The next morning, Roran and Eragon leave for Carvahall, waving goodbye to Garrow as he offers words of wisdom for Eragon and money for Roran. They meet Dempton, Roran’s new boss as the blacksmiths and Eragon takes a dislike to him immediately. The blacksmith pulls Eragon aside and asks him about the blue stone, warning him that two odd men were looking for a similar stone and that Eragon should be rid of it.
Horst tells Eragon that no one betrayed him for having the stone but that he should be wary as the strangers gave him a bad feeling. After hugging his cousin and waving goodbye, Eragon overhears Sloan speaking to two hissing voices about an incidence that happened 3 months ago. After some threats by the two voices and reassurances by Sloan, the two turn to see Eragon and begin approaching them with their swords unsheathing. Brom enters the scene at the last minute, calling Eragon’s name and scaring off the strangers.
Brom accepts Eragon’s excuses of dizziness and urges him to return him. He asks one more time about the trader who offered so much information about dragons. Eragon is unable to answer any questions though. As Eragon leaves, he shakes Brom’s hand and his glove comes off, revealing the oval shaped mark on his palm. He runs off before Brom can say anything.
Eragon runs home quickly and finds his uncle outside, near the barn. He decides to go to Saphira first, to show his uncle and make sure he believes him. As he approaches her, she becomes agitated by the news of the strangers and the smell of blood. Eragon climbs on her back and she flies away, unable to calm down.
Eragon clings for his life as she flies high above the woods, making him sick. He tries to get her to return but in her fright, she refuses angrily. She flies all the way to the Spine and when he finally falls to the snow from her back, he is in horrible pain. When he questions why she took him away, she tells him the strangers were killers and he becomes angry that his uncle is in danger. As night approaches, Eragon sleeps within Saphira’s wings, realizing that he might be too late to help his uncle.
Waking in the Spine, Eragon realizes they are in the spot where he found Saphira’s egg. Tired and hungry, Eragon asks to be returned home. She is still frightened, but his angry accusations force her to take him back. When they finally return, the farm is in ruins and Saphira immediately sense the horrors that have occurred.
In Eragon’s anger, he blames Saphira for the destruction, though she claims she has saved his life. They dig through the rubble and finally find Garrow, unearthing him of the rubble. His body is horribly burned and oozing. Saphira takes the two and flies to Carvahall, throwing Saphira’s secrecy to the wind. She drops him off near the town and Eragon begins to drag Garrow toward the town. Finally Brom arrives, running towards them, and Eragon collapses.
While still passed out Eragon sees silver haired men with lances boarding a ship and dragons flying above. He wakes from his dream to find he’s in the Gertrude, the town healer’s hut. Garrow is not getting any better and Eragon has been unconscious himself for more than 2 days.
She presses Eragon for answers about what happened on the farm, the entire village being curious about it as well as asking about his scar from the egg. He lies to her and goes to visit Garrow instead, being kept at Horst’s house. Horst’s family greets Eragon and show him to Garrow who is covered with unhealable burns, causing Eragon to feel that much more helpless. As Horst begins to question him as well, he hears Saphira’s shouts in his mind, finally able to get through after his recovery. They are going to have to leave the village for a while.
]]>The prologue is a scene that will make significantly more sense later in the novel. It opens with a Shade, a nearly human creature of the dark, sensing danger and urging his Urgal companions to be quiet. The group sits quietly as a trio of elves ride – two men and a woman – fully armed with bows and swords.
The Shade and Urgals attack the three elves, shooting down the two male elves with bow shots. The female escapes temporarily, Urgals making chase and the Shade chanting a magical phrase that sets the woods on fire from above on a giant rock.
The Shade jumps from his roost and catches the female elf, trapping her between himself and the Urgals. She quickly removes a blue stone and before the Shade can cast the necessary magic to snag the rock, it disappears. Angered by the interaction, the Shade kills his Urgal companions and takes the elf captive before riding away.
Hunting in the woods of The Spine, in the vast land of Alagaësia, Eragon is a 15 year old boy, only a year from official “manhood”. While sighting a female deer with his bow to gather food for his family, Eragon is rocked by an explosion throughout the woods.
A circle of dead grass forms around the blast center with hundreds of trees ripped clean. Eragon walks toward the explosion point and notices the presence of a stone, cautious but for a moment before picking it up. The polished blue stone is very hard yet smooth and colorful. Eragon is unsure of it other than that it might be valuable, so he packs it up and sleeps for the night.
The next day Eragon hikes his way back out of the woods to return home without any game. It takes him nearly two days to reach the Palancar Valley where Carvahall – his home – is located. Before heading home he decides to stop at the butcher shop and pick up some meat for his family.
Because Eragon has no money, he attempts to sell the blue stone for the meat, but the butcher – Sloan – will not take it because its value is unknown. The small amount he’s willing to offer is too little for Eragon, so he advises him to wait for a merchant to arrive in town to appraise it. When Eragon finally takes the money, he admits he found the stone in the Spine, to which Sloan angrily refuses the trade. He threatens Eragon and tells him to leave.
Horst enters, the town’s blacksmith and calms the butcher, eventually buying a selection of meats for Eragon and sending him on his way, happy to have humiliated the butcher. Confused by the butcher’s reaction, Eragon is advised to ask his uncle about it for more details. Eragon remembers that he must pass along a message of love to the butcher’s daughter Katrina from his cousin Roran.
