She had dueled men, she was used to being the smaller, lighter combatant; less power and more technique. She knew that her opponent would try to stay close and crowd her, knew just how dangerous that could be. In a fight like this every single move was performed at a dangerously fast pace.

But she was very fast. She was lethally fast and she knew that she could think on her feet, her mind always six moves ahead of the moment. She had been practicing the art of the blade since she was a scrawny child and every move and counter was muscle-memory now.

But she was fighting defensively.

Every close blow, every fast feint, every heavy strike was deflected and pushed aside. She knew that this was no longer about the duel, it was about her and her opponent. It was about how much each of them wanted to win.

Either she chose to pit herself totally against her opponent or she admitted defeat.

Choose.

Choosing had always hurt. It always would. But defeat hurt more.


As she slept amidst the rolling hills, Zoe dreamt that she was home again, that her brothers were laughing with her, that Lucia was smiling. She dreamt that Murtagh was there, and when all were safe asleep, that she could look up at a familiar night sky and trace the outlines of constellations she had known since she was a tiny child.

Sweet it was, sweet and gone too soon. Dawn came as a cruel dagger of light. She woke aching and alone and weary; weary of duty, weary of worrying and weary of the knowledge she carried.

They rode through the day, keeping to side roads and off the main routes which were crowded with refugees. They rode in silence, the quietness sending Zoe's thoughts spinning in a distracting whirl.

Zoe had asked herself the same questions over and over again.

Who do you trust? How do you know you can? By how they look or what they say? What they do?

Everyone had secrets. Everyone told lies, just to keep those secrets from each other.

And rarely, Zoe knew, something happens that leaves you know no choice but to reveal the secret. To let the world see who and what a person really was. The secret, inner self revealed for the world to judge. But really, she mused, mostly lies were told instead and secrets were hidden from each other and from oneself.

And when you thought about it like that…well it was a miracle one trusted at all.

There was too much time for reflection on the long ride to the city of Feinster. And Zoe could not help but to reflect. She glanced up, watching dusk fall to darkness, the first chill of night cutting through her tunic and shirt. They had ridden through the day and into the night, but then stopped to let the horses rest.

Her thoughts drifted. They drifted back to the past that she had pieced together through half remembered fragments and rushing torrents of images.

Zoe thought of the spacious palace she had grown up in. The cavernous throne room and the galleried halls. She thought of the lines of heroic High kings; lines of beautiful queens standing dutifully by their side that had paraded through her history lessons. If occasionally the kings were less heroic, and the queens less beautiful, then they perhaps could have been, it did not matter overmuch. State propaganda would ensure that the kings and queens were remembered as they should be, not as they were. She'd grown up on stories about her ancestors, last-ditch battles, pirates, spell-weavers, daring rescues, and wondered where she fit into these stories.

Better to stick to reality that was around her, she had come to decide. The reality was — no matter if those stories weren't always accurate and veered closer towards embellished propaganda — that her ancestors had established a kingdom. They had brought together the warring factions and out of the muck and mire created the Seven High Lords who answered to Angard in a fragile defence against the Lord of Annuvin.

Looking back on her childhood Zoe was unsure if she could describe it in its entirety. She had at once been a cherished child and a tool used to advance the High King's agenda. Even as she had scampered down the colonnaded walkways of Caer Dathyl, past the many fountains and fishponds, or through the lush gardens she had been surrounded by a retinue. When she went riding with her brothers or headed to the mountains to spend whole afternoons by some remote glacier lake, a young Zoe had known those were but small reprieves and that watchful eyes were never far. From an early age she had been comfortable among ambassadors, scholars, politicians and social climbers - learning to be at ease amid a flock of elegantly cloaked officials. She'd been used to being served and to serving, to being watched even as she watched others. And she had also had the best education available with the expansive library and the attached Hall of Music where the bards learned their trade so close at hand. Learning had been a serious business, involving endless drills, infinite rules and long hours. She had been taught how to build a fleet, control a currency, allocate resources and alleviate famine.

