Kairin woke up pressed against Faeria's side, head resting on her front leg, a pattern of her scaled imprinted across her cheek. She groggily sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. They were on the ground, Leaire sprawled close by. Kairin stood and looked all around; they were closeby to a riverbank, covered under a thin grove of trees. There was not a soul or city in sight. Faeria slept on uneasily, her breathing heavy and ragged. With an awful jolt of sympathetic pain, Kairin noticed the dragon's gouged haunches and bleeding wings. As gently as she could, Kairin set about healing the dragon's more urgent wounds, knitting skin and scales back together. She was just sealing up the last tatter in her wing when Faeria awoke.
"Thank you, little one," Faeria hummed, noticing that she had been healed. She turned her head to inspect her newly flawless wings when she caught sight of Kairin and gave a small roar.
"Kairin, your arm!" Kairin looked down to see that it was bleeding profusely where the arrow had struck her; in her panic for Faeria she hadn't noticed her own pain. The shaft had broken off but the arrowhead remained embedded deep in her flesh. Before she could think up a spell to remove it, Faeria brushed her nose against it.
The arrowhead lifted effortlessly and painlessly from her arm as her flesh and skin healed itself; it fell to the ground with a soft noise and Kairin was entirely healed.
"How did you do that?" Kairin asked incredulously. Faeria had never used magic like that before. The dragon seemed unimpressed with her own power.
"You were hurt. I fixed you," she said simply.
"Thanks," Kairin replied weakly. Faeria stretched her wings.
"You've improved your magic greatly."
"I suppose that's the elf in me,"Kairin replied. She did not know where the comment came from, and her tone was far more poisonous than she had intended. Faeria said nothing, and merely peered at her with eyes fathoms deep. Uncomfortable, Kairin turned away and set her attentions on the unconscious elf.
"She hasn't woken at all?" Kairin asked, reaching down to take the elf's pulse. She felt it beating, soft but persistent.
"Not even stirred. That's no ordinary sleep." Kairin allowed her brows to knit together in the frown she had been withholding.
"We can't leave her like this. She's not well, not to mention that without her we may as well wander around the Hadarac until death takes us." She looked up at Faeria. "Better killed by the heat than by the Empire." Faeria found the joke entirely unfunny.
"No natural element will take me, Kairin, I am a creature of legend."
"Tales will be told of your great humility," Kairin returned with a smirk. Faeria snapped her jaws in annoyance but Kairin could clearly feel the dragon suppressing a laugh.
"Joking aside, hatchling, we've got quite a predicament." Kairin could do nothing but sit in silent agreement. Kairin knew in her heart that all the guards who had seen Faeria take off from the roof had been engulfed in her fire spell – none who saw the dragon had survived. However she knew it was foolish to believe that their daring escape from Gil'ead would go entirely unnoticed. With the amount of damage they had left behind, the king himself would learn of it eventually. They were full-fledged enemies of the Empire now. Whether or not Kairin's identity as a Rider or Faeria's existence was known, they had been far from discreet. Kairin could not hope that Galbatorix would not surmise exactly who had stolen the elf away.
"You also forget that Durza knows exactly who we are," Faeria, who had been silently following Kairin's train of thought, chimed in. "I can think of no reason he wouldn't have told the king of us as soon as he discovered us in the Spine." She was right. Kairin's stomach sunk further to the ground.
Their only hope lay with the Varden, an organization shrouded in as much mystery as Galbatorix himself, and who's reputation wasn't any cleaner than the mad king's.
"So we've no choice but to resign ourselves to a life of war and disaster," Kairin said, resolute. "Is this really the legacy of the great Riders? Killing men, destroying cities? How honorable!" The last word leapt from her throat in a scream and echoed around the trees. Kairin reached to the ground, seized a stone, and threw it with all her might into the darkness. She seized another, and threw that one too. Over and over she threw the stones until a gentle touch around her waist calmed her.
Faeria had wrapped herself around Kairin, humming a low, calming note. Kairin let it fill her ears until the stone in her hand slipped from her limp fingers; she crumpled against the dragon, stifling angry tears.
"Easy, my love, my Kairin." Faeria's voice rarely held such tenderness, and Kairin felt the rage in her chest start to dissipate. "Whatever you are, whatever our fate may be, you will always have me."
"As you have me, bjartskular."
Dragon and girl let their minds come together until they were as one entity, feeling the strength and magic in their bond. It was as if strange, unearthly music rang in their ears as they let their consciousnesses melt together. Kairin's heart ceased to pound, and her breath returned to normal. She marveled at how clearly she felt every inch of Faeria's body in her own, from the periodic sweep of her muscular tail to the discomfort of a pebble stuck under one of her scales.
Suddenly, an idea came upon her. Kairin stood and crossed to Leaire in one swift motion and knelt by her side. Faeria edged in closer, having read Kairin's plan in her thoughts.
Kairin placed a hand on Leaire's forehead and reached out with a tendril of thought, the way she connected with Faeria.
