We’ve been to the dream well in Mani’s Caves, and we’ve stopped over in Tronjheim. Fell Thindarë seemed the next natural destination. Besides…” She fiddled with the trim of her cloak. “It occurred to me that Elva might be able to help you soothe the minds of some of the Eldunarí.”

Eragon nodded, reading the meaning between her lines. “That she might. And…were I to venture a guess, I would say she might learn something by it also.”

“Exactly,” said Angela with unexpected force. She wiped the water off the fur of her hood, not meeting his eyes. “Exactly.”

A deeper concern began to form in Eragon. Of all the people and creatures he had met since discovering Saphira’s egg in the Spine so long ago, Elva was perhaps the most dangerous. His badly worded blessing had forced her to become something more than human: a living shield against the misfortune of others. As a result, Elva had gained the ability to foresee and thus forestall impending hurts. Nor was that the end to her powers. She could perceive the most painful thoughts in those around her, which was an intimidating—even frightening—prospect. And for a young child to bear that burden: overwhelming.

It never ceased to amaze Eragon that, despite his spell, Elva had retained her sanity. She was still young, though, and risks remained.

“What are you not saying, Angela?” he said, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward. “Has something gone amiss with Elva?”

“Amiss?” The herbalist laughed, bright and merry. “No, nothing amiss. You have an overly suspicious mind, Shadeslayer.”

“Hmm.” He wasn’t convinced.

The rasping of Solembum’s tongue continued unabated.

Then the herbalist reached under her cloak and removed a thin, flat packet wrapped in oilskin. “Second: my other reason for coming.” She handed Eragon the packet. “In light of my impending dotage, I decided to put pen to paper and write an account of my life. An autobiography of sorts, if you will.”

“Your impending dotage, eh?” The curly-haired woman didn’t look any older than her early twenties. Eragon hefted the packet. “And what am I supposed to do with this?”

“Read it, of course!” said Angela. “Why else would I traipse across the whole of Alagaësia and beyond but to get the informed opinion of a man raised as an illiterate farmer?”

Eragon eyed her for a long moment. “Very funny.” He unwrapped the packet to find a small collection of rune-covered pages, each written with a different color of ink. Shuffling through them, he saw several chapter titles. The numbers appended to them varied wildly. “There are parts missing,” he said.

The herbalist fluttered her hand, as if the matter was of no consequence. “That’s because I’m writing them out of order. It’s how my brain works.”

“But how do you know that”—he squinted at a page—“this is supposed to be chapter one hundred twenty-five and not, say, one hundred twenty-three?”

“Because,” said Angela with a superior expression, “I have faith in the gods, and they reward my devotion.”

“No, you don’t,” said Eragon. He leaned forward, feeling as if he’d just gained the advantage in a sparring match. “You don’t have faith in anyone but yourself.”

She made an expression of mock outrage. “Here now! You dare question my conviction, Shur’tugal?!”

“Not at all. I just question where it’s directed. Even if I took your word at its face, what gods do you have faith in? Those of the dwarves? The Urgals? The wandering tribes?”

Angela’s smile broadened. “Why, all of them, of course. My faith is not so narrow as to be restricted to a single set of deities.”

“I imagine that would be quite…contradictory.”

“You’re far too literal-minded for your own good, Bromsson, as I’ve told you before. Expand your conception of what is or isn’t possible.” She eyed him with an aggravating amount of amusement.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, attempting to indulge her. “Still, the gods didn’t write these pages.”

“No, I did. But now we’re getting distracted by theology, and while it makes for delightful conversation, that’s not my intent….Are you familiar with the puzzle rings the dwarves make?”

Eragon nodded, remembering the one Orik had given him during their trip from Tronjheim to the elven city of Ellesméra.

“Then you know how, when they’re disassembled, they look like a patternless bunch of twisted bands. But arrange them in the right sequence, and hey ho! there you go—a beautiful, solid ring.” Angela gestured toward the papers in his hand. “Order or disorder: it depends on your perspective.”

“And what perspective is yours?” he asked softly.

“That of the ring maker,” she answered in an equally soft tone.

“I—”

“Stop asking so many questions and read the manuscript.” She picked up her mittens and stood. “We’ll talk after.”

