Edited: 3/30/2024 - Fixed Selena being written as Marian's sister instead of Garrow's

The door rang. Sloan glanced up from the counter. His eyes caught on Eragon, then immediately dismissed him and went back to work cutting the meat from a pig. Eragon wondered who had sent their livestock to the butcher so early in spring.

Sloan was fat, balding, and had a scowl chiseled into his lips. The butcher did not like Eragon, and the feeling was mutual. Sloan did not like anybody. He respected some of the adults because he had to, but everyone he could get away with disrespecting, he did.

"I'm busy, boy."

Eragon reminded himself not to rise to the bait until he'd weaseled an agreement out of him. "Whenever you're finished."

A glint shone in Sloan's eyes. "You're going to wait here for me to finish with this?" he gestured at the pig with the tip of a gleaming cleaver. Sloan was a neat freak to the highest degree, and that extended to his knives, which he kept sharp enough to cut draped thread. His whole shop was utterly pristine. Not just in the way that a tidy person swept and washed the surfaces of their home, but in the obsessive way where everything was clean. As if Sloan spent quite a lot of time scrubbing in corners and beneath counters, all sorts of surfaces that were never seen and did not get dirty.

Eragon scoffed. "I'll come back in an hour." He made for the door.

"Stay," Sloan ordered. He gestured to Eragon's game bag. "What did you bag?"

"Three rabbits," Eragon said flatly, careful not to sound proud, nor to sound nonchalant as if he were trying to not sound proud. Sloan let that pass.

"Are you going to pay me?" Sloan eyed Eragon up and down, his expression suggesting that he did not expect Eragon to have coin on him. Irritatingly, he was correct.

"I didn't bring coin-"

"And you expect me to serve you anyways?" Sloan sneered.

"We can come to an arrangement," Eragon snapped. He was already tired of the man. "You can keep the skeletons, sell them to Uma."

Sloan considered. "The onus is on me to chase remuneration for my time. I'll take the hides, too."

It was not a fair deal, but Eragon did not care. "Whatever. Shall I hold on to these until you are ready to accept them?" Eragon mocked.

"Boy," Sloan warned. "Do not tempt me to renegotiate. Put the bag there. It will be done before dark."

He left his kills and headed back into the village. He had not turned a single corner towards the square before he ran into someone he was not expecting to see.

"Roran?"

"Eragon." Roran looked uncomfortable to see him. Walking with him was Katrina, Sloan's daughter. Eragon had no idea how such an odious man had such a kind daughter. Ismira must have been a truly divine woman before she died. Maybe that was the reason Sloan was the way he was. If Eragon's amazing wife had died falling from Igualda falls, he'd have turned sour, too.

"Why are you here?" Roran asked. "I thought you'd go back to the farm."

Eragon gestured at Sloan's. "I brought my kills to get butchered."

Roran grinned. Fresh meat was always an exciting prospect. "Really? What did you get?"

"Three rabbits," Eragon boasted. Roran nodded. A smile crept over his face..

"Excellent."

"I could ask the same thing to you," Eragon added.

Roran shrugged, looking just a bit uncomfortable. "Planting is over, and the weeds will be too new to pull out yet. There is nothing to do but wait."

Eragon greeted Katrina, who smiled and waved, then set out with his cousin to catch up.

"How was your hunting trip?" Roran asked.

"Good," Eragon answered. "Odd. I met someone. Do you know of Harry Evans?"

Roran shook his head. "I have only heard Horst and Ansil speak of him," Katrina offered.

"Well I'll tell you when we get back," Eragon decided. "I don't want to have to tell the story twice." Katrina frowned a bit, but didn't push. Eragon was not sure he was entitled to share his suspicions without telling Harry, not if he wanted to stay friends with the young man.

"Was my father difficult?" Katrina asked apologetically. Eragon shook his head in good humor.

"No more than he usually is."

Eragon did not have to wait long for Sloan to finish. He was happy to accept the game bag back filled with cuts instead of corpses, though it bothered him that he would not have been able to keep some sort of trophy.

