The Upper Levels of the caverns were mostly devoted to seventeen floors of living quarters. Up higher there were more caves and caverns and tunnels, and they had been charted and mapped, and at times, when the population of Walemont had surged, many sections had even been occupied.
At present though they stood empty, as the heavy hand of the oppressive regime above ground seemed to hold the entire world in its icy, life rending grip, causing more and more families to doubt the wisdom in bringing children into a world where they would never safely see the light of day. Oh surely, there would be fleeting moments stolen in the light for some, but that was hardly a way to live, it was said more and more often. In that way Quara's family was even more of an oddity, for their small quarters seemed to be perpetually filled with the sound of laughter and music and as often as not, loud unruly voices. They were an oddity to be sure.
At the bottom of the long staircase along the edge of the chasm, coming up to the edge of the dark pit, was a large open area, of a breadth and width that they could host a dinner for giants, if those fearsome creatures ever came that far south. This area, called The Heart of the Mountain, was a vast open space lined with a few shops, a common eating area, a pub, a bank and a handful of small vendors with carts out in the open air. The common area in the middle was where holidays were celebrated and where the largest of the public city meetings convened.
A thick gold line, made from many thousands of tiny gold chains crafted from ore brought forth on heaping carts pulled out of the furthest depths of the mountain, was suspended high above the tiny businesses, running from one side of the cavern to the other. Hanging from the cable, above the middle of the Heart, and sharing it's name, was the huge stone light source. It was the color of amber and long ago it had been set in the middle of at least ten thousand diamonds. It burned from within brightly and over millennia it had never dimmed of flickered.
The stories of old said that it was formed of dragon fire that would burn for tens of thousands of years, and true to the legend it still shone steadily. It did not need fuel and it did not devour the limited air supply that circulated through the mountain.
Set within the walls, and glowing warmly in the light of the Heart, ran hundreds of thin golden veins, curling and coiling across the stone surface. The enchanting patterns couldn't have possibly been made by the natural progression of gold veins within the volcano, which had raised the massive granite crags from the bottom of the sea, back in the days when waters still lay over this part of the world. The knowledge of how the designs had come to be, like the knowledge of the production of the Heart, had slipped away so that not even the legend of its creation remained in human hands, if it had ever been known. The designs were so beautiful and the mines below so plentiful that no one dared suggest removing the gold to melt it and shape it and craft it into more useful objects.
Quara's eyes took in the familiar sight of the businesses lining the edge of the Heart's courtyard. There wasn't really a need for businesses in this little city but an economy of sorts had survived, through an act of will under taken by the entire community, generation after generation.
Items that were not strictly necessities were generally distributed through a barter system where people traded the goods that they had for what they desired. There was a currency that had survived, made of gold coins minted from a small amount of the gold that was brought up out of the ground. Everyone knew that the coins were created simply to keep the bank in business, because no one wanted to see the enormous building shuttered and because most still hoped that someday their currency would be sent out into the world again and that trade would begin to flow in and out of the mountain. The bank had once done a bustling business back before the Caverns had cut themselves off from the rest of the world and sealed off the largest entrance, entirely severing the little city from the strife and wars that raged on beyond their massive gates.
The bank itself had a grand storefront, made of marble brought in long ago from a land far to the north. It gleamed in the steady light of the Heart, a pure, unblemished alabaster. The windows were opaque and a large gold plated door, adorned by two intricately detailed dragons standing in relief, let the people of the Caverns come in and out during business hours. The doors stood open during the day and were barred at night.
Behind the façade the interior of the bank was still rather grand. The furniture was ancient and worn in places, but every surface shown as though it had been polished only moments before. There were gleaming white marble benches, with worn red velvet cushions that must have been added at a later date, and the counters and pillars were white marble as well. Only the surrounding structure was the familiar granite that marked the architecture of almost every home and business within the Caverns, and the lighting that adorned the furthest edges of these walls seemed purposefully dim, as if to help the mind forget that the luxury didn't extend to the edges of the room.
One teller worked at a time now, taking down a note about what belonged to whom, although there were spaces for as many as twenty people to work behind the counter at once, as had been the case long ago. Off of the main room ran many hallways, all carefully mapped, leading to small individual rooms with heavy iron gates where a person might store something that they felt needed to be protected or hidden from prying eyes.
Hardly anyone used them nowadays though, because secrets within the Caverns were few and far between. Besides, who kept real secrets in a place where everyone knew they should be kept? Quara had never heard anyone admit to purchasing the use of one of these little rooms, but she supposed that if you were hiding something away, it likely wasn't something you discussed casually with others.
