He crouched, then hesitated as he waited for her to tell him whether it was safe.
She stamped her foot and made a sound of exasperation. “It won’t work if you don’t mean it. I can’t tell if something is going to hurt you unless you actually intend to put yourself in danger.” She gave him a smile that he found less than reassuring. “Don’t worry; I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Still doubtful, he flexed his legs again and was just about to spring forward when—
“Stop!”
He cursed and waved his arms as he tried to keep from falling onto the section of floor that would trigger the spikes hidden both above and below.
The spikes were the third trap Eragon and his companions had encountered in the long hallway leading to the golden doors. The first had been a set of hidden pits. The second had been blocks of stone in the ceiling that would have squished them flat. And now the spikes, much like those that had killed Wyrden in the tunnels beneath Dras-Leona.
They had seen Murtagh enter the hallway through the open sally port, but he had made no effort to pursue them without Thorn. After watching for a few seconds, he had disappeared into one of the side rooms where Arya and Blödhgarm had broken the gears and wheels used to open and close the stronghold’s main gate.
It might take Murtagh an hour to fix the mechanisms, or it might take him minutes. Either way, they dared not dawdle.
“Try a little bit farther out,” said Elva.
Eragon grimaced, but did as she suggested.
“Stop!”
This time he would have fallen had Elva not grabbed the back of his tunic.
“Even farther,” she said. Then, “Stop! Farther.”
“I can’t,” he growled, his frustration increasing. “Not without a running start.” But with a running start, it would be impossible to stop himself in time, should Elva determine that the jump was dangerous. “What now? If the spikes go all the way to the doors, we’ll never reach them.” They had already thought of using magic to float over the trap, but even the smallest spell would set it off, or so Elva claimed, and they had no choice but to trust her.
“Maybe the trap is meant for a walking dragon,” said Arya. “If it’s only a yard or two long, Saphira or Thorn could step right over without ever realizing it was there. But if it’s a hundred feet long, it would be sure to catch them.”
Not if I jump, said Saphira. A hundred feet is an easy distance.
Eragon exchanged concerned glances with Arya and Elva. “Just make sure you don’t let your tail touch the floor,” he said. “And don’t go too far, or you might run into another trap.”
Yes, little one.
Saphira crouched and gathered herself in, lowering her head until it was only a foot or so above the stone. Then she dug her claws into the floor and leaped down the hallway, opening her wings just enough to give herself a bit of lift.
To Eragon’s relief, Elva remained silent.
When Saphira had gone two full lengths of her body, she folded her wings and dropped to the floor with a resounding clatter.
Safe, she said. Her scales scraped on the floor as she turned around. She jumped back, and Eragon and the others moved out of the way to give her room to land on her return. Well? she said. Who’s first?
It took her four trips to ferry them all across the bed of spikes. Then they continued forward at a swift trot, Arya and Elva again in the lead. They encountered no more traps until they were three-quarters of the way to the gleaming doors, at which point Elva shuddered and raised her small hand. They immediately stopped.
“Something will cut us in two if we continue,” she said. “I’m not sure where it will come from … the walls, I think.”
Eragon frowned. That meant that whatever would cut them had enough weight or strength behind it to overcome their wards—hardly an encouraging prospect.
“What if we—” he started to say, then stopped as twenty black-robed humans, men and women alike, filed out of a side passageway and formed a line in front of them, blocking the way.
Eragon felt a blade of thought stab into his mind as the enemy magicians began to chant in the ancient language. Opening her jaws, Saphira raked the spellcasters with a torrent of crackling flame, but it passed harmlessly around them. One of the banners along the wall caught fire, and scraps of smoldering fabric fell to the floor.
Eragon defended himself, but he did not attack in turn; it would take too long to subdue the magicians one by one. Moreover, their chanting concerned him: if they were willing to cast spells before they had seized control of his mind—as well as those of his companions—then they no longer cared if they lived or died, only that they stopped the intruders.
He dropped to one knee next to Elva. She was speaking to one of the spellcasters, saying something about the man’s daughter.
“Are they standing over the trap?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
She nodded, never pausing in her speech.
Reaching out, he slapped the palm of his hand against the floor.
He had expected something to happen, but still he recoiled when a horizontal sheet of metal—thirty feet long and four inches thick—shot out of each wall with a terrible screech. The plates of metal caught the magicians between them and cut them in two, like a pair of giant tin snips, then just as quickly retreated back into their hidden slots.
The suddenness of it shocked Eragon. He averted his eyes from the shambles before them. What a horrible way to die.
Next to him, Elva gurgled, then slumped forward in a faint. Arya caught her before her head hit the floor. Cradling her with one arm, Arya began to murmur to her in the ancient language.
Eragon consulted with the other elves about how best to bypass the trap. They decided that the safest way would be to jump over it, as they had with the bed of spikes.
Four of them climbed onto Saphira, and she was just about to spring forward when Elva cried out in a weak voice: “Stop! Don’t!”
Saphira flicked her tail but remained where she was.
Elva slid out of Arya’s grasp, staggered a few feet away, leaned over, and was sick. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, then stared at the mangled bodies that lay before them, as if fixing them in her memory.
Still staring at them, she said, “There is another trigger, halfway across, in the air. If you jump”—she clapped her hands together, a loud, sharp sound, and made an ugly face—“blades come out from high on the walls, as well as lower.”
A thought began to bother Eragon. “Why would Galbatorix try to kill us? … If you weren’t here,” he said, looking at Elva, “Saphira might be dead right now. Galbatorix wants her alive, so why this?” He gestured at the bloody floor. “Why the spikes and the blocks of stone?”
“Perhaps,” said the elf woman Invidia, “he expected the pits to capture us before we reached the rest of the traps.”
“Or perhaps,” said Blödhgarm in a grim voice, “he knows that Elva is with us and what she is capable of.”
The girl shrugged. “What of it? He can’t stop me.”
A chill crept through Eragon. “No, but if he knows of you, then he might be scared, and if he’s scared—”
Then he might really be trying to kill us, Saphira finished.
Arya shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We still have to find him.”