The morning was tense and quiet. They stayed at breakfast only long enough to eat and confirm neither Dathedr nor Oromis had pierced the scrying wards. The engine test yesterday had been heard far and wide and it was only a matter of time before the elves were paying too much attention for them to pull off an escape. At some point, somebody was going to point out how Harry continued to make and test tools for escaping the forest and ask him to stop.
Harry was trying not to think about Arya's slip last night. If Harry had had shit luck his entire life, if all the prophecies and fighting were negative karma, Harry would pay it all to pray Arya did not remember last night. So far, she hadn't said anything to hint either way.
Arya managed to track down a tent she got off an elf. Harry was willing to offer gold or magic or whatever in return, but elves really didn't care about stuff like that. Cooperation was so integral to the culture, it was more likely he'd be expected to fulfill a request later uncompensated than pay for anything, and despite the obvious ways to take advantage of the system, the elven community was small enough and manners were important enough that nobody abused it.
He supposed a bunch of thousand year old artisans were bound to have stuff laying around and would prefer it to be useful rather than collecting dust. Harry had no real intention of ever using the Grasshopper again now that he had a better plane. If somebody wanted it, he wasn't opposed to just…letting them have it.
He'd offer it to Oromis before he left.
The tent was not for another living area but to take the hangar with him. Harry didn't think Oromis wanted the brick building in the middle of his field, and Harry didn't want to leave it and start over wherever he went.
After expanding the tent to the size of the interior of the hangar/workshop, Harry cast a homebrew spell to transfer the contents of one spatial expansion into the other. He used the Elder Wand and the switching spell incantation to do it.
The effect was a mind-bending visual as the interior of the workshop warped free of the brick walls, turning inside out and upside down. It stretched into the mouth of the tent, then seemed to snap into place. The inside of the workshop was now sheets of canvas. Harry peeked inside to verify that the workshop had indeed transferred over without problems.
When that was done, the teardown took about a minute and the Crags of Tel'naer looked as pristine as the day before Harry arrived.
"You will want to leave before questions are asked," Oromis said. He looked at Harry. "You are not bound by any oaths to keep my existence secret. In that, you are freer than even Arya. But I hope you will keep my secret with the zeal that others have."
Harry nodded.
"You have done the enemies of Galbatorix a greater service than you know by bringing me that cure, knowingly or not," Oromis continued. "And more than that, you have done me a favor I can never repay. Oromis the Rider is bound to duties that prevent me from helping you as I should. Anything Oromis the Elf can do for you, you need only ask."
"Thanks," Harry said. "I'm sure we'll be back soon. Ish," he amended. "As soon as Eragon's ready, I guess. Do you want me to try to nudge him towards Ellesmera?"
Oromis shook his head. "Brom knows I'm here. When he thinks Eragon is ready, he will tell him."
Harry indicated the Grasshopper sitting off to the side near his hut. "You can have it. In case you miss the sky."
Oromis's lips quirked. "Fair winds, Harry Evans."
"Er, good luck."
Harry climbed up the stairs to the cockpit and paused at the top. The field looked empty without the hangar, the tent, or any of his projects strewn over the open grass. It was only now that he knew its history that he understood why. The Crags of Tel'naer were for dragons. Without one, it was just an empty space waiting for purpose.
He folded the jet steps up behind him. Arya was already in the copilot's seat with a map of Alagaesia and the map of the Spine with the warded spots marked off. She did not react to his presence, staring blankly through the windshield.
"You're all ready?"
Arya shook herself out of her reverie. "Yes."
"Something on your mind?" Harry sat and settled his hands and feet on the controls, turning the key to the ignition plug breakers. Outside, Oromis got well clear of the impromptu runway down the middle of the field. They were already poised for takeoff.
"My mother," Arya admitted. "She will not take it well that I am running away with you."
"We'll be back," Harry pointed out. "And the elves need the intel. You can write a letter to her when we send back whatever we find in the Spine."
Arya hummed. "Let's go," she said firmly. "What will be will be."
Harry shrugged and pushed the throttle forward. The plane accelerated as the engines roared silently to life. Halfway down the field, Harry trimmed and pulled back. They caught the air and rose off the ground. A toggled switch rendered the plane invisible as they coasted over the high forest, still climbing up and over the canopy of the massive trees at the heart of Du Weldenvarden.
Within moments, the trees fell away below and Ellesmera vanished beneath the leaves.
"It was this easy?" Harry asked. "I thought your mum would put babysitters nearby or something."
"What can stop a machine like this?" Arya asked rhetorically.
