Voila! I have returned with more character development. This is a stupidly long chapter, but it has taken the entire two months to get right and I am determined to post it on time. So, I hope you all enjoy the overlong chapter, and please feel free to comment and let me know what you think!
"Ah, I see we've got another bookworm here," Leah said by way of greeting, leaning around the doorway. "Invidia will be thrilled."
Corrin glanced up from the scroll in his hands to find his fellow Rider grinning. He sat in one of several cells in the west colonnade devoted to storing scrolls and books that Eragon and the elves had brought along from Alagaesia. Corrin wasn't much of a reader; he still struggled with the flowing letters of the elven script. However, the afternoon's lessons in fighting and later flying had been as challenging as they were exhilarating, and he was physically exhausted. Because he could not yet participate in learning magic, the last lesson of the day, Eragon had let him go early to the three hour free time that was allotted to the apprentices daily, and Corrin had decided to go explore some of the less active entertainments of the Court.
Now, as he glanced past Leah, he saw that the light outside had darkened towards the blue hues of twilight. "Just investigating," he assured her. "I wanted to see what you all did for fun besides debate ethics and beat new apprentices black and blue."
Leah laughed. "I see," she replied, and then tilted her head in the direction of the outdoors. "In that case, perhaps you'd like to accompany me. The library is great, but there's plenty more to do that we haven't had time to show you."
Corrin, curious, set the scroll back in the honeycombed shelf and followed Leah out through the archway. The dragons were out hunting for an evening meal, so the Court was actually empty at the moment, rather than simply seeming empty because of its sheer size. Leah led him straight out across the expanse of stone, towards the looming silhouette of the unnamed mountain.
"So," Leah asked as they walked, "how are you liking the Rider's Court, now that you've had a full day of lessons?"
"It's good," Corrin replied, picking up speed to match Leah's long-legged stride. "There're a lot of lessons on things I hadn't ever considered that a Rider would need. A lot of lessons in general, actually; I've a lot to do to catch up with you and Varog."
Leah shrugged. "You'll do fine; if it makes you feel better, you've already had about as hard a day as we get. And we do get some variety. Every eighth day Eragon takes us out into the wilderness to learn woodcraft, and once a month we and the dragons spend a day helping ferry building materials from the quarry a few miles south of here."
Corrin winced, imagining a long day of hauling stone. Leah must have seen his face, because she laughed. "It's not as bad as all that. The dragons and senior magic users are the ones who actually have to move the stuff. And Varog usually volunteers to do any other heavy lifting, the lunatic."
Corrin chuckled. "Where is Varog, anyway?"
"Out in the woods looking for fallen branches and the like," Leah answered, glancing through the colonnade to their right at the treeline. "He whittles, if you can believe it. Apparently it's a common pastime among the Urgals."
"Huh. That's neat." Corrin searched for some more interesting reply. "Whittling, not carving?"
"Yep. He's very insistent on the difference whenever I ask him that." At Corrin's curious look, Leah elaborated. "It's actually fairly interesting; whittling is usually just done with a knife, whereas…" and she launched into a lecture on the details of Varog's hobby.
The conversation carried them across the Court and into the woods to the east. By the time Leah finished, they were nearly to where one of the great stone doors of the new Vault of Souls hung ajar.
"...anyways, Varog is going to try and teach me more during Dashelgr. You're welcome to join us, if you'd like." Leah eyed the bulk of the mountain before she entered.
"Dashelgr?" Corrin glanced at her, frowning, as they stepped into the shadowy passageway bored into the mountain.
"You didn't-?" Leah began, but cut herself off abruptly, shaking her head. "Of course not, Kiera only hatched in the autumn. Dashelgr is an elven festival that happens in early summer, about four weeks from now. The elves all spend the night singing, in our case to the forest and plains, encouraging it to grow strong for the year ahead. That's important for us, because the land here isn't automatically prepared to support so many dragons eating through the prey populations. We have to build up the prey populations and the food supplies to sustain them, so that when we do have dozens or hundreds of dragons here, there'll be enough to go around."
"Ah," Corrin murmured, blinking. "I'd… never thought of that before."
"Neither had I," Leah admitted, "but Blodhgarm gets to lecturing about it whenever this time of year comes around. You'll probably hear that same spiel from him before too long."
"It did sound very, um, rehearsed." Corrin bit his tongue immediately after the words left his mouth, realizing that could be construed as a criticism.
