Eragon was confident that they would be able to defeat the magicians, just as he was confident that Angela and Elva were perfectly capable of defending themselves from the rest of the soldiers. Saphira, however, was already wounded in several places, and she was hard-pressed to keep Thorn from attacking the rest of the camp.

Eragon glanced at the Dauthdaert in Arya’s hand, then back at the massive shapes of the dragons. We have to kill him, Eragon thought, and his heart grew heavy. Then his eye fell on Elva, and a new idea took root in his mind. The girl’s words were more powerful than any weapon; no one, not even Galbatorix, could withstand them. If she could but speak to Thorn, she could drive him away.

No! growled Glaedr. You waste time, youngling. Go to your dragon—now! She needs your help. You must kill Thorn, not scare him into fleeing! He is broken, and there is nothing you can do to save him.

Eragon looked at Arya, and she looked at him.

“Elva would be faster,” he said.

“We have the Dauthdaert—”

“Too dangerous. Too difficult.”

Arya hesitated, then nodded. Together they started toward Elva.

Before they reached her, Eragon heard a muffled scream. He turned and, to his horror, saw Murtagh striding out of the pavilion, dragging Nasuada by her wrists.

Nasuada’s hair was disheveled. A nasty scratch marred one of her cheeks, and her yellow dressing gown was torn in several places. She kicked at Murtagh’s knee, but her heel bounced off a ward, leaving Murtagh untouched. He pulled her closer with a cruel tug, then struck her on the temple with the pommel of Zar’roc, knocking her unconscious.

Eragon yelled and swerved toward them.

Murtagh gave him a brief look. Then he sheathed his sword, hoisted Nasuada onto a shoulder, and knelt on one knee, where he bowed his head, as if in prayer.

A spike of pain from Saphira distracted Eragon, and she cried, Beware! He’s escaped me!

As Eragon leaped over a mound of corpses, he risked a quick glance upward and saw Thorn’s glittering belly and velvet wings blotting out half the stars in the sky. The red dragon spun slightly as he drifted downward, like a large, weighted leaf.

Eragon dove to the side and rolled behind the pavilion, trying to put distance between himself and the dragon. A rock dug into his shoulder as he landed.

Without slowing, Thorn reached down with his right foreleg, which was as thick and knotted as a tree trunk, and closed his enormous paw around Murtagh and Nasuada. His claws sank into the earth, excavating a plug of dirt several feet deep as he picked up the two humans.

Then, with a triumphant roar and the bone-jarring thuds of flapping wings, Thorn arched upward and started to climb away from the camp.

From where she and Thorn had been grappling, Saphira took off in pursuit, streamers of blood unfurling from bites and claw marks along her limbs. She was faster than Thorn, but even if she caught him, Eragon could not imagine how she could rescue Nasuada without injuring her.

A breath of wind tugged at his hair as Arya sped past him. She ran up a pile of barrels and jumped, and her leap carried her high into the air, higher than any elf could jump without assistance. Reaching out, she grabbed hold of Thorn’s tail and hung dangling from it like an ornament.

Eragon took a half step forward, as if to stop her, then cursed and growled, “Audr!”

The spell launched him into the sky, like an arrow from a bow. He reached out to Glaedr, and the old dragon fed him energy to sustain his ascension. Eragon burned the energy without heed, not caring the price, only wanting to reach Thorn before something horrible happened to Nasuada or Arya.

As he hurtled past Saphira, Eragon watched as Arya began to climb up Thorn’s tail. She clung to the spikes along his spine with her right hand, using them like the rungs on a ladder. With her left, she plunged the Dauthdaert into Thorn, anchoring herself with the blade of the spear even as she pulled herself higher and higher up his heaving body. Thorn wriggled and twisted and snapped at her, like a horse irritated by a fly, but he could not reach her.

Then the blood-red dragon drew in his wings and legs, and with his precious cargo cradled close against his chest, he dove toward the ground, spinning round and round in a death spiral. The Dauthdaert tore loose from Thorn’s flesh, and Arya stretched out at an angle to him as she held on to a spike with only her right hand—her weak hand, the hand she had injured in the catacombs under Dras-Leona.

Ere long, her fingers loosened and she fell away from Thorn, her arms and legs flung outward like the spokes of a wagon wheel. No doubt the result of a spell she had cast, her gyrations slowed and then ceased, as did her downward trajectory, until at last she floated upright in the night sky. Illuminated by the glow of the Dauthdaert, which she still held, she appeared to Eragon like a green firefly hovering in the darkness.

Thorn flared his wings and looped back toward her. Arya’s head swiveled as she looked over at Saphira; then she rotated in the air to face Thorn.

A malefic light sprang into existence between Thorn’s jaws an instant before an ever-expanding wall of flames billowed out of his maw and rolled over Arya, obscuring her form.

By then, Eragon was less than fifty feet away—close enough that the heat stung his cheeks.

The flames cleared to reveal Thorn turning away from Arya, doubling back on himself as quickly as his bulk would allow. As he did, he swung his tail, whipping it through the air faster than she could hope to evade.

“No!” shouted Eragon.

There was a crack as the tail struck Arya. It knocked her into the darkness, like a stone loosed from a sling, and the Dauthdaert separated from her and arced downward, its glow dwindling to a faint point that soon vanished altogether.