Yes, it's Rosyla Gypsy again, writing in yet another completely randomn fandom. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Beauty and the Beast . . . I swear, it's not my fault, my Muse just happens to be notoriously incapable of sticking to commitments. (sigh)

Anyway, as soon as I read Eragon and its sequal, said Muse started berating me so painfully that I had no choice but to take to the precious laptop (my one, my own, my preciousss . . . ahem) I was particularly disappointed with the way the killed off my fave character in the first chapter of Eldest, then brought him back in the last chapter, wherapon he has now turned evil. Gahh! (Whew, glad to get that off my chest . . ;)

I sincerely hope you like this story - for the record, I plan on sticking with it!

Disclaimer: If I owned all the fandoms I've written in over the years, I'd be a squillion-billionaire and buy Alagaësia.

1. Discovery

It was a cool night. Eragon shivered and fought to keep his mind off the way the chilly breeze bit into every exposed piece of flesh that his thick but worn clothes did not cover. This was a hunt and he hadn't spent the last two days wandering the Spine just to return home. His family was counting on whatever he could bring back.

The deer was just ahead of him, obliviously grazing on a patch of grass. It was quite young, and Eragon had thanked his lucky stars when it had broken off from its herd, presenting him with the perfect opportunity. It had taken a lot of pleading to convince Garrow to let him finally go on a hunting trip alone.

Silently, without taking his eyes off the target, the boy notched an arrow into the bow Garrow had made him for his last birthday. Traditionally, a boy was considered old enough to be deemed a capable hunter when he was fourteen, but Eragon was quite talented for his age, with a sharp eye and steady arm. Of course, it helped that he idolized his cousin Roran, who was nearly sixteen and one of Carvahall's best huntsmen.

He drew back the arrow and aimed it at the deer with careful precision, his mind whirling with excitement at being able to finally prove himself in the eyes of his uncle and cousin. Just one more second. One more . . .

A muffled scream of agony suddenly cut through the air, startling Eragon into releasing the arrow several feet away from his target. The deer was likewise spooked and bounded away in fright. Barely noticing that his potential winter meat supply was now out of his grasp, Eragon whirled around, his eyes wide as they scanned the dark area. The scream had sounded very close, and had belonged to a human. A human male, he was sure.

For a few seconds, he waited breathlesly, hardly daring to move. If someone had screamed, then they'd had to have reason to scream; if there was something dangerous in the woods then maybe he should make a run for it.

The scream came again, and this time he was sure it was to the left somewhere. Eragon bit his lip in a moment of indecision. He had been told all sorts of stories about strange happenings in the Spine, and he knew that the majority of the village - with the possible exception of Roran - would do the smart thing and head off home. However, Eragon was empathetic by nature, and couldn't stand seeing another person in trouble.

Making up his mind, he timidly walked in the direction of the unknown sufferer. Eragon had never been scared of the forest at night - he rather found the silence peaceful in comparison to his busy life at home - but tonight the trees seemed dark and forbidding as they loomed up in front of him as he made his way foward. His vivid imagination started to conjure up all sorts of terrors that he imagined lurking in the dark, just waiting to jump out at him.

His pulse was racing and he forced himself to calm down. It was pointless getting all worked up over nothing. He was always getting scolded by different people for his "mindless fantasies" and was now beginning to see their point . . .

Eragon's heart jumped into his thoat as something big and soft suddenly appeared before his feet. With a yelp, he toppled over and met the hard ground with a dull thud. After a brief moment in which he just lay there, trying to compose himself, he jumped as the road block suddenly shifted at his feet. Scrambling to his hands and knees, Eragon crawled cautiously over to the apparant cause for the screaming.

Because of the limited light that the moon provided, it was impossible for him to tell what the person's injuries were, but from the way they were curled up into a tight ball and letting out raspy, irregular breaths, they were obviously very hurt. After a quick, nervous glance around to reassure himself that there were no immediate threats nearby, Eragon slowly reached out a hand and placed it on the person's trembling shoulder, giving it a little shake.

In response the figure curled up tighter, as though trying to present as small a target as possible for an unknown attacker. Frowning, Eragon tried again, and whispered, "Hey, it's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

The person suddenly froze, and the boy took it as a sign that they were listening. "Look, you're obviously hurt, but I can't tell how much - if you let me, I can take you back to my camp, it's not far," he continued, trying to sound much calmer and more confident than he felt.

