Spark of War

by J. A. Culican

The tunnels continued onward, then rejoined a main corridors running from Safeholme to other settlements in the warrens. So far, they hadn't seen anyone, but that was expected. Dragons rarely traveled between settlements except on official business.

  They came to a T intersection, with a narrow tunnel leading off to the east again.

  Jaekob said, "I think I hear the ward alarms echoing from this side tunnel. We can keep on the main path, or head down here."

  Kalvin ran his finger along the new tunnel's wall. It came up gray with dust. "No one has been down here for a long while."

  "So it seems. Do you remember seeing this one before?"

  Kalvin shook his head. "No. Maybe it's a shortcut. We should check it out. I bet the scouts didn't check it out because of the dust."

  "Maybe they were right," Jaekob said and nudged his friend with his elbow. "It's probably empty anyway."

  "Still, the wards... Let's check it out and, if we don't find anything within a couple of miles, we'll head back and take the normal way."

  Jaekob headed into the tunnel, his friend catching up in a few steps with his longer stride. The corridor stretched out of sight in the pitch blackness, and he wished they'd thought to bring glowshrooms. Without them, they couldn't see very far.

  After a mile and a half, as Jaekob started to consider turning around, they walked through a slight curve in the tunnel and ahead, the bright blue light of glowshrooms crept into view, revealing the tunnel opening out into a cavern that was large enough so they couldn't see the far wall. That meant it was two-hundred yards across, at least.

  "That chamber is as big as a village market. What's a market chamber doing out here?" Kalvin missed a step, then stopped.

  "I've seen small villages that would fit inside that chamber," Jaekob replied. "I wonder why that side tunnel looked so old. I mean, our patrols should check it, right?"

  "I hear my father complain all the time about how the Dragon Council doesn't approve enough supply for Security to do their jobs. The Council thinks that we don't need security because of the wards. Maybe they decided it didn't look important enough to investigate, much less patrol."

  "Maybe this will change their minds," Jaekob said as he headed into the broad chamber. "Let's find out if they were right! That is, if you aren't too afraid."

  "You're afraid, not me." Kalvin sped up.

  Once they passed the threshold, Jaekob's eyes bulged and his jaw dropped. All through the cavern were square stone huts built in a grid pattern. The doors, he saw, hadn't yet turned to dust or even rotted away. They had to be a couple hundred years old, he figured, yet they still hadn't disintegrated. Maybe the fungus strips-and-glue furnishings lasted longer with no one using them.

  "Where are the people?" Kalvin asked, interrupting his thoughts. "I see pottery, and through the windows, furniture. But how can that be?"

  He was right. Jaekob saw it, too. "Let's check the whole cavern. Maybe people still live in one corner."

  That didn't seem likely, but for once, Kalvin didn't argue. They went house to house, shop to shop. Most still had equipment, but it all looked broken. A couple of the biggest houses even had curtains, but those too were damaged. They had torn from gravity and neglect, but how much wealth would it take to use curtains instead of shutters?

  "We should take all the cloth we find. No one here needs it, and I could use the trade goods," Kalvin said, rubbing the torn black cloth of a half-complete set of curtains. "Who would leave cloth behind? Even scraps?"

  "Good question. Let's go finish checking the west cavern."

  Kalvin grinned. "Maybe we'll find more cloth. By all means, let's search the place."

  Jaekob stopped mid-step, frowning.

  "What?"

  "It just seems disrespectful to loot their stuff. I mean, it seems like they all left quickly, right? They left cloth."

  Kalvin's smirk spoke volumes. "It isn't like they need it anymore. Shoot, you have to be the son of the First Councilor to even think like that."

  Jaekob punched him in the arm, but then held his hand out, pointing west. "After you, thief."

  "It's not stealing if it doesn't belong to anyone," Kalvin muttered as they entered one of the larger stone buildings. It had few windows. Maybe it had been a warehouse...

  Inside, they found rows of stone circles filled with ashes. Stone blocks that looked bed-sized were scattered all about. In each corner were large, round pits with stone benches across them, each with multiple smaller holes carved into them.

  Jaekob asked, "Toilets?"

