Arrrrgh. I had to rewrite this three times. Three, I tell you! And I finally get it written, and it doesn't even make it to the important stuff! So we have another chapter of set-building and characterization, because Leah is a rebellious pixie and keeps running off with the storyline, and I'm left behind going "Leah! What are you doing? The story isn't supposed to go over there, you should be doing this!" Now I'm in the same boat as poor Eragon. :P Woe is me.
"Make sense so far?" Eragon finished. He'd been explaining the basic layout of the living spaces as they walked; the Riders were on the south side, arranged from the most senior to the west, to Corrin, the least senior, in the easternmost inhabited cell. The elves all slept in the cells on the north colonnade, and the kitchen and storage spaces were all on the west side, leaving the east colonnade empty for the moment.
"Sure," Murtagh acknowledged, "but it doesn't seem very defensible to have all the elves here and all the Riders way over there. Shouldn't everyone be closer together?"
"There isn't anyone out here to defend from," Eragon said. "The elves prefer to have some degree of privacy, and some of them come and go at odd hours; they have a greater freedom of movement on the north side."
"It's not as though we have any shortage of room," rumbled Varog.
Murtagh sighed but left the matter alone. Corrin took advantage of the pause to look around. Their little group had stopped near the northwest corner of the Court, which had an excellent view of the lush, green side of the mountain due east. Corrin tilted his head back to look up and caught sight of a black wing against the blue sky, high above the Court. Shruikan seemed to balance there for a moment, then tilted his wings and soared out of sight behind the shoulder of the mountain.
"Does the mountain have a name?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Not yet," Leah told him. "No one can agree on one."
Varog was making the ruk-ruk sound of laughter again. "I insist that Dragon Mountain is perfectly acceptable."
"Nonsense," Leah jested, "Why not Rider Mountain, then? We live here too."
We should name it after Brom, chuckled Thuviel.
Why Brom and not Eragon? Galzra returned laughingly. Or perhaps Saphira?
"Mount Scales," Corrin offered with a shy smile.
Leah cackled. "Oh, good one! Scales, I like that!" She looked around, and her eyes alit on something behind Corrin. "Ooh, I know! Let's name it Mount Blodhgarm!" she announced with a grin. Corrin turned to see the elf in question watching them with bored yellow eyes.
"I would prefer," he said dryly, "that you did not."
Corrin started laughing despite himself, and he could hear the other two Riders doing likewise. Blodhgarm sighed in a manner that suggested this occurred often, and walked past them to join Eragon and Murtagh where they were in conversation with two other elves. Corrin turned to look over at them, and then back at the two younger Riders beside him. Varog was still laughing, but Leah was watching the conversing group with a speculating expression.
Corrin had only been there a day, but he'd already learned to recognize that expression as trouble. "What are you thinking?" he asked, a little apprehensive. He felt Kiera's attention shift to the other human.
Leah shrugged and turned towards him. "Just that our masters are probably going to be busy for a bit, and it's boring to just stand here; want to go look at something fun?"
"Are we allowed to?" Corrin had a suspicion that they weren't.
Leah smiled brightly. "Better to ask forgiveness than permission, little brother!"
Corrin's opinion of that must have shown on his face, because Leah laughed aloud, and before he knew it, she had linked arms with him and was pulling him along. Then Varog was on Leah's other side, and both of them were laughing, and then all three Riders were running full tilt down the length of the Court. He heard Eragon yell something and Murtagh laugh, but beyond that all his focus was on keeping up with the two older Riders, both of whom were faster runners than he was. Kiera was laughing too, within the confines of his mind, and he felt her urging him to go faster.
They kept going like that all the way to the northeast corner. Corrin, panting, followed Leah and Varog when they ducked into the last cell on the row and into the corner room. Inside, the three of them stood by a wooden table. Carved on it, or maybe grown out of it, was a relief map of their surroundings and the Court itself. Corrin frowned as he caught his breath. Though all the features he remembered seeing from dragonback were there, covered with hard, dark bark, there were several details he didn't remember from the night before, most prominently many slim towers in pale, bare wood.
He compared his memory to Kiera's before he asked. "The real thing doesn't look like that," he pointed out, gesturing to the table.