Instantly, she was met with a barrage of steel and ice. Leaire's mind was a cold, hard trap that snapped shut around her, squeezing the life from her, suffocating her. In agony, Kairin screamed with both her mind and her thoughts: "Leaire! Eka aí Kairin, Du Shur'tugal, eka mulabra ono né haina!"
The pain ceased.
Kairin felt a pinprick of thought at the corner of her consciousness.
The pinprick grew into a needle, which grew into a sense of eagerness and apprehension.
"Kairin?" Leaire's melodic psyche came into focus, emanating a quick flash of recognition and a subsequent wave of relief.
"It is you," the elf-woman's voice echoed in Kairin's head for a moment before vanishing, all contact severed. Kairin opened her eyes just in time to see Leaire begin to stir. She opened her eyes, blinked once, and gasped.
She began to scream.
Kairin tensed and moved slightly towards the frantic Leaire, unsure of what to do, but the ordeal was over in a second. The elf slumped into unconsciousness once more. Too dumbfounded for cautiousness, Kairin once again reached out with her mind and linked it to Leaire's; this time she was met not by an attack, but by an expectant awareness.
"I'm sorry," Leaire began, "But the pain was too great, I had to sink once more into this sleep."
"The pain?" Kairin flashed her feelings of concern to Leaire.
"My skin, under my shirt," Leaire replied grimly. Kairin took hold of the woman, and with gentle fingers she unlaced the back of her leather shirt. What lay underneath drew a gasp from Kairin and a deep, concerned rumbling noise from Faeria.
The skin was tattered and ragged – in some places it was completely melted away, showing clearly the elf's muscles underneath. The gruesome sight alone was enough to make Kairin's bile rise, but the thick and pungent smell of decay that rose from her wounds was too much for Kairin to bear. With a muttered word, Kairin pulled on her reserves of magic and tried to heal her. When nothing happened, Kairin rephrased her spell, to the same lack of results.
"These are unnatural wounds," Faeria said, her teeth bared and a growl rattling deep in her throat. Kairin did not speak but merely re-laced Leaire's shirt over her mangled skin, at a loss of what else to do. Kairin conveyed her helplessness to Leaire, but was sure not to let the elf spy her own wounds through Kairin's eyes. She did not think the elf needed to see the damage that had overrun her body.
"They must have tortured me – I have been sleeping since my capture. Now that I know they're there, these wounds do fearsomely draw on my strength." Leaire was silent for a moment, and Kairin was faintly aware of her quick summation of the facts. "Listen," she continued, "my only hope now lies with the Varden. You have done so much for me, Kairin, you brave girl, and I must ask you and your dragon to once again risk your lives for me. For if I die, things die with me that ought not to be lost." Kairin was briefly aware of a flurry of images – white sails against a great cloudy sky, a vast ocean, Faeria's pearly egg, steely, elven faces – before Leaire snatched them back and tucked them away out of view.
"What must we do?" Kairin felt a grim gratefulness from Leaire, and her mind was once again filled with images, this time deliberate.
"This is the way to Farthen Dur. The dwarves there are skilled beyond any human healer, almost as skilled as the elves. They can help me."
Kairin absorbed the directions Leaire was feeding her, hungry and determined for information.
"Now. These are the things you must know." Leaire began pouring thoughts into Kairin, clearly in a rush to convey as much as she could in as little time as possible, and the result was chaotic. A barrage of new facts and events swirled about her mind, absorbing into her memory without conscious effort or any kind of absorption on Kairin's part. The ordeal was over in a matter of seconds, but Kairin still felt as if someone had stirred up the contents of her brain with a wooden spoon. Thoughts both familiar and unfamiliar swam around before her mind's eye, making her dizzy. Leaire, knowing what she had done, conveyed a fleeting sense of remorse that was quickly gone.
"You must leave me now, brave young Rider, for I need to conserve every ounce of my strength." It was true that Leaire's aura was flickering shockingly; the mental strain of imparting so many thoughts at once had left the elf frighteningly weak. She began to pull away.
"Wait!" Kairin called out. The elf paused, a gossamer strand of thought still connecting them.
"What have you given me? All this new information you've loaded me with, I can't make sense of any of it." Kairin was growing panicky once more, completely bewildered over what was occurring in her own mind.
"I have faith in you, Kairin. All will make sense in time. Remember that Faeria is there to help you. Good luck, Shur'tugal." Without another word, Leaire was gone and her mental walls were erected once more. Kairin's eyes flitted back and forth, seeing nothing; she was entirely focused on the waves of new images, smells, sounds, and things she could now remember. It was as if she had taken the experiences of a whole new person into her mind, and found that there was only room for one. Colors and shapes flashed unbidden before her mind's eye and were gone too quickly to be recognized. She looked to Faeria, a wordless plea on her face, and attempted to reach out to meld minds with her dragon. With a fresh surge of panic, she found that amidst the madness in her mind, she couldn't locate the link to her partner. She scrambled to her feet and seized Faeria by either side of her long lizard face.
