Rhunön snorted. “No, that would never work. Once a blade has been forged and quenched, you can protect it with an endless array of spells, but the metal itself remains as weak as ever. A Rider needs something more: a blade that can survive the most violent of impacts and one that is unaffected by most any magic. No, what you must do is sing spells over the hot metal while you are extracting it from the ore and also while you are forging it, so as to alter and improve the structure of the metal.”

“How can I get such a sword, though?” Eragon asked. “Would you make me one, Rhunön-elda?”

The wire-thin lines on Rhunön’s face deepened. She reached over and rubbed her left elbow, the thick muscles in her bare forearm writhing. “You know that I swore that I would never create another weapon so long as I live.”

“I do.”

“My oath binds me; I cannot break it, no matter how much I might wish to.” Continuing to hold her elbow, Rhunön walked back to her bench and sat before her sculpture. “And why should I, Dragon Rider? Tell me that. Why should I loose another soul-reaver upon the world?”

Choosing his words with care, Eragon said, “Because if you did, you could help put an end to Galbatorix’s reign. Would not it be fitting if I killed him with a blade you forged when it was with your swords he and the Forsworn slew so many dragons and Riders? You hate how they have used your weapons. How better to balance the scales, then, than by forging the instrument of Galbatorix’s doom?”

Rhunön crossed her arms and looked up at the sky. “A sword . . . a new sword. After so long, to again ply my craft. . . .” Lowering her gaze, she jutted her chin out at Eragon and said, “It is possible, just possible, that there might be a way I could help you, but it is futile to speculate, for I cannot try.”

Why not? asked Saphira.

“Because I have not the metal I need!” Rhunön growled. “You do not think that I forged the Riders’ swords out of ordinary steel, do you? No! Long ago, while I was wandering through Du Weldenvarden, I happened upon fragments of a shooting star that had fallen to the earth. The pieces contained an ore unlike any I had handled before, and so I returned with it to my forge, and I refined it, and I discovered that the mix of steel that resulted was stronger, harder, and more flexible than any of earthly origin. I named the metal brightsteel, on account of its uncommon brilliance, and when Queen Tarmunora asked me to forge the first of the Riders’ swords, it was brightsteel I used. Thereafter, whenever I had the opportunity, I would search the forest for more fragments of the star metal. I did not often find any, but when I did, I would save them for the Riders.

“Over the centuries, the fragments became ever more rare, until at last I began to think none were left. It took me four-and-twenty years to find the last deposit. From it, I forged seven swords, among them Undbitr and Zar’roc. Since the Riders fell, I have searched for brightsteel only once more, and that was last night, after Oromis spoke to me about you.” Rhunön tilted her head, and her watery eyes bored into Eragon. “I wandered far and wide, and I cast many spells of finding and binding, but I came across not a single speck of brightsteel. If some could be procured, then we might begin to consider a sword for you, Shadeslayer. Otherwise, this discussion is no more than pointless blathering.”

Eragon bowed to the elf woman and thanked her for her time, then he and Saphira left the atrium through the green leafy tunnel of dogwood.

As they walked side by side toward a glade from which Saphira could take off, Eragon said, Brightsteel; that has to be what Solembum meant. There must be brightsteel underneath the Menoa tree.

How would he know?

Perhaps the tree told him herself. Does it matter?

Brightsteel or not, she said, how are we supposed to get at anything that the roots of the Menoa tree cover? We cannot chop through them. We do not even know where to chop.

I have to think about it.

From the glade by Rhunön’s house, Saphira and Eragon flew over Ellesméra back to the Crags of Tel’naeír, where Oromis and Glaedr were waiting. Once Saphira had landed and Eragon climbed down, she and Glaedr leaped off the cliff and spiraled high overhead, not really going anywhere, but rather enjoying the pleasure of each other’s presence.

While the two dragons danced among the clouds, Oromis taught Eragon how a magician could transport an object from one place to another without having the object traverse the intervening distance. “Most forms of magic,” said Oromis, “require ever more energy to sustain as the distance between you and your target increases. However, that is not the case in this particular instance. It would require the same amount of energy to send the rock in my hand to the other side of that stream as it would to send it all the way to the Southern Isles. For that reason, the spell is most useful when you need to transport an item with magic across a distance so vast, it would kill you to move it normally through space. Even so, it is a demanding spell, and you should only resort to it if all else has failed. To shift something as large as Saphira’s egg, for example, would leave you too exhausted to move.”

Then Oromis taught Eragon the wording of the spell and several variations on it. Once he had memorized the incantations to Oromis’s satisfaction, the elf had him attempt to shift the small rock he was holding.

As soon as Eragon uttered the spell in its entirety, the rock vanished from the palm of Oromis’s hand and, an instant later, re appeared in the middle of the clearing with a flash of blue light, a loud detonation, and a surge of burning hot air. Eragon flinched from the noise and then gripped the branch of a nearby tree to steady himself as his knees buckled and cold crept over his limbs. His scalp tingled as he gazed at the rock, which lay in a circle of charred and flattened grass, and he remembered the moment when he had first beheld Saphira’s egg.