“Were you not being honest with me before?” asked Arya, a gleam in her eyes. To be honest, I think it might be the only hope we have of vanquishing him in battle.” “It seems as if that would be the fastest way to end this war. “Has anyone tried to guess Galbatorix’s true name?” Eragon asked.

“The thought that many things are not what they appear.” Dust billowed around her hand as she patted the ground, effacing the glyphs from the surface of the earth. They read: The trickster, the riddler, the keeper of the balance, he of the many faces who finds life in death and who fears no evil he who walks through doors. He tilted his head and sidled closer in order to decipher the glyphs she had inscribed. “No.” With a flourish, she completed the latest sentence she had been working on. “They wouldn’t believe that if they had met Saphira,” said Eragon.Īrya smiled. “The Banishing of the Names is the main reason so many people now believe that dragons were nothing more than animals to ride from one place to another.” The experience was so disturbing, at least five of the thirteen, and several of the Forsworn, went mad as a result.” Arya paused, considering the outline of a glyph, then rubbed it out and redrew it. Word by word, the spell obliterated everything that defined them as thinking creatures, and the Forsworn had no choice but to watch in silent misery as their dragons descended into complete ignorance.

They could not even call themselves dragons. No longer could they say, ‘I like this’ or ‘I dislike that’ or ‘I have green scales,’ for to say that would be to name themselves. And as a result, the thirteen were reduced to little more than animals. “True names, birth names, nicknames, family names, titles. “Did they erase those as well?”Īrya nodded. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since becoming a Rider, it’s that you never, ever want to have a dragon for an enemy. What a horrible fate, to lose one’s name, thought Eragon. The dragons spared Jarnunvösk, Galbatorix’s first dragon, for it was not his fault he was killed by Urgals, and also Shruikan, for he did not choose to serve Galbatorix but was forced to by Galbatorix and Morzan.”

“Did I not just say it was inexplicable? All we know is that after the dragons cast their spell, no one could utter the names of the thirteen those who remembered the names soon forgot them and while you can read the names in scrolls and letters where they are recorded and even copy them if you look at only one glyph at a time, they are as gibberish. Together, they stripped the thirteen of their names.”Īwe crawled over Eragon. When the dragons realized that thirteen of their own had betrayed them-that those thirteen were helping Galbatorix to eradicate the rest of their race and that it was unlikely anyone could stop their rampage-the dragons grew so angry, every dragon not of the Forsworn combined their strength and wrought one of their inexplicable pieces of magic. “It is one of the most significant events that happened during the fighting between the Riders and the Forsworn. Touching her dry blade of grass to the ground, she resumed writing in the dirt. “What he spoke of,” said Arya, “was Du Namar Aurboda, The Banishing of the Names.” I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it.” “Only that it concerned a name that was no name, or some such. “Do you recall nothing of what he said, whether with words or not?”Įragon hesitated.

Eragon ancient language glyphs