  "And beds. Fire pits. This was full of people, once." Kalvin nudged his toes through the ashes in the nearest fire pit.

  Jaekob caught sight of a flash of color in the otherwise gray world of the cavern. He bent down and tried to pick it up. As he pulled it up through the dust and ashes, he blew it off, sending a cloud of dust toward Kalvin. Examining the object, he saw that it was paper. It had brightly colored drawings on it in wax. Crayons? It was a kids' drawing using wax crayons and blank paper, all of which had no business being down in the warrens.

  "That doesn't belong here," Kalvin said, peering over Jaekob's shoulder.

  "No kidding? Thanks for clearing that up for me. Your keen powers of observation will make you a fantastic member of the Security team someday."

  "I know, right? So what do you think that is?"

  Jaekob frowned. "It's impossible, but I think it looks like a kid's drawing."

  "No it doesn't. Where's the charcoal lines?" Kalvin pursed his lips and squinted, leaning closer to it.

  It was Jaekob's turn to smirk. "Just because your mother never saw a Crayon drawing, to pass the memory down to you, that doesn't mean it isn't common."

  "Touche." Kalvin walked off to the next fire pit as he whistled a tune.

  Jaekob looked back at the crayon picture. A yellow sun made of a circle with lines radiating off it sat in the upper right corner, and below it, the sky was blue over a house and a field of grass. The paper had been partially burnt away, though, and only half the house was there. Why would dragon vagrants draw pictures of sun and sky and above-ground houses? No dragon had lived up there in well over a thousand years. Either the picture was far older than Jaekob, or it hadn't been drawn by dragon kids. Unless they'd drawn from a memory inherited from their mothers, of course. That was a possibility.

  Kalvin let out a triumphant whoop. Jaekob looked up and found his friend several yards away, rooting through an old, carved-fungus basket. Kalvin grinned at him. "I found things to collect. A little knife with a blade I can salvage. Some rolled-up cloth, like bandages, if you can believe that. Smooth, round stones like Security uses in their slings, but without any runes etched into them... Lots of small useful things."

  "I should come get my share, then," Jaekob said, but his smile was forced. A flash of memory sped through his mind--his mother in an old cavern, talking to his father. She'd said, 'Many useful little bits, here.' The memory passed, but it left a shiver running down his spine, because this cavern was so similar to the one in his inherited memory.

  "You okay?" Kalvin paused, motionless, and stared at him with a concerned expression.

  "Not really. This place reminds me of something. My mom used to scavenge lost caverns like this one. When we Awoke during the second German great war, and we had no way to get to the surface for supplies without humans seeing us at one point, our parents scavenged like this."

  "Yeah, I know. I have a memory like that from my mom." Kalvin pulled his hand out of the basket. He held a necklace of gemstone bits in different colors. The stones had a pattern--yellow, blue, green, red, green, blue, yellow...

  Jaekob froze in place, eyes riveted to the necklace. Something about it was tickling the back of his mind, some half-forgotten memory. He could almost put his finger on it, but not quite. Not his mother's memory, either. It had the warm feeling of a personal memory. He must have been very young, then.

  Kalvin wrapped the necklace around his hand, then walked up to
Jaekob and held out the necklace for him to look at.

  Jaekob stared at it. A gift that was it! It looked like a necklace he'd made for his mother. Same pattern, even. That was unusual, but there were only so many colors of gems. It couldn't be the same one, anyway. The necklace he gave his mother had a golden coin attached like a medallion, a coin Mikah had said was Roman, like those he'd found himself when he was a kid.

  Kalvin let the necklace unwind from his hand and drop, but kept his fingers tightly on the cord.

  As the necklace dangled, Jaekob saw that it had a golden medallion attached to it, previously hidden in Kalvin's palm. He hissed, and his eyes flared brightly red as the once-blue iris shrunk on either side, creating an oblong slit up and down like a viper's. He blinked rapidly and turned away to wipe his eyes.

  Kalvin politely pretended not to notice, and said nothing about the tears. "You can keep the necklace."

