Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, Eragon was at peace. There was no king's shadow looming over him, no lives of countless thrust upon his shoulders. he was young and innocent again, a boy on his uncle's farm. All that mattered was the warm earth beneath his bare toes, the distant crash of waves on the shore, and a quiet life well-lived.
He was not alone. He would never be alone again. His family had tilled this land before his birth. They had planted their roots long and deep. In this farm they'd been born, grew up and raised their families. They had never left it. At the end of the lives their bodies had been given to the earth, back into the arms of their Mother, to sleep eternally beside all those who came before.
Among them Eragon had a home. He always had. Garrow and Marian embraced him as a son and Roran as a brother. This was a dream that never ended and time held no dominion here. This is where he met the nephews and nieces yet to be born, the untold generations yet to spring from them. Here was his grandfather Cadoc, and his great-grandparents Gavin and Annah.
"Oh, my boy," Aunt Marian crooned. "My baby boy. Here you are home."
Eragon frowned. Aunt Marian was the closest he had ever known to a mother, but-
"We wove your flesh and blood and bone," Annah cooed. The arms of his great-grandmother were warm and soft, the embrace of the elders he had never known. "This was your cradle. It will be again, one day."
"No, Mother," Cadoc murmured, eyes distant. "Not all of him."
Garrow slung a protective arm over Eragon's shoulders. "She has no place here. She-"
Reluctantly he drew away from his uncle. "Regardless of how she lived or who she loved, she is your blood too."
Garrow stared at him long and hard, before squeezing his shoulder and drawing away. Eragon searched the sea of half-familiar faces for one like his own. Where was his mother?
With stares and murmurs the crowd parted, drawing further and further away. Eragon flinched when even the warmth of Garrow and Marian deserted him. It was no woman that walked through them, but a wraith. Her hair was dull and colorless, skin stretched tight over her skull. Her eyes blazed bright blue within rings of bruises.
"Fuil mo fola," she murmured. "Ribadh mo lasair."
The words should have been utterly alien, as strange as this soul. But Eragon knew her all the same. Her eyes were his own, though hers had the intensity of her father's. So too were their tongues now shared. Here was Beline, the rumored witch, daughter of none. Here was Beline Ruadhluan, disgraced daughter of dragons. Here was his grandmother.
Blood of my blood. Spark of my flame.
Eragon's instincts urged him backward, to shelter shoulder to shoulder with his true family. His heart kept him rooted to where he stood. He could no more deny the wraith before him than he could Saphira. She was just a part of him.
"Fuil mo fola. Ribadh mo lasair."
Sweat beaded down Eragon's brow as she advanced. If his family was warm, then Beline burned without remorse. Unconsciously he did step back, trying to retreat into the coolness. Beline closed the gap far faster. Up close he could see why his family had retreated so far into the dark. Her form was wreathed by a dragon's, pale and spectral.
Nails sharp as talons clamped down onto his shoulders. Eragon tried to flinch back, but Beline bore down with the weight of the sky.
"Fuil mo fola," she hissed, skeletal wings spreading wide as phantom sparks flew from her mouth. "Ribadh mo lasair."
He screamed as her spark consumed him from the inside out. His farm and family burned away, until only her blazing eyes remained.
ERAGON!
His eyes snapped open. The sun was a sliver on the horizon, Saphira's bulk drowning near all else out. It was morning. He was awake. The nightmare should have been over.
The fire had followed him. His blood boiled. His bones burned. His very heart had become an ember, throbbing against his chest until it seared through his flesh to freedom.
Eragon tried to speak Saphira's name. His scrambled mind could not even form the concept. All that escaped was an agonized howl. All he felt over and again was stopstopgoodgodsmakeitSTOP-
As he writhed and roared, he knew deep down his own great-grandfather had done this.
Her Rider burned with a heat that seared even her scales, made his flushed skin too hot to sweat. Saphira could do nothing but coil around him, as close and as far as she dared. Physical contact only made Eragon scream louder. His overwhelmed nerve endings shrieked across their link, too loud that even Saphira had to take a deep breath and take one mental step back. She could not save him if his agony swallowed her too.
ERNA! she bellowed. OISIN!
Neither answered her. Of course no one answered her, even if she roared out every weredragon's name she knew.
When Saphira could take the screams no more she paced their quarters like a caged animal. She rammed against a closed door and the invisible boundaries on the balcony, straining against an oath that could make her drop dead if defied. The weredragons going about their business averted their eyes like she was a bratty child, anyone's problem but their own.
With all other paths exhausted, Saphira resorted to the name Eragon dared think. Ardanach Ruadhluan! Oathbreaker! Kinslayer! You kill your own child!