Later in her childhood she had been instructed in how to argue, how to debate with particular and exact choreography. She had been instructed as to where to breathe, pause, gesticulate, pick up her pace, lower or raise her voice. She was to stand erect. She was not to twiddle her thumbs. It had been the kind of education which was supposed to produce a persuasive speaker and provide that speaker with ample opportunity to assist her High King in its various endeavours. But she had not been as gifted as her brothers or sister whose rich voices, commanding presences and gifts for both appraising and accommodating their audience smoothed their way along with their good looks.

Had her mother not died just as Zoe came of age and her father retreated from the real world lost in his grief, Zoe might have been able to slip back from the stage and lose herself in comfortable anonymity as the forgettable daughter outshone by the golden brilliance of Lucia. But it had been she, while her siblings struggled with their grief and her father, the High King, retreated into self-imposed isolation, who stepped forward and turned the lessons she had learned to practical matters. She actually had to build fleets, actually had to control the currency and allocate the vast resources of Prydain. While her family dissolved with her younger sister fleeing to their cousins on the coast, Eomund to the bleak Northern fences and Pethred to the sun drenched plains where he claimed to be on an extended tour of duty, Zoe had thrown herself into the practical matters of state. It was remarkable what one could find themselves capable of when their back was pressed against a wall.

It had been a thankless task. For she had come of age in a world with a weighty past and a wobblier future. Hundreds of years of watchful peace were coming to an end as the Shadow of Annuvin began to threaten the borders of her homeland. Adding to the already growing feeling of impending doom the High Lords of Prydain, the once great houses, squabbled like dogs over a bone with each other. Her elder brother had described it well when he said the Lords had the temperament of wolves. They had come to resent the High King. Everything the House of Angard had been and was they wished to plunder. They intended to seize all and would either destroy everything or perish in the attempt.

And she had caught the attention of that pack of frenzied wolves. Zoe had become a prize worth plundering. Descending from the famed enchantresses of Llyr and with a power rumoured to be as great as some of that ancient House's more legendary spell weavers, she had - unfortunately in the minds of the High Lords - a streak of independence. The time spent managing her father's affairs following her mother, the High Queen, death had only added practical experience to that stubborn resistance to be something docile and meek. Indeed, by the time her father was killed on the field of battle, Zoe had known both excessive good fortune and its consort, calamity. But she had kept going, spent dusty summers and bitingly cold winters defending, negotiating, fighting and arguing. Her actions had earned her admiration even if it was grudgingly given. She had learned then that boldness sometimes won more battles be they on the field of war or in the council room than well planned and beautifully executed battle plans ever did.

But it had all come to a head as it had to sooner or later. Zoe remembered the mood of nervous exasperation. It had been possible to be both anxious and elated, empowered and terrified, all in the course of a single afternoon. The end of the civil war and the bringing together of all the High Lords and their various kingdoms had almost come too late. In times of disaster, Zoe had thought back then and still thought, enemies often reinvented themselves as friends and a common enemy greater than any faced before - an enemy straight out of the legends of old - threatening total destruction had a remarkable effect.

A remarkable effect, mused the princess with a wry grin. Sometimes all you needed was an enemy so completely evil it left no room for any doubt about what side you should be on.

But after that fight against Annuvin and it's twisted, dark Lord?

What had been left when then graves had been dug, the funeral pyres burnt out and the smoke had cleared was a new age and Zoe had been determined to make the most of it. She had worked closely with her siblings and with those they felt could be trusted to solve the persistent and manifold problems that had forced the High Kings before to maintain a precarious balancing act. The people of Pyrdain were fickle, the High Lords even more so with old loyalties, past blood feuds and countless instances of petty injustice piled up until it was hard to determine where to start unraveling the mess. Where did the blame lie? How best to mitigate the potential for conflict?

