“Well?” Roran asked.

Eragon shrugged. “They’re doing all they can. We just have to be patient.… That’s all.”

“Seemed as if she had a fair bit more than that to say,” said Baldor. “The meaning was the same.”

The color of the sun shifted, becoming orange and crimson as it approached the terminating line of the earth. The few tattered clouds that remained in the western sky, remnants of the storm that had blown past earlier, acquired similar hues. Flocks of swallows swooped overhead, making their supper out of the moths and flies and other insects flitting about.

Over time, Elain’s cries gradually decreased in strength, fading from her earlier, full-throated screams to low, broken moans that made Eragon’s hackles prickle. More than anything, he wanted to free her from her torments, but he could not bring himself to ignore Arya’s advice, so he stayed where he was and fidgeted and bit his bruised nails and engaged in short, stilted conversations with Saphira.

When the sun touched the earth, it spread out along the horizon, like a giant yolk oozing free of its skin. Bats began to mingle among the swallows, the flapping of their leathery wings faint and frantic, their high-pitched squeaks almost painfully sharp to Eragon.

Then Elain uttered a shriek that drowned out every other sound in the vicinity, a shriek the likes of which Eragon hoped he would never hear again.

A brief but profound silence followed.

It ended as the loud, hiccupping wail of a newborn child emanated from within the tent—the age-old fanfare that announced the arrival of a new person into the world. At the sound, Albriech and Baldor broke out grinning, as did Eragon and Roran, and several of the waiting men cheered.

Their jubilation was short-lived. Even as the last of the cheers died out, the women in the tent began to keen, a shrill, heartrending sound that made Eragon go cold with dread. He knew what their lamentations meant, what they had always meant: that tragedy of the worst kind had struck.

“No,” he said, disbelieving, as he hopped off the barrel. She can’t be dead. She can’t be.… Arya promised.

As if in response to his thought, Arya tore back the flap to the tent and ran toward him, bounding across the lane with impossibly long strides.

“What’s happened?” Baldor asked as she slowed to a halt.

Arya ignored him and said, “Eragon, come.”

“What’s happened?” Baldor exclaimed angrily, and reached for Arya’s shoulder. In a flash of seemingly instantaneous movement, she caught his wrist and twisted his arm behind his back, forcing him to stand hunched over, like a cripple. His face contorted with pain.

“If you want your baby sister to live, then stand aside and do not interfere!” She released him with a push, sending him sprawling into Albriech’s arms, then whirled about and strode back toward Horst’s tent.

“What has happened?” Eragon asked as he joined her.

Arya turned to face him, eyes burning. “The child is healthy, but she was born with a cat lip.”

Then Eragon understood the reason for the women’s outpouring of grief. Children cursed with a cat lip were rarely allowed to live; they were difficult to feed, and even if the parents could feed them, such children would suffer a miserable lot: shunned, ridiculed, and unable to make a suitable match for marriage. In most cases, it would have been better for all if the child had been stillborn.

“You have to heal her, Eragon,” said Arya.

“Me? But I’ve never … Why not you? You know more about healing than I do.”

“If I rework the child’s appearance, people will say I have stolen her and replaced her with a changeling. Well I know the stories your kind tells about my race, Eragon—too well. I will do it if I must, but the child will suffer for it ever after. You are the only one who can save her from such a fate.”

Panic clutched at him. He did not want to be responsible for the life of another person; he was already responsible for far too many.

“You have to heal her,” Arya said, her tone forceful. Eragon reminded himself how dearly elves treasured their children, as well as children of all races.

“Will you assist me if I need it?”

“Of course.”

As will I, said Saphira. Must you even ask?

“Right,” said Eragon, and gripped Brisingr’s pommel, his mind made up. “I’ll do it.”

With Arya trailing slightly behind, he marched over to the tent and pushed his way past the heavy woolen flaps. Candle smoke stung his eyes. Five women from Carvahall stood bunched together close to the wall. Their keening struck him like a physical blow. They swayed, trance-like, and tore at their clothes and hair as they wailed. Horst was by the end of the cot, arguing with Gertrude, his face red, puffy, and lined with exhaustion. For her part, the plump healer held a bundle of cloth against her bosom, a bundle that Eragon assumed contained the infant—although he could not see its face—for it wriggled and squalled, adding to the din. Gertrude’s round cheeks shone with perspiration, and her hair clung to her skin. Her bare forearms were streaked with various fluids. At the head of the cot, Katrina knelt on a round cushion, wiping Elain’s brow with a damp cloth.

Eragon hardly recognized Elain; her face was gaunt, and she had dark rings under her wandering eyes, which seemed incapable of focusing. A line of tears streamed from the outer corner of each eye, over her temples, and then vanished underneath the tangled locks of her hair. Her mouth opened and closed, and she moaned unintelligible words. A bloodstained sheet covered the rest of her.