Inheritance (67 page)

“Spoon,” he said, mashing the word with his tongue as if it were a piece of overcooked parsnip.

She lifted her chin and pointed toward the rear of the privy room.

His scowl deepened. He went into the room and carefully examined the walls, floors, ceiling, and all else before stomping back out. He clacked his teeth together again and scratched his bulbous head, appearing unhappy and, she thought, a little hurt that she would bother to throw away the spoon. She had been kind to him, and she knew an act of such petty defiance would puzzle him and make him angry.

She resisted the urge to pull away when he stepped forward, put his weighty hands on her head, and combed through her hair with his fingers. When he did not find the spoon, his face drooped. He grabbed her arm then and walked her over to the slab and again placed her in the manacles.

Then, his expression sullen, he picked up the tray and shuffled out of the room.

She waited until she was absolutely sure he was gone before she
reached out with the fingers of her left hand and, inch by inch, pulled up the edge of her shift.

A broad smile passed across her face as she felt the bowl of the spoon with the tip of her index finger.

Now she had a weapon.

hen the first pale rays of light streaked across the surface of the dimpled sea, illuminating the crests of the translucent waves—which glittered as if carved from crystal—then Eragon roused himself from his waking dreams and looked to the northwest, curious to see what the light revealed of the clouds building in the distance.

What he beheld was disconcerting: the clouds encompassed nearly half the horizon, and the largest of the dense white plumes looked as tall as the peaks of the Beor Mountains, too tall for Saphira to climb over. The only open sky lay behind her, and even that would be lost to them as the arms of the storm closed in.

We shall have to fly through it
, Glaedr said, and Eragon felt Saphira’s trepidation.

Why not try to go around?
she asked.

Through Saphira, Eragon was aware of Glaedr examining the structure of the clouds. At last the golden dragon said,
I do not want you flying too far off course. We still have many leagues to cover, and if your strength fails you—

Then you can lend me yours to keep us aloft
.

Hmph. Even so, it is best to be cautious in our recklessness. I have seen the likes of this storm before. It is larger than you think. To skirt it, you would have to fly so far to the west that you would end up beyond Vroengard, and it would probably take another day to reach land
.

The distance to Vroengard isn’t that great
, she said.

No, but the wind will slow us. Besides, my instincts tell me that the storm extends all the way to the island. One way or another, we shall have
to fly through it. However, there’s no need to go through its very heart. Do you see the notch between those two small pillars off to the west?

Yes
.

Go there, and perhaps we can then find a safe path through the clouds
.

Eragon grasped the front of the saddle as Saphira dropped her left shoulder and turned westward, aiming herself toward the notch Glaedr had indicated. He yawned and rubbed his eyes as she leveled out; then he twisted round and dug out an apple and a few strips of dried beef from the bags strapped behind him. It was a meager breakfast, but his hunger was slight, and eating a large meal while riding Saphira often made him queasy.

While he ate, he alternated between watching the clouds and gazing at the sparkling sea. He found it unsettling that there was nothing but water beneath them and that the nearest solid ground—the mainland—was, by his estimate, over fifty miles away. He shivered as he imagined sinking down and down into the cold, clutching depths of the sea. He wondered what lay at the bottom, and it occurred to him that with his magic, he could likely travel there and find out, but the thought held no appeal. The watery abyss was too dark and too dangerous for his liking. It was not, he felt, a place where his sort of life ought to venture. Better, instead, to leave it to whatever strange creatures already lived there.

As the morning wore on, it became apparent that the clouds were farther away than they had first seemed and that, as Glaedr had said, the storm was larger than either Eragon or Saphira had originally imagined.

A light headwind sprang up, and Saphira’s flight became somewhat more labored, but she continued to make good progress.

When they were still some leagues from the leading edge of the storm, Saphira surprised Eragon and Glaedr by slipping into a shallow dive and flying down close to the surface of the water.

As she descended, Glaedr said,
Saphira, what are you about?

I’m curious
, she replied.
And I would like to rest my wings before entering the clouds
.

She skimmed over the waves, her reflection below and her shadow in front mirroring her every move like two ghostly companions, one dark and one light. Then she swiveled her wings on edge and, with three quick flaps, slowed herself and landed upon the water. A fan of spray shot up on either side of her neck as her chest plowed into the waves, sprinkling Eragon with hundreds of droplets.

The water was cold, but after so long aloft, the air felt pleasantly warm—so warm, in fact, that Eragon unwrapped his cloak and pulled off his gloves.

Saphira folded her wings and floated along peacefully, bobbing up and down with the motion of the waves. Eragon spotted several clumps of brown seaweed off to the right. The plants were branched like scrub brush and had berry-sized bladders at joints along the stems.

Far overhead, near the height Saphira had been, Eragon spotted a pair of albatrosses with black-tipped wings flying away from the massive wall of clouds. The sight only deepened his unease; the seabirds reminded him of the time he had seen a pack of wolves running alongside a herd of deer as the animals fled a forest fire in the Spine.