As the herbalist left the eyrie, Solembum stopped his licking, stared at Eragon with his slitted eyes, and said, Beware of shadows that walk, human. There are strange forces at work in the world.

Then the werecat left as well, padding away on silent paws.

Annoyed and a little disquieted, Eragon settled back in his chair and started to read from Angela’s papers. The contrary part of him was tempted to read them out of sequence, just to spite her, but he behaved himself and started as he should, from the beginning….

CHAPTER V On the Nature of Stars

Many have deemed me a frivolous person, and that is just as I like it. When I was young (and yes, dear reader, I was once young—disregard the foolish words to the contrary from those followers of the Doctrine of the Residue), I made the error of showing myself to others. And in my youthful enthusiasm, I repeated the mistake a grave many times.

Do you wish to poke and pry, to see and know, to taste my soul? I am no capering child. No. Now I make mistakes rarely, and do not repeat them, for the mistakes of my profession come with a price measured in blood and flesh and lives.

So.

The tales contained in this volume are all true, and every one is false. I leave it to the discerning reader to untangle the contrary strands of history, memory, facts, and lies. I will say this: care has been taken to provide an accurate telling of the most well-known—and hence, most misunderstood and ill-reported—events here recounted.

The truth rarely lies in the middle, somewhere between two opposing viewpoints. In my experience, it is far more likely to be found a good deal above and to the left of the apparent, much-proclaimed “truths.” Look up from the plane of human dealings and you may see a dragon flying overhead—or at least an informative sky that warns you to take cover before the arrival of a storm.

Many will advise you to dig for the truth, but you must never, never do that. I have dug. I have seen what lies below, and I would not wish that upon the worst of you.

Strive for wisdom! Or at least a decrease in idiocy.

—Angela of Many Names

When I was a child, this was an obvious truth, something not even worth thinking about—like the rise of the sun or the change of the seasons.

I vividly recall that night spent lying on my back in the high hill pasture, eyes wide open to the celestial show. The burning stars brought a cold glow across the whole clear sky, so far from the smoke of the town-fires and the light of the searchers’ torches.

The stars trace their nightly paths over the land. They move. It is so obvious; how could it not be true? But the obvious is often an illusion.

The seeding grass and late spring flowers were black silhouettes against the star-bright sky. The greenery was high enough to hide a heifer, thus giving the impression that I was peering up from the bottom of a hole. Even if the searchers came to this pasture, they could not have seen me from mere feet away.

As hours passed, the stars turned above, night chill drew the heat from my body, and I fell into a curious trance, not asleep—I did not dare close my eyes—but not fully awake. Thinking of it now, it is obvious what natural processes were affecting my body, but for many years, they were mysterious to me.

The world altered.

In a moment, I felt as if everything—the earth beneath my back, under my outstretched arms and palms pressed flat against the damp ground—became insubstantial. I was falling away from nothing and into nothing. My body had no weight and was both plummeting and floating and yet was still pressed into the ground. My perception of time changed. The stars seemed to speed across the sky, until I suddenly felt as if they were static and I was moving. The ground, the trees and mountains, everything was moving.

I had no concept of “planet” then, but that was the right word, had I known it.

Dawn brightened the sky, and still, I had no perception of time passing. Then, with the first rays of sunlight, the trance broke and I returned to myself with a shaken understanding of the world, and a new resolution to face the inevitable troubles…consequences that were soon to strike.

With the barest touch of a single finger, the globe silently spun on nearly frictionless dwarven bearings. It was a beautiful, glittering thing of near-microscopic details incised into some unknown pale metal. Even the grandest geographical features of the world were reduced to tiny bumps and dips of cold metal under my fingertips. Doubtless, my careless touch grazed over many a place I have since visited.

I had felt a powerful fascination with the globe from the time I first set eyes on it. I had longed to study it for hours and days, to compare its features with familiar maps and learn about the different methods of representing a round object on a flat surface.

Though the globe was—I now know—a hopelessly incomplete depiction of our planet, it nevertheless was a captivating work of art, and I regret its destruction. A small price to pay…but still, art should be protected.

But in that moment, the globe was a mere distraction that stole precious seconds.

