Drifting away from Arya, it approached Eragon, a hole in the fabric of the world, encircled by a crown of flames. It hovered in front of him, humming with such intensity, his eyes watered. His tongue seemed plated with copper, his skin crawled, and short filaments of electricity danced on the tips of his fingers. Somewhat frightened, he wondered whether he should touch the orb as Arya had. He looked at her for advice. She nodded and gestured for him to proceed.

He extended his right hand toward the void that was the orb. To his surprise, he encountered resistance. The orb was incorporeal, but it pushed against his hand the way a swift stream of water might. The closer he got, the harder it pushed. With an effort, he reached across the last few inches and came into contact with the center of the creature’s being.

Bluish rays shot out from between Eragon’s palm and the surface of the orb, a dazzling, fanlike display that overwhelmed the light from the other orbs and bleached everything a pale blue white. Eragon shouted with pain as the rays stabbed at his eyes, and he ducked his head, squinting. Then something moved inside the orb, like a sleeping dragon uncoiling, and a presence entered his mind, brushing aside his defenses as if they were dry leaves in an autumn storm. He gasped. Transcendent joy filled him; whatever the orb was, it seemed to be composed of distilled happiness. It enjoyed being alive, and everything around it pleased it to a greater or lesser degree. Eragon would have wept with sheer gladness, but he no longer had control of his body. The creature held him in place, the shimmering rays still blazing from underneath his hand while it flitted through his bones and muscles, lingering at the sites where he had been injured, and then returned to his mind. Euphoric as Eragon was, the creature’s presence was so strange and so unearthly, he wanted to flee from it, but inside his consciousness, there was nowhere to hide. He had to remain in intimate contact with the fiery soul of the creature while it scoured his memories, dashing from one to the next with the speed of an elvish arrow. He wondered how it could comprehend so much information so quickly. While it searched, he tried to probe the orb’s mind in return, to learn what he could about its nature and its origins, but it defied his attempts to understand it. The few impressions he gleaned were so different from those he had found in the minds of other beings, they were incomprehensible.

After a final, nearly instantaneous circuit through his body, the creature withdrew. The contact between them broke like a twisted cable under too much tension. The panoply of rays outlining Eragon’s hand faded into oblivion, leaving behind lurid pink afterimages streaked across his field of vision.

Again changing colors, the orb in front of Eragon shrank to the size of an apple and rejoined its companions in the swirling vortex of light that encircled him and Arya. The humming increased to an almost unbearable pitch, and then the vortex exploded outward as the blazing orbs scattered in every direction. They regrouped a hundred feet or so from the dim camp, tumbling over each other like wrestling kittens, then raced off to the south and disappeared, as if they had never existed in the first place. The wind subsided to a gentle breeze.

Eragon fell to his knees, arm outstretched toward where the orbs had gone, feeling empty without the bliss they had given him. “What,” he asked, and then had to cough and start over again, his throat was so dry. “What are they?”

“Spirits,” said Arya. She sat.

“They didn’t look like the ones that came out of Durza when I killed him.”

“Spirits can assume many different guises, dictated by their whim.”

He blinked several times and wiped the corners of his eyes with the back of a finger. “How can anyone bear to enslave them with magic? It’s monstrous. I would be ashamed to call myself a sorcerer. Gah! And Trianna boasts of being one. I’ll have her stop using spirits or I’ll expel her from Du Vrangr Gata and ask Nasuada to banish her from the Varden.”

“I would not be so hasty.”

“Surely you don’t think it’s right for magicians to force spirits to obey their will. . . . They are so beautiful that—” He broke off and shook his head, overcome with emotion. “Anyone who harms them ought to be thrashed within an inch of their life.”

With a hint of a smile, Arya said, “I take it Oromis had yet to address the topic when you and Saphira left Ellesméra.”

“If you mean spirits, he mentioned them several times.”

“But not in any great detail, I dare say.”

“Perhaps not.”

In the darkness, the outline of her shape moved as she leaned to one side. “Spirits always induce a sense of rapture when they choose to communicate with we who are made of matter, but do not allow them to deceive you. They are not as benevolent, content, or cheerful as they would have you believe. Pleasing those they interact with is their way of defending themselves. They hate to be bound in one place, and they realized long ago that if the person they are dealing with is happy, then he or she will be less likely to detain the spirits and keep them as servants.”

“I don’t know,” said Eragon. “They make you feel so good, I can understand why someone would want to keep them nearby, instead of releasing them.”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “Spirits have as much difficulty predicting our behavior as we do theirs. They share so little in common with the other races of Alagaësia, conversing with them in even the simplest terms is a challenging prospect, and any meeting is fraught with peril, for one never knows how they will react.”