I do not own the Inheritance Cycle.
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a good holiday season!
After this chapter the ball should get rolling...
Edited 1/30/22
Please let me know your thoughts throughout the story, I'd love to hear for you :)
Enjoy,
Tales of Spirits
They left that day at noon, just as the sun peeked the center of the sky. It was a dank and cheerless day, though the wind had fallen the bitter chill remained, and a heavy mist rose up from the damp ground. The trail they followed was rutted, causing them to travel slowly, none of them eager to risk the chance of having a horse injure their leg.
Now they traveled through occupied country. There were many homes dotting the hills in the distance, surrounded with the bright greens specks of spring, and the shining whites of wooly sheep. They passed many of the things that Rose had already seen; children playing with hoops and dolls or walking with their parents to town, a basket in hand sometimes with a head of chicken poking out, staggering carts drawn by oxen, and the rare sole traveler riding on a worn steed. The sightings here seemed no different than the ones she had seen in the past months, and they quickly lost her attention.
Having left the dispiriting region of Anial behind, Rose found herself in a mildly joyful mood. For a time she rode in silence, enjoying the sights of the woodland, quietly watching the limbs of trees that seemed to merge together in a twisted maze, and would chat with Thorn about trivial things; books she had read and tales she was told as a girl, but these were short, and at times one-sided conversations, which left Rose feeling wistful. She would also listen to the drilling of pressing questions Brom often burdened Eragon with.
It seemed as if Brom found amusement out of frustrating Eragon. He sat atop a proud white stallion, the type Rose often saw Lords ride- the steed looked rather out of place next to Eragon's stocky traveling breed- devising a fiction, as if it were food for the starved, in which the poor boy had to answer questions to deicide the hero's fate. Most of the time the hero ended up dead, or once taken prisoner. It was not the lacks of intelligence that killed the hero, nor was it the lack of information, more than often what killed the hero was the smaller things that one would often overlook. A solider, per say, mentioned so very briefly that he was forgotten about moments later, until he was purging a knife through the hero's chest. After the hero's death, Brom would grumble unhappily and turn away for a moment before coming up with some other absurd tale for Eragon to work through. The whole thing was rather interesting, and at times even humorous.
Sometimes, though these were scarce, after a question was asked Brom would look behind him at Rose, as if willing her to join them, but when she did not volunteer anything he turned away with gruff snort. Brom did this now; turning slightly in his saddle to glance at her. His gaze was questioning at first, his bushy eyebrows drawn together and his mouth completely hidden behind the shadow of his beard. Then as Rose avoided his eyes, looking instead the tree line ahead of them, his face hardened and he returned his attention to Eragon.
"You should join them," Selena said. She was riding beside Rose, and had remained silent until then. "He is teaching Eragon something you should know as well."
He's telling stories not lessons, Rose thought to say but held her tongue. "I'm listening," she said instead. There was no reason to start something that could be avoided. If she could avoid quarreling with Selena she would and for as long as she could do so. Their friendship had been compromised, strained beyond what it should, and the thought often filled her with angering regret; why could Selena not remain to be who she said she was?
Rose often noticed times when Selena and Brom seemed completely carefree, as if, now that they were reaching the end of their quest, they could allow some their former anxieties to fall away. If she did not know the truth of them, both of them, she would have come up with many ideas about them both, and few of them would be kind. "I'm quite certain I'll be burdened with plenty of his lessons tomorrow. If it distresses you so, why not resume your teachings?"
Selena frowned, her lips setting into her face. "It was never my place to teach you. I only did what was necessary at the time," she said.
Glancing up at the sky, she rubbed Starshine's neck, tangling her finger within the horse's silvery, coarse mane. She felt for a short moment the fire of anger burn through her veins, then it smoldered before she realized exactly what it was. "How," she muttered lowly, "is now any different?"
Selena's eyes narrowed, looking as if she were wishing to shoot out white-hot needles. "Now is quite different," she said plainly, with a slight wave of her hand that dismissed the subject completely.
With a scowl, Rose turned away. She watched as the distant tree line inched closer. Surrounding the trees was a pale stone pillar that rose into the sky as if it were gasping for the clouds. Even from a distance people could be seen milling about, circling the pillar and rising and falling. It looked as if they were dancing. Rose brought her hand up, to block out the glare of the sun, trying to get a better look.