On the side of the bank closest to the stairs that led up to the upper living quarters stood the store. Here her mother came to shop for little luxury items that weren't given out at the commissary. When Quara's father had had a particularly prosperous day down in the mines or created something exceptionally beautiful in his metal shop, her mother would return with strawberries and white sugar, honey and butter and little pieces of candy wrapped in wax paper that melted in your mouth the moment they touched your tongue.
The storefront itself was possibly the strangest in all of the Caverns. If the bank was grand, the Store, known as Smitty's Shop after the old man who ran it, was exceedingly quaint. It had been fashioned on the outside to look like a cabin made of logs, only unlike the bank, the careful craftsmanship had stretched beyond the façade itself and engulfed the entire store. The sides of the medium sized cave were disguised with log walls, complete with open "windows" that looked out on carefully painted oil scenes. Her favorite window showed a painting of the sea, a large body of water she had heard tales of but could only imagine, with a ship being tossed by gigantic waves.
The luxury goods were set atop wooden barrels or in roughly made wooden boxes on rustic tables. Quara always had the distinct impression, although she could never say exactly why, that the old man was laughing at his customers as they bought things that they didn't really need in a store which held nothing that was an actual necessity. After all, no one needed the strawberries that certain young men risked life and limb to pluck from a particular spot hidden a fair distance out in the mountains, but they were one of the most sought after dishes at special occasions and celebrations and feasts. Quara wasn't entirely convinced that they really tasted sweeter than the strawberries that were grown in the Meadow, but others, including her own brothers, swore that there was no comparison.
Still Quara never felt completely comfortable in the store, despite the friendly shopkeeper and his always sparkling eyes. Her mother always said that she seemed to have inherited her grandmother's frugal nature, for she too was always uncomfortable buying anything that wasn't an absolute necessity.
To the left of the bank was the jewelry store. It had once been the largest jewelry store in all of the world. People came from lands afar and returned dripping with gems and gold, at least that's what the stories that had been passed down faithfully, generation after generation, said. Standing, looking at the enormous storefront, it was easy enough to believe that it was true.
The jewelry store, Baubles, wasn't at first glance as imposing as the bank. Unlike the bank or Smitty's, the façade wasn't really a façade at all. The storefront was carved into the granite, which had been polished until it shown brightly, like the white marble a few feet away, but in this case the stone was a grey so dark that it was nearly black. The large doors hung on enormous hinges, and the few times that Quara had gone inside she felt as if she was walking into a vault. The granite itself was plain, not carved or decorated in any way beyond it's high sheen polish, and there were no windows that allowed light from the Heart inside the store itself.
Like the bank, Baubles was obviously made for grander times, and sometimes Quara felt as if the building itself was rather dejected, waiting for its day to come again when it might be full of people from far flung lands who'd arrived to haggle and shout and laugh and bargain for beautiful things.
Next to the three stores set in the center of the wall of shops, none of the other little businesses really stood out. There was a clothing store, where people who were wealthy enough to buy their own readymade clothing shopped. And there was a cloth shop where a slightly larger number of people paid for cloth to make their own clothing. At the furthest distance from the Heart, in a shadow against the wall that ran into the Chasm, was the store where her mother bought wool and cotton and other raw goods to make homespun fabrics for their everyday clothes, although her father had been known to bring home bolts of fabric, ignoring his wife's protests that they were an extravagance that they couldn't afford.
There was a candle shop, with brightly colored candles and candles that gave of sweet scents as they burned and candles that burned down to reveal little gifts hidden inside and there was a cobbler's shop where a man might buy boots or have the soles of his old boots replaced if he wasn't in the market for a new pair.
Lastly there was a music shop, for the people of the Caverns loved music more than they loved the gems and gold that they brought forth from the mines beneath their feet, and Quara often lingered near the window to this shop, looking in wistfully at the beautiful instruments. When she managed to steal a free moment from her chores she frequently found herself stopping outside the storefront, lingering as she listened to the music lessons that were being given inside.
She'd never set foot inside the shop itself, for she'd never had a reason to, other than the burning desire to learn to put together notes to form a beautiful melody, and that reason never seemed to be quite good enough for her. Besides, she told herself, there simply weren't enough hours in the day with all the chores that needed to be done.
Hurrying through the center of the Heart she dodged carts pushed into the open area where the less affluent craftsmen and women sold their wares and she sidestepped children playing a game of Dragons and Cows, before making her way past another group playing a game that they had made up that involved throwing a ball through a hoop that had been tossed up into the air.
When she'd made her way all the way across the expanse that made up the Heart she paused and brushed a stray piece of damp hair back from her forehead and shifted the buckets in her thickly callused hands before making her way through the Crescent Gate, a door carved from an enormous stone slab of opal that gleamed like the moon. Taking a deep breath she began the descent down the next set of stairs to the Halls of Government.
