The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 6

Part 2

“The purchase was complete a minute later; the payment made, and the papers signed. We spent a while chatting with King Raznoran and his family and retinue, and they wished us well in this fine enterprise we’re embarking on.

“We’re renaming the island group Hiliani, which means New Hilia in Elvish. It’s now part of the Principality of Hilia for all purposes of government and law. We chose it because it’s extremely isolated, which makes casting the time-bubble easier, and because it’s bountiful enough to support many times more people than we’ll have living there, even if we didn’t have magic to help. And because it’s a lot like where me and Talia are from, to be honest. But with better weather.

“We have a week to do most of the building of our new homes and other buildings before the time-bubble goes up. During that week we’ll also have to bring in everything else we need. We can finish construction after we’re cut off as long as we have all the materials we need, but we might have less power available for our spells after that, so we’ll be spending a lot of power to get as much done as we can before then.

“There are a lot of big healthy trees, and Theramin says we should be able to grow most of our buildings in them in the next week, using his elven horticultural techniques and a big expenditure of power.

“Given the resources there, we figure our diet should have plenty of variety. There’s a big assortment of edible plant life whose growth we can accelerate, and we can grow some garden crops to make up the rest of our fruits and vegetables. Our meat will be about two-thirds fish and sea life, about one-sixth birds and animals that we’ll hunt on the islands, and about one-sixth domesticated livestock.

“We think the best place for a settlement should be here; on the second biggest island, beside this joining of four channels, almost in the middle of the archipelago. There’s this nice big flat area with scattered trees and minimal undergrowth between the beach and this semi-circle of small mountains. It’s well sheltered from storms, there’s good fishing access, and there’s four streams that run through it from the surrounding mountains.

“Talia and I will be making our home here, north of the flats, in these three trees across this little pass to this little valley behind it, and we’re claiming the little valley as our back yard.

“We’ll build a gathering hall here in the center of the village for get-togethers and celebrations, and we’ll build a few floating docks along the water’s edge here at the south end of the flats, where it’s too rocky to really enjoy the beach anyway.

“Over the next hour or so we’ll finish planning the rest of the village. Since we’ll be building with elven methods by growing our constructions out of the existing trees, Theramin here will be in charge of construction and community systems, and he’ll be approving all your plans to make sure that no one gets in anyone else’s way, and that everyone has a water supply to their property, and so on. He, along with Yazadril, Nemia, myself, Talia, and Alilia, are going to cast a better scaled model Illusion of the village site than this Revealing, and as you all tell us where you’d like to build and how much room you’ll need, we’ll add it to the model. Even with all the garden space we could need, there’s enough room on the flats for ten times our number to live there, so there shouldn’t be any real disagreements over any one spot. You can have your rooms up in the trees like the elves do, or we can grow human-style buildings on the ground, like they did with The Living Palace.

“West of the village here there’s this higher valley almost eight kilometers long, filled with lush meadows, and the pass between it and the village is only a half kilometer long and pretty easily passable, though it is steep. Since it’s the only good grassland around, and unicorns prefer living on open grass to dwelling in buildings, we’ll be reserving that for our unicorn friends.

“There’s only four good caves suitable for dragon lairs in the archipelago, and none of them are big enough for more than one small Dragon. Kragorram and Povon, since I assume that you and Karzog would prefer to share a lair, we’ll be glad to help you enlarge one of these if you wish. And Quewanak, if you’d like some help altering a cave, we’d be glad to help with that too.”

“That will not be necessary, thank you.” Quewanak replied. “I find none of those caves to be suitable, and all of them are too far from the village to truly share in the life of the community, as I plan to do. With all of your permissions, I will excavate a new cave for my lair in this rock face here, facing the village from the south-west.”