Time was limited. The library could Shift at any moment, and the longer I lingered, the greater the probability that I would be stranded in some unknowable hinterland, some other space, neither here nor there.

The inner door of the library only coincided with the outer door at particular moments, and I did not yet have the skill to perform the obscure computations required to predict the times of safe passage. It was an ingenious system for protecting the most precious of secrets. Regardless of the dangers, I was determined to take those first steps down the path to true knowledge.

Overstaying the window of time that the library and the tower were connected was not my greatest fear, though. I was preoccupied by the possibility of being discovered in the library by him.

The Keeper of the Tower had bought my apprenticeship with the promise of education, but the initial trickle of information had slowed to an occasional drip, just enough to wet my lips, and I needed to drink deep, to plunge and swim and drown.

My disgust at that betrayal and desire for justice outweighed my dread of the consequences of being caught, but just barely. I needed to know, and stolen freedom is still freedom.

Without the Keeper present, doling out simple books full of concepts I had long since mastered, the library felt far larger than I remembered. The carvings on the towering shelves seemed to move ever so slightly at the edges of my vision, though never when directly observed.

I searched swiftly, without further distraction, but with increasing desperation and lack of attention to my carefully prepared plan. I tipped back book after book: plain and gilded, narrower than a finger and wider than a hand, some improbably heavy for their sizes.

click

It was an unremarkable tome that triggered the hidden drawer in a nearby bookcase—along with the thrill that accompanies something unpredictable but much anticipated. I lunged toward the drawer and, in my haste, toppled a flameless lantern from its stand.

It did not break.

It did not activate an alarm.

But it did cost precious seconds as I struggled to right it with excitement-clumsy fingers. My terror of leaving any evidence of my intrusion was poorly weighed against the danger of being trapped.

Would there have been enough time without that error? Without the momentary contemplation of the globe? Or perhaps the venture was doomed from the start by my inexperience.

All the gold in the world is worthless if you are wandering in an endless desert without a supply of water. What value do the secrets of the universe have if you are lost somewhere beyond the influence of known powers?

The library Shifted. And it felt like nothing and everything. The library looked exactly as before, but my entire body ached in resonance with the sudden wrongness in the underlying fabric of the universe. I was in the same place and yet vastly elsewhere.

I was trapped.

“It is time.”

“It is always a time.”

I nodded. Elva invariably saw things in such a pleasantly askew way. After the heartbreak with Bilna, the idea of trying to teach another had long repulsed me. But more and more, I had been thinking of Elva’s potential to be my apprentice, and obversely, of what she could become without guidance.

The walls, ceiling, and floor of her chambers in the citadel of Ilirea were lavishly draped with fabrics, giving the impression of being within a tent, or perhaps the belly of some textile beast. She sat in a nest of pillows, comfortably threatening. She had grown sharper and longer since my last visit.

“You know why I have come,” I said.

“Of course. You have heard of the latest…intrigues.” She imbued the word with poison.

I sat opposite her, on the overlapping carpets that covered the entire floor of the chamber. “I heard that Nasuada no longer allows you to go into the city. Perhaps you are banned from parts of the citadel. Perhaps your world is restricted to just these rooms.”

The girl eyed me with something akin to contempt. “No one can keep me imprisoned. You know that. I stay in my quarters because I prefer it. I can leave whenever I want.”

“Theoretically, but then you would have the annoyance of constant pursuit. It wouldn’t take much for a member of Du Vrangr Gata to catch you unawares—while you are sleeping, for example—and bring you back.”

“Bah. You don’t understand. Begone and good riddance to you.” She waved a hand at me and turned away.

“I have heard stories—no doubt expanded in the telling—of your little outbursts, your…demonstrations. I cannot blame Nasuada for trying to contain you. Trade negotiations set back by weeks, fights breaking out, the most important food supplier to the army found dishonoring the dwarven chapel—”

“He was waiting for a friend.”

“He had forgotten his clothes.”

“It could happen to anyone.”

“Making the elven ambassador cry? In front of the Urgals?”

Elva laughed. “That was fun.”

“You show them too much, and they will use it against you. I come here with an offer of help, if you want it.”

Elva just stared, a wise conversational technique that I recommend in a great many situations.

