"How would you kill with magic?" the ancient elf asked.
Her concentration slipped and the tiny sun in her hand flared brightly. Mellary looked up, rapidly blinking to clear her eyes of spots. The light, drawn from her surroundings in a magical exercise, vanished.
Eragn answered the question. "I've done it many ways. I've hunted with a pebble, as well as using the word jierda to break Urgals' legs and necks. Once, with thrysta, I stopped a man's heart."
Mellary suppressed a shudder. She knew the subtler methods by heart, but like most elves she used her bow and arrows and had honed her swordcraft to an art.
She listened obliquely as Oromis explained the different methods to kill with as much energy as it took to blink. Mellary continued to make shapes out of the ambient sunlight, trying to release some of the tension in her shoulders by shaping it into increasingly complex lattices. When she finally glanced at it, she realized that the spider-webbed filigree looked startlingly similar to her former wards.
"Why are you not learning this?" Eragon's voice interrupted her thoughts. Mellary let the magic go.
"I already know it," she said, folding her hands.
"What?!" Eragon sounded outraged. "If you already knew, they why did you not use it at Tronjheim?"
"Because that is a line I will not cross," she said, her tone holding a subtle warning.
"People died," he insisted, ignoring the warning.
"Do you think I don't know that?" Mellary asked, her voice soft and her tone deadly. "Do you know how easy it is to kill with magic?"
"Very easy?" The sudden question had thrown him.
"Precisely. It becomes too easy. Don't you think that ending someone's life, snuffing them from existence, should be harder than a few words? The more you do it, the more natural it will become, until you reach for it in a moment of anger. You won't mean to kill, but no magic can bring back the dead and apologies mean nothing to a corpse. In that moment, when you kill out of anger, you become Galbatorix. You become Durza. I refuse to cross that line."
Eragon didn't look as if he understood. Oromis was watching her with a level, understanding expression that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She shifted her focus back to Eragon.
"Did you ever realize," she began, "That the most controlled people you have ever met are those with the ability to kill you in a heartbeat? Those with an absolute grip on their power, their emotions, are the deadliest you will ever meet. Only those with no training, no skill, have the luxury of anger."
Her eyes locked onto Eragon's. "You are not untrained anymore. Do not make the mistake of using this ability casually."
And as she said it, she realized she was guilty. What had she done this morning? In her anger, her fury, she had bared her weapons and attacked without regard.
In battle, it would have been suicide. Mellary had fought berserkers before. People feared the rage-filled warriors, and with good reason. One on one, they were unbeatable. On the battlefield, surrounded by that chaos, they were surprisingly easy to take down: wait until their attention was on another and a single stroke would drop them.
Mellary never lost awareness of what was happening around her. To do so was to invite death. But that morning, her concentration had narrowed until her entire being was focused on that fight. Nothing else had mattered.
And she couldn't say, if she was practiced in the form of magic that Oromis was teaching, that she wouldn't have reached for it. It was a disturbing thought.
She looked down to find that she had been absently tapping her quill against the parchment in front of her. The ink was dry now, but a constellation of dark stars decorated the corner.
Eragon and Oromis were discussing the Ra'zac. She had been fortunate to never come across the strange creatures. If her true nature had ever come out within the Empire, she was sure that would have been very different. Elves were immune to their effects, but Mellary wasn't pure elf. She wasn't sure who would walk away from that tangle, but she wasn't anxious to find out. Her gaze slid sideways, catching the furious look on Eragon's face. Then again, she had never lost any family members to the Ra'zac.
Oromis shooed the pair of young Riders outside, then joined them with sets of slate tablets. "Let us abandon such unpleasant topics for a time. I thought you might enjoy learning how to make a fairth." Mellary sat up, intrigued. She had never learned how to make the beautiful pictures, though she had admired many.
Her mother had loved them. Mellary shook the thought from her mind, unsure where it came from.