As if the universe itself could not let such an affront stand, a ray of light materialized in the cockpit the very same instant as a powerful and familiar mental presence brushed up against Harry's mind. From the way Arya stiffened, she felt it too.
"Gilderien-elda," Arya twisted her hand over her sternum. "We go with the best intentions and sound reasoning." She spoke in the Ancient Language.
Harry didn't know how the guy was going to stop them, but he did not resist as Gilderien poked and prodded at his mind, observing their reasons for leaving. He got a powerful sense of admonishment and dislike over their disobedience of Queen Islanzadi, as well as an ultimate concession that they had good reason to do so.
Go.
Gilderien was unhappy, but allowed them their departure.
Harry breathed a sigh of relief, wiping his bangs from his forehead. Beside him, Arya was still silent and focused. Gilderien was still communicating with her. His hologram watched her with a stern gaze. Arya's expression fell. She set her face then. Gilderien nodded, bowed, and then dissolved into golden light.
A moment later, they crossed the wards.
For ten seconds, the shriek of the engines was audible as the wards suppressed the silencing charms. Harry felt a moment of terror at the unknown; he had no idea what the wards would disable and what they wouldn't. Hedwig was held together by magic more than science. It seemed like the invisibility charms had also been turned off as well.
A few seconds after that, the silencing charms snapped back into place and they were flying under stealth once more.
Harry breathed out. Sweat prickled his neck.
"At least we know we can fly through the wards," he joked.
Arya was too lost in thought to laugh or scold him. Harry oriented the Hedwig southwest and continued to climb to cruising altitude.
Within an hour, they were beyond the border of Du Weldenvarden. At their height, the line between biomes was clear. A cluster of mountains stood sentinel over the edge of the forest, before it turned to dry grasslands. Off to the southeast, the dirt turned to sand at the horizon dozens of miles away. To the west, the prairie turned to grasslands.
Arya spotted their next landmark soon after, Mount Marna. It was an isolated mountain about two days' ride east of Gil'ead. She readied a sheet of paper and four vials of dye, magenta, cyan, yellow, and black.
Harry adjusted west and they crossed that distance in twenty minutes.
Gil'ead was diminutive below, less than a toy. Even with his glasses, Harry couldn't pick out people. Wagons were barely visible as the tiniest moving dots surrounding the miniature model city. Isentar Lake passed on their right, the Ramr river directly beneath. Arya murmured under her breath, casting the fairth spell with absolute focus. Harry made an imprint as well.
A cloud passed below them.
Arya put their images into a folder and gave him a new heading. Harry adjusted for the crossing over the Great Plains.
The direction was set and they had no landmarks to watch for for an hour. It was not yet midmorning and they were nearly halfway across Alagaesia. By lunchtime, they'd have arrived.
A patch of turbulence nearly scared Harry to death, but the rough air was nothing serious when they had a 35,000 foot margin of error. He was aware that he was a brand new pilot and had never received any part of the education he was sure muggle pilots must have had to get their licenses.
Nevertheless, there was nothing to do up in the sky but wait, so Harry stretched out and turned to Arya. He fished nonchalantly for some answers.
"How long did you run around with Saphira's egg for?"
Arya looked up from the map. "Sixteen years," she said. "Though I was the elves' ambassador long before that. In that role, I have been wandering the greater Alagaesia for decades."
"Are we talking like twenty, or like fifty?" Harry clarified. It was always odd to hear Arya's true age referenced in comparison to her youthful appearance.
"Closer to fifty," Arya answered. She yawned and stretched. Harry forced his eyes not to wander. He whistled.
"Fifty years. That's a lifetime to a human." It just didn't fit with his worldview. Molly Weasley was in her fifties. Mother of seven, woman with history, a proper adult. That was longer than Sirius had been alive. Forget himself, Harry's mother wasn't born yet when Arya was doing her ambassador thing.
"I know." Arya stared ahead. "I worked closely with the Varden's leaders, and saw them come and go. It colors my perception of humans, to have watched them wither before my eyes, and know the fate that awaits them all."
"Not all," Harry laughed weakly. "Eragon's gonna live forever. He's a Rider."
Privately, he thought of himself as well. He did not know exactly how being the Master of Death worked. Would he simply keep getting to be reborn, yet still be forced to start over with a new body every eighty years? More immediately concerning, was he still the Master of Death while Arya held the Elder Wand's allegiance?
The elf shrugged. "It is easy enough to see him as an elf in my mind. He will more closely resemble one than a human in behavior at least, when his training is complete."
"Hey," Harry said, offended. "If you conflate 'educated' with elves and 'dead of old age' with humans, of course you're going to think we're a bunch of pathetic animals."
