Brisingr [en]

to himself. I know what he would have said: he would have berated me for being a love-struck fool and for wasting my energy on a hopeless cause... And he would have been right too, I suppose, but, ah, how can I help it? She is the only woman I wish to be with.

The fire cracked. A flurry of sparks flew upward. Eragon watched with half-closed eyes, contemplating Arya’s revelations. Then his mind returned to a question that had been bothering him ever since the battle on the Burning Plains. “Arya, do male dragons grow any faster than female dragons?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Because of Thorn. He’s only a few months old, and yet he’s already nearly as big as Saphira. I don’t understand it.”

Picking a dry blade of grass, Arya began sketching in the loose soil, tracing the curved shapes of glyphs from the elves’ script, the Liduen Kvaedhi. “Most likely Galbatorix accelerated his growth so Thorn would be large enough to hold his own with Saphira.”

“Ah... Isn’t that dangerous, though? Oromis told me that if he used magic to give me the strength, speed, endurance, and other skills I needed, I would not understand my new abilities as well as if I had gained them the ordinary way: by hard work. He was right too. Even now, the changes the dragons made to my body during the Agaeti Blodhren still sometimes catch me by surprise.”

Arya nodded and continued sketching glyphs in the dirt. “It is possible to reduce the undesirable side effects by certain spells, but it is a long and arduous process. If you wish to achieve true mastery of your body, it is still best to do so through normal means. The transformation Galbatorix has forced upon Thorn must be incredibly confusing for him. Thorn now has the body of a nearly grown dragon, and yet his mind is still that of a youngling.”

Eragon fingered the newly formed calluses on his knuckles. “Do you also know why Murtagh is so powerful... more powerful than I am?”

“If I did, no doubt I would also understand how Galbatorix has managed to increase his own strength to such unnatural heights, but alas, I do not.”

But Oromis does, Eragon thought. Or at least the elf had hinted as much. However, he had yet to share the information with Eragon and Saphira. As soon as they were able to return to Du Weldenvarden, Eragon intended to ask the elder Rider for the truth of the matter. He has to tell us now! Because of our ignorance, Murtagh defeated us, and he could have easily taken us to Galbatorix. Eragon almost mentioned Oromis’s comments to Arya but held his tongue, for he realized that Oromis would not have concealed such an important fact for over a hundred years unless secrecy was of the utmost importance.

Arya signed a stop to the sentence she had been writing on the ground. Bending over, Eragon read, Adrift upon the sea of time, the lonely god wanders from shore to distant shore, upholding the laws of the stars above.

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and smoothed out the line with a sweep of her arm.

“Why is it,” he asked, speaking slowly as he organized his thoughts, “that no one ever refers to the dragons of the Forsworn by name? We say ‘Morzan’s dragon’ or ‘Kialandi’s dragon,’ but we never actually name the dragon. Surely they were as important as their Riders! I don’t even remember seeing their names in the scrolls Oromis gave me... although they must have been there... Yes, I’m certain they were, but for some reason, they don’t stick in my head. Isn’t that strange?” Arya started to answer, but before she could do more than open her mouth, he said, “For once I’m glad Saphira’s not here. I’m ashamed I haven’t noticed this before. Even you, Arya, and Oromis and every other elf I’ve met refuse to call them by name, as if they were dumb animals, undeserving of the honor. Do you do it on purpose? Is it because they were your enemies?”

“Did none of your lessons speak of this?” asked Arya. She seemed genuinely surprised.

“I think,” he said, “Glaedr mentioned something about it to Saphira, but I’m not exactly sure. I was in the middle of a backbend during the Dance of Snake and Crane, so I wasn’t really paying attention to what Saphira was doing.” He laughed a little, embarrassed by his lapse and feeling as if he had to explain himself. “It got confusing at times. Oromis would be talking to me while I was listening to Saphira’s thoughts while she and Glaedr communicated with their minds. What’s worse, Glaedr rarely uses a recognizable language with Saphira; he tends to use images, smells, and feelings, rather than words. Instead of names, he sends impressions of the people and objects he means.”

“Do you recall nothing of what he said, whether with words or not?”

Eragon hesitated. “Only that it concerned a name that was no name, or some such. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it.”

“What he spoke of,” said Arya, “was Du Namar Aurboda, The Banishing of the Names.”

“The Banishing of the Names?”

Touching her dry blade of grass to the ground, she resumed writing in the dirt. “It is one of the most significant events that happened during the fighting between the Riders and the Forsworn. When the dragons realized that thirteen of their own had betrayed them — that those thirteen were helping Galbatorix to eradicate the rest of their race and that it was unlikely anyone could stop their rampage — the dragons grew so angry, every dragon not of the Forsworn combined their strength and wrought one of their inexplicable pieces of magic. Together, they stripped the thirteen of their names.”

Awe crawled over Eragon. “How is that possible?”

“Did I not just say it was inexplicable? All we know is that after the dragons cast their spell, no one could utter the names of the thirteen; those who remembered the names soon forgot them; and while you can read the names in scrolls and letters where they are recorded and even copy them if you look at only one glyph at a time, they are as gibberish. The dragons spared Jarnunvosk, Galbatorix’s first dragon, for it was not his fault he was killed by Urgals, and also Shruikan, for he did not choose to serve Galbatorix but was forced to by Galbatorix and Morzan.”

What a horrible fate, to lose one’s name, thought Eragon. He shivered. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since becoming a Rider, it’s that you never, ever want to have a dragon for an enemy. “What about their true names?” he asked. “Did they erase those as well?”

Arya nodded. “True names, birth names, nicknames, family names, titles. Everything. And as a result, the thirteen were reduced to little more than animals. No longer could they say, ‘I like this’ or ‘I dislike that’ or ‘I have green scales,’ for to say that would be to name themselves. They could not even call themselves dragons. Word by word, the spell obliterated everything that defined them as thinking creatures, and the Forsworn had no choice but to watch in silent misery as their dragons descended into complete ignorance. The experience was so disturbing, at least five of the thirteen, and several of the Forsworn, went mad as a result.” Arya paused, considering the outline of a glyph, then rubbed it out and redrew it. “The Banishing of the Names is the main reason so many people now believe that dragons were nothing more than animals to ride from one place to another.”

“They wouldn’t believe that if they had met Saphira,” said Eragon.

Arya smiled. “No.” With a flourish, she completed the latest sentence she had been working on. He tilted his head and sidled closer in order to decipher the glyphs she had inscribed. They read: The trickster, the riddler, the keeper of the balance, he of the many faces who finds life in death and who fears no evil; he who walks through doors.

“What prompted you to write this?”

“The thought that many things are not what they appear.” Dust billowed around her hand as she patted the ground, effacing the glyphs from the surface of the earth.

“Has anyone tried to guess Galbatorix’s true name?” Eragon asked. “It seems as if that would be the fastest way to end this war. To be honest, I think it might be the only hope we have of vanquishing him in battle.”

“Were you not being honest with me before?” asked Arya, a gleam in her eyes.

Her question forced him to chuckle. “Of course not. It’s just a figure of speech.”

“And a poor one at that,” she said. “Unless you happen to be in the habit of lying.”

Eragon floundered for a moment before he caught hold of his thread of speech again and could say, “I know it would be hard to find Galbatorix’s true name, but if all the elves and all the members of the Varden who know the ancient language searched for it, we could not help but succeed.”

Like a pale, sun-bleached pennant, the dry blade of grass hung from between Arya’s left thumb and forefinger. It trembled in sympathy with each surge of blood through her veins. Pinching it at the top with her other