"It is an excellent device for focusing your thoughts. The slate is impregnated with enough ink to cover it with any combination of colors. All you need to do is concentrate upon the image that you wish to capture and then say 'Let that which I see in my mind's eye be replicated on the surface of this tablet'." Oromis handed one to her. Mellary weighed it in her hands. The thing was unusually light, for a slab of rock. The grey surface was dull, absorbing the light around it. Mellary drew her finger down the surface, and wasn't surprised when her finger came away tinged with ink. The green filled in the whorls of her finger, making the ridges stand out.
"Look around you, and find something worth preserving," Oromis instructed.
Mellary glanced around, but her mind had turned inward. Her gaze settled on the grey slab, her thoughts churning uneasily. Images rose up unbidden.
She shoved them aside roughly and forced her mind back to the present.
A songbird winged by, alighting on a nearby rock. Sunlight slid down its sleek feathers as the bird fanned its wings, soaking in the rays.
She grabbed the image and muttered the spell under her breath. Just as the last words left her lips, her inner vision wavered.
Jewel tones burst out of the grey, sliding across the flat surface. When the motion had stopped, she was staring at a slightly blurred version of the landscape from her dream. The colors in the middle were mixed strangely, giving the outline of the songbird she had been focusing on.
Mellary hissed, shoving the tablet away from herself. It landed on the grass, brilliant surface up.
Oromis reached down and picked up the tablet. Mellary didn't move as he studied it.
"What is this?" he asked, voice even.
"It is nothing," she said. "Just a dream."
She picked up a second tablet to stave off any comments. Oromis let it go, gesturing for Eragon's tablet.
Perhaps if she indulged her mind, the images would stop. Mellary parsed through her memories, looking for something that would work. She finally settled on an image, one that, despite the years, remained cuttingly clear.
She muttered the words, watching the green ink crawl across the slate.
"Hail, Riders!" A sharp cry made her heart freeze in her chest. Her throat locked in panic as Orik and Arya stepped out of the forest.
Her ears. With her hair tie lost to the lake, she had left her curls loose. Her sharp, elven ears cut through the fire like razor blades, blatantly inhuman.
Mellary dropped the tablet, her hands flying to her ears. She covered the tips, her lips already moving.
The incantation was muttered under her breath, the words spilling from her as if she memorized them yesterday.
A sharp pain lanced through her head as she felt the illusion take effect. Mellary slowly lowered her hands. Curved, human shells had replaced the long ends, just peeking out from behind wiry strands.
Oromis gave her a hard look, his brow furrowing. Before he could say anything, Orik and Arya had walked up to them.
They exchanged pleasantries, Mellary doing her best not to wince. They settled back, and Orik began talking.
The words swooped by her on sparrow's wings, so fast that she couldn't catch them. Mellary wanted to shut her eyes against the blinding sunlight as pain seared through her skull again and again.
Like a stonemason, the spell had driven a chisel into her mind. Each heartbeat was a hammer blow, widening the jagged line of pain across her mind.
She hadn't remembered casting illusions to be this painful.
Mellary? she heard her dragon ask, his voice distant and muted. The green flame of Embrald's presence filtered into her mind. Suddenly the pain dimmed, flowing away down their bond.
Around her the world came back into focus. Orik was asking to observe the lesson, to ensure Eragon was getting a proper education.
They had just begun with the fairths; it would be at least an hour before they finished. Even with Embrald absorbing some of the impact from the spell, she had minutes before the pressure became too much for her to bear.
Eragon bent over his tablet, concentrating. Mellary rested her hand on her colored tablet and, with only a half-formed idea of what was on it, pushed it farther behind her.
A wave of foreign pain washed over her. Mellary barely contained her wince as the world blurred out again. Embrald's agony was pounding at her mind, a hundred times worse than her own had been.
It didn't make any sense. He had only taken half, but….. but this was sorcery. No sorcerer had ever been a Rider. Something about the warped nature of a sorcerer's magic clashed with the force that flowed through the dragons very blood.
It would tear his mind apart.
She knew instinctively that he wouldn't let go. The bond between them vibrated, reverberating with agony. Mellary grabbed it and, in a single swift move, snapped it cleanly. Embrald's roar echoed through her mind, even as she slammed an impenetrable barrier into place.