I continued: “If I could take you from this place without anyone knowing, would you come?”

Her chin lifted. “Why? So you can spy on me for Eragon? So you can treat me like a dangerous animal that needs to be kept on a chain? So you can use me for some petty little plans? I’ve learned so much, so quickly. People are fragile—poke them here or there and watch them crumble. I don’t need your help.”

“Oh, you wish to be persuaded, is that it?”

Again, an unblinking stare was her only response.

“Very well. Eragon removing the compulsion to help did not improve your life as you wished. You are stretching your wings, testing your abilities, and trying to find a place in the world. But with each expansion and experiment, you are reminded again that you will never fit in and just be seen as you.” Not a question, a statement. A needle to prick and provoke. An effective one: Elva’s face hardened, revealing only the tiniest spark of the raging flames behind her eyes.

“Everyone wants things they can’t have, don’t they? Even you?”

“Oh yes.” I couldn’t help but smile, though it doubtless incensed her further. “Elva…you know the game, but just the opening moves. I can show you so many things and keep you safe until such time as you choose to return to this life. The span and depth of existence is far greater than anyone can know—not even the oldest dragon or the wisest elf. I have seen more than most, but even that is less than a particle of dust, smaller than the smallest thing, and then smaller still.”

Elva bit her lip, for once looking like a normal child.

Ah, there it was. The vastness of everything would not persuade her. But it did achieve the first step: reinforce her perception of my mastery. So, time for her real desire.

“I have made myself immune to your ability, so I can offer you a time of peace from all the suffering that constantly impinges on your mind. You can learn who you are and what you want to be. And when you return, you will have a new command over your life. Yes, there will be boundaries and restrictions while you are by my side. But I don’t need the power derived from your curse, Elva. I have no need to break or bend you.”

She gave me a look, such a look—hope when hope is not allowed, hope poisoned by profound bitterness. “Easy words,” she said.

“Am I lying?”

“You know I can’t see when people are lying!”

“Yes. You must choose with incomplete information, just like everyone else. Do you wish to come with me, Elva? Think carefully. I will not return again with this offer.” Then it was my turn to stare and wait for a response.

In any other child, Elva’s deep scowl would presage a tantrum, but her control did not weaken. “Do you really think the guards would let you take me? Ha! In just the last fortnight, they’ve stopped two attempts to steal me away.” Anger made her usually cool, contemptuous tone waver.

I made no attempt to hide my unease. “I hadn’t heard. Then your departure is all the more important; I suspect that dangerous groups are determined to have you as a weapon.”

“Ha!”

“I know. They have no understanding of your power, though they believe they do. And what people think they understand, they think they can control.”

“I’m not going to hide who and what I am.”

“There is great value in stealth; you have already attracted much attention.”

“Oh! I have guessed your plan. You will have me talk my way past the guards. But it won’t work; they are warded against me. They’re afraid of me.” And there was a deeply worrying touch of pride in Elva’s voice.

“Neither the guards stationed outside nor the heavy wards on the room mean a thing if I want to take you from within these walls,” I said.

Elva made a scornful noise.

“Just tell me, do you wish to go?”

“What I wish has never mattered, not from the moment that Eragon spoke his words.”

“Do you wish to go?”

“What is your plan? Invisibility? Addling the guards’ brains? Tunneling through the floor? None of those things will work.”

“No. I will simply open a door and we will walk away. Nothing more.”

“Ha!” Proper disgust this time.

I stood. “For the last time, do you wish to go?”

“Yes! A thousand curses on you, for making me want things. Yes.”

“Then come.” I held out my hand, but Elva did not accept it.

Without assistance, she climbed out of her nest of pillows. “Fine. But I still think you are lying. They’ve planned for every possible way out of here.”

But not, I thought, the impossible ways.

There was so much work to do with Elva, yet I found myself oddly looking forward to it. She had great potential to understand the incomprehensible. “Gather what you wish to bring, and we will go.”

Though she was clearly skeptical in the extreme, Elva put a small wooden cask and a miscellany of oddments on a blanket and tied it into a bundle.

“What of your caretaker, Greta?” I asked.

“I’ve seen to it she will live in comfort the rest of her years.”