"I apologize," Arya said. "I did not mean to offend."
Harry waved it off. "It's fine. I just think you ought to give humans more credit."
The elf raised a brow. "I do. Much more than many of my compatriots, I have the benefit of having lived among you. Most only hear of you secondhand. A race that dies so quickly they may not live to see a single Blood Oath Celebration? They practice slavery and cannot even feed themselves. They produced Galbatorix, who tore down the golden days. Many elves regard humans with far worse disposition. I am simply making an observation of fact; humans die very quickly by an elf's perspective. Elves consider me young."
She pushed her hair behind her ear. "Does your magic let humans live longer?"
Harry felt awkward dancing around the point. "That's one of very few things it hasn't mastered. It can apparently keep someone alive and bound to life even after their body is gone–"
Arya perked up at that, interested.
"And it can restore a body to the disembodied–"
"Disembodied?" Arya asked.
Harry supposed it was a pretty remarkable idea. 'Living' as a concept was usually tied to having a body that worked.
"I only know of one way to do it, and I'm not keen to learn how else it's done," Harry said. "It's just about the evilest magic I know of, and involves splitting the soul–" he saw Arya file away that word for later. "And maybe it was just him, but the bloke who made himself a new body came out monstrous."
He didn't really want to dive into the subject. "Anyways, I know of a way to stay eternally young, too. A really famous alchemist invented the philosopher's stone, which makes the elixir of life which can apparently keep people alive forever."
Arya was not distracted from the evasive discussion of horcruxes. "Do your people have a religion?" she asked.
"Wizards, or muggles?"
"Either."
"I wasn't raised in the wizarding world. They kept it secret from the muggles."
"The Statute of Secrecy," Arya remembered.
Harry nodded. "So maybe I just didn't notice, but the wizards and witches never went to church on Sundays or prayed or whatever. I s'pose it's not as important to wish for God to reshape the world when you can do it yourself, is it?"
"God, one god?" Arya asked.
Harry shrugged. "That's what the muggles believe. Billions of 'em. Some call him Allah or Yaweh or just God. People used to believe in pantheons; we learned about that in Hogwarts. Old legends of Zeus are still useful in spells that make lightning. But for the most part, pantheons have had their day. I think India has Hinduism that's got a bunch of gods. I dunno, we never talked much about it."
"Worshiping this one God is common for muggles, but not for wizards and witches?" Arya clarified.
Harry tilted his hand back and forth. "Less now than it used to be. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia hardly went even for Christmas mass."
"Then when you say souls, spirits…?" Arya led. Harry finally understood where she was headed. His ring suddenly felt ice cold on his finger.
"Not even wizards have all the answers," Harry said carefully. "I would be curious what elves believed. I didn't see much evidence of religion, not like human places."
Arya gazed out the windshield at the endless grass. "Elves do not practice religion. We hold logic and reason as of higher value than delusion. As far as death, we know as little as humans. You are familiar with the ability to touch the mind of another, as Gilderien did this morning?"
Harry nodded. "Seems rude."
Her lips twitched. "Indeed. Many have recorded accounts of the experience of being in contact with a mind as it dies. Many are inspired to see for themselves with an animal or plant. It is a horrible, ravenous emptiness as something bright vanishes, fading into the void. We do not believe anything. We know the minds of the dead become voids. And no living elf who has tried to follow the dead ends up as anything but."
"So when I mention spirits, souls, disembodiment…?"
"It flies in the face of all we know," Arya agreed. "Is it belief, or do you have proof?"
He rubbed the face of the resurrection stone. Something told him it was not the right time. "Loads," he said anyways. "I was there when that evil wizard got his body back. I saw him possess another person a while back while he tried to steal the philosopher's stone. I saw another part of him, a different shard of his soul try to possess my best mate's sister. Hogwarts has ghosts that float around the castle helping firsties or dropping water balloons on people's heads or snitching to Filch." I spoke with Dumbledore while we were both dead.
"Hm." Arya noticed him fidgeting with his ring. Harry forced himself to stop. "Then if wizards have so much evidence of identity separate of a living body, do they know what happens after death?"
Harry exhaled sharply through his nose, smiling at the absurdity of the question. He wanted to stand up and take a bow, or gesture at Alagaesia itself. For this was what came after death, at least for him.
"They don't," was what he actually said. "Everybody seems very sure there's something. Except Voldemort, I guess, but he's a nutter. It seems a bit obvious that if identity and memories and consciousness can exist outside someone's body, that soul can move on to some other plane of existence."
