the wood with her claws. Without opening her wings, she sprang into the air and dropped the hundred or so feet to the ground, landing in a thunderous cloud of dirt.
“Of course,” said Arya, as if she expected nothing less. Eragon scowled; he had wanted to be alone with her, but he knew better than to complain.
They walked under the trees, where dusk already extended its tendrils from inside hollow logs, dark crevices in boulders, and the underside of knobby eaves. Here and there, a gemlike lantern twinkled within the side of a tree or at the end of a branch, casting gentle pools of light on either side of the path.
Elves worked on various projects in and around the lanterns’ radius, solitary except for a few, rare couples. Several elves sat high in the trees, playing mellifluous tunes on their reed pipes, while others stared at the sky with peaceful expressions — neither awake nor asleep. One elf sat cross-legged before a pottery wheel that whirled round and round with a steady rhythm while a delicate urn took form beneath his hands. The werecat, Maud, crouched beside him in the shadows, watching his progress. Her eyes flared silver as she looked at Eragon and Saphira. The elf followed her gaze and nodded to them without halting his work.
Through the trees, Eragon glimpsed an elf — man or woman, he could not tell — squatting on a rock in the middle of a stream, muttering a spell over the orb of glass clutched in its hands. He twisted his neck in an attempt to get an unobstructed view, but the spectacle had already vanished into the dark.
“What,” asked Eragon, keeping his voice low so as to not disturb anyone, “do most elves do for a living or profession?”
Arya answered just as quietly. “Our strength with magic grants us as much leisure as we desire. We neither hunt nor farm, and, as a result, we spend our days working to master our interests, whatever they might be. Very little exists that we must strive for.”
Through a tunnel of dogwood draped with creepers, they entered the enclosed atrium of a house grown out of a ring of trees. An open-walled hut occupied the center of the atrium, which sheltered a forge and an assortment of tools that Eragon knew even Horst would covet.
An elf woman held a pair of small tongs in a nest of molten coals, working bellows with her right hand. With uncanny speed, she pulled the tongs from the fire — revealing a ring of white-hot steel clamped in the pincers’ jaws — looped the ring through the edge of an incomplete mail corselet hung over the anvil, grasped a hammer, and welded shut the open ends of the ring with a blow and a burst of sparks.
Only then did Arya approach. “Atra esterni ono thelduin.”
The elf faced them, her neck and cheek lit from underneath by the coals’ bloody light. Like taut wires embedded in her skin, her face was scribed with a delicate pattern of lines — the greatest display of age Eragon had seen in an elf. She gave no response to Arya, which he knew was offensive and discourteous, especially since the queen’s daughter had honored her by speaking first.
“Rhunon-elda, I have brought you the newest Rider, Eragon Shadeslayer.”
“I heard you were dead,” said Rhunon to Arya. Rhunon’s voice guttered and rasped unlike any other elf’s. It reminded Eragon of the old men of Carvahall who sat on the porches outside their houses, smoking pipes and telling stories.
Arya smiled. “When did you last leave your house, Rhunon?”
“You should know. It was that Midsummer’s Feast you forced me to attend.”
“That was three years ago.”
“Was it?” Rhunon frowned as she banked the coals and covered them with a grated lid. “Well, what of it? I find company trying. A gaggle of meaningless chatter that...” She glared at Arya. “Why are we speaking this foul language? I suppose you want me to forge a sword for him? You know I swore to never create instruments of death again, not after that traitor of a Rider and the destruction he wreaked with my blade.”
“Eragon already has a sword,” said Arya. She raised her arm and presented Zar’roc to the smith.
Rhunon took Zar’roc with a look of wonder. She caressed the wine-red sheath, lingered on the black symbol etched into it, rubbed a bit of dirt from the hilt, then wrapped her fingers around the handle and drew the sword with all the authority of a warrior. She sighted down each of Zar’roc’s edges and flexed the blade between her hands until Eragon feared it might break. Then, in a single movement, Rhunon swung Zar’roc over her head and brought it down upon the tongs on her anvil, riving them in half with a resounding ring.
“Zar’roc,” said Rhunon. “I remember thee.” She cradled the weapon like a mother would her firstborn. “As perfect as the day you were finished.” Turning her back, she looked up at the knotted branches while she traced the curves of the pommel. “My entire life I spent hammering these swords out of ore. Then
Rhunon turned on Eragon. “Now Zar’roc has returned to me. Of all my creations, this I least expected to hold again, save for
“It was given to me by Brom.”
“Brom?” She hefted Zar’roc. “Brom... I remember Brom. He begged me to replace the sword he had lost. Truly, I wished to help him, but I had already taken my oath. My refusal angered him beyond reason. Oromis had to knock him unconscious before he would leave.”
Eragon seized on the information with interest. “Your handiwork has served me well, Rhunon-elda. I would be long dead were it not for Zar’roc. I killed the Shade Durza with it.”
“Did you now? Then some good has come of it.” Sheathing Zar’roc, Rhunon returned it to him, though not without reluctance, then looked past him to Saphira. “Ah. Well met, Skulblaka.”
Without bothering to ask permission, Rhunon went up to Saphira’s shoulder and tapped a scale with one of her blunt fingernails, twisting her head from side to side in an attempt to peer into the translucent pebble. “Good color. Not like those brown dragons, all muddy and dark. Properly speaking, a Rider’s sword should match the hue of his dragon, and this blue would have made a gorgeous blade... ” The thought seemed to drain the energy from her. She returned to the anvil and stared at the wrecked tongs, as if the will to replace them had deserted her.
Eragon felt that it would be wrong to end the conversation on such a depressing note, but he could not think of a tactful way to change the subject. The glimmering corselet caught his attention and, as he studied it, he was astonished to see that every ring was welded shut. Because the tiny links cooled so quickly, they usually had to be welded before being attached to the main piece of mail, which meant that the finest mail — such as Eragon’s hauberk — was composed of links that were alternately welded and riveted closed. Unless, it seemed, the smith possessed an elf’s speed and precision.
Eragon said, “I’ve never seen the equal of your mail, not even among the dwarves. How do you have the patience to weld every link? Why don’t you just use magic and save yourself the work?”
He hardly expected the burst of passion that animated Rhunon. She tossed her short-cropped hair and said, “And rob myself of all pleasure in this task? Aye, every other elf and I could use magic to satisfy our desires — and some do — but then what meaning is there in life? How would you fill your time? Tell me.”
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
“By pursuing that which you love the most. When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it. A lesson for you. You’ll face the same dilemma one day, if you live long enough... Now begone! I am weary of this talk.” With that Rhunon plucked the lid off the forge, retrieved a new pair of tongs, and immersed a ring in the coals while she worked the bellows with single-minded intensity.
“Rhunon-elda,” said Arya, “remember, I will return for you on the eve of the Agaeti Blodhren.” A grunt was her only reply.
The rhythmic peal of steel on steel, as lonely as the cry of a death bird in the night, accompanied them back through the dogwood tunnel and onto the path. Behind them, Rhunon was no more than a black figure bowed over the sullen glow of her forge.
“She made all the Riders’ swords?” asked Eragon. “Every last one?”
“That and more. She’s the greatest smith who has ever lived. I thought that you should meet her, for her sake and yours.”
“Thank you.”