"Are you heading back?" Roran asked. Eragon decided that he ought to, if only to not draw further ire from Garrow for not mentioning he'd returned. His cousin seemed eager for Eragon to depart.

"Say hello to Baldor and Albreich for me," Eragon offered, and headed out.

The walk from Carvahall to the farm always felt like the longest journey in the world. And the last half mile after it came into view, the most exhausting. All the hiking and walking he'd done over the past week suddenly caught up with him, and his legs began to burn as he moved between the fields of sprouting crops.

He trampled over the porch and knocked on the door. Garrow slid open a slat in the door to check his identity. Eragon waved at him.

"You're back," Garrow stated. Eragon nodded. "I told you to come home first."

"My kills would have gone bad," Eragon explained.

"Over a half a day?" His uncle raised a brow. Eragon didn't have anything to say to that.

"Fool boy," Garrow said fondly. "What did you bag?"

"Three rabbits," he announced, opening the game bag. Eragon saw the pride in Garrow's eyes and felt it himself.

"Let us have a heartier meal, then," Garrow smiled.

Eragon headed to his room to drop off his supplies. The room was so familiar to him that he had almost forgotten it. The shelf of oddities, the rope bed with its feather mattress and stuffed pillow, his bedside table, and the lamp on top of it. He dumped his backpack on the floor and fell into his bed.

Garrow put together a hearty stew with the first rabbit. They did not often have fresh bread, but when Roran returned, it was with two of the morning's loaves from Errol's bakery, only hours old. They were still making do with the left over produce from last harvest while the summer's crops grew.

Soon the main room was filled with appreciative hums and the scraping of spoons on bowls.

Roran was in a contemplative mood and Garrow seemed content to enjoy the meal in quiet. Only Eragon had something on his tongue.

"Have either of you met Harry yet?"

"You know that I haven't," Roran said around a mouthful. Garrow chastised him. Roran actually seemed to take the telling to heart.

"Nor have I."

"He built a home in the Spine, just up the river from the falls." Eragon gauged their reactions.

"Sloan will never like him now," Garrow joked.

"No great loss," Roran muttered. Eragon's lips twitched.

Garrow put down his spoon. "They say we live too far out, that we'll be beyond the village's aid in hard times. Unless he spends his life walking, he will live a lonely life."

Eragon didn't think Harry was likely to need much aid.

Eragon wanted to raise the topic of magic, but so soon after mentioning Harry, Roran and Garrow would both put two and two together.

"What was he like?" Roran asked.

"Personable," Eragon decided. "He speaks the common tongue, but uses odd turns of phrase. He lives alone and seems comfortable with it, but nor was he averse to my company."

Garrow frowned. "You say he had a house. Was it barely started, or nearly finished?"

"Finished," Eragon answered. Garrow scowled. "Why?"

"Did he say he came to the village before choosing to settle in the Spine? He could not have built a home so quickly." Eragon privately knew that yes, he quite easily could have done so in a day, if the walls were any indication, but did not fight the point.

"Maybe he found an old one and fixed it up."

"Did it look like that was the case?" Garrow's gaze was intent.

"I don't know. Why are you so worried?"

His uncle sighed. "Your mother was someone important. She came in a hurry with adornments of wealth, then left as quickly and was never seen again. Carvahall is far out of the way, but not unknown. If someone came looking for answers, they may think to find them in the boy who shares her features."

Eragon finished his soup, mopping the last of it up with his last piece of bread. He never knew quite how to feel about his mother. He had never known her. When Aunt Marian had passed a few years back, he had hurt far more than the notion that his 'true' mother had already died. No one knew who his father was. Selena had told her sister-in-law that he was important and dangerous, and Marian had told Garrow who recently told Eragon. Eragon imagined what that would have been like, some great tale of courtly intrigue, assassins, and magic.

Perhaps he was dead, too, and Eragon was all that remained of his bloodline. Him and Roran.