"How do you know another plane of existence exists?" Arya challenged.
Harry rolled his eyes and huffed, spreading his arms. "I told you I didn't come here on a rocket ship."
That caught Arya out. The reminder took the wind out of her sails. Harry could almost see the gears turning in her head. Faced with such damning evidence against her worldview, she was deciding whether or not to think Harry was just crazy.
"Ilumëo," Harry promised. Truth.
"It could have been the transport spell from another planet," Arya tried. Harry shrugged. "Maybe. But I tried to scry back home once while I was here. It didn't go well. It felt like I was, well, trying to pierce the veil, I s'pose."
"It could have been so far it took too much energy?"
He shook his head. "My magic doesn't take energy."
Arya breathed out, slouched in her seat with eyes unfocused as she processed.
"Could those ghosts be projections, like Gilderien?" Arya asked. "We can move our consciousness out of our body. But our brains are still the anchor, the place where they ultimately originate and reside, even if we can move our mind's influence beyond the borders of our skulls. As long as their bodies exist somewhere, ghosts could be mere magic."
"No," Harry said. "Nearly-Headless Nick was 500 years dead. His body was dust and bones. Voldemort's body was turned to ash."
"They could have hidden their true bodies and possessed the ones that died until their demise, then projected ghosts," she theorized.
Harry raised a brow. "You're grasping."
"When you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," Arya quoted.
"Sherlock Holmes," Harry observed.
"Ilyria of Osilon," Arya shot back. "I am not ready to concede a fundamental observation the elves have made for millenia on a single testimony."
Harry itched to just twist the stone and prove her wrong. He was sure Morgan was watching this and laughing.
"You don't have to," Harry said, bemused. "Just like I'm sure the humans who believe in God are wholly capable of listening to your reasoning as to why their God is a delusion, and continuing on their merry way believing in him despite that."
Arya gave an utterly exhausted sigh. "You have just perfectly described the entire dwarven race in a single sentence."
He laughed. "I get it. Maybe I'm hallucinating and that way, you guys get to continue to be right."
"The dwarves believe in Helzvog's Hall," Arya said. "An endless feast with all their past ancestors."
"Most wizards believe in some pleasant place after death where everybody gets to reunite with dead loved ones."
Arya seemed disappointed with the answer.
"What's wrong with that?" Harry pressed.
"Elves choose not to believe in anything. We accept what is, and search for answers when we don't know, rather than making a pleasant one up to spare our feelings."
"What's wrong with sparing people's feelings?" Harry insisted. "It makes people happier, and eases their fear of death."
"Fear of death can be a good thing. It stops people from being reckless. It may make a man hesitate before taking a life."
Harry shook his head. "Voldemort did horrible things in his terrified flight from death. He shattered his soul into pieces, murdered and tortured and mind-controlled on his campaign to become immortal."
Arya wore a disdainful look. Harry became a bit irritated.
"It's easy to think he was stupid when you take for granted what he so desperately wanted. If this is humans' lot in life, let them make peace with it however they like."
She was quiet for a long while. The sound of rushing air filled the lull in the conversation. Harry adjusted in his seat, stretching out after sitting for so long.
"I do not understand," Arya said finally, after several minutes of silence. "Your people are so close. If they know it is possible, why are your people not pursuing the philosopher's stone relentlessly, or using the one that exists to keep as many people alive as possible? It is different for humans in Alagaesia. Only a single dragon can save a single person. You have hope, a place to start, and knowledge that it is possible."
Harry sighed. "Maybe they've just gotten used to it. If you think about it, society's built around death. People are born, grow up, have kids, and die. They work until they retire, then leave whatever remains to their children when they die. Children grow up and step into the shoes their parents leave them when they die. They inherit an old world and make a new one for their kids to inherit when they die. Even the elves do it, don't they? Your dad wasn't the first king of the elves ever, right? Somebody before him died to give him the spot."
"Queen Dellanir," Arya said. "She did not die. She abdicated to pursue experimentation with magic, five centuries ago."
"But Evandar was her son, wasn't he?" Harry argued. "And Islanzadi was his wife. You're still following a pattern of inheritance based on death. If she died–"
"I would not necessarily be next," Arya interjected. "The elves vote."
"It's just a coincidence then, that the person on the throne has been from the same immediate family for the last three rulers?" Harry said sardonically.
"Yes," Arya answered simply.
Harry rubbed his forehead. When he thought about it, it was a bit odd that the Flamels only made one stone and kept it to themselves. Dumbledore said he was friends with them, Harry assumed that meant they were decent people. Did they have a reason not to make as much elixir as they could and sell it far and wide?
