When Eragon hesitated, unsure whether to tell her the truth, Arya said, “You would not know the name of its maker, wise one, but during your travels, you must surely have heard tell of the belt of the twelve stars.”
The herbalist’s eyes widened. “That belt?! But I thought it was lost over four centuries ago, destroyed during the—”
“We recovered it,” said Arya flatly.
Eragon could see that the herbalist longed to ask more questions, but she merely said, “I see.… We can’t waste time searching every room in this warren, though. Once the priests realize you’ve escaped, we’ll have the whole pack of them nipping at our heels.”
Eragon motioned toward the novitiate on the floor and said, “Maybe he can tell us where they took our things.”
Dropping into a squat, the herbalist placed two fingers against the youth’s jugular vein, feeling his pulse. Then she slapped his cheeks and peeled back his eyelids.
The novitiate remained slack and motionless.
His lack of response seemed to annoy the herbalist. “One moment,” she said, closing her eyes. A slight frown creased her brow. For a while, she was still; then she sprang upward with sudden speed. “What a self-absorbed little wretch! No wonder his parents sent him to join the priests. I’m surprised they put up with him as long as they did.”
“Does he know anything of use?” asked Eragon.
“Only the path to the surface.” She pointed toward the door to the left of the altar, the same door through which the priests had entered and departed. “It’s amazing that he tried to free you; I suspect it’s the first time in his life he’s ever done anything of his own accord.”
“We have to bring him with us.” Eragon hated to say it, but duty compelled him. “I promised we would if he helped us.”
“He tried to kill you!”
“I gave my word.”
Angela sighed and rolled her eyes. To Arya, she said, “I don’t suppose you can convince him otherwise?”
Arya shook her head, then hoisted the young man onto her shoulder without apparent effort. “I’ll carry him,” she said.
“In that case,” the herbalist said to Eragon, “you had best have this, since it seems you and I are to do most of the fighting.” She handed him her short sword, then drew a poniard with a jeweled hilt from within the folds of her dress.
“What is it made of?” Eragon asked as he peered through the transparent blade of the sword, noticing how it caught and reflected the light. The substance reminded him of diamond, but he could not imagine that anyone would make a weapon out of a gemstone; the amount of energy required to keep the stone from breaking with every blow would soon exhaust any normal magician.
“Neither stone nor metal,” said the herbalist. “A word of caution, though. You must take great care when handling it. Never touch the edge or allow anything you cherish to come near it, else you will regret it. Likewise, never lean the sword against something you might need—your leg, for example.”
Wary, Eragon held the sword farther away from his body. “Why?”
“Because,” said the herbalist with evident relish, “this is the sharpest blade in all of existence. No other sword or knife or ax can match the keenness of its edge, not even Brisingr. It is the ultimate embodiment of an incision-making instrument. This”—she paused for emphasis—“is the archetype of an inclined plane.… You’ll not find its equal anywhere. It can cut through anything not protected by magic, and many things that are. Try it if you don’t believe me.”
Eragon looked around for something to test the sword against. In the end, he strode over to the altar and swung the blade at one corner of the stone slab.
“Not so quickly!” cried Angela.
The transparent blade passed through four inches of stone as if the granite were no harder than custard, then continued down toward his feet. Eragon yelped and jumped back, barely managing to stop his arm before he cut himself.
The corner of the altar bounced off the step below and then tumbled clacking toward the middle of the room.
The blade of the sword, Eragon realized, might very well be diamond after all. It would not need as much protection as he had assumed, since it would rarely meet with any substantial resistance.
“Here,” said Angela. “You had better have this as well.” She unbuckled the sword’s scabbard and gave it to him. “It’s one of the few things you can’t cut with that blade.”
It took Eragon a moment to find his voice after so nearly lopping off his toes. “Does the sword have a name?”
Angela laughed. “Of course. In the ancient language, its name is Albitr, which means exactly what you think. But I prefer to call it Tinkledeath.”
“Tinkledeath!”
“Yes. Because of the sound the blade makes when you tap it.” She demonstrated with the tip of a fingernail and smiled at the resulting high-pitched note that pierced the darkened chamber like a ray of sunshine. “Now then, shall we be off?”
Eragon checked to make sure they were not forgetting anything; then he nodded, strode to the left-hand door, and opened it as quietly as he could.
Through the doorway was a long, broad hallway lit by torches. And standing guard in two smart rows, one along each side of the hallway, were twenty of the black-garbed warriors who had ambushed them earlier.
They looked at Eragon and reached for their weapons.
A curse ran through Eragon’s mind, and he sprang forward, intending to attack before the warriors could draw their swords and organize themselves into an effective group. He had only covered a few feet, however, when a flicker of movement appeared next to each man: a soft, shadowy blur, like the motion of a windblown pennant seen at the edge of his vision.
Without so much as a single cry, the twenty men stiffened and fell to the floor, dead, every last one of them.
Alarmed, Eragon slowed to a stop before he ran into the bodies. Each of the men had been stabbed through an eye, as neat as could be.
He turned to ask Arya and Angela if they knew what had happened, but the words died in his throat as he beheld the herbalist. She stood braced against a wall, leaning on her knees and panting heavily. Her skin had gone deathly white, and her hands were shaking. Blood dripped from her poniard.
Awe and fear filled Eragon. Whatever the herbalist had done, it was beyond his understanding.
“Wise one,” said Arya, and she too sounded uncertain, “how did you manage to do this?”
The herbalist chuckled between breaths, then said, “I used a trick … I learned from my master … Tenga … ages ago. May a thousand spiders bite his ears and knobbly bits.”
“Yes, but how did you do it?” insisted Eragon. A trick like that might be useful in Urû’baen.
The herbalist chuckled again. “What is time but motion? And what is motion but heat? And are not heat and energy but different names for the same thing?” She pushed herself off the wall, walked over to Eragon, and patted him on the cheek. “When you understand the implications of that, you’ll understand how and what I did.… I won’t be able to use the spell again today, not without hurting myself, so don’t expect me to kill everyone the next time we run into a batch of men.”