No Righ answered her. But at last a mind tentatively knocked against her own. Saphira snapped at empty air, jaws smoking, as she threw open her fear and her fury to Erna Suther. Peace, Saphira, peace. His path is beyond us now. It is the Lord Moon's judgement.
Your Righ poisoned his own great-grandchild! You should have executed us and be done with it! Eragon is... He's no...
Blood calls to blood, and spark calls to flame, Erna answered solemnly. The Righ could have claimed Eragon as clan or executed him as Rider. From then on today was inevitable. We have done all we can to bridge the gap between your bonded and his heritage. But still his heart and mind are human, for all blood burns. The Lord Moon does as he wills.
No! Saphira snapped. It is up to Eragon! Shades and tyrants could not kill my Rider. He will not lose to himself!
Vehemently she threw Erna from her mind and coiled once more around Eragon. Only for him did she open herself. She thought of calm summer skies and the warm dark of the egg, passing on whatever cold comforts she could. Eragon mindlessly latched onto her, his one focal point in the endless agony.
Little one, she murmured, dearest one. You are bonded to me. I do not share my soul with a lesser man. You have flown and thrown your own fire. You will not succumb to your own blood. I forbid it.
Saphira could only gouge her claws into the stone floor and wait out endless hours. The only other option was to curl up and die beside him, and tht was no option at all. Eragon screamed out his voice for all his agony echoed across their bond. Carefully she meted out her strength when she could, whenever he faltered. He always tried to latch on a leech and drain them both, until she was forced to swat him down.
Around noon, when the sun outside blared hot and merciless, Saphira was shaken from her stupor by a crack. And then another. Eragon flailed with newfound desperation, eyes rolling into the back of his head.
His writhing mind surged against her own, seeking to abandon its crucible altogether. Saphira wanted nothing more to take him into her heart, to let him live on in the most intimate manner possible, without two separate bodies to divide them ever again.
But that was a fate no one deserved. Gently, ruthlessly, Saphira pushed him back down into the burning. This was still his body and his fire to face.
Oromis Thrandurin had rarely walked the waking world in weeks. He rose only to eat and drink, to exercise long enough to satisfy his concerned caretakers and Glaedr's rumblings. Conventional scrying had failed but their students were not dead. Captured by Galbatorix or another hostile power during an impulsive adventure, almost certainly. But not dead. His soul refused to believe the rebellion's last and greatest hopes had died died so unceremoniously, laid low by a storm or fickle chance.
Oromis had found Eragon once, in the ethereal realms between sleep and waking. He had reached across endless leagues to beat back a Shade's dying gasps of spite and granted his pupil new purpose. He would find him once more.
Oromis!
He woke, thrashing in his cot, soaked in sweat and tears. Familiar gold loomed over him. Instinctively Oromis latched on, weeping as he had not wept since Ilirea's annihilation. Glaedr leaned into him and keened with him.
Oromis cared nothing for his ruined home, for Glaedr had plowed through walls in his single-minded goal to reach him.
He thought of the split second he and Eragon had found each other at last, before that fire had burned him from the inside out.
Only hours later, when they had wrestled their grief down to the same dark pit where all their other nightmares simmered, did Oromis confirm what their souls already knew. By virtue of outliving every other legitimate bonded pair they were nominal heads of the Order. Vrael and Umaroth had rarely tapped into the deeper threads of the pact, for in their time the threads had been woven far and wide, a tapestry spanning hundreds.
Oromis plucked only two. Always there was Galbatorix, warped and wrong, at the edge of the loom with Shruikan's thread snared in his. So too were Murtagh Morzansson and his dragon, bound in spite and mutual desperation.
Nothing remained of the last true bond but ashes on their tongue.
Perhaps Saphira survived out there somewhere, a husk of herself as Brom had become.
Glaedr and Oromis prayed that was not so. Death was preferable to such emptiness.
Murtagh jerked awake, falling out of bed before he realized the flames weren't consuming him alive. He was no stranger to nightmares. They had become especially vivid since his enslavement. His master was creative in his torture. For daring to let Eragon and Saphira escape the Burning Plains his oaths had not only become more choking, but his mind dragged away from his body in illusions of Galbatorix's whims, to break whatever spirit was left in him.
But this had been no nightmare. It was as vivid as the night Murtagh dreamed his mother dead in her fever, long before the servants had seen fit to announce it to him.
As a Rider he was never alone long in his thoughts. Within moments Thorn tentatively prowled at the edges of his mind. Reluctantly Murtagh let him in. For all that brat was responsible for their eternal imprisonment they were still all the other had.
Are... you... well?
I'll live, he replied brusquely, ignoring the scrape of claws above his head. Galbatorix insisted on his quarters being beneath Urubaen's dragon-hold, so he and his dragon could be ready in moments if called.