Eragon decided to raise the question he'd been holding on to all evening. "I've been thinking about magic."

Roran scowled. "Aren't you too old for stories?"

Garrow looked disapprovingly at Roran. "You're never too old for stories. Brom would be out of a job if that were true. And magic is no story. Your mother had it. What about it?"

That immediately answered a question, and raised many more in its place. Just knowing that his mother had known it made him feel warm. Another connection to a part of his identity that he'd thought lost.

"Would that mean I have it?" Eragon asked.

Garrow shrugged. "I know almost nothing. Selena never knew it when we were kids. I would believe even I had it too, and never learned to use it. It does not matter. We do not need magic. It is more trouble than it's worth."

Eragon imagined it; him, a mighty magician learning how to raise castles by himself, turn aside armies at his word, part of song and legend. Somehow he couldn't wrap his head around Garrow being a magician. He was too practical for that.

"And what of its practitioners?" Eragon asked.

Roran scowled. "You cannot trust a magician. They pervert the order of nature, and even a weak one can kill any who challenge them. So says the stories." That unexpectedly hurt. Both for the insult to his mother and perhaps to himself.

"I thought you knew better than that, Roran," Garrow snapped. "Take everything you learn from the King with a mountain of salt." Garrow looked to Eragon. "Nay. They are people like any other. They merely wield an incredibly dangerous tool. However, today is a dangerous time for a magician to live in. The King knows the power they wield and seeks them voraciously. Carvahall has been lucky to escape the worst of the Empire. We pay our taxes and they leave us alone. A magician would change that. For your own good, stay away from them, but give no offense, either."

Late spring was always the slowest time of year for Eragon, except perhaps winter. He lazed about on the porch, rode Birka their draft horse in slow circles around the field, explored the forest beyond the farm, and practiced his archery upon hay bales out by the barn.

Baldor and Albreich came over often, and he would play games with them and Roran. Contests of throwing accuracy and distance, arm-wrestling, sprints, contests of archery (he won them all) and simply exploring either the forest or the village, wandering through the alleys in search of something interesting.

It all felt very slow to Eragon. Where he really wanted to be, where his mind always was, was up in the Spine. The forest behind the farm was just a bunch of trees. Up there, it was game trails and ridgelines, caves and wildlife and secrets, uncharted except in his own mind.

And of course, Harry lived up there.

Two weeks had never passed so slowly. Eragon was actually glad when Garrow called him and Roran to weed the field. He spent the day on his knees, lost in thought about what might have changed, what Harry might be doing up there, and what he'd find when he went up next.

He let his gaze rest out on the Igualda Falls, imagining himself at the top of the roaring water, exploring somewhere real.

When it was finally time to depart, Eragon wheedled a longer trip out of Garrow.

"I know the trails well," he promised. "I'll have my bow if I meet a buck or coyote or bear. And I am going to visit Harry first, so I won't be in the wilderness the whole time."

Garrow looked down at the assembled supplies Eragon had laid out before his pack. "Fine. Go, but be responsible."

Joy surged through his limbs. "I will," he promised solemnly." He scooped everything in and tied the pack shut. Within the hour, he was walking towards the Falls and beyond it, the Spine.

The gate was still open. Eragon wasn't sure what he'd have done if it was closed. Knock maybe? He jogged up to the great archway. It had changed quite a bit since he was there last. The plain archway had strange, symbolic knotwork along the outline, and the proportions had been altered to be more pleasing to the eye. He did not think the gatehouse was tall enough for the entire portcullis to fit in its upward position, but obviously Harry had done something, since it was up even now.

Eragon rounded his side of the arch and gazed in, awed.

Harry had been busy indeed.

Where there had last been a flat field pocked with stump holes, the whole of the terrain itself had been reshaped. The grass was flat in a massive ring from the walls inward a couple hundred yards. A copse of trees had been preserved to the southwest. Inside the flat ring, the grass began to slope up on half the grounds, and downward on the other, curving around each other in a pair of crescents. The crescent furrow was soil and rock, and already half filled with water.

