A/N: Okay, so bear with me here as I do a little bit of personal worldbuilding-I got a little carried away with the descriptions of the new Cair Paravel. This story also ended up like three times as long as I meant for it to be... So I'll be posting it in three parts. Stay tuned!
Summary: Caspian determines to find the seven friends of his father that Miraz forced out of Narnia.
Timeline: About a year after the events of Prince Caspian.
Disclaimer: See Ch. 1.
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Caspian and his court moved into Cair Paravel in the middle of the next spring. The dwarves, despite the winter weather, had worked hard for months on rebuilding the castle, and while no-one expected that it looked the same as it had hundreds of years earlier, when the four Pevensies ruled Narnia, they were all extremely impressed with the handiwork of the dwarves. The dwarves, naturally, responded to compliments on their craftsmanship with comments like "oh, it was nothing, of course", but were really very proud of their work.
On his first day holding court in the palace, Caspian stood at the great window behind the dais in the throne room and stared out over the sea. It sparkled a brilliant blue and turquoise in the morning sun, and he saw ribbons of white foam at the tops of the waves far below. The stripe of golden sand was dotted with dark figures-the dwarves and many others were now hard at work building a port to go along with the new capital of Narnia. A small settlement had also sprung up along the main road through the forest; this is where the builders had stayed throughout the fall and winter during the construction of the castle. Now that the king and his court had moved officially into Cair Paravel, there was no doubt that the settlement would soon grow into a town of more permanent structures.
The throne room of Cair Paravel wasn't hugely different from that of Miraz's Castle, for which Caspian was grateful-the layout had always seemed practical to him, and every taste of government he'd ever had, beyond the time spent leading the Narnians in their revolt from Aslan's How, had come from within that room. Therefore, the room was a great rectangle, longer actually than that of the castle of the Telmarines, and a large square was formed on three sides by beautifully crafted seats for the Lords and by the dais on the fourth. These seats, unlike the massive ugly chairs of the Telmarine court, were beautifully crafted and hand carved out of the finest woods by satyr and faun craftsmen. The seats were cushioned in lovely, bright fabrics, the wooden arms and back were decorated with intricate scenes (mostly of flowers and trees, but also of other things that would represent the person supposed to sit in the chair), and each chair was perfectly sized and suited for its intended occupant: low seats for dwarves, high broad seats for minotaurs and satyrs, stairs up to Reepicheep's tiny seat-so that he wouldn't be seated lower than everyone else-and an extra-stuffed cushion for Doctor Cornelius's old bones. The chairs were fully movable, unlike those in the Telmarine court, to allow them to be taken to the sides so that the room could be used as a Hall.
In the front center of the dais was Caspian's throne. There had been some discussion as to whether it should be a stone throne, like the one in Miraz's castle, and like the four thrones of old were rumored to have been (and the ruins of the castle seemed to support the latter). Finally, someone came up with the idea to construct a throne out of stone remnants of the original castle of Cair Paravel, and that is what now stood on the dais in the throne room. It was a large throne, but not ornate, made simply of chunks of white stone carved to fit together perfectly. The base of the throne was carved to look like the trunk and roots of a tree, and flowed down into the grey and white stone of the dais (as this was constructed out of what remained of the original dais, along with new stone brought by the dwarves), and the back and arms were made to look like twisting vines or branches. At the center of the back of the chair was a medallion of plain white stone, into which Caspian had tasked Trumpkin with carving a relief of a lion's face and mane, to represent Aslan.
The rest of the castle was similarly a combination of the old and the new. The foundations of many of the walls and towers were still made of the old off-white stone that the original Cair Paravel had been constructed from, but had been added onto with soft-colored grey stone mined by the dwarves in the north. The gates and doorways were made of redstone from the southern mountains, so that, all-in-all, Cair Paravel was, even at first sight, much brighter and more colorful than Miraz's castle had ever been. Inside the halls of the castle, bright tapestries, depicting the reigns of great kings and queens of history-not just the four Pevensies-and the early events of Caspian's reign were hung. These had been woven by centauresses and dryads and many of the Talking Beasts, and presented to the young king as a sort of "housewarming" gift. Spaced between the tapestries, except in interior rooms and corridors, were huge windows, most of them ranging from floor to ceiling, looking out over the sea to the east, Narnia to the west, and the forest that still surrounded the castle. The views were breathtaking; Caspian easily found himself lost in them, just as he was now.
"Your majesty?" came a gentle voice from behind him, and Caspian snapped out of his reverie. He turned around and found Doctor Cornelius standing behind him, resplendent in his plain blue robes, with his long white beard tucked into his belt and hair freshly combed and braided.
"Good morning, Doctor," Caspian smiled. It was almost as though the sea air of the island was working a miracle in all of them-Doctor Cornelius looked years younger after only a few days in the castle, and Caspian felt himself freshly renewed-fully invigorated for almost the first time since he had taken his throne.
"A truly magnificent view, isn't it?" the doctor's gaze drifted out the window, taking in the sea, forest, and beach below them.
"Yes," Caspian agreed.
"I hear-and see-that the dwarves have begun building a port down to the east?" Doctor Cornelius nodded towards the bustle of construction down on the beach.
"Yes," Caspian said again. "I don't think it was so much their idea-I think the minotaurs probably had something to do with it; did you know that, according to legend, the minotaurs were the first seafarers in Narnia? They taught the craft to the other races, and some say to men as well."
"A pity that the knowledge of seafaring was lost when the Telmarines invaded," Cornelius sighed.
"A pity," Caspian agreed. "I have never understood why my people feared the sea so much."
"The Telmarines feared what they didn't understand," Cornelius said. "The sea, the Narnians, Aslan… They had no knowledge of these things, but instead of seeking to learn about them, they feared them and pushed them away. And so much knowledge has been lost."
"But it doesn't have to be lost for good," Caspian pointed out. "There are legends of islands near the eastern coast of Narnia-even the Telmarines spoke of them, and a representative from Galma has sat on the Council of Lords for most of our history."
"Unfortunately, the last of these representatives was killed in the Battle of Beruna, and we have no way of contacting his people," said the doctor.
"Not necessarily," Caspian said, his eyes beginning to shine with excitement. "Doctor, I have a task for you."
"Anything you ask, my king, I will do, so long as it is in my power-and does not go against the laws of Aslan," Cornelius bowed slightly.
"Would you please spend some time searching your books for any mentions of seafaring or sailing?" Caspian asked. "I have already spoken to the minotaurs, but they do not keep much of a written history, although they have promised to speak to their storytellers to see what they may remember. I have asked the same of the centaurs."
"I will search my texts, sire," Cornelius said, "but I will make no promises that there will be anything to be found in them."
"All I ask is that you search," Caspian said. "And if nothing is found… well, then we may have to take the study of seafaring from the beginning."