He struck Eragon on the other cheek, and for a second, all Eragon could see was a black immensity littered with flashing lights.

“I shall enjoy having you in my service,” said Galbatorix. In a lower voice, he said, “Gánga,” and the pressure from the Eldunarí assailing Eragon’s mind vanished, leaving him free to think as he would. But not so the others, as he could see from the strain on their faces.

Then a blade of thought, honed to an infinitesimal point, pierced Eragon’s consciousness and sheathed itself in the marrow of his being. The blade twisted and, like a cocklebur lodged within a batt of felt, it tore at the fabric of his mind, seeking to destroy his will, his identity, his very awareness.

It was an attack unlike any Eragon had experienced. He shrank from it and concentrated upon a single thought—revenge—as he struggled to protect himself. Through their contact, he could feel Galbatorix’s emotions: anger, mainly, but also a savage joy at being able to hurt Eragon and watch him writhe in discomfort.

The reason, Eragon realized, that Galbatorix was so good at breaking the minds of his enemies was because it gave him a perverse pleasure.

The blade dug deeper into Eragon’s being and he howled, unable to help himself.

Galbatorix smiled, the edges of his teeth translucent, like fired clay.

Defense alone was no way to win a fight, and so, despite the searing pain, Eragon forced himself to attack Galbatorix in return. He dove into the king’s consciousness and grasped at his razor-sharp thoughts, trying to pin them in place and prevent the king from moving or thinking without his approval.

Galbatorix made no attempt to guard himself, however. His cruel smile widened, and he twisted the blade in Eragon’s mind even further.

It felt to Eragon as if a nest of briars were ripping him apart from the inside. A scream racked his throat, and he went limp in the grip of Galbatorix’s spell.

“Submit,” said the king. He grabbed Eragon’s chin with fingers of steel. “Submit.” The blade twisted yet again, and Eragon screamed until his voice gave out.

The king’s probing thoughts closed in around Eragon’s consciousness, restricting him to an ever-smaller part of his mind, until all that was left to him was a small, bright nub overshadowed by the looming weight of Galbatorix’s presence.

“Submit,” the king whispered, almost lovingly. “You have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.… This life is at an end for you, Eragon Shadeslayer, but a new one awaits. Submit, and all shall be forgiven.”

Tears distorted Eragon’s vision as he stared into the featureless abyss of Galbatorix’s pupils.

They had lost.… He had lost.

The knowledge was more painful than any of the wounds he had received. A hundred years’ worth of striving—all for naught. Saphira, Elva, Arya, the Eldunarí: none of them could overcome Galbatorix. He was too strong, too knowledgeable. Garrow and Brom and Oromis had all died in vain, as had the many warriors of different races who had laid down their lives in the course of fighting the Empire.

The tears spilled from Eragon’s eyes.

“Submit,” whispered the king, and his grip tightened.

More than anything, it was the injustice of the situation that Eragon hated. It seemed wrong on a fundamental level that so many had suffered and died in pursuit of a hopeless goal. It seemed wrong that Galbatorix alone should be the cause of so much misery. And it seemed wrong that he should escape punishment for his misdeeds.

Why? Eragon asked himself.

He remembered, then, the vision the oldest of the Eldunarí, Valdr, had shown him and Saphira, where the dreams of starlings were equal to the concerns of kings.

“Submit!” shouted Galbatorix, and his mind bore down on Eragon with even greater force as splinters of ice and fire lanced through him from every direction.

Eragon cried out, and in his desperation he reached for Saphira and the Eldunarí—their minds besieged by the crazed dragons of Galbatorix’s command—and without intending to, he drew from their stores of energy.

And with that energy, he cast a spell.

It was a spell without words, for Galbatorix’s magic would not allow otherwise, and no words could have described what Eragon wanted, nor what he felt. A library of books would have been insufficient to the task. His was a spell of instinct and emotion; language could not contain it.

What he wanted was both simple and complex: he wanted Galbatorix to understand … to understand the wrongness of his actions. The spell was not an attack; it was an attempt to communicate. If Eragon was going to spend the rest of his life as a slave to the king, then he wanted Galbatorix to comprehend what he had done, fully and completely.

As the magic took effect, Eragon felt Umaroth and the Eldunarí turn their attention to his spell, fighting to ignore Galbatorix’s dragons. A hundred years of inconsolable grief and anger welled up within the Eldunarí, like a roaring wave, and the dragons melded their minds with Eragon’s and began to alter the spell, deepening it, widening it, and building upon it until it encompassed far more than he originally intended.

Not only would the spell show Galbatorix the wrongness of his actions; now it would also compel him to experience all the feelings, both good and bad, that he had aroused in others since the day he had been born. The spell was beyond any Eragon could have invented on his own, for it contained more than a single person, or a single dragon, could conceive of. Each Eldunarí contributed to the enchantment, and the sum of their contributions was a spell that extended not only across the whole of Alagaësia but also back through every moment in time between then and Galbatorix’s birth.