Spark of War

by J. A. Culican

  She gave him a faint nod and he wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her back toward the last side tunnel they'd passed.

  He said, "If we go this way, I think it leads to the abandoned East Ward Tunnel. From there, we can come out into the Council District." He led her into the narrower side tunnel. It ended in a T-intersection, which he didn't remember seeing before. He paused and looked both ways, but they looked the same.

  She said, "If we turn right, that's the direction we want to go. We'll find the tunnel eventually, if we just keep going that way."

  He shrugged and took his arm off her waist. They had to walk single-file to get through the narrower tunnel. As they walked, it snaked back and forth, but had an overall curve in one direction--away from the tunnel with the mourning party. A couple hundred yards later, it ended in another T. He wasn't sure which way to go.

  Jewel frowned, echoing his own feeling on it. She said, "I think if we go right, we'll dead-end or be back into the big tunnel. Let's go this way," she said, and turned left. She took the lead walking them down the narrow, winding corridor.

  He was surprised at the walls in the tunnel. They were rough-cut, but no one had even bothered to smooth them a bit with dragonfire. It looked old, but without dragonfire melting the dirt and dust into the walls and floor, it might have been cut a week ago for all he could tell for sure. He followed behind her, but the basket wouldn't fit just hanging at his side from one hand. He had to hold it in front of himself, slowing him down.

  "Don't get too far ahead," he said. The last thing either of them needed was to get separated and lost in unknown tunnels. She'd probably be able to backtrack--dragons had great direction sense--but it still wouldn’t be the safest thing they’d ever done.

  From not too far up ahead, she called back, "Okay. But keep up, slowpoke." Her voice echoed off the tunnel walls, but even though its winding path had cut off his view of her--and a great view it had been--she sounded close enough that he wasn’t concerned. He tried to speed up, though.

  "It's a dead end," she called from up ahead, sounding frustrated. "We have to go back."

  He had spent a lot more time than she had in wandering through the warrens’ winding tunnels. Sometimes, there was more going on than met the eye. "No, wait. Stay there."

  When he caught up to her, he found her in a dead end just as she’d said, but the last ten meters or so expanded out wide enough for three people to walk side by side. "This doesn't make sense," he said. "Sometimes these dead ends have a hidden entrance to another tunnel. See how this one gets wide here at the end? That's almost a dead giveaway that there's a hidden tunnel. It gets wider so people can stack supplies out of sight, then move them through the hidden tunnel. Check the walls and look for anything unusual. A bigger bump, a crack that shouldn't be there. Anything."

  They spent several minutes examining the walls and running their fingers over the rough texture, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He had found a little stone with rough edges that stuck out of the wall, and was picking at it with his fingertips when Jewel said, "Here! I think I found something."

  He turned to look at what she was doing, and saw her running her finger over a shallow depression in the wall. "What is it?"

  She said, "I think it's a pattern. Like, maybe a symbol carved into the wall? If you stand back a bit you can just sort of barely see what I'm talking about."

  He stepped back and tried to see what she meant. Growing more excited, he said, "I think you're right. I can almost see a glyph there. But it's not one I recognize, do you?"

  Jewel shook her head. She was tracing the symbol with her fingertip, but when she got to the bottom of the faintly visible mark, Jaekob sensed a faint, pulsing power deep in his eardrums, felt more than heard. Then, the entire symbol began to glow. Faintly at first, it got brighter by the second, but only enough to shift which spectrum his eyes used. A lavender symbol he didn't recognize now shined clearly, though not brightly.

  He was about to ask if she recognized it when the symbol faded out in an instant, like a light switch had been turned off. A half second later, there was a faint vibration that he felt in his feet, through the floor. Then a seam became visible, forming an archway from the floor to an apex, about seven feet up. A doorway! As he watched, the stone within the archway disintegrated in a puff of dirt, which first billowed out and then suddenly shrank back in on itself. It looked like a vacuum had been turned on, but instead of disappearing, the dirt formed itself from a cloud into a two-inch high ridge across the doorway's threshold.

  "That's incredible," shel said, her voice rising high with excitement. "Have you ever seen something like this?"