  Jaekob still couldn't bring himself to turn away, and wiped his eyes again. "Thanks. I appreciate it." The gems were almost useless, but they had value to him as mementos of his mother. "Let's head back. We can tell your dad about this place and he can send scouting teams out."

  Kalvin grabbed Jaekob's shoulder and half-spun, half-dragged him toward the tunnel they'd come by, ignoring the other tunnels along the walls. The six of those were only the ones they could see from where they were, too. There might have been others, but they didn't search more to be sure.

  When Jaekob got back into the tunnel, he welcomed the sudden feeling of safety that came from having solid stone all around him, like a shield to protect him from his terrible childhood memories. The idea of being above ground seemed suddenly much less attractive, more scary. More dangerous.

  Chapter 6

  Jaekob led Kalvin out of the narrow, dust-covered tunnel, into the wider corridor that led into Safeholme proper. "Let's find your dad first," he said, "and then we can tell Mikah if Thomaes thinks we should."

  In reply, Kalvin simply walked a bit faster and Jaekob followed. They sped down the corridor at a brisk pace. Mid-stride, Jaekob froze in place and looked around, confused. It took him a second to realize what was going on--he had smelled something he'd never smelled before. Something new. There was nothing new in the warrens, ever. His mind raced, trying to catalog the scent.

  "What's up? You okay?" Kalvin had stopped. He looked concerned.

  Jaekob raised his nose in the air and took quick, shallow sniffs, but as suddenly as it had hit him, the scent was gone. "I think so... I thought I smelled something. I might have imagined it. Come on, let's go."

  But then, after a couple hundred more yards and passing several side corridors, a noise echoed in the hallway. He stopped, holding his arm out to block Kalvin, then cocked his head to listen better. "Voices," he muttered.

  Kalvin was listening carefully, too. "From ahead, not behind, though. Let's check it out. I sense dragons."

  Who else would be in those warrens? Jaekob remembered the wards going off—they could be connected. He started to walk toward the noise, but slowly, listening and sniffing as they went. As they advanced together, the noise got louder and seemed to be coming toward them.

  Kalvin said, "I hear a bunch of voices, now. They sound angry, and they aren't trying to hide themselves."

  "So, not invaders." Not that Jaekob had seen or even heard of invaders in the last two Great Sleeps, except during the second great German war.

  Ahead, the glow of phosphorous mushrooms flickered as though someone was carrying the light. The noise kept getting louder. Moments later, the first dragon came into view, but he wasn't the last and a stream of dragons followed on his heels. They were shouting at each other, voices raised high and tense.

  Kalvin barked, "What's going on, here?" His voice cut through the mob's buzz. They quieted down, but when Jaekob stepped out from behind his friend, they grew silent and stared at him.

  Jaekob said, "You heard him. What is the problem?"

  A woman's voice rose from the crowd. "It's the First Councilor's heir. Tell him."

  Another voice followed, shouting, "He can judge this," and the crowd murmured its agreement.

  Jaekob took a deep breath and walked toward the mob, which had stopped in its tracks. "I can try to fix the issue, if you tell me what's the matter."

  The man in front said, "An egg is missing."

  Another woman shouted, "That's impossible! You lie."

  The man turned and snarled, "I'm no liar. Shut your mouth."

  Jaekob shouted, "Quiet. Start over, one at a time." He pointed at a man in the crowd. Like many of them, his face was flushed and angry. "You there, tell me what's going on."

  "My cousin's egg is missing. That means someone took it."

  Another said, "You're a fool, and so is your cousin. She must have misplaced the thing."

  The first man shouted, "That's not a 'thing'." He launched himself into the other man, fists flying.

  Kalvin said into Jaekob's ear, "Eggs are a big deal. Figure this out or someone's going to start flaming."

  Jaekob shouted for the crowd to break it up, and people pulled the two men apart. They continued to snarl and curse at one another, but being firmly held, they soon quieted down. A hush fell as they looked at Jaekob.

  Then, in the sudden, sullen silence, an older woman said, "No one takes eggs. I bet there never was one. It's just some stunt for sympathy."

  Several in the crowd broke into fighting again, and the woman was knocked to her knees by the tornado of brawling.