There was a long stretch of silence in which Eragon began to consider whether or not his discovery was still conscious, when they finally raised their head slowly to face him.

Eragon saw that the person was indeed male, with a thin, pallid face that looked deathly pale even in the dark. It was framed by a mass of black hair that reached his neck, and there was a small but steady trickle of blood that running down from his nose. He was still young, perhaps a couple of years older than himself, but Eragon could tell that he wasn't from the close-knit village of Carvahall. Perhaps Therinsford?

"Who - who are you?" The boy finally whispered, his voice sounding hoarse and raspy. He emphasized the "you" in his sentence, as though having expected to find someone other than Eragon crouched over him.

Swallowing down the thousands of questions that threatened to burst from his mouth, Eragon answered, "I'm Eragon, of Carvahall. I was just hunting when I heard you scream, so I decided to . . ."

"Where am I?" The boy's next question was so unexpected that it shocked him temporarily into silence. How could he not know where he was?

"Uh, you're in the Spine." The boy looked at him blankly. "You know, trecherous mountain range, near the Palancar Valley?" he elaborated, his bewilderment mounting as his companion continued to look utterly unenlightened. Eragon sighed and finally said, "Well, if you're not from the Valley, where are you from? And how did you get those injuries?"

The boy blinked, looking thrown by the question. After a brief interlude of silence, he finally said, "I - I don't know."

"What? How can you not know?"

He shrugged, then winced as the movement seemed to cause him pain. "I don't - I can't remember."

Eragon blew out a frustrated whoosh of air, feeling completely off-balance with the whole situation. He then looked at the boy's head thoughtfully, noticing how part of his hair was all wet and matted. "Maybe you got a concussion and that's why you can't remember. My uncle said that can sometimes happen, if you're hit on the head hard enough."

The boy didn't say anything, and Eragon thought for a moment. The situation mystified and even scared him a little. Part of him wished that this responsibility hadn't been thrust at him - how was he supposed to get this stranger, who had just appeared out of nowhere, back home if here didn't even know where his home was? Ignoring him was out of the question, and his injuries were extensive enough that, by the time Eragon had run home, convinced someone to help him, and returned to this place with said assistance, he would surely be dead.

Finally coming to a decision, he voiced the only solution he could think of. "Look, um . . . why don't I take you back to my camp and treat some of your injuries - I packed some medical supplies, just in case - then we'll go back to my village, which isn't far, and help you return to wherever it is you come from. What do you say?" He tried to keep his voice light and positive, as though what he was proposing would be a breeze to accomplish.

For a tense moment of silence, Eragon could do more than wait for the boy's answer, though he really didn't see any other way out. It was either he accepted the offer or lie here and bleed to death - unless a bear or wolf found him first.

After what seemed a long time, he finally gave a wry smile that looked more like a grimace of pain, and said, "Very well, Eragon of Carvahall. I don't really have a choice, do I?"

Eragon smiled sympathetically. "I guess not." He sighed a little, mentally preparing himself for what he was about to undertake, then a thought occured to him. "Do you remember your name? Or if you don't, can you at least make up one so I have something to adress you as?"

The boy hesitated.

"Murtagh. My name's Murtagh."

It had taken about twenty minutes to get Murtagh back to Eragon's camp, whereas had he been alone, it would have taken less than two. After it became apparant that his discovery couldn't move without some heavy assistance, Eragon had called up all the strength his thirteen-year-old body could muster and half carried, half dragged Murtagh to their destination. Surprisingly, the older boy was quite thin, almost dangerously so, and not as heavy as Eragon had predicted.

Nevertheless, by the time he had clumsily set up his bed roll, helped Murtagh down onto it, and spent several painstaking minutes striving to get a fire going, he was beginning to wonder how on earth he was to get them both back to the village before tomorrow evening. He had been given three days maximum to return, and knew that his family would drag the whole village into the Spine in search of him he he exceeded that limit by so much as a minute.

There was only one thing he wanted at that moment, and it was to lie down and sleep what was left of the night away. However, Murtagh's injuries still needed to be treated lest he was to die of them within the hour, so Eragon took a brief moment to compose himself before reluctantly getting up to rumaging through his pack. He resurfaced with a worn drinking flask, bandages, needle and thread, and a little bottle of liquid made by the village healer, Gertrude, for cuts and scratches.