If horcruxes were a really evil way to survive the death of your body, was there no possible way to get the same effect without being evil? Hadn't Dumbledore suggested his own mother's protection was serving a similar role while Voldemort lived with his stolen portion of it?
That should be worth investigating. He resolved to ask Morgan when he had some privacy.
"You're right," Harry concluded. "We should be checking that out. I'll work on it."
Arya smiled wryly. "You've got about sixty years to figure it out."
Harry suspected he had quite a bit more time than that.
He was glad to have her with him, even if they both had things on their mind that stilted conversation. Harry could imagine the cockpit being very lonely at 35,000 feet. The phrase 'lonely at the top' took on a literal meaning in an empty plane at the roof of the world.
As they flew on, clouds began gliding beneath them on the horizon, sparse wispy clumps that did not make it too tough to see the ground through them. A tiny village passed by unremarked upon.
It was not long before the clouds thickened, much denser cloud cover that made seeing the ground at all impossible. From above, the clouds looked like an endless mattress of cotton balls, illuminated white by sunlight from above.
A tremor of turbulence ran through the airframe. Harry wondered if he couldn't eliminate that with a stabilization spell of some sort, if only when at cruising altitude. Something to guard against sudden changes in direction or altitude. He could turn it off before maneuvering and leave it on for long stretches without navigation or heading adjustments.
"We should be reaching the Spine soon," Arya said quietly.
Harry glanced down at the layer of white obscuring the ground. "We can fly lower. Buckle in, in case the air gets rough."
He took them down into the clouds.
With a larger plane came restrictions on how quickly Harry could maneuver. Harry was used to whipping about his broomstick and clinging on for dear life while he flew competitively. Sitting in Hedwig's cockpit, even a moderately aggressive dive lent an unpleasant sense of weightlessness that felt very different and much less welcome in what amounted to an office rather than on a stick with handles.
He remembered to ease up on the throttle as well, and began a wide banking spiral to the right. They were going fast enough to overshoot the Spine as a whole and be out over the uncharted sea before they broke beneath the clouds at cruising speed.
It was a bit awkward to manage a much more cumbersome flying machine than he was used to. He imagined drivers were similarly disconcerted switching from cars to lorries. Hedwig had a lot more thrust behind her than a broomstick, and flew a hell of a lot faster. More momentum meant spending longer to redirect it.
They emerged beneath the clouds nearly as far north as Palancar Valley, headed southeast. Harry finished turning back to course and left the engines pulled way back, nearly a quarter power. Despite that, they still coasted at a couple hundred miles an hour, according to Harry's cobbled together ground speed indicator made from a repurposed measuring charm.
The clouds were grey and the light was dimmer beneath, but it wasn't raining. Arya produced a mirror and began scrying, the folder of fairths and the ink cartridges within reach. Harry picked up his own mirror, scrying broadly to hone in on the right area.
Connecting where they were with the map of the Spine, the marked points they wanted to check out, and their actual location was an exercise in juggling. Arya did all the heavy lifting. Harry just fed her data and kept the plane steady.
Arya glanced down at the marked map. "We should be coming across the northernmost one any moment now. On our right."
Harry glanced over. She tilted the map and indicated where they were and where the warded spot was ahead. He waited until he was nearly overhead before banking a sharp right turn, tipping the wing down on Arya's side so she could see the ground through the window on her side.
She took a fairth, then unbuckled and hurried back to the empty cargo hold to peer through those windows as well. Harry circled overhead as she worked. When she returned, Harry handed off the controls and peered out the window to take his own imprints.
Urgals.
Hundreds and hundreds of them, marching across the ridgeline to the south. Harry made his imprint and returned to his seat, exiting their holding pattern to continue south to the next site.
"Well, we did expect it," Harry tried.
Arya rubbed her forehead, filing away their images. "Aye, but I am no more happy knowing it than guessing."
They flew on to check the next site, and then the next, and then the next, flying their way south down the backbone of Alagaesia. Each confirmation turned the mood in the cockpit grim. The Urgal parties ranged from a hundred to a thousand, disparate and straggling on their way down the mountain range.
By nightfall, they had become easier to identify by their torches and campfires as they halted for the night.
They flew further into the Empire after night fell, chasing down the sites that begun scattering to the southeast. They marked off a crossing over the Jiet River between Feinster and Belatona. Harry found no significant hidden sites further southwest than the crossing. Arya took note of that and was not reassured. If anything, she was even more worried.
"Isn't it good that they're not after Surda."