"Do you know who they're worshiping?" she asked as she continued to watch them.
"They're not worshiping anything," Brom said, turning in his saddle to look at her. "They're doing a ceremonial dance for their gods. They're hoping to please the gods so that they will cast the Malasuci back into the spirit realm."
Looking again at the distant figures, Rose raised an eyebrow. "I've never heard of anything like that."
"Good," Brom said gruffly. "It means you have some common sense."
"What's the Malasuci?" Eragon asked. He looked more than glad to have a change of subject.
The old man turned to him, his hands moving beneath the shadow of his cloak. "A fabled spirit who is believed to possess the children born within the last year and turn them wicked."
Rose frowned, and shifted on the saddle uncomfortably. "And so they dance for their gods in pursuit to impress them, which it seems would not do much in protecting their young from a rogue spirit," she said with a laugh. Then as an afterthought she continued, in a low voice that she doubted anyone would hear; "Though I suppose that if the worse came, they frighten the spirit away with their dancing."
"I didn't claim that it made sense," Brom grumbled. "Now let's take a rest, the horses look as if they need it. I certainly do."
They rode off the road to a thin deer path. There they followed the path through the trees for a short time, to a silent river guarded jealously by a stony overhang. The pale blue water reflected the greens and browns of the trees, and the golden brown and red and grey from the splintered stones.
Reedy grass poked out from the stones, waving at them in the breeze.
They picketed the horses and, after a time of searching, found a small marshy sloop to guide the horses down to drank. After the horses were left to rest, Rose found a fallen tree to lean against and closed her eyes, letting the sounds of the trickling stream and twittering birds relax into her. She could feel the tight muscles of her body loosen as their aching became known, nevertheless it felt as if she could melt into the soil and would be happy to never get up.
"Don't get too comfortable," Brom said, interrupting the peace of the moment. "We have a long way to go yet."
Despite Brom's warning, Rose did get comfortable. So comfortable in fact that she was the brink of sleep within moments. But it seemed as if the slumber was not meant to happen for soon Brom's voice pulled her back into herself, waking her fully. "Are you still dreaming of that woman?"
There was a short silence, which only the rustling of the leaves in the wind and the snorts of the horses could be heard.
"Yes," Eragon said, from somewhere behind her. "Every night. It's gotten worse."
"You're seeing her while you're awake now, too. Don't give me that look. Saphira told me about it," Brom said intently.
"I asked her not to."
Brom huffed. "She's worried about you," he said. "I don't blame you for keeping silent, but you should have come to me about it yourself when it first started."
Rose could hear a soft rustling; Brom scratching his beard perhaps. Snuggling closer to the log at her back, she drew her legs up to her chest and leaned her head against them.
"Why is it only happening to me?" Eragon asked, it seemed to himself more than anyone else.
"I don't know," the old man said. "I could come up with a few predictions but I'd prefer not to. How do you know it's only you having these visions?"
"I asked Rose," Eragon said with a sigh. He began to beat a stick against the log, its vibrating sound echoed through the wood.
"If she was having these visions, do you think she would admit it?"
There was a short pause in Eragon's tapping. "No," he said quietly. "That why I asked Saphira to ask Thorn about it. She's not. It's just me."
"I see," said Brom. His shoes scuffed against the ground as he stood. "I have a feeling that whoever is responsible for this, isn't somebody we can trust. No matter how horrible these visions may seem to you, no heroics. Heroes have tendency not to return. No heroics, Eragon, promise me that."
Lifting her head, Rose turned to look at them. Despite nodding, Eragon looked as if he didn't agree to such a thing, there was a fire in eyes told a different story than the one he was portraying.
Brom walked around the stump, to the rocky riverside where Selena sat, there he kneeled down beside her and muttered something too low to be heard. Then he stood and made his way to the bags, and pulled enough food for a light meal out of one of them.
After a hasty meal they followed the trail back to the road and continued back down the road. They traveled as swiftly as they dared; the sun furthered its descent to the horizon. They didn't stop until it became too dark to move on. Brom found an overgrown copse where they might conceal a fire without too much trouble, and unsaddled Snowfire, then rubbed down his rough coat. Rose watched him as he worked. She was no closer to understanding him now than she was before.
