Eldest is the second novel in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, first published by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2005. It opens in the aftermath of the battle beneath Farthen Dûr: the Varden have held the dwarf city of Tronjheim, but their leader Ajihad is dead, and his daughter Nasuada inherits both his command and a war she cannot yet win.
Eragon and Saphira are sent north to Ellesméra, the hidden capital of the elves within the forest of Du Weldenvarden, to complete the training no one left alive was able to give them. There they find Oromis and his dragon Glaedr — the last Rider and dragon still free of Galbatorix — and begin a long apprenticeship in magic, swordsmanship and the ancient language. Eragon's progress is shadowed by the crippling wound he took from the Shade Durza, and complicated by his feelings for the elf Arya, who does not return them.
The novel's second thread follows Eragon's cousin Roran. Left behind in Carvahall when Eragon fled, Roran becomes the target of Galbatorix's soldiers and the Ra'zac, who burn the valley and carry off Katrina. Roran leads the villagers over the Spine and south towards Surda, seizing a ship at Teirm, and turns from a farmer into a leader of men. The two storylines converge on the Burning Plains, where the Varden meet the Empire's army and Eragon is confronted by an enemy Rider whose identity changes everything he believed about his own family.
Written when Paolini was in his early twenties, Eldest is a deliberately traditional high fantasy — a quest narrative built on mentorship, inheritance and the slow acquisition of power — and it deepens the world of Alagaësia considerably, giving the elves, dwarves and dragons of the first book their own histories, politics and losses.
