Eragon grimaced as Elain’s latest scream pierced the air, the cry no less excruciating than those previous.
Then the entrance to the tent was swept aside for a second time, and Arya stormed out, bare-armed and disheveled. Her hair fluttered about her face as she trotted over to three of Eragon’s elven guards, who were standing in a pool of shadow behind a nearby pavilion. For a few moments, she spoke urgently with one of them, a thin-faced elf woman named Invidia, then hurried back the way she had come.
Eragon caught up with her before she had covered more than a few yards. “How goes it?” he asked.
“Badly.”
“Why is it taking so long? Can’t you help her give birth any faster?”
Arya’s expression, which was already strained, became even more severe. “I could. I could have sung the child out of her womb in the first half hour, but Gertrude and the other women will only let me use the simplest of spells.”
“That’s absurd! Why?”
“Because magic frightens them—and I frighten them.”
“Then tell them you mean no harm. Tell them in the ancient language, and they’ll have no choice but to believe you.”
She shook her head. “It would only make matters worse. They would think I was trying to charm them against their will, and they would send me away.”
“Surely Katrina—”
“She is the reason I was able to cast the spells I did.”
Again Elain screamed.
“Won’t they at least let you ease her pain?”
“No more than I already have.”
Eragon spun toward Horst’s tent. “Is that so,” he growled between clenched teeth.
A hand closed around his left arm and held him in place. Puzzled, he looked back at Arya for an explanation. She shook her head. “Don’t,” she said. “These are customs older than time itself. If you interfere, you will anger and embarrass Gertrude and turn many of the females from your village against you.”
“I don’t care about that!”
“I know, but trust me: right now the wisest thing you can do is to wait with the others.” As if to emphasize her point, she released his arm.
“I can’t just stand by and let her suffer!”
“Listen to me. It’s better if you stay. I will help Elain however I can, that I promise, but do not go in there. You will only cause strife and anger where none are needed.… Please.”
Eragon hesitated, then snarled with disgust and threw up his hands as Elain screamed yet again. “Fine,” he said, and leaned close to Arya, “but whatever happens, don’t let her or the child die. I don’t care what you have to do, but don’t let them die.”
Arya studied him with a serious gaze. “I would never allow a child to come to harm,” she said, and resumed walking.
As she disappeared inside Horst’s tent, Eragon returned to where Roran, Albriech, and Baldor were gathered and sank back down onto his barrel.
“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.”