Frowning, Rose dug a hole in the dirt with a stick. Her interactions with the man were, at the best of times, strained. An chasm lay between them that neither of them seemed to be willing to cross. It was a rarity when either of them would hold a conversation more than four sentences long, and even then it was tense and awkward.
It was no new news to Rose that Brom was the man that ended her father's life, and though she felt little love for the man that fathered her, she couldn't help but at times see Brom as a murder. Neither did it seem that man forgot who her father was; his glances at her were often short as if he couldn't look at her for long, and his words were crisp though not always unkind.
She sighed.
Her whole family seemed to be made up of murders and lairs. There didn't seem to be an end the cycle; her father was a Dragon Rider and he had ended countless lives, her mother was once an assassin, and now Rose, herself, was a Rider. She often wondered how long it would be before she was forced to raise her hand and end someone's life herself. Would that person have a family? Children? Or would they be too young to have started one?
She shrugged off the thought, knowing that she would do what she must. It was better them than her. Worry about yourself, she thought. If someone choose to face off against her than they had sealed their fate. It wasn't her problem. But the thought remanded; was she selfish enough to end someone else's life to save her own?
Fragmented visions flashed in her mind of the failed assassinations on her life. Thank the gods she hadn't born been a boy; they would surely have been much more frequent and crueler. But most of her father's enemies overlooked a girl, until they found out she was the sole heir, or believed that her father's evil had been passed to her. But what could a girl do against them?
Rose smiled at the thought.
So many men overlooked a woman's strength, and because of this a woman could easily slip through their barriers. That was likely why her father had her mother do so much for him. She must have been a major shock to his enemies, and the ones that knew of her did not forget. Rose didn't blame them.
Rose was so deep in thought, she didn't notice that the night had deepened, and the dragons had joined the camp until Thorn nudged her back with his snout. You look as if your pain, he stated.
You don't look so grand yourself, she said, turning to look at him. The fact was that Thorn did look grand. His red scales shone regally in the fire light, like fractured glass in the streaming golden light of the sun, and his large wings looked like veined silk tumbling down at his sides.
Snorting out a puff of gritty smoke in reply, he lay down, winding his tail around her. He blinked at her, his rubicund eyes gleaming laughingly. What were you thinking so hard on?
Nothing of much importance. She leaned back against him. How far is a stream from here?
Too far to go to this night. Why ask?
I wish to bathe before we continue tomorrow. I feel as if I've rolled in a pile of filth.
Thorn shuttered beneath her, his scales rubbing against the fabric of her cloak. Then I shall take you at first light.
I thank you, Thorn, she said, settling closer into him. It's not too horribly far, is it?
You'll want to let someone know where you're going. They might think you've run off on them.
Oh, she said, and closed her eyes. I'm going to need a saddle or something of the like if we keep going off like this. I'm going to look like a patch-worked doll before the week ends.
You promised you'd ask about it again.
I know, and I will. Rose shook her head slightly. When the time is right. Now does not seem to a good time for requesting much.
When is? Thorn rumbled a growl.
When things settle, and we have the proper time and supplies to do such, said Rose with a smile. They'll probably be in shock that I ride with you at all.
Thorn grumbled his laugh. What do they think we do?
They likely believe that we beat each other with sticks or, perhaps, chase down a weasel or two. The former being something I'm quite certain you would do.
Thorn, catching on to her teasing, said nothing, and a silence formed over them. Rose realized, with a shock, that it was deep into the night; the moon had risen high and was now inching downwards, a faint silver limned the trees and the grass, but nothing stirred in the night.
And then a booted foot came down silently on the leaves, an arm's length in front of her, carefully placed to make no sound. At once Eragon emerged into visibility through the shadows of night, his skin shimmering with sweat, and a bag dangling at his side. He froze midstep, taken by surprise, as Rose forced herself to her feet. For a long moment, he and Rose stared into each other's eyes.
His Adam's apple moved as he swallowed. "I thought you were asleep," said Eragon as he moved the bag behind him, as if he were trying to hide it from view.
"Where are you going?" asked Rose, eyeing the bag in his hands. She raised an eyebrow. "It's rather early to break your fast, don't you think?"
