Another piece of rock fell from the ceiling and struck the floor with a loud crack.
A hand gripped his arm, and he turned to see Murtagh standing behind him, one arm pressed against the wound in his stomach. “Move aside,” he growled. Eragon did, and Murtagh spoke the name of all names, as he had before, as well as jierda, and the iron cuffs opened and fell from Nasuada’s limbs.
Murtagh took her by the wrist, and he began to lead her toward Thorn. After his first step, she slipped under his arm and allowed him to lean his weight on her shoulders.
Eragon opened his mouth, then closed it. He would ask his questions later.
“Wait!” cried Arya, and she leaped down from Saphira and ran over to Murtagh. “Where is the egg? And the Eldunarí? We can’t leave them!”
Murtagh frowned, and Eragon felt the information pass between him and Arya.
Arya spun around, her burnt hair flying, and sprinted toward a doorway on the opposite side of the room.
“It’s too dangerous!” Eragon shouted after her. “This place is falling apart! Arya!”
Go, she said. Get the children to safety. Go! You haven’t much time!
Eragon cursed. At the very least, he wished she had taken Glaedr with her. He slid Brisingr back into its scabbard, then bent and picked up Elva, who was just beginning to stir.
“What’s happening?” she asked as Eragon carried her up onto Saphira’s back behind the two other children.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “Hold on.”
Saphira had already started moving. Limping because of her wounded foreleg, she trotted around the crater. Thorn followed close behind her, Murtagh and Nasuada upon his back.
“Look out!” shouted Eragon as he saw a chunk of the glowing ceiling break loose directly overhead.
Saphira shied to her left, and the jagged piece of stone landed next to her and sent a burst of straw-yellow shards in every direction. One of them struck Eragon in the side and lodged in his mail. He plucked it out and threw it away. Smoke trailed from the fingers of his gloves, and he smelled burnt leather. More pieces of stone fell elsewhere in the chamber.
When Saphira arrived at the mouth of the hallway, Eragon twisted and looked back at Murtagh. “What of the traps?” he shouted.
Murtagh shook his head and waved for them to continue.
Piles of broken stone covered the floor along much of the hallway, which slowed the dragons. To either side, Eragon could see into the rubble-filled rooms and tunnels that the explosion had torn open. Within them, tables, chairs, and other pieces of furniture burned. The limbs of the dead and dying stuck out at odd angles from beneath the tumbled stones, occasionally a grimy face or the back of a head.
He looked for Blödhgarm and his spellcasters but saw no sign of them, either dead or alive.
Farther down the hallway, hundreds of people—soldiers and servants alike—poured out of the adjoining doorways and ran toward the now-gaping entrance. Broken limbs were common among them, as were burns, scrapes, and other wounds. The survivors moved aside for Saphira and Thorn, but otherwise ignored the dragons.
Saphira was nearly at the end of the hall when a thunderous crash sounded behind them, and Eragon looked back to see that the throne room had caved in on itself, burying the chamber floor under a pile of stone fifty feet thick.
Arya! thought Eragon. He tried to find her with his mind, but without success. Either too much material separated them, or one of the spells woven throughout the mined-out crag blocked his mental probe, or—the one alternative he hated to consider—she was dead. She had not been in the room when it collapsed; that much he knew, but he wondered if she would be able to find her way back out again, now that the throne room was blocked.
As they emerged from the citadel, the air cleared and Eragon was able to see the destruction that the blast had wreaked on Urû’baen. It had ripped off the slate roofs of many nearby buildings and set fire to the beams underneath. Scores of fires dotted the rest of the city. The threads and plumes of smoke drifted upward until they collided with the underside of the shelf above. There they pooled and flowed along the angled surface of the stone, like water over a streambed. By the southeastern edge of the city, the smoke caught the light of the morning sun as it seeped around the side of the overhang, and there the smoke glowed with the reddish-orange color of a fire opal.
The people of Urû’baen were fleeing their houses, streaming through the streets toward the hole in the outer wall. The soldiers and servants from the citadel hurried to join them, giving Saphira and Thorn a wide berth as they ran across the courtyard in front of the fortress. Eragon paid them little attention; as long as they remained peaceful, he did not care what they did.
Saphira stopped in the middle of the quadrangle, and Eragon lowered Elva and the two nameless children to the ground. “Do you know where your parents are?” he asked, kneeling by the siblings.
They nodded, and the boy pointed toward a large house on the left side of the courtyard.
“Is that where you live?”
The boy nodded again.
“Go on, then,” said Eragon, and gave them a gentle push on the back. Without further prompting, the brother and sister ran across the courtyard to the building. The door to the house flew open, and a balding man with a sword at his belt stepped out and wrapped the two of them in his arms. He gave Eragon a glance, then hurried the children inside.
That was easy, Eragon said to Saphira.