Ultimately, however, the question had become not how to use power but how to manipulate it, how to convince those who had once slaughtered each other that it was possible to be allies. By the time Zoe had been swept off on her world hopping adventure, Prydain had looked very different then it had when Zoe was a young child.

It must still be unsteady, she guessed. It must still be a powder keg waiting for one wrong move to explode. The balances created, the alliances forged during the Darkness all fragile, like matchsticks waiting to be blown over. A pack of wolves just waiting to spring on Angard.

What had it been in that world since she had left? Almost two years? Barely any time at all in the grand scheme of alliance building and fence mending, but Zoe had no doubt that her elder brother had the strength of will and the cunning to hold it together until things were more solid, more stable. He was strong and he was far more ruthless than he let on.

Once, she conceded inwardly, she had not thought that about her elder brother. She had found it difficult to see him as a leader in his own right and capable of the pressures of ruling. He had failed to step up, failed to support her when she had needed him to following the death of their mother and it had been hard to forgive him for it. Harder still to see that she could step back, give him the reins and trust him…because trust was such a fragile thing. It could be taken in an instant.

Rivalries between siblings were natural, they were a part of growing up and discovering who one was and how one could exist as adult members of a family. But Pethred and Zoe had been in a unique situation. Both of them placed in positions of responsibility at a very young age. They had clashed on issues of policy and military strategy, but also in other, less obvious ways.

The process of reconciliation between the two had taken time and more than a little frustration on the part of Eomund and Lucia who had little time for the games played by their older siblings. But when so much of one's life was lived playing intricate games of truth and misdirection, utilizing the symbols and pomp to further a political agenda…it was difficult to separate and disentangle that from one's private life especially when that private life so quickly bled over into the public.

It had infused everything in Zoe's life with a tinted cynicism and she had regretted that more than anything. Power, time, gravity, love. The things that were really powerful were invisible. The things that scarred your very soul and fundamentally changed the things you had promised as a child would never change…

Finally the two travellers stopped for a brief respite. Neither needed the rest, but the horses were tired and there was no point running them into the ground. The sun had sunk and the sky was velvet black above them, thick clouds obscuring any stars.

Zoe turned her eyes back to the fire and her uneasy elvish companion. Her people lived long lives but they were not immortal. She was glad of that. The elves had an unfortunate habit of dismissing the mortals as young, blind to deep truths and impulsive in their actions.

"Why are you doing this?" came the sudden voice of the elf, Laufin. He was sitting elegantly beside the small fire, his lithe figure mostly in shadow.

Zoe shrugged, "There are a number of different reasons, Laufin. Many of which you have already heard from your commanding officer when you received the order to accompany me."

The elf's keen eyes were fixed on her, she could feel the intensity of his gaze.

Zoe glanced at the sky. She didn't remember who it was that had told her that worries always seemed larger than they were in the dark of the night. They had told her that, conversely, that was when the brightest of stars would appear, when the wide expanse of the sky would blaze with the lights of thousands of stars. Your worries were small when compared to such a vista.

But she had many worries. And running away to Feinster just meant dragging them along with her.

The elf's brow furrowed. "You are older than you look," said the elf.

"So are you," said Zoe.

"What is it like where you come from?"

"Prydain?" The word, the name of her homeland sent a shiver through her. She clenched her hands into the soft dirt, feeling the faint tremble of the forces…that desire that coursed through her to reach out.

A tension that bound the world together.

Not a power per se but an awareness. An awareness of a balance.

Balance was…is wholeness.

So many things were off balance. This whole world was off balance and had been since the Fall. The slaughter of the dragons, the unleashing of so much magic in the Fall and the isolation of the elves in Du Weldenvarden was just the beginning of everything that was off.

"A little place," she said softly, dragging her mind back to the present, "in a much, much wider whole. But it is where I come from. It is home."

"You miss it?"

"Parts of it," she said honestly.

"And the rest?"

