“Yes, see,” said Shrrgnien, grinning. He gripped the stud above his left index finger, carefully twisted it free of his knuckle, and then handed it to Eragon.
Eragon smiled as he rolled the sharp lump around his palm. “I wouldn’t mind having ‘fists of steel’ myself.” He returned the stud to Shrrgnien.
“It’s a dangerous operation,” warned Orik. “Few knurlan get Ascûdgamln because you can easily lose the use of your hands if the drill goes too deep.” He raised his fist and showed it to Eragon. “Our bones are thicker than yours. It might not work for a human.”
“I’ll remember that.” Still, Eragon could not help but imagine what it would be like to fight with Ascûdgamln, to be able to strike anything he wanted with impunity, including armored Urgals. He loved the idea.
After eating, Eragon retired to his tent. The fire provided enough light that he could see the silhouette of Saphira nestled alongside the tent, like a figure cut from black paper and pasted against the canvas wall.
Eragon sat with the blankets pulled over his legs and stared at his lap, drowsy but unwilling to sleep quite yet. Unbidden, his mind turned to thoughts of home. He wondered how Roran, Horst, and everyone else from Carvahall was doing, and if the weather in Palancar Valley was warm enough for the farmers to start planting their crops. Longing and sadness suddenly gripped Eragon.
He removed a wood bowl from his pack and, taking his waterskin, filled it to the brim with liquid. Then he focused on an image of Roran and whispered, “Draumr kópa.”
As always, the water went black before brightening to reveal the object being scryed. Eragon saw Roran sitting alone in a candlelit bedroom he recognized from Horst’s house.Roran must have given up his job in Therinsford, realized Eragon. His cousin leaned on his knees and clasped his hands, staring at the far wall with an expression that Eragon knew meant Roran was grappling with some difficult problem. Still, Roran seemed well enough, if a bit drawn, which comforted Eragon. After a minute, he released the magic, ending the spell and clearing the surface of the water.
Reassured, Eragon emptied the bowl, then lay down, pulling the blankets up to his chin. He closed his eyes and sank into the warm dusk that separates consciousness and sleep, where reality bends and sways to the wind of thought, and where creativity blossoms in its freedom from boundaries and all things are possible.
Slumber soon took him. Most of his rest was uneventful, but right before he woke, the usual night phantasms were replaced with a vision as clear and vibrant as any waking experience.
He saw a tortured sky, black and crimson with smoke. Crows and eagles swirled high above flights of arrows that arched from one side to another of a great battle. A man sprawled in the clotted mud with a dented helm and bloody mail — his face concealed behind an upthrown arm.
An armored hand entered Eragon’s view. The gauntlet was so near it blotted out half the world with polished steel. Like an inexorable machine, the thumb and last three fingers curled into a fist, leaving the trunk of the index finger to point at the downed man with all the authority of fate itself.
The vision still filled Eragon’s mind when he crawled out of the tent. He found Saphira some distance from the camp, gnawing on a furry lump. When he told her what he had seen, she paused in midbite, then jerked her neck and swallowed a strip of meat.
The last time this occurred,she said,it proved to be a true prediction of events elsewhere. Do you think a battle is in progress in Alagaësia?
He kicked a loose branch.I’m not sure. . Brom said you could only scry people, places, and things that you had already seen. Yet I’ve never seen this place. Nor had I seen Arya when I first dreamt about her in Teirm.
Perhaps Togira Ikonoka will be able to explain it.
As they prepared to leave, the dwarves seemed much more relaxed now that they were a good distance from Tarnag. When they started poling down the Az Ragni, Ekksvar — who was steering Snowfire’s raft — began chanting in his rough bass:
Down the rushing mere-wash
Of Kílf’s welling blood,
We ride the twisting timbers,
For hearth, clan, and honor.
Under the ernes’ sky-vat,
Through the ice-wolves’ forest bowls,
We ride the gory wood,
For iron, gold, and diamond.
Let hand-ringer and bearded gaper fill my grip
And battle-leaf guard my stone
As I leave the halls of my fathers
For the empty land beyond.
The other dwarves joined Ekksvar, slipping into Dwarvish as they continued on to other verses. The low throb of their voices accompanied Eragon as he carefully made his way to the head of the raft, where Arya sat cross-legged.
