You waited, said Eragon. You deliberately waited! You could have rescued me ages ago, but instead you left me here to listen to Fredric go on about water stones, oil stones, and whether linseed oil is better than rendered fat for protecting metal from water.

And is it?

Not really. It’s just not as smelly. But that’s irrelevant! Why did you leave me to this doom?

One of her thick eyelids drooped in a lazy wink. Don’t exaggerate. Doom? You and I have far worse dooms to look forward to if we are not properly prepared. What the man with the smelly clothes was saying seemed important for you to know.

Well, perhaps it was, he conceded. She arched her neck and licked the claws on her right foreleg.

After thanking Fredric and bidding him farewell, and agreeing upon a meeting place with Blödhgarm, Eragon fastened the falchion to the belt of Beloth the Wise and clambered onto Saphira’s back. He whooped and she roared as she raised her wings and surged up into the sky.

Giddy, Eragon clung to the spike in front of him and watched the people and tents below dwindle away into flat, miniature versions of themselves. From above, the camp was a grid of gray, triangular peaks, the eastern faces of which were deep in shadow, giving the whole region a checkered appearance. The fortifications that encircled the camp bristled like a hedgehog, the white tips of the distant poles bright in the slanted sunlight. King Orrin’s cavalry was a mass of milling dots in the northwestern quadrant of the camp. To the east was the Urgals’ camp, low and dark on the rolling plain.

They soared higher.

The cold, pure air stung Eragon’s cheeks and burned in his lungs. He took only shallow breaths. Beside them floated a thick column of clouds, looking as solid as whipped cream. Saphira spiraled around it, her ragged shadow racing across the plume. A lone scrap of moisture struck Eragon, blinding him for a few seconds and filling his nose and mouth with frigid droplets. He gasped and wiped his face.

They rose above the clouds.

A red eagle screeched at them as it flew past.

Saphira’s flapping became labored, and Eragon began to feel light-headed. Stilling her wings, Saphira glided from one thermal to the next, maintaining her altitude but ascending no farther.

Eragon looked down. They were so high, height had ceased to matter and things on the ground no longer seemed real. The Varden’s camp was an irregularly shaped playing board covered with tiny gray and black rectangles. The Jiet River was a silver rope fringed with green tassels. To the south, the sulfurous clouds rising from the Burning Plains formed a range of glowing orange mountains, home to shadowy monsters that flickered in and out of existence. Eragon quickly averted his gaze.

For perhaps half an hour, he and Saphira drifted with the wind, relaxing in the silent comfort of each other’s company. An inaudible spell served to insulate Eragon from the chill. At last they were alone together, alone as they had been in Palancar Valley before the Empire had intruded upon their life.

Saphira was the first to speak. We are the rulers of the sky.

Here at the ceiling of the world. Eragon reached up, as if from where he sat he could brush the stars.

Banking to the left, Saphira caught a gust of warmer air from below, then leveled off again. You will marry Roran and Katrina tomorrow.

What a strange thought that is. Strange Roran should marry, and strange I should be the one to perform the ceremony. . . . Roran married. Thinking about it makes me feel older. Even we, who were boys but a short while ago, cannot escape the inexorable progress of time. So the generations pass, and soon it will be our turn to send our children out into the land to do the work that needs to be done.

But not unless we can survive the next few months.

Aye, there is that.

Saphira wobbled as turbulence buffeted them. Then she looked back at him and asked: Ready?

Go!

Tilting forward, she pulled her wings close against her sides and plummeted toward the ground, faster than a speeding arrow. Eragon laughed as the sensation of weightlessness overtook him. He tightened his legs around Saphira to keep himself from drifting away from her, then, overtaken by a surge of recklessness, released his grip and held his hands over his head. The disk of land below spun like a wheel as Saphira augered through the air. Slowing and then stopping her rotation, she rolled to the right until she was falling upside down.

“Saphira!” cried Eragon, and pounded her shoulder.

A ribbon of smoke streaming from her nostrils, she righted herself and again pointed herself at the fast-approaching ground. Eragon’s ears popped, and he worked his jaw as the pressure increased. Less than a thousand feet above the Varden’s camp, and only a few seconds from crashing into the tents and excavating a large and bloody crater, Saphira allowed the wind to catch her wings. The subsequent jolt threw Eragon forward, and the spike he had been holding nearly stabbed him in the eye.

With three powerful flaps, Saphira brought them to a complete halt. Locking her wings outstretched, she then began to gently circle downward.

Now that was fun! exclaimed Eragon.

There is no more exciting sport than flying, for if you lose, you die.

Ah, but I have complete confidence in your abilities; you would never run us into the ground. Her pleasure at his compliment radiated from her.

Angling toward his tent, she shook her head, jostling him, and said, I ought to be accustomed to it by now, but every time I come out of a dive like that, it makes my chest and wing arms so sore, the next morning I can barely move.

He patted her. Well, you shouldn’t have to fly tomorrow. The wedding is our only obligation, and you can walk to it. She grunted and landed amid a billow of dust, knocking over an empty tent with her tail in the process.