Atop the crescent hill, a grand stone hall stood. Harry was out in front, waving that stick of wood around in the air as if conducting reality according to his whims. And miraculously, the world was listening. Huge blocks of stone floated at his command, slotting into place assembling a paved square. Harry spotted him and put down the giant floating block. It was large enough that a team of mules would have struggled to heave it across the ground. Rising from the back left of the hall, a great tower stood proud in the sky, at least a hundred feet tall.

"You told me you weren't a magician!" Eragon called.

"I said no one ever called me that," Harry corrected, grinning. "I'm a wizard!"

Harry invited him inside. Eragon kept Garrow's advice in mind. Magicians, wizards, they were still people, they just had something extra. His mother had been one. He might be one. Until Harry gave him a reason not to trust him, Eragon would treat him like any other.

He trotted up the grassy hill. The slope had blocked his view of what Harry was working on. A great shallow circle had been dug out of the crown of the hill. Harry was filling it back in block by block with flagstones two feet thick, stuck together by mortar he was siphoning out of a big iron basin.

"Watch your step," Harry advised. "I haven't been drying out the mortar, so not everything is set. It makes the seal brittle. Come around the edge."

The wizard was wearing a dyed cloth overshirt with a hood. The center was fixed together by a metal contraption Eragon had never seen, like a hundred tiny, interlocking teeth. The shirt was red with a golden lion on the front.

"You did this all in two weeks?" Eragon asked in wonderment. Harry nodded.

"The landscaping was pretty easy. There's a spell, permutaterra, that just does it. Well, except for the lakebed. I wasn't sure leaving it soil would hold water instead of just flooding and turning this area into marsh, so I had to rip up the dirt completely and raise the water table. Filling in the stump holes was just tedium. Do you want to see the Great Hall?"

Eragon decided that yes, he very much would like to see the grand stone building which had not existed at all the last time he was there. Not even a foundation. The hill it rested on was new, too. That anyone, magic or no magic, could work that fast bewildered him.

Harry led him through the enormous open doors. Hallways split around the Great Hall to either side. Another set of doors opened into the gigantic room. The hall was rather barren, though Eragon didn't hold it against him. Huge glass windows rose in intervals along each of the side walls, starting from ten feet up. Beneath them, empty hearths awaited firewood. Harry rubbed the back of his neck.

"There's a spell called Gubraithian fire, I've heard, but I don't know how to cast it. Doesn't burn firewood to run forever. For now, I've been trying to get this enchantment to work. I must've heard Hermione mention it a thousand times from Hogwarts: A History, but the roof just doesn't want to take it." He flicked that same stick at the roof, muttering a long incantation. Harry's voice echoed a bit in the cavernous stone room.

For a second, the gabled roof seemed to flicker, like it was partially made of glass. The blue sky and its scattered clouds drifted overhead. Then the ceiling resolidified and returned to its semi-dim lighting.

Eragon gaped. "What- how?"

Harry grinned. "It's pretty awesome. I wish I studied harder when I had the chance. There were candles, too. A million of them, floating in the air. They lit the whole hall up even at night. But I don't have wax or Gubraithian fire. There's a spell for lighting, lumos-" the tip of the stick glowed white.

"-but I don't like the color. You can tweak it with a bit of effort." Harry frowned and the brilliant glowing point shifted to a warmer candlelight hue. "I dunno. It's still missing the flickering effect of real candles. Just feels like a kitchen light."

"It's amazing," Eragon decided. "Does it burn?"

Harry shook his head. "Only your eyes." He flicked the wand again. The tip flashed brilliantly, leaving spots for Eragon to rub from his eyes.

Eragon kept looking around. Everywhere his gaze traveled, new and incredible details were revealed. The Great Hall was no boring stone box. There was scrollwork bordering the trim of the floor, with grates hidden in the details. Harry watched where he looked and offered explanations.