“That is good of you, but events are often unpredictable. You might never get the chance to see her again. Forestall future regrets by saying a proper farewell now.”

Elva hesitated, but in the end, she did as I recommended. Not wanting to be seen, lest someone later rummage through Greta’s memories, I slipped behind a fold of drapery while the girl rang a bell.

Greta arrived quickly, ever attentive to the needs of her charge. She was understandably distressed by Elva’s farewells; the old woman was utterly devoted to the girl and had sacrificed much to protect her. I admired the tenacity and determination with which Greta had pursued her purpose. When she spoke of her fears—that Elva was far too young to go unprotected into the world—Elva assured her that she would be safe and thanked her for all she had done.

But Greta would not be dismissed. She talked in circles, returning to the same points again and again—how she loved, was proud of, and wanted to protect Elva—as she struggled to express the depth of her feelings.

Elva’s responses grew snappish as her caretaker continued. Then she became quiet, and I was concerned. I was about to intercede when Elva said something softly, and Greta shrieked a horrible strangled sound, like some dying animal.

Whatever fear Elva had given voice to, it struck her caretaker a near mortal blow. But then the girl murmured again, and Greta exclaimed again, but in a very different tone.

“You monstrous…thing! You can’t break something and mend it a moment later with pretty words. Broken things stay broken. Wounds heal into scars, not skin. I love you. I love you so much. Do you even know what that means? I will love you and worry for you with every breath in my body, so long as I live, but I will never again trust you.”

After brief shuffling sounds, the door moaned closed, and then the room was terribly quiet.

I stepped out from my hiding place. “Was that really necessary?”

Elva shrugged, trying to appear unaffected by the consequences of her actions, but she was pale and shaking. Then she looked me in the eye and, in just a few words, spoke my deepest fear.

Although I live every moment with the knowledge, hearing someone else say it—even without understanding the implication or meaning—felt like being stung by a thousand wasps, countless stabs of fear and surprise and pain.

I should have been safe from her power, but somehow the curse had circumvented my wards. Again and again, the deep magic of the dragons tried to fulfill its purpose, finding ways around even the strongest protections. I resolved to redouble my wards as soon as possible, to forestall Elva’s prying powers, at least for a time.

She looked up at me, defiant, and said, “Do you really want to travel with me, witch? Can you bear to be around me, knowing that I know?”

But she could not break my composure. I was not the inquisitive child I once had been, not the foolish apprentice or the sharp-edged postulant. During both the broken days of wandering and the times of pleasant stasis, this fear had controlled me. Those days were past; now I could confront it without flinching. I had pondered for years and learned to admit, if not accept, the truth of the straightness of right angles.

A strange series of emotions passed over Elva’s face, as my reaction was not what she had expected. Unlike Greta, I had long since mastered my feelings.

I said, “You cannot turn me from my purpose. I have braved far more dangerous things than you. As you should know…Now, time is pressing. Come.”

Elva hugged the bundle of possessions to her chest. “Can you really take us from here?” And she fixed me with a powerful glare that implied: Now disappoint me, adult….All the others have; why wouldn’t you?

I once more extended my hand. This time Elva took it. I led her to a wall and pushed aside the layers of fabric to expose the bare stone.

“What—”

I traced a line on the wall, reached out, and opened a door that wasn’t there. On the other side—nighttime, a beach by a black ocean lit only by stars, so many, many stars, more stars than there should be.

Of course, I would not take Elva to my home, not yet. But this was a waypoint, a place to build and learn and grow. A place where she could rest her weary mind, free from the painful distraction of other people’s needs.

She stared into the gap, the impossible portal. No cutting words this time.

Solembum sauntered into view and peered around the edge of the doorway, into Elva’s chamber. He twitched his tasseled ears and looked up at me.

I’m hungry. Did you bring food?

Of course. Rabbit this time. Does that meet with your approval?

A sniff. It’ll do. He meandered down the beach, out of view.

“Do you wish to go?” I asked a final time.

Elva squeezed my hand as tightly as she could. She walked through the door, and I followed a half step behind.

CHAPTER VI Questions and Answers

Eragon lowered the sheaf of pages and stared for a long while into the whirling snow outside the eyrie.