From the second he had lain down, his sharp green gaze hadn't left Eragon for a second, and quite frankly, it was making him feel nervous. Biting back an annoyed comment, he walked over on his knees and settled himself beside the bedroll. By the light of the fire, Eragon could see that the many cuts that Murtagh had somehow aquired weren't particularly deep or fatal, but he had lost a lot of blood. On closer inspection, parts of his clothes were ravaged and torn, particularly on his back, where an angry collection of welts covered his skin.

"Do you have any idea who did this, or how?" Eragon asked, staring at his back. It looked like someone had taken a whip to him.

Murtagh shook his head and Eragon's uneasiness gave way to anger. How could anyone torture another human being like this? It was pure evil!

Eragon then spent the next hour and a half performing the most uncomfortable healing proccess he had ever imagined. Although Garrow had shown him all the basics and more, and had refused to let him out of the house without a substantial first-aid kit, the boy had bever imagined having to actually use his skills.

He was nervous enough about making a mistake and causing everything to become worse, but it was all the more difficult with Murtagh flinching whenever his hand came anywhere near him. Eragon knew it was more a reflex than his actually being scared, but it was still annoying. It had taken a lot of patience to persuade the older boy to remove his shirt so that he could treat the long red gashes.

When Eragon had come to a particularly nasty cut that had needed to be sewn up, his confidence had quailed. His healing skills were mediocre at best and the idea of threading a needle repeatedly through someone's bloody skin made him feel undeniably queasy.

However, as he hesitated, his clear blue eyes suddenly met Murtagh's pain-clouded green ones. There was something else in those eyes, barely visible beneath the guarded wariness that he seemed to put up on reflex. Eragon realised that it was fear. Fear of what had happened, fear of being subjected to more pain, and fear of the strange boy who held his life in his hands.

The look gave Eragon a strange feeling of resolution. He realised that he wanted to heal this boy; he wanted to prove the fear unfounded. He had never been responsible for someone else's life before - with Roran and Garrow's occasional overprotectiveness always at his back, he'd barely been responsible for his own. But right now, with no one but himself to help this stranger, it gave him a sense of importance and responsibility that he decided he liked. He wanted to be someone this boy could trust.

So, after letting out a bracing sigh, he got to work. Thankfully, Murtagh seemed surprisingly unpertubed by the sharp needle, and Eragon was immersed completely in the task, tongue sticking out one corner of his mouth in concentration, so the task wasn't as uncomfortable as could be predicted.

After that parcticular hurdle was crossed, the rest of the healing process seemed to be downhill. Once they were done, Murtagh looked better, and Eragon inwardly allowed himself a pat on the back. He would not be returning home with a prize kill slung over his back as a tribute to his spectacular hunting skills, but he knew that Garrow would be pleased that his lessons in first-aid had not gone to waste. Of course, Gertrude would probably re-do everything when they got home (he still wasn't sure exactly how they were going to accomplish that), but he was sure the stitches and bandages would hold until then.

After what seemed an eternity, Eragon sighed and sat back on his heels, stretching. "How do you feel?" he asked Murtagh, anxious that his charge would feel as good about the work as he did.

The older boy gave himself a brief once over, examining his patched up wounds. After a few tense moments, he finally said. "Better. How old are you?" He looked up at Eragon as though seeing him for the first time.

"Thirteen," he replied, hoping he didn't look too pleased with himself.

Murtagh's eyes now showed what he was sure was a glimmer of admiration, as well as something else he couldn't interpret. "Really? Not a bad job."

Eragon blushed slightly and moved to the other side of the fire. "We should probably get some sleep. You look like you could use a lot of rest."

His companion nodded, then realised that he was occupying the only bedroll. "What will you sleep on?"

The younger boy looked up, surprised. "The ground. It's fine, I've done it plenty of times before."

Not seeming to have the energy to argue, Murtagh simply shrugged and settled down. "Good night." Eragon said cheerfully, stifling a yawn.

"Yeah, same to you," the other youth replied, then seemed to hesitate. "And thanks . . . Eragon."

The thirteen-year-old closed his eyes, smiling slightly into the fire.