I struggled with writing this chapter for four months. And then it comes to me in two days. Muse, thou art a fickle bitch.
Not even two full weeks among the daonna-arach and Eragon felt like tearing his hair out from the gods-damned boredom.
Oisin prioritized language over literature. Rather than teach his students the alphabet he crammed in as many words as possible into their heads each lesson. After their grueling sessions Eragon couldn't even think of opening a book for yet another nauseating round of the memories printed into the pages. He and Saphira had spent those first few lessons without much of an appetite or a will to do anything but curl up and sleep away the pain.
Though Oisin's lessons involved increasingly complex words and grammar his knowledge was no longer so overwhelming. Each day Eragon found himself better able to withstand the mental bombardment. Words wove themselves together, transforming from alien thoughts shoved into his head to another language smooth as the tongue of man or the ancient language. His tongue better learned to form the strange glides and growls. He still tripped over the words to a maddening degree, but now the servants understood him enough to get his wishes across.
The lessons also seemed to be taking their toll on Oisin. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, dull and distant. At times he plodded through the lesson. Other times the slightest mistake could raise his ire and scales prickling across his flesh.
Then, hours before their lesson should have ended, their tutor abruptly stopped in a rant on conjugation. With a silent snarl he pressed his face into his palm.
"No more of this," he said resolutely in his native tongue. "I need rest."
As one Eragon and Saphira glanced to the window. Late afternoon light streamed in, warm and golden.
Why? she asked bluntly. It's not even near... duv-rath yet.
"Dubh-thrath," Oisin growled. Dusk. "I must sleep when I can."
Eragon frowned. Not entirely crushed by a day's worth of drilling, the faintest bit of curiosity wriggled in his mind. Over the last few days he had been absently aware of how even sensible daonna-arach like Erna were increasingly ill at ease as the new moon neared. He calculated the moon's path in his head. There was still a sliver of crescent due tonight. Why worry about the night before total darkness?
"Then our lessons continue tomorrow?" he prompted in the human tongue, not in the mood for grappling with the Word again. Early in the mornings Oisin still half-heartedly to correct Eragon's pronunciation. In the late afternoon he had given up.
Oisin gave him the scowl that meant he thought Eragon had been born under a rock. His face twisted that way whenever Eragon dared ask a question about the daonna-arach that was common sense to any that had grown up in the Isles.
"No, my prince. Then we have to prepare."
"For?"
Dull brown eyes flashed their usual dark gold. "For the Long Night."
Eragon bit back his next natural question. Spending considerable amounts of time in Du Weldenvarden and Farthen Dur had taught him the hard way to hold back brash questions. His clumsy tongue had infuriated others before for even remotely implying something of their culture was odd or outright absurd.
Perhaps the daonna-arach dreaded a moonless night the way the dwarves dreaded a coronation where a vision of their god did not appear. Legend said werewolves were chained to the whims of the moon, transforming into mindless beasts on full moon nights. There was a chance the legend had a sliver of truth, that the weredragons were somehow bound to the lunar cycle.
Oisin gave them a curt bow and took his leave. Eragon rolled his eyes after him.
"How much of their fear do you reckon is just unfounded superstition?" he muttered.
Saphira snorted. Their fear is certainly not fake. It hangs over all of them like a pall. You should have pressed him more.
Eragon bit back his first instinct to snap at her. Rage and frustration still boiled across their link. Even two souls bound as one needed more space apart than their current luxurious confines. "There's nothing stopping you from asking. He's half dragon just as much as he is half man."
She bared her fangs at him. Do you not see the way they look at me, stone-head!? The maids look right past me or out of the corners of their eyes, as if I'm some pet about to piss on the carpet. And that Oisin... I would be less than dirt to him, if your blood did not make him hold back his disgust in front of you.
Her Rider averted his eyes. During one of those first hellish sessions Oisin had pounded kith and kin into their heads, terms for parents and siblings and bondeds and all else in a clan. Eragon had not dared ask how a weredragon princess had wound up among human peasants or of the family left behind.