  Jaekob nodded. He had, though not very often. Just like the other times, the hallway widening near the dead and was a dead giveaway. "Once or twice, but not with that symbol, and not with the disappearing stone doorway. I wonder where this one goes."

  "Who knows? Let's find out. If my direction sense isn't messing me up, I think this curves toward Safeholme. I bet it comes out somewhere hidden. Probably somewhere cool.”

  Before Jaekob could answer, she had run down the hallway laughing. He grinned as he remembered that excitement the first time he had found one of these hidden doorways. Neither of the ones he had found used a symbol, so that was pretty cool and new. With the others, one had a hidden lever of stone built into the wall and the other had a barely-visible button to press. Both of those made the doors slide to one side, rather than disintegrate. No doubt this one would soon reset itself, judging by the fact that all the debris had been gathered up automatically when the archway's interior disintegrated.

  "Catch me if you can," she laughed, her angelic voice echoing through the stone corridor.

  He snatched up the picnic basket and ran after her, though she was at least twenty yards ahead of him. He ran faster and caught a glimpse of her before the tunnel's winding path took her out of sight again. "I'm coming for--"

  His words were cut off when a deafening roar from ahead washed over him, and he felt like a mallet had struck him in the chest. It sent him flying backward five or six yards, and he landed on his back. He'd lost his grip on the basket when the shockwave hit him, but he didn't waste any time looking for it. He scrambled to his feet and ran ahead, choking on the heavy dust in the air.

  "Jewel!" he cried, but could barely hear himself scream over the ringing in his ears. If she answered, he couldn't hear it.

  It only took a few seconds to find out what happened. The entire tunnel had caved in. It had been sudden and violent, like an explosion--nothing like any cave-in he'd ever seen. Dazed, he looked at the walls. They were granite. There was no way they'd cave in like that.

  "Jewel! Answer me." The only answer he got was his own echo.

  He attacked the rubble, digging frantically, but there was too much and the pieces were too big. When he did manage to remove some, more flowed in to replace it from up above. He couldn't make a dent in it. Her only hope was for fast help, and he couldn't give it to her.

  But his father could...

  "Jewel, hang on! I'm going to get help," he screamed, half deaf, and sprinted back down the hallway the way they'd come from, tears of fear and rage streaming down his dirt-caked face. It was up to him to get her help in time, and he hated himself for thinking it was already too late.

  #

  Scene 07-D

  Jaekob stood numb with shock next to his father and Kalvin. This couldn't be real. It had to be a bad dream, and he'd wake up any minute to find Jewel laughing at his stupid nightmares. She still had to show him how she curved armor plates--he needed that to finish the wings on his skeletal dragon sculpture. She didn’t know it yet, but he was making it as a gift for her.

  He shook his head, clearing the thoughts. Why was it so hard to stay focused on anything? He didn't want to be there. Didn't want his father to speak. If Mikah spoke, he knew the nightmare would turn real. Please don't talk...

  "I'm sorry, son. We did all we could for
your friend." Mikah shifted from one foot to the other. He raised his hand to put it on Jaekob's shoulder, but hesitated, then dropped it to his side with the contact unmade.

  Jaekob felt a rage at his father for not touching him, and at the same time, wished both Kalvin and Mikah were anywhere else but there with him in that damnable tunnel. But it wasn't really them he was angry at.

  "And you have no idea why the tunnel caved in?" Mikah asked.

  "No." Since the panic left and mental shock replaced it, Jaekob couldn’t muster the energy for a longer answer.

  Quietly, Kalvin said, "Dragon-dug tunnels don't cave in. But this one is rough-hewn. Like, really rough. It hasn't been reinforced"--by melting the surface stone facing with dragonfire, like every other dragon tunnel--"and it isn't all that old, either."

  Mikah nodded. "They're still inspecting the stonework, but the investigators say there was a lack of dust. Lots of dirt, farther away from the cave-in site, but not the normal even layer of dust."

  "I get it, father," Jaekob replied, struggling to squash his anger. Then, suddenly, he was completely numb again. His emotions had been swinging back and forth since the rescuers first started to dig out Jewel. What they'd ‘rescued,’ when they found her, couldn't be identified. Tons of rock delivered punishment far beyond what even a dragon's body could take.

