54. Anniversary Gone Awry

Eragon and Arya were enjoying a lively discussion with their friends around a warm fire. The anniversary cake was gone, and it was well after midnight, but no one seemed tired thanks to their midafternoon naps.

Knilf had just finished telling a joke, and the conversation lulled as the laughter died away. Eragon noticed Elva raise a hand to her temple and rub gingerly. Her other hand immediately went to her distended womb, which tightened noticeably under her touch.

Tomath turned to Elva in concern. "Turn it off, sweetheart!" he urged. "The baby!"

But Elva moaned, sagging into her husband. "Your dragons!" she cried. "Something terrible is going to happen! They're all . . . going . . . to . . . die . . ." Each word came out more strained than the one before. Then Elva shrieked, clutching first her head followed instantly by her womb. "No! Such sorrow! Such anguish! Tomath!" She passed out.

Tomath's terror was etched in his face as he kept Elva from collapsing to the ground. He looked up, his eyes darting wildly around the circle of people. "The baby's coming!"

Eragon—along with everyone else—was transfixed by this frightening scene. When he sensed Arya begin to stand, apparently intent on going to Elva, Eragon tore his gaze away from Tomath's tortured face. Arya hadn't taken two full steps before Eragon suddenly heard Brom's voice issuing forth from the small enchanted mirror Arya carried with her everywhere she went, just as all the Riders did.

Before Arya had even been able to retrieve the mirror from her pocket in order to see Brom, he was shouting, "Mother! There isn't any time! Tenga's going there right now, where you are! He was just here, and he kidnapped Lena. He has somehow managed—"

But Brom's message was cut short when the mirror in Arya's hands shattered as if someone had crushed it under their heel. At the same moment, Arya, Hanin, and Maehrí all began to crumple toward the ground. Eragon sprang up and caught Arya in his arms before she landed.

Hanin slumped into Grintuk, who caught him in surprise and gently lowered him down. Varhog did the same with Maehrí, who had fallen the other direction and would have bashed her head on the ground. The two Urgals looked up in confusion.

"Arya!" Eragon anxiously cried, gazing helplessly down into Arya's blank face. But he had no more time to consider his wife's mysterious condition, for right then, part of Eragon's mind died. Saphira! he shouted in agony.

He was barely aware that almost everyone else in the circle—save Nasuada, Greta, and obviously Elva and the elves—was experiencing the exact same devastation. But an inexplicable force abruptly demanded his attention, and while Eragon's body froze in place, he found his head turning toward the beach at the sound of a wheezing, tittering voice.

"Ah, so delightful!" the voice cackled. "What you must be going through, dear friends. We should be friends. Oh, so we should. I was friends with the ancient Riders. But one among you has ensured that friendship will never exist between old Tenga and the modern Dragon Riders."

Eragon recognized the old man lazily making his way—with Lena by his side—up the beach toward the group surrounding the fire. Even if Tenga hadn't named himself, Eragon would have recognized the insane, rambling, ancient man. Eragon wanted to speak, but he couldn't open his mouth.

"No, none of you can speak," Tenga regretfully tittered. "Hee! No, indeed! I learned my lesson after hearing your children shouting back on the Isle. Don't you fret. I haven't harmed anyone. And the elves? Couldn't have them trying anything sneaky, now could I? That's why I rendered them unconscious, isn't it? Never you fear, Shadeslayer," he reassured Eragon. "Your little wifey will recover, so she will. But not while I'm here. It's for the best, for if any of them had tried to attack, why I would have had no choice but to kill them. And also don't worry about your partner of heart and mind. She's not dead. Just wild."

Tenga released a jittery giggle. "Oh yes! Wild, wild, wild. The dragons are all wild now, so they are! And the Dragon Riders are no more. Your dragons no longer remember you. They remember nothing about their decades of life being bonded to the frail, sniveling two-legs. Oh dear me, dear me. I do believe they might simply fly away! And where will that leave you, dear friends? Stranded? Yes, I do believe that's right. Stranded on a desert island!" And he dissolved into a fit of seemingly irrepressible twittering.

Then Tenga's mad tirade abruptly ended as he stopped next to Murtagh and Nasuada, crouching down behind them. His eyes were suddenly cold, calculating, and full of deep hatred.

"What did I ever do to you?" he whispered in Nasuada's ear, his voice icy and chilling. "Tell me that. What did I ever do to you!" Tenga lifted one crooked finger to her cheek and ran it along her skin. Murtagh's fury was visible in his eyes, but he appeared to be just as immobile as Eragon.

Tenga turned a casual eye on Murtagh. "Feeling a bit helpless, are we, Your Highness? Well, you are. Powerless. Just a regular man now. No magical abilities whatsoever. As it should be. No man or woman should have their otherwise mundane life vaulted to that of near invincibility by having a dragon hatch for them. Like gods, you are. Think you're so strong, so wise. Well, I haven't lived for centuries on borrowed ability. I have only imitated that trait within the past week, for it was necessary in the fulfillment of my plan, which I have now successfully implemented."

