Eragon glanced about for any means of transportation and groaned with anguish when he confirmed that none existed. “How can I reach her? It’s too far to run, there’s no trail, and I can’t—”

“Calm thyself, Eragon. What was the name of the steed who bore you hence from Sílthrim?”

It took Eragon a moment to recall. “Folkvír.”

“Then summon him with your skill at gramarye. Name him and your need in this, the most powerful of languages, and he will come to your assistance.”

Letting the magic suffuse his voice, Eragon cried out for Folkvír, sending his plea echoing over the forested hills toward Ellesméra with all the urgency he could muster.

Oromis nodded, satisfied. “Well done.”

Twelve minutes later, Folkvír emerged like a silver ghost from the dark shadows among the trees, tossing his mane and snorting with excitement. The stallion’s sides heaved from the speed of his journey.

Throwing a leg over the small elven horse, Eragon said, “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

“Do what you must,” said Oromis.

Then Eragon touched his heels to Folkvír’s ribs and shouted, “Run, Folkvír! Run!” The horse leaped forward and bounded into Du Weldenvarden, threading his way with incredible dexterity between the gnarled pines. Eragon guided him toward Saphira with images from his mind.

Lacking a trail through the underbrush, a horse like Snowfire would have taken three or four hours to reach the Stone of Broken Eggs. Folkvír managed the trip in a bit over an hour.

At the base of the basalt monolith—which ascended from the forest floor like a mottled green pillar and stood a good hundred feet higher than the trees—Eragon murmured, “Halt,” then slid to the ground. He looked at the distant top of the Stone of Broken Eggs. Saphira was up there.

He walked around the perimeter, searching for a means to achieve the pinnacle, but in vain, for the weathered formation was impregnable. It possessed no fissures, crevices, or other faults near enough to the ground that he could use to climb its sides.

This might hurt,he thought.

“Stay here,” he told Folkvír. The horse looked at him with intelligent eyes. “Graze if you want, butstay here, okay?” Folkvír nickered and, with his velvet muzzle, nudged Eragon’s arm. “Yes, good boy. You’ve done well.”

Fixing his gaze on the crest of the monolith, Eragon gathered his strength, then said in the ancient language, “Up!”

He realized later that if he had not been accustomed to flying with Saphira, the experience might have proved unsettling enough to cause him to lose control of the spell and plunge to his death. The ground dropped away beneath his feet at a swift clip, while the tree trunks narrowed as he floated toward the underside of the canopy and the fading evening sky beyond. Branches clung like grasping fingers to his face and shoulders as he pushed through into the open. Unlike during one of Saphira’s dives, he retained his sense of weight, as if he still stood upon the loam below.

Rising above the edge of the Stone of Broken Eggs, Eragon moved himself forward and released his grip on the magic, alighting upon a mossy patch. He sagged with exhaustion and waited to see if the exertion would pain his back, then sighed with relief when it did not.

The top of the monolith was composed of jagged towers divided by deep and wide gullies where naught but a few scattered wildflowers grew. Black caves dotted the towers, some natural, others clawed out of the basalt by talons as thick as Eragon’s leg. Their floors were blanketed with a deep layer of lichen-ridden bones, remnants of the dragons’ ancient kills. Birds now nested where dragons once had—hawks and falcons and eagles, who watched him from their perches, ready to attack if he should threaten their eggs.

Eragon picked his way across the forbidding landscape, careful not to twist an ankle on the loose flakes of stone or to get too close to the occasional rifts that split the column. If he fell down one, it would send him tumbling out into empty space. Several times he had to climb over high ridges, and twice more he had to lift himself with magic.

Evidence of the dragons’ habitation was visible everywhere, from deep scratches in the basalt to puddles of melted rock to a number of dull, colorless scales caught in nooks, along with other detritus. He even stepped upon a sharp object that, when he bent to examine it, proved to be a fragment of a green dragon egg.

On the eastern face of the monolith stood the tallest tower, in the center of which, like a black pit turned on its side, was the largest cave. It was there that Eragon finally beheld Saphira, curled in a hollow against the far wall, her back to the opening. Tremors ran her length. The walls of the cave bore fresh scorch marks, and the piles of brittle bones were scattered about as if from a fight.

“Saphira,” said Eragon, speaking out loud since her mind was closed to him.

Her head whipped up, and she stared at him as if he were a stranger, her pupils contracting to thin black slits as her eyes adjusted to the light from the setting sun behind him. She snarled once, like a feral dog, and then twisted away. As she did, she lifted her left wing and exposed a long, ragged gash along her upper thigh. His heart caught at the sight.

Eragon knew that she would not let him approach, so he did as Oromis had with Glaedr; he knelt among the crushed bones and waited. He waited without word or motion until his legs were numb and his hands were stiff with cold. Yet he did not resent the discomfort. He paid the price gladly if it meant he could help Saphira.