Turns out I was able to polish up one last chapter before getting ready to pack like crazy :D
It was scarcely past dawn and already the castle buzzed with life. Brede Standa held back a wistful sigh as servants lumbered past with great casks of beer from the store rooms. She sorely could have used a good drink to lull her to sleep - anyone able to sleep away the day would better welcome the long night of giving thanks and drunken revelry ahead.
Not for the first time she damned Roderick Lunde to the depths of the deepest hells. Even when they wanted clan cooperation, the Knoths insisted on dragging the Righ into everything.
Or the prince, as they almost always did now. As if the Righ were on his deathbed.
Ciar snickered at the thought. I pity the force that tries to take the Righ from this world before he's good and ready for it.
Brede held back a smile. Probably why Lunde always makes me pester the crown in his stead. Can't handle the thundercloud.
The prince always received them in the throne room. Instead they had been directed down to Triath Luan's sanctuary, down inclined hallways that gradually narrowed and lost their polished luster the deeper they descended. From anyone else, Brede would have thought it a gesture of piety.
Never knew the prince to call upon the gods outside of diplomacy's sake, Ciar mused. You don't think...?
Fuck's sake, Ciar! Gods willing, the Righ's got a century left in him. That would only give him a hundred and fifty years he did not want but was too damned stubborn to let go of.
Brede, I pray he'll make it ten.
The transition from castle to mountain was seamless, a testament of long-dead architects who had gradually yielded influence to the Earth-Mother in her deep domain. The murals of nocturnal battle, the victories of a thousand Long Nights, blurred until only unadorned stone remained. The floors and ceiling became less polished and more like the cave where the great Red had once made his nest. The sounds of the castle above faded the further they strayed from the beaten path. As if the Earth-Mother held her breath, the air became dank and still. Dull flames burned low in their braziers. Light-keepers were few and far between.
When the path took a steep decline and bright white blazed ahead, Ciar halted.
Brede rolled her eyes back at him. Are you coming or not?
He's your blood, Brede. The prince requested you specifically, and this is a sacred place. I can wait.
Brede vowed to get Ciar back somehow. Then she swallowed her trepidation and pressed on alone.
Triath Luan's sanctuary shone brightly, white starfire burning high in their braziers. Despite the cavern's massive size, the massive head of his stone likeness still nearly brushed the ceiling. His outstretched wings spread the cavern's circumference, the tips meeting above the sanctuary entrance. Wrought from the rock itself, Triath Luan looked almost lifelike, as if about to leap from from his pedestal and bring the island crashing down around him as he tore his way back up to the stars.
Brede avoided the Lord Moon's gaze, represented as one glimmering moonstone in the right socket. The left eye, after all, was one that could never be captured by mortal hands nor mortal Will.
Prince Caedmon himself knelt before Triath Luan, deep in prayer. Brede made herself as small as possible, sinking deep into a submissive pose at the temple's threshold.
"Blessed is your might," she murmured, "and may it never falter. Blessed is your sight, and may it never dim. Blessed is your light-"
"-may it never fade," the prince finished hoarsely. His gaze turned down to the earth itself. "And blessed is she who birthed you twice." He smiled wanly as he rose. "Such familiar words. The routine of it all has always calmed me most, I'm afraid."
Brede hid her wince when Caedmon's voice cracked on the final word. It must have nearly been that wonderful time of year again. "You summoned me, my prince?"
"Lady Knoth is most anxious to apprehend the rogues who fly such circles around her patrols," the prince said neutrally. "She insists most are not under her domain. The banners of the Standa, or the Linde, or any other clan alone will not suffice. No, she needs royal support, so all clans remember whom they ultimately answer to."
Brede snorted. "Old Lunde said the same to me when I suggested just flying out together and dealing with the problem."
Caedmon's eyes narrowed. "Did Captain Lunde also inform you the rogues appear to be sheltering on the Southern Isle?"
There was no Southern Isle, at least none so blatantly named as such. Why did the name still sound so familiar? Brede strained to recall her grandfather's lessons. She gaped when it came back to her.
"V - Verrr - Vroengard?" Her tongue tripped over the strange word. Her blood froze at such a forbidden place violated. "Vroengard?"
The prince bared his fangs. "Lady Knoth's patrols recovered artifacts of forbidden magic from the dens they've uncovered. They could have come from nowhere else."
Except further south. It was enough to make her spine turn to water. "I do as you will, my prince."
"And the Righ wills every such... traitor executed. You and your finest fliers are to depart for Mother's Womb at dawn."
