She sighed and pushed herself off Murtagh’s chest so she was sitting upright. With some reluctance, he released his hold around her shoulders. She sniffed, then looked him square in the eyes. “I couldn’t just lie there and let him do whatever he wanted to me. I had to fight back; I had to show him that he hadn’t broken me, and I wanted to hurt him however I could.”

“So it was spite!”

“In part. What of it?” She expected him to express disgust or condemnation at her actions, but instead he gave her an appraising look and his lips curved in a small, knowing smile.

“Then I say well done,” he replied.

After a moment, she returned his smile.

“Besides,” she said, “there was always a chance I might escape.”

He snorted. “And dragons might start eating grass.”

“Even so, I had to try.”

“I understand. If I could have, I would have done the same when the Twins first brought me here.”

“And now?”

“I still can’t, and even if I could, what purpose would it serve?”

To that, she had no answer. Silence followed, and then she said, “Murtagh, if it’s not possible to free me from here, then I want your promise that you’ll help me escape by … other means. I wouldn’t ask … I wouldn’t place this burden upon you, but your assistance would make the task easier, and I may not have the opportunity to do it myself.” His lips grew thin and hard as she spoke, but he did not interrupt. “Whatever happens, I won’t allow myself to become a plaything for Galbatorix to order about as he will. I’ll do anything, anything at all to avoid that fate. Can you understand that?”

His chin dipped in a short nod.

“Then do I have your word?”

He looked down and clenched his fists, his breathing ragged. “You do.”

Murtagh was taciturn, but eventually she succeeded in drawing him out again, and they passed the time talking about matters of little import. Murtagh told her of the alterations he had made to the saddle Galbatorix had given him for Thorn—changes that Murtagh was justifiably proud of, as they allowed him to mount and dismount faster, as well as to draw his sword with less inconvenience. She told him about the market streets in Aberon, the capital of Surda, and how, as a child, she had often run away from her nurse to explore them. Her favorite of the merchants had been a man of the wandering tribes. His name was Hadamanara-no Dachu Taganna, but he had insisted that she call him by his familiar name, which was Taganna. He sold knives and daggers, and he always seemed to delight in showing her his wares, even though she never bought any.

As she and Murtagh continued to talk, their conversation grew easier and more relaxed. Despite their unpleasant circumstances, she found that she enjoyed speaking with him. He was smart and well educated, and he had a mordant wit that she appreciated, especially given her current predicament.

Murtagh seemed to enjoy their conversation as much as she did. Still, the time came when they both recognized that it would be foolish to keep talking, for fear of being caught. So she returned to the slab, where she lay down and allowed him to strap her to the unforgiving block of stone once again.

As he was about to leave, she said, “Murtagh.”

He paused and turned to regard her.

She hesitated for a moment, then mustered her courage and said, “Why?” She thought he understood her meaning: Why her? Why save her, and now why try to rescue her? She had guessed at the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it.

He stared at her for the longest while, and then, in a low, hard voice, he said, “You know why.”

AMID THE RUINS

he thick gray clouds parted, and from his place on Saphira’s back, Eragon beheld the interior of Vroengard Island.

Before them was a huge bowl-shaped valley, encircled by the steep mountains they had seen poking through the tops of the clouds. A dense forest of spruce, pine, and fir trees blanketed the sides of the mountains as well as the foothills below, like an army of prickly soldiers marching down from the peaks. The trees were tall and mournful, and even from a distance Eragon could see the beards of moss and lichen that hung from their heavy branches. Scraps of white mist clung to the sides of the mountains, and in several places throughout the valley, diffuse curtains of rain drifted from the ceiling of clouds.

High above the valley floor, Eragon could see a number of stone structures among the trees: tumbled, overgrown entrances to caves; the husks of burnt-out towers; grand halls with collapsed roofs; and a few smaller buildings that looked as if they might still be habitable.

A dozen or more rivers flowed out of the mountains and wandered across the verdant ground until they poured into a large, still lake near the center of the valley. Around the lake lay the remnants of the Riders’ city, Doru Araeba. The buildings were immense—great empty halls of such enormous proportions that many could have encompassed the whole of Carvahall. Every door was like the mouth to a vast, unexplored cavern. Every window was as tall and wide as a castle gate, and every wall was a sheer cliff.

Thick mats of ivy strangled the blocks of stone, and where there was no ivy there was moss, which meant that the buildings blended into the landscape and looked as if they had grown out of the earth itself. What little of the stone was bare tended to be a pale ocher, although patches of red, brown, and dusky blue were also visible.

As with all elf-made structures, the buildings were graceful and flowing and more attenuated than those of dwarves or humans. But they also possessed a solidity and authority that the treehouses of Ellesméra lacked; in some of them, Eragon descried similarities to houses in Palancar Valley, and he remembered that the earliest human Riders had come from that very part of Alagaësia. The result was a unique style of architecture, neither entirely elvish nor entirely human.