  Kalvin said, "I'm glad you weren't here when they found her. No one should have to see a friend like that."

  Well, Jaekob wasn't glad. He hadn't even been able to say goodbye. Thank the heavens his father had sent someone else to tell Thomaes, Jewel’s father. Seeing that gruff old man who had taken Jaekob under his wings for so many years, hearing the news and looking at him with anger or disappointment or disbelief... It would have crushed him. He was already crushed. But neither he nor Thomaes could be as crushed as Jewel had been.

  His morbid thoughts were interrupted when Kalvin said, "What is this? Jaekob, did you see this before?"

  Irritated at the very sound of his friend's voice--just as everything irritated him at the moment--he whipped around to say something rude that Kalvin certainly didn't deserve, but when he saw what Kalvin was looking at, he froze and left his harsh words unspoken. His friend had found a faint etching in the tunnel wall, a few meters back from where the cave-in had happened. Jaekob hadn't noticed it before because it looked almost natural, like a part of the excavation, but now that Kalvin had pointed it out, he saw the pattern, and more. Lines swirled and zigged and zagged, forming an odd shape. He stepped closer.

  And then his heart dropped, face contorting with rage. It was a symbol. A glyph. Just like the one in the hidden door, the one that made the door disintegrate.

  "You recognize this?" Mikah said, more statement than question. "What is it?"

  "I... When we found this tunnel, the connection from the other tunnel was hidden. It looked just like any other part of the tunnel wall. But when we touched the glyph carved into it, the stone disintegrated, revealing the tunnel."

  But what did that mean? His mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, but in his dazed state, none of them made sense, no connections drawn.

  "Son, that glyph didn't hide the entry to this tunnel, it created it by disintegrating the thin stone wall they'd left in place. This glyph, if it's the same--"

  "It is. The same one, I'd swear it."

  "--then it wasn't a cave in. It was a trap. This was not a hidden traffic tunnel, but an escape route. The trap would stop any pursuers. Understand?" Mikah grabbed him by his shoulders and looked into his eyes, face etched with concern. "Do you understand?"

  Jaekob took a deep breath with his eyes closed. He did indeed understand, now. Jewel's death had been no accident, beyond the accident that it had been her and not him who set it off.

  Jaekob swore on the spot that he wouldn't rest until he found who had done it. Then, another thought occurred to him. In a way, it felt as though the discovery of a killer and his decision to hunt them had somehow blown the fog in his mind away. "Father, at the entry, the symbol was lost when it was activated and the wall crumbled. Why is this one still here, if it caused the cave-in?"

  Mikah dragged Jaekob away from the glyph. "It's still here because it's not the one that killed Jewel."

  Jaekob turned to stare at the faint symbol in the wall. Was it another hidden door? Was it another trap? There was only one way to find out. The moment Mikah let go of him, he leaped toward the symbol and put his hand on it. There was no reason to have two traps so close together. It just had to be another tunnel. If he was wrong, he realized as the symbol began to faintly glow, he'd be crushed like Jewel. That didn’t sound so terrible, actually…

  Mikah screamed at him to stop, his arm stretched out toward his son, face twisted in terror. Kalvin, too, was shouting at him to stop. But Jaekob turned away. He had no time to do anything about it, if it were a trap, so the die was cast.

  A moment later, however, he was still alive. Alive and staring down a new tunnel of rough-carved stone, just like the one Jewel had died in and in which he now stood. "Dad..."

  Mikah grabbed Jaekob’s bandoleer and yanked him back from the new tunnel entry. "Don't go down there. We'll have Scouts go through it. Maybe they'll find clues as to who built this, and how long ago."

  Jaekob felt tears welling up again, though he had no new reason for it--just random flipping back and forth between shocked and numb, anger and despair. He turned and wrapped his arms around his father, surprising both Mikah and himself alike, and squeezed hard. Mikah put his arms around Jaekob, too. Hesitantly at first but then with surprising strength. "I can't lose you, Jaek," he whispered.

  A strange scent hit Jaekob's nose and his head whipped toward the source--the tunnel entry--and inhaled deeply through his nose. He stuck out his tongue, smelling the air; dragons only smelled things about as well as humans, at least until they stuck out their tongues. Then, they had the keen olfactory senses of a pit viper.