Fortunately, Leah laughed aloud instead of taking umbrage. "In my defense, there really isn't much else to do here than talk about these things." She turned to gesture back up the passageway. "In Vroengard of old, I hear they had to isolate their newer apprentices up in the mountains because there were so many distractions in Doru Araeba. We, on the other hand, have very little in the way of entertainment besides what's in the Court itself. Hard to run off to anyplace in the veritable middle of nowhere."
All the better for you to train, Umaroth interjected, opening his mind to them as they descended.
Once again, Corrin's feet hurt by the time he reached the rune-adorned arch that led into the chamber of the eggs and Eldunari. This time, however, he entertained himself on the way by listening to Leah exchange greetings and news with the Eldunari who reached out to the two apprentices. It was clear that she came here often, though he'd forgotten to ask what for. As they entered, the metal dragon-man - Cuaroc, Corrin remembered his name was - stared across the room at them from his seat, but did not rise, evidently not feeling the need to challenge them.
Corrin followed Leah to a clear space near the well in the rock which provided light and heat to the subterranean chamber. His fellow apprentice lowered herself easily to sit cross-legged on the stone, and after a moment's hesitation Corrin joined her.
Something in particular you want to learn, Leah? Glaedr prompted.
Corrin shot a questioning look at Leah, who winked at him and then took a moment to think. "Vroengard," she said finally. "Show us Vroengard."
Corrin more felt than heard a thoughtful rumble from the minds of several Eldunari. He half-opened his mouth to speak, but closed it immediately as Umaroth's consciousness pressed closer and a stream of sights, sounds, sensations, and even tastes began to flow from the old dragon. He found that he was flying above blue-gray waves, the cavern of the Vault of Souls half-forgotten in the moment, with the smell of salt in his nostrils and the wind pressing against wings he had not had a heartbeat ago.
The cool-air-over-water tugged at him, but he beat steadily onwards as he covered the last leagues to Vroengard. The clouds were low today, shrouding the peaks and upper slopes of the island. Mist trailed down to the forested shores. The odor of pine needles and leaf mold wafted on the breeze, mingled with the scent of smoke from the tiny dock town that serviced the rare shipping between the island and the mainland. An orange dragon who he knew in passing was sprawled on a ledge above the wharf. He bellowed a greeting as he approached, and she lifted her head and sent back a wash of flickering yellow flame, a salute. Then he was past.
His wingbeats slowed and grew more powerful as he ascended up towards the clouds and the mountain pass which they hid. Vroengard was well-guarded, even from dragons,but Aras Thelduin was a mountain range, not a wall, and certain vales between the slopes had become highways over millenium, this one most of all. He still remembered flying along this path the first time he had come to Vroengard.
A startling flash of grief manifested at the memory-within-a-memory of flying with Vrael for the first time. It had been a long while since then, and with Vrael gone only he remained to recall-
Leah's hand closed on his like a vice, so hard that he was yanked from his melancholy, and Corrin remembered distantly that he was not Umaroth, the great white dragon, and that the grief which had been so consuming a moment ago was not his at all. The transition was startling, even dulled as it was by the continued overlay of thoughts and sensations not his own. He had one moment in which to glance at Leah and find her watching him with a steady gaze, and then the vision returned to dominate his awareness, though without the haze of grief.
He was in the clouds now, navigating a winding canyon between two invisible summits by a combination of instinct and memory. Thankfully the wind wasn't up. He had only his own speed to mind as he traversed the old route forwards and upwards, towards the open sky that he could sense far above.
A dragon's roar echoed from somewhere far ahead, and just as he began to seek for the noise he broke unexpectedly from the top of the cloud, into astonishingly bright sunlight. All around him he could see the glowing calderas of Aras Thelduin spearing up through the cloud bank and into the clear blue sky. The clouds themselves clung to the sides of the peaks, most of the grey mass held back by the bulk of the mountain range, so that a clear circle of sky gaped open above Doru Araeba. He winged swiftly past the trailing edge of the clouds, and there beheld the city cradled in the bowl of the mountains.
No city had ever been as great as the glittering-dragon-city at the heart of the Rider's homeland. Here was a center of civilization in Alagaesia, a place of learning and sanctuary that was reserved for the Riders and those they deemed worthy to live beside them. The elegant, jewel-adorned buildings swelled as he coasted nearer, the lake at the center of them glittered like beaten metal, and the sun glowed on the gem-like hides of more dragons than could be found anywhere else in the world. He roared with the joy of his homecoming, and half a dozen voices answered.