She smiled and shrugged, "Some things I don't miss."

"Why did you come to Algaesia?"

"It was necessary."

The elf looked ever so slightly annoyed by her answers but he had the good grace not to say so. Instead they lapsed into silence until, his voice very soft, the elf asked a more probing question: "Will you stay here?"

Zoe almost flinched, the question bringing to mind a whole host of internal debates and regrets. "I can't," she said at last, pleased that her voice was steady at least. "It is not an option."

The elf looked faintly surprised. "Who knows?"

"I have not had an opportunity to explain it," she said cooly, "to those that need to understand."

"Including the Red Rider?"

It took every ounce of self-control not to snap something very rude at the elf. But then again, she told herself sternly, he had a right to ask her questions after being sent on this random, half-mad mission that, to most, would appear to have no logical reason.

"I have not had the opportunity to speak with him," she said slowly. "I did not understand the full situation before he left."

"It has been said," said the elf with infinite care, "that you love the Red Rider. That the Red Rider loves you."

"Many things are said," said Zoe. "And, even if it was true, what would it matter to you?"

"Love," said the elf simply, "can cloud, distort and distract. Are you in love?"

"To love…" Zoe shook her head. "It makes you vulnerable, you know." The elf regarded her, still not fully grasping her meaning. "You build up all these defences, a whole suit of armour, so that nothing can hurt you, then one person, no different from any other, wanders in…and you give them a piece of you."

"But should you not — as a commander, a princess — know better?"

Zoe did not rise to the provocation. She had heard similar things throughout her life. They had been hurled at her in council rooms and whispered in ballrooms behind painted fans. Others had also thought she should know better, act more responsibly.

"You've asked that before and my answer remains the same: of course. Countless times I have seen love come before duty and the consequences have been swift, painful. But my life is not my own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside and it leaves you without recourse. A simple phrase, a single kiss turns into a glass splinter that works its way into your heart. It hurts. But it is real."

The elf was still staring at her with that look of clinical disapproval and Zoe sighed.

"One day you might meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, they understand you," she said. "You trust them — even if they come hand in hand with pain or suffering. You love them even as you know they are not yours to keep. You love them as you let them go. You love them because for a brief time you see the world in a whole new way and that joy…even if you must let it go is precious beyond measure."

"I do not understand."

Zoe wondered, with some amusement, if the elf would fall in love much the way a young girl might: all of sudden, with the intensity of a summer storm. She wondered if it would be like a tornado sweeping across the plains — flattening everything in its path, tossing the neatly ordered life of the elf up in the air, ripping everything he had deduced to shreds, crushing his neat philosophical outlook to bits. A love that came suddenly, without warning, of truly monumental proportions.

"No," said Zoe, "not yet. But one day you might." She smiled, "I hope you do, Laufin. For while a mortal life is short, it is not without its joys. And an immortal life would be a poorer thing if it did not include love." She sighed, "A philosopher of a world I once spent some time in said that being loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."* (Lao Tzu)

"I fail to understand how this cost benefit analysis functions." The elf's frown was deepening, his disapproval as sharp as a knife.

"Pain is part of being alive," said Zoe quietly. "Without love…without love, Laufin, our heart is singing an incomplete song, waiting for another heart to whisper back."

She thought the tenderness it left in her heart, the softness it left in her, were like bruises which would never fade, but which she would cherish forever. But she could not explain that to the still - almost scientifically - unconvinced elf whose centuries of life seemed to have numbed him. It tore at her heart, the feelings that she kept bottled up; the promise, the passion…the brittle undercurrent of unspoken terror that she had started something she would regret for all of time. She could not forget and she could not let go. Murtagh was like a knife. A different sort, but a knife still. And she hadn't cared.

She had thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.