Deep down, he already knew the answer. His grandmother could have been nothing more a younger, spoiled daughter that had ran off on a whim and gotten herself disowned from it. Doubtless she had many dutiful brothers and sisters for the family to pretend she no longer existed. Her human whelps were nothing but unwanted bastards, spawn that never should have existed. The clans of wild dragons were large and sprawling families, and the daonna-arach followed the same system.
And history had repeated itself for Selena and her sons.
Eragon silently stalked out to the balcony, counted under his oaths as part of their chambers. Back pointedly turned to the cavernous fortress, he scowled out to sea and the Green Isle beyond. Servants and guards watched him out of the corners of their eyes. He openly stared back, pleased when they looked away. His heart ached at how they flew in circles or from door to door, never deviating from their predestined paths. Were he in their position he would have soared into the sun and never looked back.
He sulked outside for hours until the arrival of Erna and the maids with supper lured him inside. Damn his appetite. Lunch had not been too long ago.
Saphira scarcely glanced at him before she snapped up a roasted pig and hauled it past him onto the balcony. Erna huffed at the juices trailed behind her.
"Privacy, my prince?" she suggested neutrally, for the could Will the barrier that shut out prying eyes to work both ways.
"No thank you," he grit out. Then he tore into the dishes with savagery befitting his maternal ancestors.
The servants gracefully took their leave. Eragon cracked fresh loaves of bread and gnashed on the usual boiled root and tables but could not ease out his frustrations. Not even the crunch of carrots was satisfactory.
He glared down at roasts picked around for near two weeks. Aside from the fish in their cells he had not willfully eaten meat since that horrific killing of the rabbit in Du Weldenvarden.
His eye did not fall upon generous roasts or stews, but on a humble sausage. Most animals on his family's farm had been working animals in some purpose, not slaughtered until they had aged past their prime working years. Even the chickens and cows had been spared so long as they had produced eggs and milk. The few pigs feeding at the outskirts of their farm were the exception. In autumn they had been butchered. Eragon's mind carried him back to a happier time, when Marian had still been alive, and his aunt had finally deemed him big enough to help her with readying the sausages to be spiced and stored for the winter. She had awarded him the first of the season.
Eragon tentatively bit into one. Flavor, warm and familiar, burst into his mouth. Eyes watering, he devoured the rest.
By the time Erna returned he had changed his tunic and did his best to clean up the mess. She still swept over the picked-over plates and the lingering stains with an unreadable expression.
Erna's girls scurried to clean. She knowingly lingered as the last of them departed.
Eragon inhaled deeply. "Erna."
"Yes, my prince?"
"What happens on the... Long Night?"
"The Lord Moon sleeps and we must fend without him." Erna's expression steeled when she interpreted his silence for concern. "Fear not, my prince. You have but one soul and no fires of your own. We shall keep you safe." Her gaze flicked past him. "The both of you."
She bowed and took her leave. Bemused, he watched her departure, and could not find it in his heart to tell her he could slaughter her kind by the dozens if his magic were unbound.
Saphira didn't need luxurious quarters or a bed like clouds. She had weathered far worst nights in the elements than the one she was facing now. Fighting the urge to pace the balcony like a beast in her cage, she curled up for the night, and counted the waves crashing into the rocks below.
Eragon took the hint and fell onto bed on his own, without her fires to warm it. Cursing under his breath he rose once to bundle himself in multiple tunics against the night wind. Then he slammed back down and pretended to sleep. His heaving breaths and thundering heart loudly declared otherwise.
For a moment Saphira thought to apologize first. Their captivity was wearing them both thin. Then pride demanded her to discard the notion. So many, Oisin amongst them, made it painfully clear they heeded her only because they saw her as Eragon's. Elves had near worshiped her. Even dwarves, though they grumbled about her turning on them in their sleep, at least addressed her plainly. Of course dragon-men treated her as full men did. And she would not lower herself by giving in to the one man on this gods forsaken rock that was supposed to be her partner in everything.