"Faeria, can you hear me? I can't hear you, Faeria, I can't hear you," the words tumbled from her lips. Faeria stared at her with widened, silvery eyes. After a moment, Kairin felt the singularly strange sensation as if a drain had been unclogged near her brainstem. Slow at first, and then gaining speed, Leaire's unfamiliar thoughts swirled smaller and smaller until they had reached a comfortable level, a compact package near the back of her head.
"Calmer?" Faeria's voice rang clear through her once again. Kairin embraced the sound.
"What did you do?"
"I closed everything Leaire gave you away." Sure enough, Kairin attempted to burrow into the package of thoughts and found that they were securely closed to her prying.
"So I have all this information inside of my own head that I can't even access?" Kairin said aloud, rubbing her knuckles across the back of her skull where she felt the unfamiliar shape in her brain. It was a strange sensation, carrying this locked chest that she could feel but was entirely intangible.
"I am sure that when the need arises, you will be able to glean the information you need." Faeria replied calmly.
"How can you be sure? How did you do this?" Faeria tossed her head slightly in a dragonish shrug. Just as when she had healed Kairin's arm, Faeria seemed both completely assured and uninterested in her magic use. Kairin traced a wondering finger down her snout.
"I wonder if Eragon's dragon or even Galbatorix's own Shruikan are as singularly amazing as you are." Faeria purred like a pleased kitten.
"I should think not."
The pair decided that delaying any longer would be dangerous, but Kairin took one look at Faeria's scaly back and all at once remembered the pain in her legs from flying.
"Not only can I not stand to lose all the skin on my legs," Kairin reasoned, "Leaire certainly can't afford any more injury." Faeria rustled her wings. Kairin realized with a twinge of amusement that the dragon was offended.
"Well, dragon rider, how do you intend to ride me?"
At these words, an unfamiliar image flashed into Kairin's head. It was a strange looking object made with several sheets of leather tied together by cords. Kairin instantly knew it to be a dragon's saddle, although she was sure she had never heard of the thing in her life.
"Something Leaire left you, I suppose," mused Faeria. It was in fact one of the elf woman's memories.
"How am I supposed to make it?" Kairin said quietly, knowing as soon as she said it that she did not need to ask. The technique was all there, laid out in her mind like a blueprint, as if she had done it many times before.
"It seems you have the knowledge," Faeria began.
"But not the materials," Kairin finished. It looked as if the saddle needed a good amount of leather hide, something she did not happen to have in her sparse saddlebags. Going to Gil'ead, or any city for that matter, was entirely too dangerous to even consider. After much thought, Kairin decided that the best alternative would be to use as much of Eriere's old saddle as she could salvage, filling in the spaces with her lost steed's horse blanket. After nearly an hour of cutting and weaving with a good deal of help from Kairin's magic, Faeria stood tall wearing a completely functional if not fashionable saddle.
"Do I look like an utter fool?" the dragon asked, her pride not taking to the ramshackle saddle at all.
"You look beautiful and mighty as always, my love," Kairin replied with as much patience as she could muster; she was feeling drained from her magic exertions. With great care she arranged Leaire in the front of the saddle and slid in behind her, fastening Eriere's saddlebags to a spike on Faeria's spine.
"Think you can handle all this weight, Faeria?"
In response, the dragon launched herself from the ground with alarming speed, leaving great gouges in the earth behind her. The desert surface spun away and Kairin felt the exhilaration of flying once more. However it wasn't long before the rhythmic beats of Faeria's wings, the desert heat, and the monotonous landscape below got the better of Kairin's weariness and she slipped into a half sleep.
She stood on the bough of a great ship. She liked it up front where she could stand at the very edge of the deck and look out over unbroken ocean, pretending she was flying over the waves unsupported by any craft. When the sight of the water flying by below her began to make her stomach turn, she spun around to survey the deck behind her. The ship was great in stature if not size; a pale, wooden vessel carved with intricate patterns all over. There was a figure standing at the wheel, gazing over the great spanse of the ocean ahead of them, but she couldn't make out a face – it was fuzzy and vague. She smiled at the figure, and the figure smiled back.
She turned around again and bent her little body over the railing of the ship. She could see her face reflected in the water below. It was full of such heartbreaking joy and naivety, it must have been the face of a child. Her angular features and huge almond eyes seemed to glow and buzz in a distinctly inhuman way. Her hair was silky and black as night, save for one streak that shone like burnished silver. She let her eyes caress this lock of hair for an especially long time – she had just grown it in recently and was quite taken with herself.
She met her reflected eyes, a sharp and spicy green, and Kairin could see that the girl was her.
With a jolt, Kairin returned to her body. She was still sitting on Faeria's back, clutching Leaire before her, soaring over the great expanse of the Hadarac Desert.
Yet she could almost still taste the salty ocean spray and feel the deck tossing on the waves beneath her feet.
Faeria gathered what had happened from the sudden surge of emotion in Kairin's thoughts, and read the quickly dimming details of Kairin's vision in her memory. Not for the first time, Kairin was incredibly grateful for the quick instincts of her dragon saving her from explaining the impossibilities that went on inside her head. Faeria said only three words:
"Dream or memory?"
"Both," was all Kairin could reply.