#milestone get

In the morning, the boys greet each other while Saphira does the “dog growls in its sleep at dreams” thing. Eragon muses on inheritance until Saphira wakes up hungry and interrupts him. Eragon gets bored and looks at a lantern until people actually arrive.

They have been summoned to Ajihad! And are going to walk through extremely public tunnels to make a good impression. So they get lead to their horses and ride down the tunnel with Armed Accompaniment. Just before they’re actually in sight of people, Eragon is told to get up on Saphira instead.

The doors open into the inside of a volcano, with typical Paolini descriptive prose. As someone who actually does live in the shadow of a volcano, volcanic craters do not work in this way. I’m willing to allow it, though, because it’s cool.

Rule of cool justifies a lot of this novel, honestly. The scenry is so impressive that it takes Eragon five paragraphs to notice the crowd. He eventually waves awkwardly (CHEERING GET) and then they go down the path. Saphira blows smoke and generally behaves precisely as a pride-filled dragon ought to, while the humans remain awkward, the crowd remains cheering, and the guards remain guarding.

Eventually they arrive at the city itself, and here I have to laugh at Paolini’s mismatched scales for a bit. The crater is supposedly ten miles across. I realize this is fantasyland and so the population is much lower, but ten miles really isn’t all that large for a city. I don’t know, maybe I’m just spoiled by having lived in metropolitan areas all my life, but ten miles is “not even calling it a commute” distance around here. But then there’s a four story tall gate and that’s??? actually pretty impressive to have carved into solid rock without it shattering and falling on your head?

Anyway. They go in, and eventually arrive at a massive room that goes all the way up to the top “a mile up” (Paolini. Paolini no.). At the top there’s a massive star sapphire of “dawn-red” color, carved into a rose. I am not sure how Eragon can see it in that much detail if it is a mile away. Apparently at this point in the series no one had informed Paolini that red sapphires are usually called “rubies.”

Which is a pity, because it makes for interesting meta regarding Saphira and Thorn being made of the same stuff in a metaphorical sense.