Still holding the papers, he stood and descended the long curve of stairs that led to the common area at the base of the stone finger. The dwarves were there eating, and most of the humans as well, but only a few of the elves and none of the Urgals. In a corner, one of the dwarves was playing a bone flute carved with runes, and the deep, thoughtful melody provided a homely accompaniment to the murmur of conversation.

The herbalist was sitting by herself next to one of the fires, knitting the brim for a woolen cap made of red and green yarn. She looked up as Eragon approached, but the speed of her clicking needles never slowed or faltered.

“I have questions,” he said.

“Then you have more wisdom than most.”

He squatted next to her and tapped the pages. “How much of this is true?”

Angela laughed a little, and her breath frosted in the cold. “I believe I made that perfectly clear in my preface. It’s as true or not true as you want it to be.”

“So you made it all up.”

“No,” she said, giving him a serious look over her flashing needles. “I did not. Even if I had, there are often lessons worth learning in stories. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Eragon shook his head, bemused and somewhat exasperated. He pulled over a stump they were using for a chair, sat, and stretched his legs out toward the fire. He thought about how Brom would often smoke his pipe in the evenings, and for a moment, Eragon considered getting a pipe of his own. The dwarves would be sure to have one he could use….

In a quiet voice, he said, “Why did you have me read this?”

“Perhaps because I think there are certain doors you need to walk through.”

He frowned, frustrated as always with the herbalist’s answers. “The Keeper of the Tower, is he—”

“I have nothing to say about him.” Eragon opened his mouth again, and Angela interrupted: “No. Ask other questions if you must, but not about him.”

“As you wish.” But Eragon’s suspicions remained. He looked across the common area. Elva was there, sitting and chatting with a group of dwarves, all of whom were attending to her with uncharacteristic animation. “What you wrote about her…”

“Elva is a bright young woman with a bright future,” said Angela, and she gave him an overly bright smile.

“In that case, I should see to it that she has the sort of training that a young person of such great promise ought to have.”

“Exactly,” said Angela, seeming both satisfied and relieved. Then she surprised him by saying, “Understand me, Eragon; it’s not that the task is beyond me, but some tasks are best accomplished with more than one set of hands.”

He nodded. “Of course. Elva is my responsibility, after all.”

“That she is….Although you could blame her on Brom, if you wanted, for not teaching you the proper forms of the ancient language.”

Eragon chuckled, despite himself. “Perhaps, but blaming the dead for our mistakes never accomplishes much.”

The clacking of the herbalist’s needles continued at the same steady pace as she gave him a thoughtful look and said, “My, you have grown wise in your old age.”

“Not really. I’m just trying to avoid making the same mistakes as before.”

“One could argue that is the definition of wisdom.”

He half smiled. “One could, but just avoiding mistakes isn’t enough to make a person wise. Does a turtle that lives alone under a rock for a hundred years really learn anything?”

Angela shrugged. “Does a man who lives alone in a tower for a hundred years learn anything?”

Eragon eyed her for a moment. “Maybe. It depends.”

“Even so.”

He stood and held out the papers toward her. “Here.”

“Keep them. They will serve you better than me. And besides, I have the words in my head already. That’s all that really matters.”

“I’ll make sure they’re stored where no one will ever think to look,” he said. He tucked the pages into the front of his jerkin.

She smiled. “You do that.”

Then Eragon looked back at Elva, and a hint of trepidation stirred within him. He ignored it. Just because something was difficult or uncomfortable didn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing. “We’ll talk later,” he said, and Angela made a noncommittal sound.

As Eragon walked across the common area, he reached out with his mind to Saphira, who was outside with Blödhgarm and a number of the elves, clearing snow with the fire from her throat.

You’ve been listening? he said.

Of course, little one.

I could use your help, I think.

On my way.

And he felt her turn and head inward. Pleased, Eragon continued on. The witch-child might prove troublesome for him alone, but even she would hesitate to disregard a dragon. Moreover, Eragon did not believe that the girl would be able to manipulate Saphira with her powers the way she might him.

Either way, it would be an interesting experience.

As he stopped in front of Elva, she looked up at him with her violet eyes and smiled, wide and sharp-toothed, like a cat before a mouse. “Greetings, Eragon,” she said.