The hours crawled past, and Eragon grew increasingly frustrated. His time was running out—ideally he and Saphira should have left for the Varden the previous day—and yet no matter what he tried, he seemed unable to describe himself as he was.
It was nearly midnight, by his reckoning, when the rain ceased.
Eragon fidgeted, trying to make up his mind; then he bounded to his feet, too wound up to bear sitting any longer. I’m going for a walk, he said to Glaedr.
He expected the dragon to object, but instead Glaedr said, Leave your weapons and armor here.
Why?
Whatever you find, you need to face it by yourself. You cannot learn what you are made of if you rely on anyone or anything else to help you.
Glaedr’s words made sense to Eragon, but still he hesitated before he unbuckled his sword and dagger and pulled off his mail hauberk. He donned his boots and his damp cloak, and then he dragged the saddlebags that contained Glaedr’s heart of hearts closer to Saphira.
As Eragon started to leave the half circle of stones, Glaedr said, Do what you must, but be careful.
* * *
Outside the nesting house, Eragon was pleased to see patches of stars and enough moonlight shining through the gaps in the clouds for him to make out his surroundings.
He bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, wondering where to go, and then he set off at a brisk trot toward the heart of the ruined city. After a few seconds, his frustration got the better of him and he increased his pace to an all-out run.
As he listened to the sound of his breathing and of his footsteps pounding against the paving stones, he asked himself, Who am I? But no answer came to him.
He ran until his lungs began to fail, and then he ran some more, and when neither his lungs nor his legs would sustain him any longer, he stopped by a weed-filled fountain and leaned on his arms against it while he recovered his breath.
Around him loomed the shapes of several enormous buildings: shadowy hulks that looked like a range of ancient, crumbling mountains. The fountain stood in the center of a vast square courtyard, much of which was littered with pieces of broken stone.
He pushed himself off the fountain and slowly turned in a circle. In the distance, he could hear the deep, resonant croaking of the bullfrogs, an odd booming sound that grew especially loud whenever one of the larger frogs participated.
A cracked slab of stone several yards away caught his eye. He walked over, grasped it by the edges, and, with a heave, picked it off the ground. The muscles in his arms burning, he staggered to the edge of the courtyard and threw the slab onto the grass beyond.
It landed with a soft but satisfying thump.
He strode back to the fountain, unclasped his cloak, and draped it over the edge of the sculpture. Then he strode to the next piece of rubble—a jagged wedge that had cleaved off a larger block—and he fit his fingers underneath it and lifted it onto his shoulder.
For over an hour, he labored to clear the courtyard. Some of the fallen masonry was so big, he had to use magic to move it, but for the most part he was able to use his hands. He was methodical about it; he worked back and forth across the courtyard, and every piece of rubble he encountered, no matter how large or small, he stopped to remove.
The effort soon left him drenched in sweat. He would have removed his tunic, but the edges of the stone were often sharp and would have cut him. As it was, he accumulated a host of bruises across his chest and shoulders, and he scraped his hands in numerous places.
The exertion helped calm his mind and, since it required little thought, left him free to mull over all that he was and all that he might be.
In the midst of his self-appointed task, as he was resting after having shifted a particularly heavy length of cornice, he heard a threatening hiss, and he looked up to see a snalglí—this one with a shell at least six feet tall—gliding out of the darkness with startling speed. The creature’s boneless neck was fully extended, its lipless mouth was like a slash of darkness splitting its soft flesh, and its bulbous eyes were pointed directly at him. By the light of the moon, the snalglí’s exposed flesh gleamed like silver, as did the track of slime it left behind.
“Letta,” said Eragon, and he straightened upright and shook drops of blood from his torn hands. “Ono ach néiat threyja eom verrunsmal edtha, O snalglí.”
As he spoke his warning, the snail slowed and retracted its eyes several inches. It paused when it was a few yards away, hissed again, and began to circle around to his left.
“Oh no you don’t,” he muttered, turning with it. He glanced over his shoulders to make sure no other snalglí were approaching from behind.
The giant snail seemed to realize that it could not catch him by surprise, for it stopped and sat hissing and waving its eyeballs at him.
“You sound like a teapot left to boil,” he said to it.
The snalglí’s eyeballs waved even faster, and then it charged at him, the edges of its flat belly undulating.
Eragon waited until the last moment, then jumped to the side and let the snalglí slide past. He laughed and slapped the back of its shell. “Not too bright, are you?” Dancing away from it, he began to taunt the creature in the ancient language, calling it all sorts of insulting but perfectly accurate names.
The snail seemed to puff up with rage—its neck thickened and bulged, and it opened its mouth even farther and began to sputter as well as hiss.