She let her feet fly as she ran down the steps between the fourth and fifth levels. There were thick granite walls on either side of this staircase and she needn't worry about falling off the side of a cliff if she miss stepped. She listened carefully as she ran, but the only sound she heard was her own footsteps, charging headlong towards the brightly lit opening below, so she knew that she didn't need to slow down to pass anyone coming from the opposite direction. For the most part the adults in the Caverns would still be going about their jobs, and most of the students who'd had class would have arrived home some time ago, so it wasn't a busy time of day in the common areas of the Cavern Dome.
The Halls of Government held the City Council and the Mountain Council. In earlier days these two things hadn't been exactly the same thing, for there had been many cities within the mountain range, and this had merely been the Capital, but all of the other stood abandoned in the wake of wars of the past few millennia, so that really the two councils simply battled over who had the right to decide what, without having made much progress for a very, very long time.
The Common Cupboard was also on this level, as was the Commissary, which distributed the basic goods that people needed to survive, with different items being given out on different days of the week. If something was badly needed a person could submit a formal request, and those requests were seldom denied, but for the most part the system worked as it was.
The Cupboard hadn't always been a fact of life within the walls of the Cavern. Once upon a time, the building that served as the Cupboard had been used for State Celebrations and balls. In one of the books from the library, which also happened to be on the same level as the Government buildings, Quara had found a series of paintings in a thick book with golden edges on the pages, that had been painted after the Crown Princess of another realm had visited the Caverns to help the Master Jewelers come up with the perfect plan for the tiara that she was to wear on her wedding day.
The Permit Office, which Quara had heard her father say was the oddest building in all of the Walemont, stood next to the Commissary. It was also a plain building made of granite, but as she passed by it as she continued her journey to the lake, she couldn't help but think that there wasn't a building or storefront in all of the Cavern Dome that looked less like Baubles.
People came to the Permit Office for all sorts of reasons. They went to the office to fill out forms to formalize their engagements and marriages and they registered the birth of each and every child born within the Caverns in that space. They recorded the sale of animals within the office and sometimes, if a deal was to be struck that involved large amounts of gold or gems, the deal was recorded within the permit office too. Work contracts and the sale or assignment of living quarters also went through the office.
The most common reason for the steady stream of people who wandered in and out of the permit office, however, was the hope to obtain a permit to leave the Caverns on a pass. Each pass was for a set amount of time, from one hour to twelve hours, although the hours were extended to fourteen during the hot summer months when the sun lingered in the sky.
Quara's brothers had told her that the record keeper interrogated anyone that came asking for a permit to leave the safety of the Cavern's thick walls and that when they'd first attempted to get a permit to go out and hunt strawberries, the old woman who they'd handed their meticulously filled out paperwork to had acted like they were spies set out to destroy the very foundations of the mountain.
She nodded to the two unblinking guards standing on either side of the Bronze Gate and glanced quickly at it's finely detailed carving of a great tree that was part of a very long story that stretched back to the founding of the first Kingdoms in the southern lands.
Slowing considerably she began her descent down to the next level of the Dome. The layers of the Cavern Dome were not stacked like pancakes, one on top of the other. They lay in sequences, for the most part climbing higher and higher inside the mountain, with a few exceptions, like the vast underground lake that could most directly be reached from a side room off of the Guild Hall Level, or the mine shaft which could be descended into through various pulley powered elevators scattered throughout the vast complex.
There was a rule within the Caverns that every child learned early. To get from level to level on foot one must always use stairs. If you found yourself in a hallway and that hallway began to climb, than you were to carefully retrace your steps back to the start of your journey and take another route. None of the true passageways climbed at all. The climbing passageways were built to throw off invaders and about fifty feet into each one the traps began, and once they were triggered by an unwary step it was unlikely that anyone inside would survive.
Thankfully, most of the false hallways were in the lower levels, far from the living quarters. Quara could only imagine the trouble that her sister might have found herself in if they'd been a common feature higher up above the Heart. Then again, having witnessed Lina's ability to go through life totally unscathed by the trouble that she seemed to attract, or more accurately, bring about, Quara doubted that even a false tunnel could touch her tiny sister's ability to go through life living on the edge of danger, completely untouched by any sort of harm.
Passing through the bottom doorway she entered the vast training field where the Walemont Cavern's military force trained. Her pupils contracted and she squinted for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the bright light. This level glowed as if it were midday above ground, or at least that's what she had been told. It was kept brightly lit to ensure that their soldiers were prepared for the conditions above ground, long before they arrived there.
This level was where her brother's came most days, although their attendance wasn't compulsory until their nineteenth winter, when they would move into the barracks for four years of service.