Brede again sank into a bow and left. Already sprouting scales as she hurried up the hall, she opened her mind to Ciar. By the time she met up with him, she was firmly on all fours and they had ten good teams to rally. Rogues usually only grew so reckless if they had no one else to live for. If she and Ciar were fortunate, they could execute them all on the spot without fear of harming any innocent bonds.
...What do you suppose the prince was praying for? Ciar murmured as an afterthought. His partner blinked, having completely forgotten about it. Damn it, Brede, it's not like he's the type to give thanks for every full moon night! Or to worry about something when we usually all just look forward to forgetting our troubles for the night, not unless it was really eating at him.
It's not our place to speculate, Brede chided. Then she shoved him out of her mind to indeed do just that.
Caedmon was her second cousin once removed, gods dammit, but she still knew him well enough he never bowed before the gods unless in dire circumstances and already the royal clan had been blessed with a miracle. Granted, Niall wasn't a direct heir to Caedmon, but the boy was still a trueborn Ruadhluan. Better the throne one day pass to him than a Knoth.
Was it the Righ after all? Surely he was still in good health, if cantankerous as ever. No one in the castle had appeared ill at ease. Unless the Righ was hiding an illness from all but those who knew him best, and his heart had died a long time ago...
Brede forced the fear from her head before they ran rampant. Her duty was the rogues.
She sent a quick prayer to whatever gods were listening to show at least a little mercy toward the family that already shouldered so much of their burdens. The Isles weren't ready to lose their Righ, not without sparking civil war.
"Eragon."
He stood barefoot on a rocky shore, the pebbles beneath his feet worn smooth by the constant grind of the tide. Cold water lapped at his toes. The night breeze nipped at his hair. It smelled of salt.
The stars glittered clear and bright ahead, but the full moon was clearest and brightest of all. In the moonlight the whitecaps shimmered silver. A fire burned high and bright on the horizon. If he squinted he could just make out the shore it burned on. When the wind blew right it carried the scent of smoke and sunlight.
"Eragon."
She called to him, clear and sweeter than morning dew. Her voice was in the sky, the sea tugging at his toes, the wind in his hair. She called him home.
Eragon waded out until the waves lapped at his nose and he had to strain to not swallow saltwater. He glanced back at safety and a certain shore. Miles away, the fire beckoned.
"Eragon."
He knew he was a moth drawn to the flame. Still he kicked away from solid ground.
He swam until his muscles burned. When he felt eyes gazing at him from below as well as from above, he pressed on. He swam until his arms turned to lead and he breathed more water than air.
Choking and spluttering, he fought to stay above water, even as the tide forced him under again. To one side loomed the darkness of his certain shore. On the other burned a bonfire. He knew he could reach neither.
Eragon.
The voice called to him even as he slipped beneath the waves a final time. Down, down, down he sank, as the cold seeped into his lungs and his eyesight dimmed.
His death loomed in the abyss below. As he plummeted it sprang up to meet him, opening its void of a mouth and-
ERAGON!
Blindly he groped for security, a drowning man reaching for a lifeline. Feeling the reassuring bulk of Saphira pressed against him, he latched onto her scales and coughed and wheezed until his body remembered it could breathe.
Groaning, Eragon slid down Saphira's side into a sitting position. He opened his eyes to the warm darkness of her wing membrane.
"Let me out, Saphira!"
Even after the gifts bestowed upon him in the Blood-Oath Ceremony his eyes needed time to adapt to the darkness of Farthern Dur's dragon-hold. He sensed Saphira's disapproval when he staggered away from his side. She padded after him.
Only after glimpsing the moonlight shining through the cavern's entrance did Eragon allow himself to sit, his dragon again coiling protectively around him. His subconscious mind finally stopped insisting he'd been swallowed by... whatever the hell that thing was.
That was even worse than last night's dream, little one.
Eragon winced as his body, having stopped fearing for its life, decided to remind him of his pounding hangover. He and Saphira both reeked of alcohol and inebriation. It almost made him wish for the scent of salt back.
"I don't think we can keep blaming the mead," he joked weakly.
Saphira growled. Your first dream happened before Orik was even crowned.
Ever since the Blood-Oath Ceremony Eragon had stopped sleeping. Instead he had slipped into lighter trances, his dreams nothing more than fleeting visions or feelings. And then, not long after Katrina's rescue, the drowning dreams had started. Each night they only grew in intensity, pulling him in deeper than mere mortal sleep ever had. Never before had Eragon actually thought himself drowning. His throat still burned from the saltwater.
Despite the wild revelry of Orik's coronation and spending each night in a drunken stupor, the voice still found him, and lured him into the sea. A new thought came to him.
"They're like my dreams from before," he murmured.
Your visions of Arya never tried to kill you, stone-head.