“I had a. . vision during my sleep,” said Eragon. Arya looked at him with interest, and he recounted the images he had seen. “If it’s scrying, then—”
“It’s not scrying,” said Arya. She spoke with deliberate slowness, as if to prevent any misunderstanding. “I thought for a long time about how you saw me imprisoned in Gil’ead, and I believe that as I lay unconscious, my spirit was searching for help, wherever I might find it.”
“But why me?”
Arya nodded toward where Saphira undulated through the water. “I grew accustomed to Saphira’s presence during the fifteen years I guarded her egg. I was reaching out for anything that felt familiar when I touched your dreams.”
“Are you really strong enough to contact someone in Teirm from Gil’ead? Especially if you were drugged.”
A ghost of a smile touched Arya’s lips. “I could stand on the very gates of Vroengard and still speak with you as clearly as I am now.” She paused. “If you did not scry me in Teirm, then you could not have scryed this new dream. It must be a premonition. They have been known to occur throughout the sentient races, but especially among magic users.”
Eragon clutched the netting around a bundle of supplies as the raft lurched. “If what I sawwill come to pass, then how can we change anything that happens? Do our choices matter? What if I threw myself off the raft right now and drowned?”
“But you won’t.” Arya dipped her left forefinger in the river and stared at the single drop that clung to her skin, like a quivering lens. “Once, long ago, the elf Maerzadí had a premonition that he would accidentally kill his son in battle. Rather than live to see it happen, he committed suicide, saving his son, and at the same time proving that the future isn’t set. Short of killing yourself, however, you can do little to change your destiny, since you don’t know what choices will lead you to the particular point of time that you saw.” She flipped her hand and the drop splattered against the log between them. “We know that it’s possible to retrieve information from the future — fortunetellers can often sense the paths a person’s life may take — but we’ve been unable to refine the process to the point where you can choose what, where, or when you want to see.”
Eragon found the entire concept of funneling knowledge through time profoundly disturbing. It raised too many questions about the nature of reality.Whether fate and destiny really exist, the only thing I can do is enjoy the present and live as honorably as possible. Yet he could not help asking, “What’s to stop me, though, from scrying one of my memories? I’ve seen everything in them. . so I should be able to view them with magic.”
Arya’s gaze darted to meet his. “If you value your life, never attempt it. Many years ago, several of our spellweavers devoted themselves to defeating time’s enigmas. When they tried to summon up the past, they only succeeded in creating a blurred image on their mirror before the spell consumed their energy and killed them. We made no more experiments on the subject. It is argued that the spell would work if more magicians participated, but no one is willing to accept the risk and the theory remains unproven. Even if one could scry the past, it would be of limited use. And to scry the future, one would have to know exactly what was going to happen and where and when, which defeats the purpose.
“It’s a mystery, then, how people can have premonitions while sleeping, how they can do something unconsciously that has defeated our greatest sages. Premonitions may be linked to the very nature and fabric of magic. . or they may function in a similar way to the dragons’ ancestral memories. We don’t know. Many avenues of magic have yet to be explored.” She stood in a single fluid movement. “Take care not to lose yourself among them.”
DRIFTING
The valley widened throughout the morning as the rafts swept toward a bright gap between two mountains. They reached the opening at midday and found themselves looking out of shadow upon a sunny prairie that faded into the north.
Then the current pushed them beyond the frosted crags and the walls of the world dropped away to reveal a gigantic sky and flat horizon. Almost immediately, the air grew warmer. The Az Ragni curved to the east, edging the foothills of the mountain range on one side and the plains on the other.
The amount of open space seemed to unsettle the dwarves. They muttered among themselves and glanced longingly at the cavernous rift behind them.
Eragon found the sunlight invigorating. It was hard to ever really feel awake when three-quarters of the day was spent in twilight. Behind his raft, Saphira launched herself out of the water and flew up over the prairie until she dwindled to a winking speck in the azure dome above.
What do you see?he asked.
I see vast herds of gazelles to the north and east. To the west, the Hadarac Desert. That is all.
No one else? No Urgals, slavers, or nomads?