"Yeah, no," Leah agreed. "This is something the elves made. It helps Eragon and the elves who work on construction to keep track of what we have built and what we want to build in the future. When we finish building anything on here we grow bark over it to differentiate."
Corrin bit his lip. "Is it to scale?"
"More or less," Leah responded. "Why?"
"Those towers would be gigantic," he mentioned hesitantly.
"Have to make room for the dragons somewhere," Varog answered. "They won't fit in the colonnades forever."
"That," Corrin laughed, "I can believe. At this rate Kiera'll be too fat for my legs to fit around in a few years."
I heard that, his dragon announced tartly.
Leah laughed. "She won't be that bad," she assured him. "A dragon's growth rate goes through what's called exponential decay. Some elf Rider defined it, centuries ago; it means that while it might take her a year to grow a foot now, when she gets old it'll take her ten years, or twenty, or two hundred. And the longer she lives, the slower she'll grow."
We'll see about that, Kiera jokingly threatened.
Leah held up her hands in surrender. "As you say, bright one." Corrin stifled his amusement.
Shouldn't you three be worried about Eragon? she huffed.
"Nah," Leah waved the question off. "He's going to introduce Murtagh and Thorn to all the elves on the north side, so he'll be a while."
"How many people are here, total?" Corrin asked, suddenly curious.
Leah cracked her knuckles and leaned over the table. "Well," she responded, "to start with, there are now six dragons."
"Saphira, Thorn, Shruikan, Thuviel, Galzra, and Kiera," Corrin supplied quickly, eager to prove that he'd been paying attention.
"Yes," Leah nodded, "and there are five Riders; Eragon, Murtagh, you, and I, the humans, and then Varog, our only Urgal. The rest are elves."
"And there are how many of them?" Corrin prodded, curiosity unsatisfied.
"I'm getting there," grumbled the other Rider. "During the war, Islanzadi Drottning assigned twelve spellcasters to protect Eragon and Saphira. Of those twelve, Wyrden was killed in Dras-Leona, and Laufin and Uthinare chose to stay in Alagaesia. The remaining nine are here. Besides them, there are twenty elves who decided to journey east with our masters. Seven of those are boatsmen. They live and work down by the dock they built for the Talita; we don't talk with them very much. There are two who work on surveying the mountains, looking for natural resources and the like. Eight have assigned themselves to construction work, and they spend most of their time arguing over materials and architecture. We have three healers, all of whom like the dragons better than us, so you won't see much of them unless you are injured. The rest do odd jobs around the Court and help with food production. The names you actually need to know are Invidia, who weaves clothing for everyone, Calarel, who runs our kitchen, such as it is, and Yaela and Blodhgarm, who help Eragon in teaching the Riders."
"Huh," Corrin murmured, processing this. "I see."
Leah nodded. 'So he'll introduce Murtagh and Thorn to everyone, and then they'll come collect us and the whole group will go over to the southwest corner" she pointed to the correct corridor, "which is where he keeps the mirrors for contacting Alagaesia."
"Is there anything interesting about those?" Corrin inquired.
"Not really," Varog answered, "other than that there is always someone there; Eragon insists that the monarchs in Alagaesia must be able to contact us at all times."
I believe Invidia is on duty at the moment, Galzra contributed, I can hear her loom.
Ebrithil will probably take the opportunity to contact the various kings and queens and inform them that you've arrived safely, Thuviel added.
"Alright," Corrin accepted, "but is that all? It's still barely past mid morning, and Ebrithil said he wouldn't start testing Kiera and I until the afternoon… What?" His question was prompted by Leah and Varog, who had looked at each other as soon as he asked the first question.
Leah glanced back at him and shook her head. "That's not all," she said, "but it's our master's place to show you the rest, not ours."
Corrin scowled and opened his mouth to argue, but Leah ducked around the table and made it back out to the Court before he could ask again. Corrin sighed and followed her back into the sun, grumbling about vague, elfish answers. Kiera snorted in amusement.
So that happened. I will get back to actual plot next chapter. I will. In the meantime, thank you as always to everyone who reviews; I really appreciate the feedback.