  Jaekob turned to Kalvin. He was desperate to end the fighting before it went too far. The dragons were too agitated, and someone was going to die soon. "Kal, you're a warrior. Wade in there and break this up!"

  "Not on your life." Kalvin pursed his lips and looked back out over the crowd.

  Jaekob shouted for order and moved to split them up himself. In the melee, a random fist caught him on the side of his head, and he staggered back. Someone shrieked, "The heir! Stop, fools!"

  The crowd worked to get the two sides pulled apart. Those who had been fighting glared at each other from across the corridor, but all knew what would happen if Jaekob reported the assault. Mikah would move mountains to get whoever had done it, and those who weren't glaring at each other watched Jaekob in chilly silence. No doubt they were realizing the consequences they faced, and what could happen next.

  Holding his ear and jaw, Jaekob made a quick decision. "I won't report this. It was an accident. But now, I expect you to talk, and to listen. Your ears for your life, understand?"

  They murmured agreement. Then, another man’s voice rose up above the low murmur rippling through the crowd. "You can’t think the missing egg and the alarms are a coincidence. If they can get in, then we're all in danger."

  Jaekob could almost feel the crowd's mood shift from anger and fear to a chilly, frightened silence. He felt tingling on the backs of his arms as he realized the risk. A scared crowd could be more dangerous than an angry one. He had to divert them somehow before they started talking again and egging each other on to do something stupid. "Enough of that. No one can get through the wards except those with dragon blood in their veins. All of you know this. You're letting your fears get in the way of your reason."

  "Then what should we do, if you're so sure it can't be them."

  Jaekob didn't know who 'they' were, but there were only two possibilities, Pures or humans. Neither one could get through Safeholme's wards.

  Kalvin whispered, "The best thing would be to somehow split the crowd and get their attention redirected to something positive."

  "Yeah," Jaekob replied, his voice rising above the crowd noise. To the crowd, he said, "I need two of you to go to your Ward Guardian and explain that some dragons are claiming an egg has been taken. If it didn't exist, as some of you believe, then we lose only time. But if it does exist, then we may save a life."

  Then, he pointed at several more and continued, "You four, go door to door and ask her neighbors if they've
seen the egg. The rest of you, get into teams of two and start to search the egg's Crèche, the areas around the woman's house, and also the market chamber. Perhaps it was set down somewhere."

  "But what if they took it? Then what--"

  "Stop. That's not possible. No one can get into Safeholme except for dragons. Focus on what's likely, instead. Time is wasting, so get moving." Jaekob drew himself to his full height and glowered at the crowd, his gaze sweeping over them, meeting their eyes.

  “You heard him. Move it, Kalvin barked, and they stood still and silent at first, but then one broke away and headed back. Then another, and the whole crowd soon began to break up.

  A minute later, he and Kalvin were again alone in the tunnel.

  Kalvin stared after the crowd. "You realize that if the Pures found a way through and took that egg, we're going to war, right?"

  "That's not possible. Dragonblood." Jaekob tried to sound certain, but inside, he had his doubts about how secure the wards truly made them.

  "I hope you're right, but I can't help thinking that thousands of years is a long time to learn ways to beat the wards.”

  “Maybe. We don’t have time to talk ourselves into a panic, though. Come on."

  Kalvin frowned. "What's your hurry?"

  "I don't want to talk about it. I'm going back. You can come if you want."

  When Kalvin gave him a faint nod, Jaekob left and his friend stayed a few paces back as they went. He was grateful for that. Kalvin was a prankster, but he was also a good friend, and he must have realized that Jaekob needed some space, because for once, he didn’t talk as they walked.

  #

  Scene 04-B

  Jaekob made his way through the tunnels of Safeholme until he got to the one he needed, a wide, long, well-used tunnel. He had been to his destination so many times that he easily found the correct cavern by memory, paying little attention to where he was going, rather than by the sign out front that proudly proclaimed it to be the shop of "Thomaes, MBs"--Master Blacksmith. The bright-red glow pouring into the tunnel from the wide, open entrance told him Thomaes was hard at work already. He would have been surprised if it had been otherwise, since Thomaes was almost always there, unless he was sleeping or buying more supplies for the smithy.