One of them echoed from his left, rather closer than the rest. A quick glance spotted wide golden wings flashing in the sunlight. He shifted his weight and let himself slide down the sky to where Glaedr was rising to meet him. His old friend's mind called out to him, and he could feel the greeting of both the gold dragon and his Rider…
But then it was as though the memory was dragged away, or as though a sheet of clear Surdan glass had interposed itself between the memory and him, and Corrin snapped back into awareness of his own mind even more abruptly than the first such intercession. His vision seems blurry, and he had to blink several times before he surmised that his human eyes were simply weaker than Umaroth's hawk-eyed gaze.
"Wh.." he started, too discombobulated to understand what had interrupted the immersive memory.
My apologies, murmured a vaguely familiar voice. He recalled it -her, rather- from his previous trip to the Vault, though it took him a moment to dredge her name up from his still-disorganized mind.
Ah… Agaravel-elda? he hazarded awkwardly. He sensed a sort of wordless assent from the elder dragon, which eh assumed meant he had in fact recalled her name correctly, but which clarified none of his disorientation. I… I'm a bit confused-
We know, rumbled a deep mental voice that was decidedly not Agaravel. Corrin startled, whipped his head around on instinct, and narrowly kept from shrieking when he found himself face to face with a glittering-eyed predator of shadow and ink. For one second it looked more like a nightmare than a dragon.
Shruikan, who must have joined them in the buried chamber while he and Leah were lost in the memory of Vroengard of old, watched Corrin with an air of bored patience until the Rider remembered how to breathe again. Then the black dragon stepped neatly around the space where Corrin and Leah sat, and continued on his way.
I did not mean to pull you back to yourself so abruptly, Agaravel continued, with an hint of remorse, but it is better to take time to process what you have seen. One must remember which identity is yours and which are theirs.
Why? Corrin asked diffidently.
Easy to get lost, Shruikan rumbled from across the chamber. Corrin glanced over to find the young male scenting the air above a shelf of the eggs, as though checking on them, though what could possibly harm the substance which made up dragon eggs he couldn't fathom.
The Riders of old were always wary of letting new Riders spend too much time viewing the memories of others, Agaravel elaborated, continuing where Shruikan had left off. The mind, especially for a young creature, is easily influenced. There is always the concern that a Rider or dragon will delve too deeply into the memories of others, to the point where they forget their own life and identity.
Corrin shuddered, suddenly grateful that the two dragons had intervened. Has such a thing happened before?
Yes, came the curt reply. He felt a flicker from Agaravel, as something drew her attention elsewhere. Your dragon seeks for you, she added distractedly.
Oh, but... Corrin began, glancing at where Leah sat, still engrossed in the lives of the Riders of old. He couldn't even truly articulate a reason for his reluctance, but that he did not want to go just yet. If there was danger in the memories of the Eldunari, then surely she should have someone watching out for her. And, too, the vision, however dangerous, had been intoxicating in its rich detail, full of the promise of knowledge unique to the Riders.
He didn't say it, but he was still prone to forget that any unguarded thought was open to this company. He felt Agaravel's focus shift back to him, and then, queerly, her thoughts softened with something very like amusement.
Do not forget that you have many years now to learn all that a Rider must be, she chided gently. Go to your dragon now. Agaravel paused briefly, and then amended, If you return with her tomorrow, I will show you both all I know of Vroengard, this I promise.
I would like that, Corrin murmured. And Leah?
Agaravel rumbled amusement. I will tell her where you have gone, she assured him. Fear not for her. We are very careful with her mind, just as we are with yours. Then the dragon was gone from his mind as suddenly as if she had never been there to start. Corrin cast another at Leah, still lost in another time, and at Shruikan who now sat catlike before the largest Eldunarí, and then departed in search of his dragon.
This chapter constitutes more or less the end of Corrin's 'introduction' to the Riders Court. There is going to be a time jump several weeks forward to Dashelgr, which will cover at least two and probably more chapters and will start moving the actual plot along again. I will try to have it ready by this date in March, but I plan to write all of the Dashelgr chapters together, so they may or may not be done in time. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and as always, if you noticed any editing or consistency mistakes or have constructive criticism to offer, please let me know in the comments. I truly appreciate them.