Tenga barked a cold, humorless laugh completely opposite his nervous tittering of moments before. Then he continued in a cunning tone, "But you should also be grateful, Your Majesty, Your Highness, for part of that plan was the murder of the high queen. It seemed only right after she ruined my peaceful, unobtrusive life. I never hurt anyone, never planned to. Yes, I'm powerful, but I had no intention of using that to injure anyone. Was that enough? No, indeed."

Then Tenga turned to Lena. His face filled with what could only be described as lust, though it seemed very rusty and hesitant. "But my new form of revenge is much more to my liking. I'm not a killer. Not deep down. So I decided to take your oldest daughter. Ironic, don't you think? The crown princess of Alagaёsia will now be a slave to the most powerful force in the land. Never fear. I shan't harm her. And if she behaves, I will even be kind. She may prove more useful than a scullery maid or servant girl. Perhaps she will provide old Tenga with greater pleasure than food and drink brought on a silver platter." Another jumpy titter escaped his throat, apparently without his conscious awareness.

Lena also appeared to be frozen in whatever spell Tenga had restrained the rest with. Her eyes, which had until that moment been defiant and disdainful, betrayed the first trace of fear at his final words, but Tenga didn't notice. He turned his attention back to Murtagh.

"But never forget, young man," he menacingly breathed. "I wanted to kill your wife. And I would have. Oh, I could, true enough. I could kill you all. But where would be the fun in that? It's so much more delightful imagining you all here, struggling to survive without the magic and dragons you've come to rely on so heavily. Just normal humans, dwarves, and Urgals now. The elves could use magic before bonding with the dragons, so they could, and so they will be able to still. But not as powerfully, and that ability may fade as time goes on, for it initially sprang up after that race formed the bond with the dragons so many millennia ago. And will any of you even have a desire to live? We shall see. But I'll be far from here, leaving you to your misery. We shall just see what comes of Alagaёsia without the royal family and the Dragon Riders around."

Tenga turned to the others, raising a hand to close around Lena's arm. Eragon, who had been observing the scene with growing dread and hopelessness, happened to notice that Lena now wore a golden ring on her left hand's third finger. Will must have proposed, but cruel, cruel fate had separated them at the most agonizing moment. Eragon's eyes filled with tears as Lena looked at her father with apologetic, pleading despair. Help me, she seemed to say. And Murtagh's wordless reply was equally as devastating. I can't.

Tenga, who was oblivious to this silent exchange between father and daughter, smiled brightly and offered a cheery wave. "Ta ta!" he breezily cried. "Do enjoy yourselves, dear friends. For I certainly shall, now that I need no longer fear the Dragon Riders interfering in affairs that ought not to concern them." And with that, he suddenly seemed to disappear, though Eragon's sharp eyes noticed that he actually just departed at such a dizzying speed that it simply mimicked an abrupt disappearance.

When the old wizard had put sufficient distance between himself and the island, the spell holding everyone in place dissolved. Eragon forced himself to kneel slowly so as not to harm Arya, though his body wanted to crumple to the ground and curl up into a tight ball. He raised his head when Murtagh let out a strangled cry of protest, jogging unsteadily down the beach and several steps into the water.

"Lena!" Murtagh desperately shouted. "Lena!" Then his legs gave out and he landed on his knees, waist-deep in the water. "Lena," he moaned, hanging his head in misery.

-:-:-:-

The End of Part One


A/N: So that's Part One. Though you got a little insight into the workings of Tenga's plot in this chapter, I'll elaborate in more detail in upcoming chapters. I'm curious what you all think. If any of you have tried to write a bad guy for an IC fic, you probably understand the dilemma I faced. Trying to make a believable villain who wouldn't immediately be squashed by the Dragon Riders or the use of the name of names is harder than you might think. In The Cycle Continues, I struggled to make King Kulkarvek a plausible threat, and I had to revisit the curse Galbatorix casts on him several times before I felt like I had taken into account all of the loopholes that might have existed.

When Paolini wrote the Dragon Riders as he did, he practically made them gods. They're so powerful that almost no one can stand against them. So, short of another Dragon Rider war (I didn't like the idea of my Riders turning on each other), which is exactly what Paolini already did (and which therefore seemed too repetitive), I decided that undoing the Dragon Riders would be my conflict for this book. And Tenga was very intriguing to me as an antagonist. He never seemed really evil in IC (he had such a minor appearance anyway), but I did get the sense that he had a mean streak and he also seemed loony, which made for some interesting potential. He just finally got fed up enough to retaliate in a major way.