  Kalvin, surprised, said, "What... What's that smell? It seems..."

  "Familiar," Jaekob finished for him. "I smelled this before, the day the wards went off and the egg vanished." The scent wasn't a dragon's, he was certain of it. That could only mean one thing.

  Mikah's eyes went wide and he let go of his son. "Intruders!"

  #

  Scene 07-E

  Jaekob didn't wait for his father to finish. He sprinted toward the tunnel entrance and plunged straight into the new tunnel.

  "Son, no!" Mikah cried.

  Jaekob ignored the command. A moment later, he heard his father and Kalvin running after him into the tunnel. If there were more traps, he realized, it could kill them all if they were too close together. He put his head down and ran even faster, desperate to keep far enough away from them in case another trap went off.

  The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Hundreds of yards, on and on. There could have been more hidden side tunnels, but none of those would contain whatever made that strange scent. He had to find out where this tunnel led if he wanted to find the source.

  At last, he saw an opening ahead. Though his lungs burned, he kept running. The closer he got, the stronger the odor became. His heart beat like a hammer, both from running and in anticipation of finding the source. But after rounding a sharp corner, he found himself at the tunnel's end and drew to a stop.

  The tunnel there was only about ten feet across, rough-hewn like the rest of the mysterious tunnels were. There was another, narrower tunnel--more like a crevasse--off the left wall. Off the back wall, facing it, there stood a person with a chisel, carving something into the wall. Another of the glyphs, no doubt. The person was obviously a man, but taller than most humans by a good six inches, with long hair the color of straw. He wore clothes like humans did. His pants were green and he wore a light yellow tunic. It would have cost a fortune for all that cloth. Instead of a proper bandoleer, he wore a thick leather belt with loops that held chisels and hammers, a short sword, and in the small of his back, four tiny glass vials tucked into
small leather belt loops.

  The man turned around, but he was no human. Jaekob had never seen anything like this man, but knew immediately what his yellow eyes, slit pupils, and gently sweeping, pointed ears meant.

  An elf was in Safeholme.

  Mikah came up behind Jaekob, catching up just before Kalvin, but froze when he saw what Jaekob saw. "Impossible," he blurted incredulously. "The wards... How is that foul thing here?"

  When the elf saw them, he crouched and drew his blade in one smooth motion. He opened his mouth to hiss at them, revealing perfect white teeth, the very picture of beauty in almost every way. Almost. His cuspids were twice as long as Jaekob's human-sized canine teeth.

  Mikah pushed past Jaekob, pulling his own sword Alqatil. His was a legendary sword, about four feet of blade that swept upward in a gentle curve, like a saber, but it was thicker near the point than at the base before sweeping back down to a narrow, wicked point. It had been crafted of an unknown silver-alloy, nearly strong as titanium, and had a gold-inlaid silver hilt with rubies and emeralds embedded in it.

  It was a Moorish scimitar picked up as a war prize during the battle that led to the Great Fire of Istanbul. Legend had it the wicked blade was forged in Spain at the turn of the first millennium, etched with magical glyphs by Elven masters, and the jewels had been individually enchanted as well. Disappointingly, it didn't glow when Mikah drew it.

  It may not have glowed, but the elf's eyes went wide when he saw it, and he whispered something in Elvish, a guttural, cruel-sounding language. Clearly, he recognized the famous sword.

  Jaekob stepped next to his father on the left, blocking Kalvin from rushing in to steal his revenge. He drew his own favorite weapon, a masterfully crafted short spear only six feet long, it had an ironwood haft, a metal cap on the butt, with a spear tip that was a 6-inch long elegant blade, half as wide as it was long, with a silver inner core within the razor-sharp edges.

  The elf tried to dash out the side tunnel, but Mikah swung Alqatil at him with an overhead chop. The elf flipped backward into the chamber to avoid Mikah's slashing attack, and flipped again to avoid another attack. It took the elf out of Mikah's reach, who didn't press his attack. The elf couldn’t escape, after all, so he stayed in place and let the elf escape to the chamber's corner. The elf put his back against the wall and hissed at them again.