None of the men in the caverns married before those four years were up, and while it was not a formal rule, it was a practical one, because the men undertaking their years of compulsory service barely had a moment to themselves during all those long days of scouting missions and training exercises. They trained together, worked together, ate together and lived together in a giant bunk room when they weren't on duty through the night guarding one of the entrances or watching from one of the watch posts.
The guards were the only people who ever passed a night outside the walls of the Caverns, which meant nearly every man who lived under the Cavern Dome had done so, but very few women ever saw the sun set over the forest since the laws of old said that they were to be inside before the entrance doors were sealed for the night. Some of the girls wanted those restrictions lifted and argued that they should be allowed in the guard too, but Quara had heard too many tales of the horrors that occurred to those captured outside of their little burrow, and so she was thankful that things were as they were. Lina, she was certain, was less thankful.
Women were not entirely left out of the precautions taken to defend the Caverns. Many were skilled as archers, and spent long hours honing their craft on the Training Grounds. Some were involved with the engineering of traps and drops and walls meant to hold back enemies. A few even designed and forged weapons.
For the most part though, the girls and young women within the Caverns took up the trade of their mother before them, learning the skills that would serve them as adults when they were still at their mother's knee, which meant that by and large jobs were seen as specifically male or female.
Quara's mother was a fine seamstress, and before she had the children she had made beautiful gowns for the wealthiest women within the community. Now she used her skills to make sturdy clothing for her husband and children. Quara could sew a straight line, and had been making her own clothing since she was ten, but she didn't think she was good enough to make her living making clothing for women who had enough gold in their purses to purchase the clothes that they wore on their backs.
Her mother had begun to ask her rather insistently if there wasn't an interest that captured her attention, a craft that she loved that she might begin to apply herself to, but she deflected the questions and while a shadow of worry darkened her mother's brow each time she changed the subject, she hadn't yet pushed the question and insisted Quara share any plans she might have for the day when she came of age.
It was easy enough to see where Lina's talents lay, Quara thought with a shake of her head. Lina should surely be one of those daring souls who tested out the security systems that lay in place to make sure an enemy never made their way inside the Dome. If anyone alive could make it through one of those booby trapped hallways it was her little sister, and Quara suddenly found herself thankful that there was only one Lina in the world and that she was on their side.
As she approached the Silver Gate she glanced back over her shoulder at the entrance to the school rooms, half expecting to see Elder Deaconberry rushing out to scold her for her sister's interruption in class, before she turned and began her descent down into the Hall of the Masters.
The staircase that ran to the Guild Masters' Hall was the most ornate in all of the Caverns. The bottom half of the wall was plated with solid gold. The upper half was a plain white backdrop painted with creatures that were said to be from a land far away called Za'Reek.
Here Quara's steps slowed ever further, as they always did. "Za'Reek." She murmured the name to herself. The word felt strange on her tongue. Was there really such a place? And even if there was, could such creatures really exist? It seemed far more likely that they were simply the creations of overactive imaginations, bored after long years underground.
She could relate to the feeling.
Within the Caverns there were plenty of creatures that weren't human. There were cats. There was also a kennel where specially trained dogs were bred and kept to go out with the guards on their patrols and to accompany scouts on special missions. And of course there were mice that had snuck into the Caverns some years before. These tiny creatures had, despite generations of efforts to exterminate them, never been entirely rooted out and destroyed.
The paintings, however, were not of cats or mice or even dogs. The creatures had been painted by masters of old, with fine gold lines that almost seemed to breathe life into the figures, and they were grand. There were dragons as large as mountains and dragons as small as mice, as well as a variety of sizes in between. A lengthy serpent made the water of a sea seem to boil as he churned the deep into a frenzy. A griffin guarded a pile of eggs on a nest set atop a cliff, and centaurs raced across a field, laughter clear in every line of their bodies. There were fairies and tree folk and water folk and mermaids and other creatures that were half something and half something else whose names she had never even heard spoken, nor found described within the pages of one of the many books she'd read in the library.
Turning away from the carefully painted figures she glanced up at the massive gate that had been built to secure the levels above in the event that invaders somehow made it this far into the Caverns stronghold. The Silver Gate was at least two feet thick and surely it would hold off any attackers that came to it. Yet she couldn't help feel a jolt of panic as she looked past the gate, into the brightly lit room at the end of the corridor, for anyone who made it this far would have already passed many impassable traps and would not find a door, even a very strong door, to be much of a challenge at all.
She hoped, as she continued on her way, that it would never come to that, that the Cavern would prove as impenetrable for their enemies as it ever had, and so she allowed her feet to carry her along, but she could not entirely away from the worries of the great outside world, which she had never seen.