She shook her head. "No. They are headed somewhere. And if not Surda…" She traced the trendline between all the scattered Urgal spottings and the unconfirmed sites ahead, trailing around the north coast of Lake Tudosten, the very edge of the massive migration just beginning to cross the grasslands that skirted between the lake and the southwest edge of the Hadarac Desert.
"Who lives down there?" Harry wondered.
Arya barely seemed to consider keeping the secret from him. "The Varden does," she admitted. "And apparently Galbatorix already knows."
Morzan's castle was empty. They landed late at night. Harry pulled back on the engines until they were gliding at a hundred miles per hour low over the mountaintops on approach to the courtyard.
It was ridiculous on the face of it, landing in a box with no runway. But the courtyard was plenty big enough and the plane was magic. Harry cranked up the levitation charm high enough to keep them floating even as high as the walls of the compound, slowing down even further. Hedwig transitioned from aerodynamic flight to levitation about a hundred yards from the edge of the walls. He applied momentum arrest to slow down the rest of the way, hovering over the center of the courtyard.
Turning the levitation charm back down, Hedwig lowered on a cushion of magic until the altimeter read less than a foot. Harry cut the engines and stretched, yawning.
"Anybody home, d'you reckon?" He sent out a hominem revelio ping, letting the wandless magic scan the entire compound. It pinged once, on Arya, and returned nothing else. "Not that I found."
"Nor I," Arya agreed after a moment of focused silence. She was an elf, and when elves were not sick or poisoned, apparently they needed hardly any sleep. While Harry struggled to stay awake after fourteen hours in the pilot's seat, Arya looked like she'd be ready to get back into the sky after a quick bite to eat and a lap around the courtyard.
Harry took the key from the dash and pushed open the folding stairs.
"If there are no objections, I'm just going to pitch the tent and sleep."
"That's fine," Arya reassured. "I will check through here and confirm they were here at one point."
Yawning, Harry tossed out the tent and let the enchantments pitch it on the cobbles. "G'night."
The next morning, Harry woke to the smell of breakfast being made. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and padded into the kitchen. Arya served him deviled eggs and toast with raspberry jam.
"You're making me food now?" Harry was bemused. "Unusual, isn't it?"
She shrugged, a little self conscious. Harry refused to acknowledge how perfect she looked standing next to the enchanted window as morning sunlight fell on her dark hair in a radiant golden halo, her effortless beauty, he refused to acknowledge it…
…too late.
Harry shook himself. "Thanks."
Arya nodded. "Returning the favor is the least I can do." She indicated a stack of papers and maps marked up from yesterday's recon flight. "Duplicate, please."
Harry snapped his fingers and swept the originals away, setting them on the coffee table in the living room. He repeated the process with the fairths as well as attempting it with the imprints. Geminio worked remarkably well on the imprints, better than he'd expected, but it was clear the copies were inferior. The senses were less vivid when he touched them. He put away those originals too, then duplicated the whole pile a second time and piled them up.
"Do you want to send copies or the originals back?" he asked, spreading a set of copies over the table. Arya slid a plate of food over his spot.
"Copies," she decided, after glancing over his shoulder at the maps. "I checked the castle last night. It was occupied recently. Within the last week."
Harry groaned. "We just missed them."
"I doubt catching up will be difficult," Arya said wryly. She popped an egg into her mouth.
Harry wasn't so sure. "I enchanted Saphira's saddle to let her go invisible like the plane does. And Brom is just one tiny little guy on a broomstick in the sky. They're not as fast as us, but they're fast enough that a week could put them anywhere in Alagaesia."
"You can't scry to find them?"
Harry shook his head. "Brom made us all cast anti-scrying magic before we split up. We planned to meet at the Varden if we couldn't find each other."
"Do you think it's likely they are headed there?"
Harry slid the map of the Spine over to himself, tapping the Urgal sightings just east of them. "Unless they went back to Kuasta to take a ship to Surda, they had to have seen the Urgals. Brom would tell the Varden, wouldn't he?"
"Aye, he would."
Harry blew the bangs off his forehead. The deviled eggs really were quite good. He had some vague idea that they were not the easiest meal to prepare. He mostly focused on soups, scrambled eggs, stuff he could make in giant batches. This felt like a personal gesture.
"So we head straight there?"
"If we return to Du Weldenvarden, my mother may try to hold us there," Arya mused. "You were going to send them this all somehow?" she gestured at the maps and images.
Harry remembered. "Witches and wizards managed to train owls to carry mail for them. I can do something similar, but that's still slow. I had an idea. Let me try something. I'll get back to you."