His nails dug into the floor when all of Urubaen shook. From stories and stories below Shruikan bellowed with their master's outrage. He bit back a pained grunt when Galbatorix turned his wrath upon any and every around him. Fortunately the closest objects to punish were shelves and priceless books raided from the Fall, and not human servants.
Something wet dripped onto his knee. Murtagh wiped a hand over his face, expecting blood from the fall or the strain of his master's mind upon him. He blinked in utter bewilderment to find his eyes wet. He thought Galbatorix had scoured all the tears from him months ago.
No wonder Galbatorix raged so. Weeks of relentless searching had just gone up in smoke.
"My brother is dead," Murtagh murmured aloud, and found he spoke the truth. Eragon Morzansson was dead and his true name with him, consumed by some fire far and beyond any Imperial spies.
Murtagh fought down envy and rage, that Eragon had at least found a way behind his fate entirely. But never would Murtagh be again compelled to drag his little brother into bondage beside him. Never would Thorn be made a rapist or Saphira to mother monsters.
It was better this way, for everyone. Galbatorix could not afford to torture Murtagh or his dragon to death. They were indispensable now, with no she-dragons left to resurrect her race and the Riders beside them.
Tonight was a night of celebration, the last full moon when the day yet beat out the dark. Tonight was a night to glut oneself over the harvest and thanksgiving for a bountiful summer.
Caedmon had nothing to be thankful for. What should have been a day of rest and contemplation had become an exercise in blocking out one boy's dying screams as the magic Sparr and Amalia had wrought burned him from the inside out. He was reluctantly impressed the Rider had made it through the early morning and then to noon. As the afternoon dragged on now he only prayed for that suffering to end.
Not that the crown prince could hide away as his bastard nephew succumbed to his righteous punishment for daring to ever be born, to take a dragon as bonded, to stumble into the lands of Beline's birth.
Caedmon did not budge from the feasting table. He nursed his beer in dark anticipation, downing one whenever the Rider's agonies especially needed drowning out. The servants thoughtfully replaced his dragon-sized tankard every time his grip turned Will-strengthened wood to froth and splinters.
His heart ached for Myrna's wings but of course his mate lead and treated in his stead. For all he reached out to her in his weakness she kept her heart walled off him, so his guilt would not claim her too. One of them had to remain strong for their people to show them they were both unbroken by a boy that had no true claim to their name.
Caedmon's lips twitched as he barely repressed a snarl at his uncle's family. Uncle Berach and Aunt Imke weren't the boy's direct blood. Their genial facades never faltered as daonna-arach from across Green Isle came to pay their respects and offer the tribute of their harvests, choice rams and cattle, bushels of wheat and barrels of beer. Niall laughed and jested with his friends as he always did. Caedmon imagined smugness there, that soon his cousin would soon be the uncontested Ruadhluan heir once again.
Above all loomed the Righ, stoic as the mountainside. He spoke not a word beyond what the rites demanded of him, not even to his brother. This Bright Night passed to him same as all others.
Most of all Caedmon watched the sun set into a sea of blood and the day bleed out into black. Miles away on Crown Isle the boy's suffering reached another depth to its hell and his she-dragon's stubborn calm neared its breaking point. Moonrise it would be after all.
As the first sliver of the full moon cleared the horizon, Caedmon clutched at his chest as a hammering heart stopped. He ground another tankard to splinters as his not-nephew died.
His involuntary keen ended as a questioning rumble at the aftermath. His aunt and uncle slumped against each other. Niall choked on his beer. The Righ's head swung toward Crown Castle.
There was no sudden hole in their hearts when the... boy descended into a darkness gentler, less permanent, than the long sleep. His she-dragon did not scream her grief or let herself go. Her fear slumped into exhausted relief as she followed him into sleep.
When the shock subsided Caedmon found a grin twitching at his snout. So the boy had survived out sheer spite. That was the truest family trait there was, as the Righ proved time and time again.
"A toast," he called at last. His tenth tankard was swiftly slid down the table. "To my nephew, Eragon Ruadhluan!"
Every eye turned to the Righ. His jaw parted to reveal the slightest bit of fang.
"To Prince Eragon!" Myrna seconded, for Uncle Berach's booming voice could not quite beat her to the punch.
"Eragon Ruadhluan!" the isle roared, as if loudness counted for sincerity.
"Homewards," Oisin sang, high and exuberant, "homewards, where summer's come and a new spark burns bright..."
It was a song the Isles had not heard from the royal fili in eighteen years, when Aunt Imke had been a healthy son at long last.
Caedmon turned his concentration inward, on family not often dwelt upon. He was disappointed but not surprised to discover Soraid hadn't the dignity to drop dead when Amleth passed on the good news.
Oisin's just happy he won his bet, not that the brats survived this or anything :p