If we had any sense
, he said to Saphira,
we would turn around
.

If we had any sense, we would leave Alagaësia and never return
, she rejoined.

Arching her neck, she dipped her muzzle into the seawater, then shook her head and ran her crimson tongue in and out of her mouth several times, as if she had tasted something unpleasant.

Then Eragon felt a sense of panic from Glaedr, and the old dragon roared in his mind:
Take off! Now, now, now! Take off!

Saphira wasted no time on questions. With a sound like thunder, she opened her wings and began to beat them as she reared out of the water.

Leaning forward, Eragon grabbed the edge of the saddle to keep
from being thrown backward. The flapping of Saphira’s wings threw up a screen of mist that half blinded him, so he used his mind to search for whatever had alarmed Glaedr.

From deep below, rising toward Saphira’s underside faster than Eragon would have believed possible, he felt something that was cold and huge … and filled with a ravenous, insatiable hunger. He tried to frighten it, tried to turn it away, but the creature was alien and implacable and seemed not to notice his efforts. In the strange, lightless caverns of its consciousness, he glimpsed memories of uncounted years spent lurking alone in the icy sea, hunting and being hunted.

His own panic mounting, Eragon groped for the hilt of Brisingr even as Saphira wrenched herself free from the grasp of the water and began to climb into the air.
Saphira! Hurry!
he silently shouted.

She slowly gained speed and altitude, and then a fountain of white water erupted behind her, and Eragon saw a pair of shiny gray jaws emerge from within the plume. The jaws were large enough for a horse and rider to pass through unscathed and were filled with hundreds of glinting white teeth.

Saphira was aware of what he saw, and she twisted violently to the side in an attempt to escape the gaping maw, clipping the water with the tip of her wing. An instant later, Eragon heard and felt the creature’s jaws snap shut.

The needle-like teeth missed Saphira’s tail by inches.

As the monster fell back into the water, more of its body became visible: The head was long and angular. A bony crest jutted out over the eyes, and from the outer part of each crest grew a ropy tendril that Eragon guessed to be over six feet in length. The neck of the creature reminded him of a giant, rippling snake. What was visible of the creature’s torso was smooth and powerfully built and looked incredibly dense. A pair of oar-shaped flippers extended from the sides of its chest, flailing helplessly in the air.

The creature landed upon its side, and a second, even larger burst of spray flew toward the sky.

Just before the waves closed over the monster’s shape, Eragon looked into its one upward-facing eye, which was as black as a drop of tar. The malevolence contained therein—the sheer hate and fury and
frustration
that he perceived in the creature’s unblinking gaze—was enough to make Eragon shiver and wish he were in the center of the Hadarac Desert. For only there, he felt, would he be safe from the creature’s ancient hunger.

Heart pounding, he relaxed his grip on Brisingr and slumped over the front of the saddle. “What was that?”

A Nïdhwal
, said Glaedr.

Eragon frowned. He did not remember reading about any such thing in Ellesméra.
And what is a Nïdhwal?!

They are rare and not often spoken about. They are to the sea what the Fanghur are to the air. Both are cousins to the dragons. Though the differences in our appearance are greater, the Nïdhwal are closer to us than are the screeching Fanghur. They are intelligent, and they even have a structure similar to the Eldunarí within their chest, which we believe enables them to remain submerged for extended periods of time at great depth
.

Can they breathe fire?

No, but like the Fanghur, they often use the power of their minds to incapacitate their prey, which more than one dragon has discovered to their dismay
.

They would eat their own kind!
Saphira said.

To them, we are nothing alike
, Glaedr replied.
But they do eat their own, which is one reason there are so few Nïdhwalar. They have no interest in happenings outside their own realm, and every attempt to reason with them has met with failure. It is odd to encounter one so close to shore. There was a time when they were only found several days’ flight from land, where the sea is the deepest. It seems they have grown either bold or desperate since the fall of the Riders
.

Eragon shivered again as he remembered the feel of the Nïdhwal’s mind.
Why did neither you nor Oromis ever teach us of them?

There is much we did not teach you, Eragon. We had only so much
time, and it was best spent trying to arm you against Galbatorix, not every dark creature that haunts the unexplored regions of Alagaësia
.

Then there are other
things
like the Nïdhwal that we don’t know about?

A few
.

Will you tell us of them, Ebrithil?
Saphira asked.

I will make a pact with you, Saphira, and with you, Eragon. Let us wait a week, and if we are still alive and still possessed of our freedom, I will happily spend the next ten years teaching you about every single race I know of, including every variety of beetle, of which there are multitudes. But until then, let us concentrate upon the task before us. Are we agreed?

Eragon and Saphira reluctantly agreed, and they spoke of it no more.

The headwind strengthened into a blustery gale as they neared the front of the storm, slowing Saphira until she was flying at half her normal speed. Now and then, powerful gusts rocked her and sometimes stopped her dead in her course for a few moments. They always knew when the gusts were about to strike, for they could see a silvery, scalelike pattern rushing toward them across the surface of the water.