"Will proximity be a factor?" Arya asked. Harry shook his head.
"I'll apparate to the edge of the forest and send it from there."
"Be quick," she said. "They need to know as soon as possible."
"And then what?" Harry asked, already knowing the answer.
"The Varden needs to know even more urgently," Arya said. "And they will not trust what we send them blindly. We must go in person."
Harry went out and pitched the workshop tent to work on his concept. The idea worked out and within twenty minutes, he had a pair of mailboxes to show Arya.
"They use switching charms," he explained. Arya was inserting a pair of letters into the folder full of intel they were sending. The spiky writing of Liduen-Kvaedhi covered more than a couple pages.
The inspiration had come from Hermione's D.A. Galleons, which had themselves come from Voldemort's Dark Marks. Only instead of sharing an interior, the mailboxes exchanged their contents whenever the flag was pulled down.
Harry demonstrated, sticking a slice of cold toast in one box and a deviled egg in the other. He pulled the flag and showed Arya that the food had switched places. He stuffed one mailbox into an expanded cloth bag along with the intel before rolling the bag up, conjuring a tube for it, and holding it up.
He apparated to the middle of Du Weldenvarden. On the western edge, hopefully far enough in to avoid the outer ring of scouts while in the middle of a massive portion of wilderness. He scooped together a bit of dirt off the ground and sculpted it into a bird before breathing life into it, giving it the tube, and directing it to Ellesmera.
Enduring the squeezing void of the return trip, Arya had already packed up and put down the jet stairs.
It really did look jarringly out of place, a modern looking jet with white aluminum fuselage, turbines, and rubber stairs, sitting in the middle of a stone castle courtyard.
"It's done?" Arya confirmed.
Harry held up the pair to the magic mailbox, ducking through the door of the cockpit to stick it to the wall of the cargo bay. "We'll see if we get any mail. Where are we headed?"
"The Beors," Arya answered. Harry flicked on the switches and levers, waking up the aluminum beast. Hedwig levitated off the ground, higher and higher until she was above the compound walls. Harry gunned the engines, throwing the throttle open and letting the acceleration jam them into their seats before the land around them dropped away into the open mountain range.
The plane lurched down after clearing the walls for a moment, then caught the wind and began to climb. Arya gave him a heading south-southeast. Another four hours or so. They'd be there in time for a late lunch.
The Beors had to be magic. There was no other explanation. Harry could not imagine a set of geological glitches that could produce such unimaginably huge mountains.
They were visible for hundreds of miles. Arya wanted to do recon on the closer warded sites to make sure there were no significant forces in the vanguard. Even as they confirmed by flying near Lake Tudosten that the Urgals were indeed headed to the Beors, the tips of the mountains were peeking through the fog of a thousand miles of air. Not as jagged ridges low on the horizon, as fully formed mountains like a wall around the world.
For the first time, Harry thought he might have run up against a force of nature that was truly indomitable. His perspective seemed wrong. At 35,000 feet, the Hedwig seemed high enough to just barely clear the Beors' peaks.
As they flew closer, Harry had to continually revise that estimate. The curvature of the planet brought the peaks higher and higher as they cruised towards the horizon. He was no longer confident that the plane could clear the peaks at all. The air would get too thin, both to feed oxygen to the engines, and for the wings to rest upon, at least at any reasonable speed.
If he wanted to fly over the ludicrous mountain range, he'd probably have to take Neil up on the rocket powered jet.
"I have come here dozens of times in my role as ambassador," Arya said, gazing ahead at the Beors. "The sight is never less awesome. Few have had the privilege of beholding the Beors as we are."
Arya directed him to fly along the mountain range until they came across an opening in the row of mountains. A river had cut a deep valley into the Beors, far deeper than any of the others formed by the mountains themselves. The valley plunged further into the mountains. Harry cut way back on their speed and followed the valley.
The mountains were too high on either side. Maybe he could get over the top with afterburners, but not only would that announce to everyone below that they were there, when they reached the end of the valley, they'd have to dive for miles anyways to reach the ground. Harry wasn't sure there was enough room between the mountains to circle all the way down.
As it stood, they were not even flying at half the height of the mountains, despite being miles up at cruising altitude. Harry did not want to test the anti-crash momentum arrest charms by ramming Hedwig into a mountain at 600 mph.
The only option was to fly low and slow and let the invisibility on the plane keep them from being noticed.
"Do you intend to keep the plane secret from the Varden?" Arya asked as they drew closer to the end of the valley. Harry flew only a couple hundred feet or so over the trees, the silenced wake of their passing stirring up the leaves.