Eragon shook his head. "Older dreams, Saphira, from long before I ever found your egg. They used to keep me up every few weeks as a child. I grew out of them. Uncle Garrow always said they were a phase." He frowned thoughtfully. "I can't even remember what they were about, not really. Only that I'd be up all night bouncing with energy and begging Roran to come play with me. And she - the voice, whatever she is - isn't out to kill me."
Whatever the voice's intentions, he knew they were not malevolent the same way he had known to pick Saphira's egg up from its smoldering crater. His same instincts had insisted his visions of Arya were not a trap.
Saphira snorted. Childhood fantasies are different from visions of a voice out to drown you.
Eragon's fists clenched. "It's not her fault I can't swim an ocean and that I haven't a boat." He paused. "Or wings to fly across."
Together he and Saphira poured over memories of the dream's sky. Brom had taught them the basics of astronomy. Oromis and Glaedr had further refined their studies. Navigating by the heavenly bodies was a technique wild dragons had practiced even before elves had landed in Alagaesia.
In his dreams the moon had been full. So too was the moon above his head in reality. They even looked in the same position, as if no time had passed at all between his vision and the waking world.
Eragon returned to the cave Saphira had claimed for herself. He kindled a lantern and tore through his saddle bags until he found their star charts. On a hunch he reached for the map of western Alagaesia.
Astronomy was not a precise art. Most adhered to a general formation and nightly cycle through the sky, but some wondered without regard to pattern. Some had stayed the same course for centuries. Other stars that had seemed just as dependable sometimes stopped appearing. Some appeared on some nights and not others. However, elves had chartered out the course of these particular stars just the year before, and were certainly the most accurate information available for the northern skies.
He and Saphira both reviewed his memories and confirmed they were indeed the same stars the elves had recorded from the western shore. It was the furthest west even the most tenacious scouts ventured since the Fall, the same shore that looked out to...
Vroengard? Saphira scowled at the map as she pored over his memories again and again, always reaching the same conclusion. Her frustrated skepticism wavered.
"Vroengard," Eragon murmured in awe. "A lost Rider?"
Or dragon, Saphira suggested, her tentative belief in the theory growing by the moment. Or an elf. Anyone that might have been affected by the Fall. The Forsworn purged the island of all sentient life. What better place to hide then the site of Galbatorix's greatest massacre?
Her Rider nodded, then paused at how resolute her faith in him suddenly was. "Did you not believe this voice out to kill me?"
...So too did others think of Arya's visions when she needed us the most. Eragon tried not to think of Murtagh. Saphira looked somberly down at the map. If this voice grows only more insistent each night, then perhaps so does her need of us. We barely reached Arya in time. If this mystery voice has already been calling you for so many nights-
Her voice cut off when Eragon's alarmed mind envisioned the voice consumed by the same force that always preyed upon him in his nightmares, the cold black void that swallowed up all that was warm and bright in the world.
He frantically turned toward his belongings. Everything he needed was already in the dragon-hold. The dwarves had sent far up far too many meals over the past several days. They insisted hearty food was the perfect cure for soaking up excess alcohol.
"We should warn someone that we're leaving," he suggested as he stowed the hardier biscuits into his pack. He absently thought someone might be upset at their sudden departure.
Saphira snorted. I don't think anyone would be sober enough to remember if we ever told them so. Or to notice we're missing, for that matter, not until the celebrations wind down.
Eragon's pounding hangover conceded this point. Even with his strengthened constitution drinking a dwarf under the table was an ill-fated bet. Muttering a spell to clear his head, he instead left a detailed note thanking the dwarves of Farthen Dur for their hospitality and again congratulating Orik for his coronation. He regretfully expressed urgent orders called him elsewhere.
Less than an hour later, the saddle bags were packed and Saphira saddled. Unfurling her wings, Saphira threw herself into the cool night air and left Farthen Dur behind. If they hurried they could be back before anyone sobered up and realized they were gone.
Whoever was calling to them, Eragon only hoped they did not reach her too late.
The first scene should start shedding light on certain things without too much of an info-dump. Especially considering where our heroes are heading XD
Eragon is recklessly impulsive, especially when a life looks to be on on the line. Saphira both trusts in her Rider and knows from past experiences with Arya his 'dreams' can be a hell of a lot more than they seem. It is thus totally in character for them to charging off into the plot without spending multiple chapters on getting around to it :P
My knowledge of foreign languages goes no further than four years of Latin and some very small knowledge of Mandarin. I rely on online dictionaries and Google Translate for this story. If something isn't translated even in the point of view of someone who was actually raised in the language, it's a choice on my point to avoid contexts I feel might be 'lost in translation.'