Movement on her right made Saphira look up. From another balcony loomed a shadow she first mistook for the Righ's, for the broad form and smoke billowing from his nostrils. But this male's eyes blazed molten gold. He snorted furiously and hurled himself from his perch. She watched him plummet to the rocks below.
Another dragon leaped from the same balcony. For a moment she first thought the female preventing a suicide attempt. Then the two slipped and whirled around the other, wings still closed, and she realized it a dance.
Side by side, the dragons fell to earth. Mere moments before they were impaled on the rocks below they snapped open their wings in the same heartbeat and soared out to sea.
Saphira's heart clenched as she watched them vanish into the night. Only in her ancestral memories had she ever seen a mated pair.
Hours crawled by. Behind her Eragon's breathing at least evened out into a restless slumber. Saphira's snatches of sleep were brief and chaotic.
There was the slightest tinge of gray on the horizon when she spotted the mated pair return. They glided easily on the coming dawn, tension gone.
But then the male's eyes caught hers. Immediately his face shut down. Then it twisted into a hateful snarl. With a jet of red-gold flame he furiously pulled away from his mate, storming onto his balcony and thundering inside. His blazing eyes were slitted as her own.
Saphira remained where she was, too proud to shrink beneath that fury and too cowed to bellow back. The she-dragon glanced helplessly after her mate. Then she sighed and directed her gaze downwards.
"Good evening," she called neutrally. "Or good morning, rather."
Digging her talons into the stonework, Saphira reluctantly opened her mind to the stranger politely requesting access. Good morning.
She warily rose to her full height as the stranger landed beside her. Saphira was not dwarfed by daonna-arach like she was by Glaedr, but still had to crane her head upward to look the other in the eye, much like how Eragon did with men fully grown. How odd. This female was slimmer than Brede, her scales a deep rose red, and eyes warm.
"I am Myrna. Myrna Ruadhluan." With a sigh her gaze flicked upwards. "And that was Caedmon, my mate."
Ruadhluan. The Righ's clan. Saphira studied the she-dragon and saw nothing of the Righ in him, not like she had glimpsed in her mate. Caedmon must have been a son of the Righ, older brother to Eragon's errant grandmother. And, though Myrna did not look very old by daonna-arach standards, that made her Eragon's great-aunt.
Should she bow? Pride squared her shoulders.
I am Saphira Brightscales. She glanced behind her to where her Rider lay in fitful dreams. And you surely know my Rider, Eragon.
"The Righ has recognized Eragon as blood and claimed him," Myrna said. "He is clan, and so are you."
Ice chilled her veins. How exactly where weredragons created again? He's my Rider!
The older female stared flatly at her. "Yes. Your bonded. He is yours and you are his."
Only then did Saphira belatedly remember not every bonded pair of dragons were mates. Beyond clan bonds some nestmates forged enduring connections. A pair with far too many offspring might fine one adopted by an elder sibling or another childless adult in the clan. Even a pair of the opposite sex, completely unrelated to each other, could form a platonic bond with no urge to mate or produce eggs or their own.
Bid'daum had bonded to the first Eragon under such circumstances. The formation of the pact had purposefully altered the bond-making of unhatched dragons so as to accept only a chosen Rider.
Apparently such bonds had not been lost among the daonna-arach. Saphira heaved a silent sight of relief and hid it behind shields Myrna had not breached.
Dragons were also not ones for beating around the bush. Your mate doesn't seem to think that way.
"You are not the source of his anger. Or your bonded." At her own disbelieving stare, Myrna quietly conceded. "Your bonded is not the direct source of his anger. Only the closest thing my mate can direct his frustrations at."
Ah, Saphira said. Then she shoved her thoughts firmly behind her thickest barriers. Caedmon was furious at the little sister that had abandoned the clan to have human offspring. And the half-breed niece that had subsequently spawned a Dragon Rider by the last Forsworn. Eragon was the closest link alive to blame.