"You would risk your position, everything you have worked for," said the elf doggedly, "for a matter of the heart? You have access to great power if you saw fit to use it-"

"I thought you understood," said Zoe, "the difference between power and strength, Laufin." Her voice sharpened, "I know my duty. I know what my responsibilities are. I am, as you say, a commander, a princess, a sister to a High King of another world. My entire life has been given in the service of my homeland." Her voice had sharpened, her shoulders had stiffened, "But I know that what we think, we become. And I have seen the consequence of holding unlimited power."

She knew the feeling of holding incredible, immense power at your fingertips. It thrummed inside her and it terrified her. The knowledge that she could bend forces to her will, as a bow was bent for an arrow…

No, power like that was nothing. Power like that was not real, it did not give. Power took and it lied. Power twisted and corrupted all that it touched. There was strength in loving, strength in stepping back. Strength in acknowledging that playing with such power only destroyed the very things you worked to protect.

"You would use that power," said the elf cooly, "I know you would."

I've seen you fight, went unspoken, and then in Dras'Leona? You used it then, without hesitation or thought.

"When I have to," said Zoe, simply. "When there is no other way than yes, I will do what it takes. Because when you find a way, Laufin, you've got to everything in your power to see it through."

"And how is this seeing it through?"

"When it is the right time," said Zoe, "I will fight."

She always had.

That was another truth, she thought. The eldunari thought her a child, but children grow, and children learn. She hadn't been a child for a long time.

Darkness had tempered her, darkness had taught her and darkness had left its mark on her.

Steel rang, steel sang, steal screamed and sparked and scraped, and she refused to yield. Enchanted flames blazed around her, following the sweep of her sword.

There was no more justifying of herself or her actions. It would do no good to explain. It would be weak, actually. It was wiser to conceal her knowledge and wise to conceal some parts of the past. She knew that a person's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movement and the unguessed at expression of a face. It is the absence of facts and information that was her power now: the gap she opened into which there was nothing but unknowable future.


Elves didn't change.

Her skin was as pale as the lilies on a dark lake, and her hair raven feather glossy. Too beautiful for human eyes. Untouched by time and the decay it wrought. But in the end, Murtagh thought, a man wants to sense the same mortality that dwells in his own flesh in the skin he caressed.

He had flown with Thorn far longer and further than he had thought the young dragon could. But his companion of heart and mind was unflagging, steel eyed in his determination and unswayed by his Rider's pleas to be careful.

"You are the son of Morzan."

It was a challenge. A biting and cold challenge delivered with an expectation of failure, but one he refused to shy away from. He had been preparing himself for this first meeting with the elf Queen since he had Thorn had departed the elvish city five days before.

"I," he emphasized carefully, "am Murtagh Rider of Thorn."

The Queen was silent for a long, considering moment before, with the grace of someone warming up for the real fight she gestured at the maps spread before her. "Tell me, Rider," said the Queen, "what do you think of Galbatorix's plans?"

And he realized right then, more than ever before, that he couldn't step free of it. In front of this elf Queen he found himself rising to the challenge.

He couldn't refuse.

Not the son of Morzan who had stood on the wide marble floor in front of the seat of Galbatorix's power and knew the most inner secrets of it's working. The son of a fallen Rider raised to know power and potential equally - to use them without regard for the destruction wrought. This elf Queen saw that and he sensed, for the first time, not open disgust but an acknowledgement.

An offer to play the game.

An offer to prove himself.

And he wanted to win. A part of him — the survivor, the child Selena had left behind — would always seek the advantage. Because it meant surviving, it meant a chance to keep fighting. Never get backed into a corner, keep your options open and never, ever show weakness.

Maintaining his calm demeanour he said, "I cannot comment on what he is planning. I think it is clear that the King wants us to spend our strength in a campaign so that he can more easily crush our combined forces. He will gather us in one place, crushing the majority of the resistance. The King has no compassion, he will destroy everything without reservation."

Islanzardi never took her eyes off of him, changing tacts so quickly he was almost unprepared, "Tell me, Rider, what do you fight for?"