There was not much time to think about it. The river terminated in a lake with a waterfall pouring into it, and that lake was fast approaching. Harry did not like taking complicated and life-changing decisions at 150 mph.
On one hand, any stealth advantage of the plane would be immediately gone. Galbatorix could immediately get to work trying to find ways to negate the advantages it provided. It would make flying recon missions eternally more dangerous than the first, zero risk one they'd just done. Harry wouldn't be able to drop a squad of people behind enemy lines and take them completely by surprise; the Empire would always know it was possible. They would be able to account for Hedwig's presence, however he used it.
It might even spur Galbatorix to try to replicate the plane. He had a different sort of magic, one with many more rules than Harry's, but he did have magic, and the principles of a plane were not hard to understand. Merely knowing it was possible and practical would be enough.
But on the other hand, freedom appealed to Harry. The idea that he would not have to hide, that he could openly exercise his magic, live as he was, live as he promised himself he would the very first day he stepped foot in Alagaesia, it was a siren song to him. That he could be himself.
"Can the Varden actually keep secrets?" Harry asked.
Arya frowned. "They generally do. Something as large as this will probably eventually leak. The Varden has very strict protocols for vetting new members. Among the Varden itself, there is some confidence that there are no spies or disloyal among them. The dwarves would be offended by the suggestion, but there are far, far more dwarves living in the Beors than humans, and they have much more disparate politics. They are also not subject to vetting as the Varden are, and you will struggle to keep Hedwig secret from them while using it in service of the Varden."
Harry stared down the valley. The point of no return rushed towards him.
"Is this the obvious entrance everybody's watching?"
Arya nodded.
"There's probably nowhere in this valley I can leave the plane where it won't be found."
Another nod.
Harry pulled the throttle back even further. They were barely flying fast enough to stay aloft. He needed time to think.
"I could drop you off, fly back and hide the plane, then apparate back here."
Arya considered. "Apparition seems the greater secret to keep. You put it at much greater risk. Coming and going will prove a logistical barrier, especially if you hope to run secret missions. What we need is to speak to King Hrothgar and ask him for a secret spot to take off and land."
"How long do you reckon it'll take to make that happen?" Harry asked. Hedwig wouldn't fit into the workshop right now while the expanded space was anchored to the inside of the tent; the opening was too small. The notion that he could use engorgio occurred to him, but he was wary of casting space-warping spells on space-warped things. It'd be pretty stupid to lose everything in the workshop because he didn't want to test his idea.
He could leave the invisibility on and just ward the area with Hermione's spells. Leave Hedwig camping out for a couple days until they secured permission and a secret airstrip to work with.
They approached the lake on foot. Harry suddenly felt exposed so far from the plane. In a day, it had completely reshaped his perspective on travel. Much more so than broomstick, it was safe and fast. Unlike apparition, he could take it wherever he pleased, not limited by where he'd been before, or where other wizards had set up apparition points.
"The Varden can be demanding," Arya warned him as they made their way across the narrow path around the inner edge of the lake, hugging the wall of the overhanging cliff as the waterfall thundered behind, sending billowing mist and cool air circulating around the damp overhang.
"They cannot afford to offend me as the ambassador," she said. "I will vouch for you, and that shall be the only credential you need, even if we must convince them of it."
They came to an unremarkable spot by the stone face of the mountain. Arya scooped up a damp fist-sized rock from the water's edge and hefted it.
Harry took a deep breath. They were about to head into the lion's den. But then, he was a Gryffindor. He set his expression.
"I'm ready."
Thanks to Scarze for his help beta-ing this and many other chapters. I've totally forgotten to give him credit, for which I apologize. I'm sure many of you are familiar with his fic Harry Potter Stranded in Alagaesia, but in case you aren't, I highly recommend it. If you're fans of a more wizardly feel than this story, which has been mostly focused on the events of Inheritance Cycle, his story is the place to go.
AN: As people mention that they enjoy reading Harry's POV most in this story, I've been trying to condense other POV's down into one or two chapters per switch. Unfortunately, the board needs to be set for the first book's finale, so you've gotta hear about Brom and Murtagh and Eragon and Saphira.
However, your feedback makes me worry that you guys won't like what I have planned for Roran's storyline. It's very different from canon, and I'm excited to get to write about it. If it's not your thing, you could of course skip or skim his chapters, but I'm hoping to manage the impossible task of making Roran POV's actually interesting. Same with Eragon's training in Ellesmera, the middle part of Eldest tends to really drag.
Something I'm hoping to do more and more is examine the wake Harry leaves with his actions. More on that later.