"Now is a very poor time to begin making amends between us." Myrna uneasily averted her gaze to the sliver of moon dipping below the horizon. "Perhaps later, if the Lord Moon wills it. Farewell, Saphira Ruadhluan. May we meet once more as the Mother's."
The same to you, she said in bemusement as Myrna disappeared after her mate, because she did not know the other half to what seemed a common closing.
What had Oisin told her about the weredragon gods? Saphira tried to remember, for the dwarven mythologies had put her off the subject of deities altogether.
Dimly she recalled something about some mated pair, a male sky and a female earth. Everything in the world had been born from them in some form or another. Were not weredragons born of both?
The headache tired her. Unable to take any more riddles Saphira curled up and finally fell asleep bathed in dawn's golden fires.
If he did not awake on his own it was usually by servants bringing breakfast. Instead was by frantic dragons outside his window.
Sloughing off so many of the extra tunics he had donned, Eragon padded outside to watch in bemusement as so many dragons below him were busily lighting braziers and closing off doorways below. Usually at dawn Crown Isle was uncovered to embrace the new day.
So used was he to Saphira's presence beside him that his bleary mind only then remembered their fight from the night before. Eragon cleared his throat and did not shrink back from the blazing eyes upon him.
"I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I should have paid better attention to how they were treating you." He pulled his teeth into a bitter grimace. "If you're a beast, then I'm a simpleton child to them."
It was a stupid thing to fight over in the first place, little one, Saphira said gently. I'm sorry to let the resentment fester like it did.
Side by side they watched the morning sun climb higher. Their breakfast, if it could still be called such, was delivered late. Saphira sniffed at simple gruel and sausages.
"Forgive us, my prince," Erna said. "I'm afraid for most of us here it's a latha na traisg." A fast day, he surmised.
"Unless you want the fire-wine, my prince," the dark-haired girl, Lillias, offered guilelessly. "Then-"
"FOOL!" Erna roared, scales erupting from her face as she turned upon the girl. "He is ain-duisgte! He'd burn from the inside out!"
Lillias groveled before both Erna and Eragon as she tearfully stammered out an apology. Eragon hastily accepted it. Then Erna furiously banished the girl from the room.
"Our burden is not yours, my prince," Erna said when she had composed herself and drawn her humanity around her like a cloak. Her honey gaze flicked to Saphira. "Nor is it yours, little dragon. Eat, rest, and pray. We'll leave you your privacy."
They finished their meal in speculative silence. Then Saphira cleaned her scales while Eragon readied for what promised to be an eventful day. He pulled on a soft blue tunic he had worn before, its sleeves now hemmed in to fit his smaller frame.
Not even an hour later, as the early afternoon dragged on, their confinement was interrupted by one they had not seen since their first day in these damned quarters. Brede Standa stood in human form, every inch covered in thick leather armor, and such a helm beneath her arm. At her side was buckled a sword. The thin strip of blade visible above the sheath was pale as milk-glass and shimmered in the sunlight.
Her partner Ciar greeted them with a perfunctory show of the neck before gliding past them and onto their balcony. In a brazier they had never seen lit before he raised his hand and kindled fire that burned hot and white even in broad daylight. When he crossed over the threshold the barrier behind him thickened, the sunlight and sea breeze dying as stone grew solid and firm once more.
"It is time," Brede said heavily. "Eragon and Saphira Ruadhluan, the Righ bids you both to come with me."
Such was her grimness that they did not question her. Eragon still shuddered as he crossed the threshold into the hall, a part of him convinced he was about to drop dead when he did.
Instead they descended down through a castle preparing for siege. Barrier after barrier was raised behind them. Dragons in clanking metal armor raised flames in every brazier. Down halls he heard the whetting of blades and sharpening of claws. Eragon raised his brows at the sight of bleating sheep being herded down into the castle's heart. Dragons hauling bags and barrels followed in their wake.