He never took his eyes off of the Queen's glacially cold ones "I have a great deal to fight for, my lady."

"Oromis-elda seems to think you lack….Morzan's more destructive characteristics."

"But you do not?"

"It would seem to me," said the Queen, "that any man who has gone to the lengths you have to survive would hold more than a little hate. I wonder what you will do with it."

And the game was on, thought Murtagh.

His voice sharpened, "I know hate, your majesty. It gnawed at me, coiled around me with every breath. It whispered in the dark and clouded even the brightest day. For every beat of my heart it was the knowledge I could never forgive."

"You speak as if that was the past?"

He met her gaze, the words tasted like acid, "I have taken what I can from the past and now I look to the future. I know power. And I know that the power the King offers is nothing. It takes as much as it gives. And that I have never and will never want."

He could not lie. The Ancient Language prevented that.

The Queen regarded him for a long moment, "I see now why the Lady Zoe so appreciates you."

"My lady?"

There had been a dangerous meaning to that last statement, thought the Rider warily.

The elf raised a hand, ending the conversation before he could seek clarification. "You will find your quarters on the edge of the camp. Several of my captains are waiting there to speak with you about warding Thorn and other assistance our spell weavers can offer both of you. They served under the Riders of Old." She fixed him with that intense gaze, her eyes completely devoid of any emotion, "I urge you to listen to their advice."

With a small bow, Murtagh departed feeling oddly drained. Thorn?

As he exited the tent the Rider felt a sudden surge of wariness even as he schooled himself to remain calm. He was aware of the many eyes that followed him, the too sharp gazes that saw too much and too little all at once. The elves were watching him, faces unreadable as he walked through the camp that was too quiet, too clean.

Are you alright? Thorn's steady stride accompanied by sound of his thick tail trailing on the ground. The two making their way together through the camp, Rider and dragon moving together.

Of course, said the dragon. The question is - are you?

Yes, said Murtagh.

But he was very much aware of how precarious his position was. What was distant history for him was not for the elves. It was all too recent history by the count of immortal elves. They remembered Morzan and how he had assisted the King. They remembered the flames and the death. They remembered how a cascade of betrayal and treachery had begun with the single decision of a headstrong, arrogant boy.

But he could not falter.

The future was before him. It was a future he intended to claim.

The ruby Rider rested one hand on the bright red scales and walked slowly on.


Wait. Look. Notice.

And if you did those three things, Zoe came to learn, you just might survive.

"Do you know that doubt can be a good thing if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to make you hesitate, why something makes you feel that cold spark of doubt, demand proofs from it, test it."


She listened, intense grey-blue eyes fixed on the grizzled captain.

"Insist on arguments, be attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being the thing that stops you when you should act, it becomes one of you best qualities - the thing that men trust about you."


Once, not too long before, flying had terrified the sapphire Rider. But now? Having tasted flight on the back of a shining sapphire dragon, he found that he was more at ease in the air than he was on the ground. It was to the air that he longed to return.

They had had an untroubled flight so far. The miles speeding by with each strong beat of Saphira's wings.

But the sapphire Rider knew it had been too good to last.

Saphira, warned the sapphire Rider.

We have no choice, she said.

Flying into this storm…if they had an option, Eragon knew, they would wait until it had turned along the coast. Part of the scariness was how the winds over the ocean would change from one moment to the next. They knotted together faster than Saphira would be able to react, wind and water and stored heat from the sun churning into high, fluffy clouds; thickening further into grey, then near-black, lit since with the spiderweb-scrawls of sky-lightening. The winds would still and lurch, shuddering and twisting Saphira's flight.

We can't risk it, he snapped.

I am a dragon, she replied. My ancestors did not shrink before a storm and neither shall I.

And with that she launched herself into the sky.

He could do nothing but trust her. He could not seek to govern these storm clouds and wild winds through magic just as he could no more hold a proud, wilful dragon back from testing her skills.