The belated sound of something physical shattering reached her ears. Mellary opened her eyes without realizing she had closed them. An indistinct black-haired lithe figure stalked away, fury in every line of her body. Mellary looked down and saw a shard of slate lying next to her hand.
Words buzzed against her ears as the pain crescendoed. Orik turned away just as it peaked, and something in her mind snapped. Her head felt like it was fracturing, and black washed over her vision. A sharp, agonized sound tore itself out of her throat. Mellary clamped her hands to her to try to hold the pieces of her skull together.
"What is this?" she heard Orik exclaim angrily. Oddly, his voice was crystal clear.
The pain was fading slowly, her mind beginning to move again, albeit sluggishly
"I would like to know that myself," Oromis said.
The part of her mind that sustained her false images was mercifully quiet. Her illusion had failed.
She opened her eyes, the world sharp again. Orik was standing over her. In her seated, curled up position the dwarf was a head above her.
"It is none of your concern," she told him, wishing her voice was stronger.
A dwarven curse greeted her statement. "The affairs of the Riders are the concern of all the races," he argued.
Mellary straightened and lowered her hands. A few curls stuck to her hands, damp with sweat. She glanced at her hands, making sure no fragments of skull were stuck to them. Remarkably, they were clean.
She looked back at the dwarf and raised an eyebrow. "Since when have the Riders answered to any of the races? In their height, they answered no demands, no summons, no questions unless they wanted to. Why should that have changed?
"That age has passed. You and the boy are our future. It is all our concern what becomes of you."
Mellary glared at him, an edge in her steel eyes cutting through the lingering pain. "Let me make this clear. I swore no oaths; I do not answer to you."
Orik watched her with a level gaze.
"Who do you answer to, Rider?" he asked softly.
"I answer to Embrald. If you have a concern, you may take it up with him."
On cue, wind gusted around them as her dragon swooped in. Long claws dug into the ground as he landed. Mellary craned her head back, suddenly realizing how big he had grown. Green eyes flashed dangerously, Embrald leaned down towards them.
"Dragon," Orik said in greeting, suddenly less aggressive. Mellary almost snickered.
Embrald regarded him for a moment. She is half elven, he said. Her father was a human.
Mellary's jaw dropped open. She began to protest.
Hush, Embrald told her, his mental voice softer. She rolled her eyes, but fell quiet.
Orik gave her an obscure look, then excused himself. He walked off, vanishing.
Oromis regarded her. Mellary opened her mouth to offer an explanation, to head off any pointed questioning, when her head gave a low throb. She couldn't contain her wince.
Mellary? Embrald asked in alarm. Though she had severed the peripheral connection that let him take some of pain, there was nothing she could to do break the fundamental bond between Rider and Dragon. Embrald spoke through that bond, making it impossible for her to completely block him out.
Backlash, she said briefly.
"What strange talent was that?" Oromis asked.
"Illusion," She said succinctly. Thorns had grown in her mind, and they snagged every passing thought.
If I may, Embrald began, the strange magic she performed has exhausted Mellary. She is in significant pain, and it may be best if I take her home.
Oromis regarded the green dragon levelly without saying anything.
Mellary felt the delicate brush of gold fire against her outer shield. Recognizing the presence, she collapsed the shield. The gold fire touched her mind and withdrew quickly.
I concur with Embrald, Glaedr said, close enough to make his voice heard by all.
Oromis nodded. "Very well. But know that we will discuss this tomorrow."
Mellary nodded. Leaning all her weigh on the boulder, she struggled to her feet. A long green tail wrapped around her, lifting her up. The world spun, and she was settled gently on Embrald's back. The dragon dipped his head to Oromis. Thank you, Master, the dragon said. He stepped off the ledge and dropped into open air.
In all the confusion, she left the fairth behind.
"You don't need to know my history."
"... I don't need to know your history."
"I am not the Rider you're concerned with."
"...you are not the Rider I'm concerned with."
"Carry on."
"...carry on."