As the smooth floors gave way to rough stone beneath their feet they parted ways with the food and flocks. Despite being deep in the isle's core the air was hot and dry, for that bright white fire blazed in every brazier and left no room for dank or dark.
At last the winding passage gave way to a massive cavern. Eragon gaped up into the single shimmering eye of the massive black dragon statue that encompassed the chamber, the very same from the battle scene depicted in the hallway down to the throne room. Only now did he recognize it as a depiction of how the daonna-arach envisioned the moon, the eye of a massive dragon called only Triath Luan, the Lord Moon.
They were not alone. Many knelt before the idol in fervent prayer. There were warriors, armed and armored, but far outnumbered by what Eragon numbly realized were civilians. There were elders, shrunken and blind. Huddled in a pile of skin and scales were little children, humans scarcely more than toddlers and dragons the size of large dogs.
His heat clenched at the sound of a squalling infant. His eye found a couple, a broad-shouldered man with his arms around a slender woman and the bawling babe between them. The pair lowered their heads and met in a long, fierce kiss. Then the mother gently touched her forehead against her infant's, before passing the bundle her mate's arms.
It was the woman that pulled away, soft curves and glistening eyes giving way to iron scales and a brutal snout. Her child wailed louder and grasped after her with pudgy arms. But the mother did not turn. The child's wails grew loud and shrill. The father winced and scrambled to hold the furious bundle of scales and butter-soft claws scrabbling against his hold.
Ciar stopped at the threshold, but Brede stubbornly led them to the base of the throng. Most were too concerned with their prayers and farewells to notice them.
"Here is where you stay until the Righ Wills it," she said firmly. Then she dipped her head to them. "May we meet once more as the Mother's."
"And burn all the brighter as the Father's," murmured one nearby, sightless eyes turning in the direction.
Then Brede pulled away, meeting Ciar at the threshold before vanishing with other warriors giving their farewells.
Eragon and Saphira quickly claimed a quiet corner away from the crowd. The daonna-arach gave them a wide berth. More noncombatants trickled in as several warriors remained vigilant near the entrance. So many expectant gazes fell upon it.
Finally descended the Righ himself, the crowd all shifting to give him a path clean through to the idol. With his arrival the air grew hot and heavy. Every adult and older child in the room fell prone and bared their necks to him, with their hands to their hearts.
The Righ plodded by without truly seeing any of them. His silver eyes never strayed from the dark threshold at the statue's base.
In the Righ's wake marched another, a dragon the slightest bit smaller, but no less battle-hardened. Beneath armor that shivered like silver his scales were iron to the Righ's storm clouds, and eyes the deep same gray. Their brutal features made them nothing less than brothers.
Where the Righ plodded like one facing the gallows, his brother was a veteran about to charge once more unto the breach. While the Righ quietly slipped into the shadows, the darker dragon turned to face the crowd.
"The Righ descends!" he rumbled. "He rises!"
"He rises!" their kingdom bellowed back. "He rises!"
When both dragons disappeared into the dark so did the tension grow in those left behind. Most huddled before the Lord Moon or small candles that burned like stars, whispering fervently to them. Eragon's ears catch snatches of prayers to gods and loved ones, tenderly invoked one name at a name. Guiltily he averted his eyes from them.
"Fret not, little one," a wizened grandmother murmured to the girl trembling beneath her wings. "Your brothers rise. On this night they burn brightest just for you."
Eragon searched the sea for familiar faces. Erna and Oisin were not among them, not even gentle serving girls like Lillias.
One dragon, not a warrior, furiously paced the side of the chamber. His scales were brilliant gold and his eyes molten. He huffed and snarled. The daonna-arach gave him an even wider berth than they did Eragon and Saphira. Adults did not even look his way, and cuffed and chided children that did.
Why in the seven hells is he in here and not outside with the rest of them? Eragon muttered privately. He looks ready to fight his way through the mountain itself.
Saphira's eye surreptitiously tracked the golden male, her own thoughts unusually closed off. His eyes, little one. Look at his eyes.