Neither, he knew, would his worries and fear do anything to help the situation. They would only make her more determined and potentially distract them both. But he thought of what Brom might have said: the line between confidence and arrogance was fine and the line between arrogance and stupidity even finer.

The storm was as terrifying as it had appeared.

It was as if they had passed through a curtain, one minute soaring high above the storm tossed ocean and the next…gliding down to a pristine blue lake set in a narrow mountain valley.

And then he was no longer sitting on Saphira's back but standing…

He stumbled, trying to orientate himself.

Standing in a stone courtyard of pale grey walls of polished stone. There was one arch at the end of the square courtyard and standing in it was a tall man. His hair was a shiny black and his stance was that of a swordsman, weight perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet.

And Eragon somehow knew this man. "Your her brother," said Eragon in bewilderment. He had never seen an image of Zoe's younger brother but there was enough of her in this face.

"And you are the Rider of the sapphire dragon," said Eomund.

"Taren said you were a hero of battles fought against unspeakable darkness."

The dark-haired warrior raised an eyebrow, "Taren must have been drinking. What do you think you know about heroes?"

Eragon said nothing, instinctively uneasy.

The brother of the High King of Prydain sighed and lifted his shoulders in a casual shrug, "Everyone needs a hero. Everyone needs someone they can look up to, someone that inspires them to be more than they are…to be better than they are. I can guarantee you that I am not Taren's hero." The dark head bowed, the eyes dropping from Eragon's face to the ground, "Taren is one of my heroes. Zoe another."

"How did I get here?"

"The borders between dimensions," said Eomund conversationally as though people popping in and out of his dimension was something that happened everyday, "must be getting thin. You crossed through somehow. There seems to be a lot of that going on right now if Taren has managed to wander into your dimension." He studied Eragon for a moment longer, taking in the travelling clothes and sword. "Where is your dragon? You do still have a dragon, right?"

"I don't know," said the Rider, a note of panic bleeding into his voice. "I can't feel her."

"Damn powers that be," said the warrior with dark look, his light voice not changing. "Messing about with things they shouldn't. Playing grand puppet masters…"

"Don't anger them," said Eragon.

"Who cares? Why should I? I am sick and tired of them messing around like we were all chess pieces," said the warrior bluntly. "Sometimes you need to remind those who think they are all-knowing and all-powerful that their actions or lack of action has consequences."

Eragon stared at him slightly agog, "Everyone has been lecturing me on not opening my mouth. Zoe's been especially forthright on the matter."

"Well sometimes you shouldn't," said Eomund, "but there are times when someone needs to speak. Someone needs to say: enough. Enough of these battles. Make it loud. Remind everyone that sometimes it needs to end. Enough."

"And if no one listens?"

"You've got a dragon," said the other warrior with a wry smile. "I don't think people not listening has been a problem for you."

"You'd be surprised," said the Rider darkly.

"Ah," said Eomund, "my brother struggled with that. The High King's eldest son and everyone wanted him to be something, say something, do something…but you cannot be everything to everyone." The man's eyes sharpened in exactly the same way his elder sister's did, "You see things, you do things…you make choices. Sometimes you make the wrong choice."

"I cannot afford to make a wrong choice."

Eomund shook his head, "Think like that you will stop moving, stop doing, stop trying. That is more dangerous."

Eragon felt a tug, or a shift suddenly. The smooth walls flickered, suddenly blurry for a moment.

"Time for you to go," said Eomund. "Tell my errant sister I miss her. And tell Taren to keep his sword between him and his opponent otherwise it's useless."

"That sounds like a story."

"It is," said Eomund with a quirk of his lips. "But he would put seaweed in my boots for the next decade if I told you…"

And suddenly he was back on Saphira.

How did I—

You've been here, snapped his partner of heart and mind.

I haven't, he persisted.

And then the wind hit them and pulled the dragon downward in a spiral and all thoughts of how or trying to explain were set aside…