Sja Fram [Inheritance Cycle | Eragon Fanfiction]

Chapter XXXIX: Preparation

Umaroth, get up! Saphira growled in my head. I jerked awake, reaching for my sword. I blinked upon realising that it was still night.

"You must come!" A dwarf said from the entrance of the cave, wringing his hands. "Great trouble – Ajihad summons you. There is no time!"

I grabbed my weapons and put them on. "What's wrong?" Eragon asked as he did the same.

The dwarf only shook his head, beard wagging. "Go, you must! Carkna bragha. Now!"

Eragon and I strapped the saddle onto Saphira. So much for a good night's sleep, she groused. Eragon clambered onto her back and I followed. Saphira launched herself from the cave, and the cold was quick to wake me up properly.

Orik was waiting for us with a grim expression when we landed at Tronjheim's gates. "Come, the others are waiting." He led us through Tronjheim to Ajihad's study. On the way, Eragon piled him with questions, while I struggled to stay awake. In reply to Eragon's questions, Orik would only say, "I don't know enough myself – wait until you hear Ajihad."

The large study door was opened by a pair of burly guards. Ajihad stood behind his desk, bleakly inspecting a map. Arya and a man with wiry arms were there as well. Ajihad looked up. "Good, you're all here. Eragon, Umaroth, meet Jörmundur, my second in command."

Once we'd all acknowledged each other, we turned our attention to Ajihad. "I roused the five of you because we're all in grave danger. About half an hour ago, a dwarf ran out of an abandoned tunnel under Tronjheim. He was bleeding and nearly incoherent, but he had enough sense left to tell the dwarves what was pursuing him: an army of Urgals, maybe a day's march from here."

Shocked silence filled the study. Then Jörmundur swore explosively and began asking questions at the same time Orik did. Ajihad raised his hands. "Quiet! There is more. The Urgals aren't approaching over land, but under it. They're in the tunnels... we're going to be attacked from below."

Eragon raised his voice in the din that followed. "Why didn't the dwarves know about this sooner? How did the Urgals find the tunnels?"

"We're lucky we know about it this early!" Orik bellowed. Everyone stopped talking to hear him. "There are hundreds of tunnels throughout the Beor Mountains, uninhabited since the day they were mined. The only dwarves who go in them are eccentrics who don't want contact with anyone. We could have just as easily received now warning at all."

Ajihad pointed at the map, and we all shuffled closer. The map depicted the southern half of Alagaësia, but until the one Eragon and I owned, it showed the entire Beor Mountain range in detail. Ajihad's finger was on the section of the Beor Mountains that touched Surda's eastern border. "This," he said, "is where the dwarf claimed to have come from."

"Orthíad!" Orik exclaimed.

"What?" I asked.

"It's an ancient dwelling of ours that was deserted when Tronjhei was completed," Orik explained. "During its time, it was the greatest of our cities. But no one's lived there for centuries."

"And it's old enough for some of the tunnels to have collapsed," Ajihad said. "That's how we surmise it was discovered from the surface. I suspect that Orthíad is now being called Ithrö Zhâda. That's where the Urgal column that was chasing Saphira, Eragon, and Umaroth were supposed to go. And, I'm sure it's where the Urgals have been migrating all year. From Ithrö Zhâda they can travel anywhere they want in the Beor Mountains. They have the power to destroy both the Varden and the dwarves."

Jörmundur bent over the map, eyeing it carefully. "Do you know how many Urgals there are? Are Galbatorix's troops with them? We can't plan a defence without knowing how large their army is."