Eragon risked a peek. In the brightness the male's eyes were furious pits of molten gold, his pupils little more than thin slits. Occasionally in his track the dragon stopped, snarling and gnashing his teeth as every muscle in his body shivered and spasmed. Then his furious pacing resumed with even more smoke darkening the air above his head.
"He's trying to force it," muttered an elder near to them. "The fool."
"Someone should stop him before he pushes himself too far," murmured another.
None of them rose to do so. Even when their teeth collectively gritted at one spasm so violent it ended with a pained keen.
Finally the father rose, leaving his squalling infant in the arms of another. Where the crowd thinned at the edge of the room he finally shifted. Something about his shape was off. Only then did Eragon realize his dragon shape had but one wing. The other was a charred stump.
He murmured something to the golden dragon, voice low and soothing. At last the other male halted in his pacing, sides heaving. For a moment he looked ready to attack the other dragon. Then some of the wild light finally died in his eyes.
With a curt snort the golden dragon retreated to simmer in the corner opposite Eragon and Saphira's. The father quietly returned to soothing his son.
Hours dragged by. The tension in the room rose, prayers growing quieter and more fervent as the daonna-arach waited for some unknown storm to break.
The silence was shattered by a terrible shriek. Shrieking inconsolably, one old woman lunged forward. Several in dragon shape rushed to subdue her before her lashing tail and claws could harm the others nearby. Warriors tensed, wings half-unfurling and swords drawn as their gazes snapped toward the threshold. Even the more able-bodied moved to put the elders and children behind them. The golden male sprung before them, as if even his great bulk could shield them all from whatever was about to surge in.
Eventually the sobs quieted as the old dragon sunk into herself, gaze slack and fire extinguished. The crowd grew silent as the crypt in breathless anticipation. One by one their eyes flicked to Triath Luan's feet.
The Righ shambled forth, eyes dull and gray. The celebratory cries of his people withered and died in their throats as he bared his fangs at them. Still the sea bowed and parted for him. At the Righ's paws followed his brother, weary and triumphant.
"Adhar Athair wakes!" he proclaimed. "Adhar Athair rises!"
Murmurs rippled through the crowd as their Righ stalked through. Upon his exit they erupted into true cheers, deep and bellowing. The golden male took advantage of the chaos to slink away first.
Some fell before the feet of Triath Luan in gratitude. Others surged forth to greet the new day. Their oaths binding them to the room, Eragon and Saphira lingered awkwardly at the threshold.
At last Brede and Ciar came to collect them. Eragon was almost relieved when they were escorted back to their chambers. From their winding way up he knew Brede deliberately took side passages to avoid the bulk of the crowds. Still they passed others in the halls. Most gaped at them like animals in a menagerie. A few curled their lips in open contempt, no matter their form. Apparently now that the night had passed they had remembered their prejudices.
Eragon ignored them in favor of inspecting their surroundings. Servants now doused flames and opened up windows and doors one by one to the dawn. They had a good view of exactly what the isle had weathered last night.
Nothing looks touched, Saphira murmured privately to him.
Eragon's first response was to blame superstition. Then he remembered the gold dragon's desperate helplessness, the old woman's chilling cries, and held his tongue.
"Were we lucky?" he ventured aloud. "To be so untouched?"
Ciar stiffened without looking their way. But Brede turned to face them, eyes bleak and blunt.
"Aye," she agreed. "We were."
His oath was ash in his mouth as reports of the confirmed dead trickled in one by one.
Torin Standa had lost none of his. Of course Soraid Knoth, hoary old bitch, hadn't either. Cullach Cromaig's bitterest losses had been on his western isles. As for the Lord of the West himself...
Herulf Holgata had lost both his sons along with the best and brightest of his clan. His scouts were still confirming the devastation on his outer isles.
Whale Isle had never been large or important even in the grand scheme of the Western Isles, but the Hvalmans had still been hospitable hosts to those whalers braving the open ocean. Yesterday their clan had numbered twenty. Now Arne and his great-grandmother were the last of their blood.
