Luminescent (Inheritance Cycle and Beyond)

Chapter Fifty-Five: Brilliant

"Are they standing over the trap?" I asked, keeping my voice low. Elva nodded, I turned to Eragon who promptly slammed his palm against the floor.

A horizontal sheet of metal—thirty feet long and four inches thick—shot out of each wall with a terrible screech. The plates of metal caught the magicians between them and cut them in two, like a pair of giant tin snips, then just as quickly retreated back into their hidden slots.

I put a hand to my mouth and promptly turned away as my small meal came back up. Eragon put a hand to my back as I gagged. Behind us, Elva gurgled, then slumped forward in a faint. Arya caught her before her head hit the floor. Cradling her with one arm, Arya began to murmur to her in the ancient language.

"You okay?" I nodded at Eragon.

"Fine, it just caught me by surprise," I told him before he and the other elves consulted with each other about how best to bypass the trap while I checked on Elva.

Elva blinked up at me as the group decided that the safest way would be to jump over it, as we had with the bed of spikes. Four of them climbed onto Saphira, and she was just about to spring forward when Elva cried out in a weak voice.

"Stop! Don't!" Saphira flicked her tail but remained where she was. Elva slid out of Arya's grasp as I stood up. "There is another trigger, halfway across, in the air. If you jump"—she clapped her hands together, a loud, sharp sound, and made an ugly face—"blades come out from high on the walls, as well as lower."

"Why would Galbatorix try to kill us? ... If you weren't here," Eragon said, looking at Elva, "Saphira might be dead right now. Galbatorix wants her alive, so why this?" He gestured at the bloody floor. "Why the spikes and the blocks of stone?"

"Perhaps," the elf woman Invidia said, "he expected the pits to capture us before we reached the rest of the traps."

"Or perhaps," said Blödhgarm in a grim voice, "he knows that Elva is with us and what she is capable of." The girl shrugged.

"What of it? He can't stop me."

"No, but if he knows of you, then he might be scared, and if he's scared—"

"Then he might really be trying to kill us." Saphira finished.

"It doesn't matter. We still have to find him." Arya said bluntly. Eragon looked over his shoulder and whitened a little. I looked at what he was looking at and cursed under my breath and tugged my hood farther over my head. Murtagh was running from one side of the hallway to the other in our direction. We don't have long.

"Maybe we could put something into the walls, to keep the blades from coming out," I suggested quickly.

"The blades are sure to be protected from magic," Arya pointed out. "Besides, we don't have anything with us that could hold them back. A knife? A piece of armor? The plates of metal are too big and heavy. They would tear past whatever was in front of them as if it were not there." Silence fell upon them. Blödhgarm licked his fangs.

"Not necessarily." He turned and placed his sword on the floor in front of Eragon, then motioned for the elves under his command to do the same. Eleven blades in total they laid before Eragon.

"I can't ask you to do this," Eragon said. "Your swords—"

Blödhgarm interrupted with a raised hand, his fur glossy in the soft light of the lanterns.

"We fight with our minds, Shadeslayer, not our bodies. If we encounter soldiers, we can take what weapons we need from them. If our swords are of more use here and now, then we would be foolish to retain them merely for reasons of sentiment." Eragon inclined his head.