After completing his business in town, Eragon leaves for his uncle’s farm, a mere 10 miles away. Eragon’s Uncle Garrow greets him gruffly and grows angry at the meat received in charity. Eragon reassures him that he is to work the meat off as an assistant to the blacksmith in the spring and that he will juggle the work between his uncle’s farm and blacksmithing.
After Eragon shows his uncle the stone, Garrow explains that Sloan’s wife was killed in the Spine and that it is indeed odd for him to react quite so harshly, even with such history.
The following chapter describes the life of a farm boy with Eragon readjusting to his life on his uncle’s farm with his uncle and his cousin Roran. Working to harvest their crops before a blizzard works through and covers thearea in snow, Garrow worries about the traders making their way through. A bit later, Eragon notes their tracks and everyone packs up and readies for them.
They arrive in town and Eragon begins looking for a merchant to value his stone, noticing how wary everyone appears. When he finds Merlock, a jewel merchant, he and Garrow enter a private tent to observe the tone. Unable to value the stone, he comments on how hard it is and that it is oddly hollow. After offering them what little information he can about the stone, Merlock shares what he knows of the world, the illness, fights, and bad luck of Alagaësia. Urgals are attacking villages in the desert, so the king has sent his own armies to fight them.
Later in a tavern, Eragon hears more of the world, of the rebel Vardens fighting with the Urgals against the King. The traders speak highly of the king, to which the villagers disagree. The villagers continue to argue with the traders about the empire, displaying their hatred for the king and the empire, going way back, wary of his intentions.
Brom, the storyteller, later weaves stories of the Dragon Riders, protectors of the king and allies of elves and dwarves. Everyone was happy until one day a certain rider named Galbatorix’s dragon was killed, sending him into madness, searching everywhere for a new dragon. The other riders denied him one as he was now evil. There were two riders though who helped Galbatorix sneak in and steal a young dragon though, and with Morzan at his side fought the Riders. There were 13 evil riders in all at the end and they killed all of the other riders and defeated King Vrael to place Galbatorix on the throne.
Returning from the village, Eragon tests the hollowness of his stone with various items, beating on it repeatedly until it produces a mild squeak. Later that night while sleeping he is awoken by another squeak, this time much louder coming from the stone. After hiding the stone under his bed he goes back to sleep for the night, intent on dealing with it in the morning.
When the stone moves about under his bed, Eragon wakes once more and decides to bury it. However, it falls and cracks as he’s leaving and soon enough a dragon breaks its way through the shell.
The dragon itself is small and covered in blue sapphires, revealing the stone as an egg. The dragon watches him for a moment, but then begins to explore. When Eragon reaches to touch the dragon he feels a jolt of energy course through him, extremely painful in its abruptness. An oval then appears on his hand. When he touches the dragon a second time, nothing happens nearly so violent. However, a small charge runs through him and he feels emotions that are not his own. The dragon is hungry, so he feeds it and decides to hide the dragon, knowing he cannot kill it but that the dragon could bring pain and worry to his family.
The next day, Eragon takes the dragon to the woods and builds a small shelter for her, telling her to stay through their new telepathic link. The dragon survives well on her own and Eragon begins to spend a great deal of time with her. The dragon quickly begins to grow and the two begin to communicate much better. Stretching to longer distances, their link is almost complete and the dragon begins to grow large dagger like teeth and heavy scales. Worried for the safety of the dragon, Eragon covers her tracks often, keeping her secret.
Because he doesn’t understand dragons as well as he’d like, Eragon heads to Brom to learn more. Brom tells Eragon the story of the Dragon Riders and their origins, how dragons arrived with the creation of Algalsia and that early on elves and dragons fought vehemently. One day an elf named Eragon found an egg and raised his dragon in secret. The two later made the case for peace and Eragon became the first dragon rider. Brom also tells Ergaon that dwarves have disappeared in recent years, hiding underground to escape the reach of the empire.
Brom tells Eragon that some dragons can reach a wingspan of up to 100 feet, and when Eragon tells Brom that he’s heard the scales of dragons are gem like, Brom demands to know from where the information was heard. Dragons can not only live for hundreds of years but have a magical impact on other living things. Because of this link, Dragon Riders become smarter and stronger than other humans. The last thing the two discuss is names for dragons, Eragon seeking a name for his new dragon. The last name given to him is Saphira.
Roran and Eragon are leaving Carvahall to return home and Roran reveals that he’s been offerd a job in a mill very far from Carvahall. He also announces that he will propose to Katrina. Eragon for his part is worried that his father will not accept the decision, worried about the work that needs to be done on the farm.
Now that Eragon knows that dragons are as intelligent as human beings, he sees his in a different light. Even with her reaching out to him, Eragon is in a fowl mood, something that she can also feel through their link. He begins listing names for the dragon, at first turned down because he’s listing male names for a female dragon and then just turned down because she doesn’t like them. Eventually, he says Saphira and she accepts the name, happy with the sound of it.
Despite his worries that he wouldn’t, Garrow accepts Roran’s plans and they decide he will be leaving in two weeks. Eragon is worried about the upcoming changes and discusses them at length with Saphira. The two become much closer as they have intelligent conversations and Saphira displays her wisdom. Wanting to reveal her to his family, Eragon is cautioned to be wary by Saphira because of how they might react. On the night Roran is to leave, Eragon almost tells his cousin about Saphira, but decides against it, worried about how busy his cousin already is with his packing.
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-Jigsaw
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