Berach Ruadhluan had been the Righ's last and greatest guard last night. Now, as warden and steward, he solemnly received reports and gave condolences the Righ and Caedmon were both unable to. The crown prince's arachtide had not yet broken. It was a miracle the Righ had awoken at all.
As his father's son, Caedmon's only true heir, Niall had long to remain by his sire's side and act the part even as he inwardly seethed at how fickle the fucking Serpents could be. Two months of peace, and then they had emerged to near shatter the west.
But his mother's burning eye fell upon him. Niall was near a man grown. He should not have feared a female. Inwardly he trembled at the very real possibility she was about to haul him off by the scruff like a disobedient pup.
Mother and son departed the public eye with grace that befitted the royal clan, the blood of Sparr and Amalia. In private quarters she raised a paw and swatted him across the face. Shock more than pain made Niall stumble with the blow. His mother had never raised a hand against him but for a few chiding shakes as a naughty child.
"You complete and utter fool!" Imke Ruadhluan snarled. "Courting death like that and dragging your friends down with you!"
Niall hissed, already knowing the traitor. "Eachann!"
He quailed back when Imke's teeth snapped down inches from his face. "Eachann was a good and dutiful son! He told his grandfather exactly what he should have. Swearing on the sun and earth to slay a Serpent or die trying? What in all the hells were you thinking!?"
"The Rider-"
"Yes!" Imke snapped. "The Rider. The bastard mud-man in Caedmon's old chambers. Beline's old chambers. And, had the stars not smiled on us last night, you would have left him the only heir of his generation!"
Niall wanted to retort the mud-man would burn from the inside out long before a true fire ever kindled in his heart of hearts. But his blood froze at the slightest ghost of a chance that it could. Which was why he so desperately needed to prove himself a true duine-arach, one capable of protecting the clan and kingdom, and one day all of creation with it.
His unspoken desperation flowed across their link. His mother drew back, pity and understanding banking her fires. But not her conviction. Her mind only steeled herself upon his.
"Prince Sioltach," she intoned. Niall drew back as if burned. "He was about your age when he thought to prove himself before his sire that Long Night. And by dawn the main line was dead, for King Arran chose to follow his son into death than return to us."
Shame made Niall shrink into himself. He fell before his mother and begged forgiveness, for his arrogance had nearly cost their clan its last great hope.
Imke shifted as he did, gently taking his face in human hands so he met her gaze. "Oh, my son. In time you shall have your chance. You know whose blood flows through their veins, the burden you shall bear. So do they. Your death shall find you, and you must be ready to cast it back into the night."
For such was the curse of their clan. It was their fault the Lord Moon knew weakness and weariness. For one night a month his burden was theirs to bear. Or die and leave sun and stars alike to be swallowed by shadow.
Eragon's daily mental bombardment with a foreign language is not helping him healthily process yet another curve ball fate has thrown him in regards to family. At this state he has no idea about the truth behind either Selena's or Beline's circumstances, and is projecting his own fears and insecurities on the situation. Considering his scandalous beginnings in canon, and adding a scandalous grandmother on top of it here, there must have been some rumors happening in that closed little village of his during his childhood.
FtA's clan system is based off my structure of wild dragon society for Sunrise. Given how long-lived wild dragons are and how Bid'Daum naturally bonded to the first Eragon, I figured there was a natural bonding system in place for wild dragons reworked to suit the pact. Mated monogamous pairs allow optimal raising of numerous clutches without allowing one frisky male to go out and make every clutch in a general area half-siblings. Platonic and family bonds allow for connections that strengthen clans and safely raise extraneous hatchlings without adding to the problem.
Brede and Ciar are platonically bonded. In daonna-arach society there remains a precedent in place for a dragon-Rider to be accepted, no matter how much they revile both Riders and Riders' dragons.
Of course, now that the new moon is one rather pressing hurdle is out the way, the characters in the know can now freak out about the other ticking time bomb ;)