"It probably won't ever flood up on the hill," he said. "But I put drains in anyways. I figured out how to enchant a pipe with the vanishing charm, so all the runoff goes there. I used it for the toilets, too. Sometimes it rained in the Great Hall. I'd rather not have puddles."

"The sky enchantment lets in the weather?" Eragon wondered.

"Well it's not supposed to, but magic doesn't always behave like you want."

Eragon wandered along the edges of the room. In the middle of the side walls, doors led out to each side.

"Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what's next." Harry pushed open the left hand door. The corridor led to a juncture with blank stone walls where doors ought to have been. "The only thing I really needed was a place to live. So I put in a tower here. I tried to get the stairs to do what Dumbledore's office had, but you just go round and round instead of going up."

Beyond the juncture, the hall opened into the huge tower. The stairwell took up the entire core, circling around a central pillar. Again, Eragon was impressed by how fast and how finished the place looked. The balustrades weren't just bits of wood on stilts but proper, elaborately carved stone guardrails.

Harry mounted the steps and climbed all the way to the top, Eragon close behind. "I wasn't sure what to do here," he said as if embarrassed by the quality of his legendary castle. "Mostly I've been copying Hogwarts, but it didn't make much sense to build a dormitory if I'm the only one living here." Harry pushed open the door at the top floor.

Eragon's jaw dropped. Here he was, acting modest, and living in a bedroom fit for a king. The north side of the tower was a curved balcony with sliding doors made from impossibly clear glass. Outside, a railing cordoned off a drop from a height Eragon was forced to re estimate as probably closer to two hundred feet. There was a lounge chair on the balcony with a little end table next to it, and a proper table with a proper chair.

A lounge with a sofa and two armchairs encircled another hearth beneath a draped banner of the same red and gold lion Harry wore on his sweater. The vaulted wooden roof displayed what the spell Harry had tried in the Great Hall was supposed to do. It looked like the daytime sky overhead, and only towards the lower edge of the rafters was Eragon able to see the wooden beams and paneling of the real ceiling behind.

The bed itself was in a loft accessible by a staircase curving around the wall near to the door. Beneath the stairs, an empty bookshelf supported the curved underside. Beneath the loft was a desk with a lamp. There were sheafs of paper and a strange writing device atop it, like a stick of charcoal but shrouded in metal, and producing ink instead of charcoal.

"My journal," Harry offered. "It seemed like the wizardly thing to do, chronicling my life and the mysterious magic I may or may not ever discover."

Eragon was treated to a pang of disappointment over the fact that he could not read. He wondered if Garrow knew how. He could do sums and lots as well as anyone else, but deciphering the common tongue as it was written was beyond him.

Eragon glanced down at the patterned woven rug by the hearth. The room was subdivided on the right side so the main area was like a crescent. He wondered if there was something to the shape that Harry liked. It was everywhere. Harry pushed open the door into the other room.

"The bathroom. Based on the Prefect's bathroom, except the weird potions from the different taps. Just water I'm afraid." The idea that Harry was apologizing was ludicrous. Marble tiling with silver veins, gold leaf and glass, huge windows of glass that seemed deliberately bubbled to obscure detail. Eragon had not seen a finer room in all his life, and he did not expect to ever see another again. Places and things so nice were the place of rich merchants and royalty.

"How did you do all this so quickly?" Eragon wondered.

"Magic," Harry frowned.

"No," Eragon disagreed. Even if Harry's magic was able to make his imagination reality in an instant, simply having these many ideas, coming up with the artwork and the design, even if he were copying it, that took time and refinement. Eragon had seen Horst work on a piece for days, trying to shape a piece of metal into the idea in his mind, then reworking it until he was satisfied. "Just having the ideas."

"Oh." Harry looked at the stick in his hand. "My wand, probably. And years of inspiration. I used to live in a place like this. And this wand is a bit…eager."

"I have never seen talent like this," Eragon swore. "Whatever you call it, it's amazing. The King would weep in envy. If he was capable of shedding a tear."

Harry snorted. "Maybe my perspective is a bit off. Thanks."

Eragon was again forced to reevaluate his perspective on Harry. Who exactly was he, to live in such opulence? Some foreign prince? The son of an incredibly wealthy merchant? Maybe the head of a great religion. Those were the only reasons he could come up with. Harry Evans. What did that name mean?

Harry dropped into the sofa and began twirling his wand about between his fingers. "Are you planning on hunting?"

Eragon shook his head. "No. I was hoping-" he paused and prayed he would not offend the wizard. "-I was hoping I could stay for a week."

Harry seemed surprised. "I don't see why not. There's not much to do around here."

Eragon scoffed. That was impossible. "Who doesn't want to explore a castle for secrets."

Harry cracked a grin. "You and I are going to get along, Eragon. Problem is, I haven't put any secrets in yet."

"I can help you," he proposed recklessly. "I've got a great eye for secret passages."

"Yeah?" Harry was bemused. "How many castles have you explored?"

"One," he muttered.

Harry nodded to himself. "Well that makes me the expert, since this one makes two."

Eragon looked around at the kingly bedroom again. "Is everyone in Britain as good at magic as you?"

"I'm probably about average," Harry mused. "Better than most at some things, worse at others. Why?"

Eragon blew a breath through his lips. "I've never heard a legend of a magician doing this." he waved his arm around the room. "Britain must be amazing."

Harry shrugged. "It's home. There aren't a lot of places like this, but I think mostly because people don't try to make these anymore. The ones we've got are hundreds of years old. Do you know any magicians?"

Eragon chewed his lip. He hadn't before yesterday. Now, he knew one. And maybe…well maybe he actually knew three. "My uncle said my mother was one."

Harry stopped. "Really?" Eragon nodded.

"Unless you're a squib, usually that means you are, too."

Eragon shrugged. "I've never done any magic."

Harry's expression grew fierce with enthusiasm. "Neither had I before Hagrid came around. You don't always notice. Do you have really weird luck, Eragon? Maybe some odd things happen to you, things you can't explain?"

He wracked his brain. Odd, maybe, but rarely inexplicable. He was the only one from Carvahall willing to hunt in the Spine. Some of the less nice villagers (read: Sloan) tried to start rumors that he was cursed or unnatural, but no one with any sense bought into them. Not a lot made him unique. The most interesting thing about him was probably his mother.

Harry turned thoughtful. "Maybe. It could stop when you're eleven for all I know. But I do know, there's one way to know for sure." he held out the knobbly white stick to Eragon.

Eragon shied away. He had seen what that thing could do. "You want me to hold it?"

Harry nodded, offering the stick. "It won't bite. Well, probably. It didn't bite Voldemort."

Gingerly, he accepted the wand.

A look of mischief crossed Harry's face. "Well go on then, give it a wave."

Eragon carefully pointed it at the ground and twitched the wand limply in the air. A strange sensation ran through him, like his blood had been turned to ice. The wand gave a couple of resentful coughs, sputtering black smoke. The sensation vanished after a second.

Harry accepted the wand back. "It doesn't seem to like you," he said. But he was fighting a smile.

"What does it mean?"

The smile tugging at his lips broke onto his face. "Yer a wizard, Eragon."

AN: Given Selena was a magician as part of her role as the Black Hand, it is not unreasonable to assume that Eragon was too, even before Saphira. The events that led up to him discovering he could use magic were specific and not likely to occur randomly. This is part of my theory that magicians in Alagaesia are a whole lot more common than anyone realizes, and the reason they seem so rare is that very few people manage to break through that barrier the first time and discover their abilities. The elves think they have way more magicians, and they probably do, but it's also pretty likely that knowledge of magic and people willing to teach it are much more common in Ellesmera, so the data we have is biased.

Plus, Eragon didn't have much to contribute in the early stages of the story. Now he and Harry share something in common.

I'm experimenting with shorter chapters. They will probably come more frequently. Let me know if you prefer this to 8k-20k word chapters.

Also, thanks to Coolhunter for catching my mistake. Selena was Garrow's sister, not Marian's.