The Trials of Caste

by Joel Babbitt

  Arbelk pondered on the question for several moments as his father looked on patiently. Unlike most of his fellow yearlings, Arbelk’s hopes did not rest on winning tomorrow’s competition. In fact, to him it was nothing more than another thing he had to do to get what he really wanted. Never the one to step out into the limelight, long before the year of training Arbelk had found his niche as a Climber’s apprentice in the Deep Guard.

  The Climbers were a different sort. They were warriors of few words, needing and wanting very little leadership. The Deep Guard depended on the Climbers to get their warriors from one level to the next in the great sunken caverns far beneath their gen.

  One of the jobs within the Climbers was that of Bridge Master. It was a job with a clear set of responsibilities and a clear purpose. He wanted to be the one that everyone trusted with their lives, to build the bridges that got them over the greatest of chasms. After a year of apprenticing with the Climbers, Arbelk had grown to love working in a small, highly skilled team, and of all the Climber teams none was more highly skilled than the Bridge Masters.

  “Yes, father,” Arbelk finally answered. “I still want to be a Bridge Master.”

  As the conversation continued, Arbelk’s mind began to wander. He thought back to the year of apprenticing he’d done with the Climbers before the year of warrior training. He had gotten so good at establishing bridgeheads and climbing lanes that the Climbers would often take him along on exercises to help establish the rope and piton bridges that would carry the bulk of the Deep Guard troops through the massively uneven terrain of the underdark.

  Though his year of warrior training had gone well, he knew that he was no match for Gorgon and some of the others. Arbelk had resigned himself to the fact that he would not win this competition, but he certainly would welcome anything positive that the Fates threw his way. His greatest hope was that he would not make a fool of himself in front of the entire gen, and that the Deep Guard would be impressed enough with his performance to grant him his wish of continuing with the Climbers after his year-group’s quest was done.

  As he sat talking with his father, Arbelk heard the third gong ring out. Remembering a meeting that Gorgon had planned, Arbelk excused himself and made his way quickly toward the upper portions of the Kale Gen’s home caverns.

  Trallik was still confused by Trelkar’s generosity in blindly taking his side against Durik and Keryak. He didn’t know why Trelkar had done it, but he could only imagine it had something to do with the Trials. Perhaps Khee-lar Shadow Hand and his chief elite warrior saw greatness in him? Perhaps they were expecting him to take the competition and be awarded the rank of elite warrior? Trallik’s imagination was working overtime on the options and possibilities for his future.

  The more he thought about his future, however, the less happy he was with his current circumstances. Like normal, he sat simmering in his home surrounded by his numerous younger siblings. It wasn’t much of a home, of that he was sure, and he would be glad to leave it. After all, it was only a tent with a sand floor in the deeper regions of his gen’s home caverns. Why did his family live here? Trallik had often asked himself that very question, and had long ago figured out who to blame.

  When he was a young whelp, not much taller than his father’s knee, he had listened with amazement as his father had recited to him, his older brother and younger siblings the glorious stories of their heritage. Stories of great warriors and powerful leaders filled his whelping years. The fact that these were his ancestors had only made these stories more wonderful.

  He’d had his mother, who always understood him and seemed to care as much about him, the second son, as she did about all the rest of her whelps. When his mother had died birthing his youngest sister, however, his father had too quickly taken on that ugly, nagging female who was not more than a handful of years older than Trallik as his new mate. Trallik had resented that, and in the two years since had grown further and further away from his father. He had never opened his heart to his father’s new mate. With the arrival of her first whelp, she returned the favor and ignored Trallik as well.

  Trallik’s interest had changed to focus on the power his ancestors had held. His respect for his father and for his humble upbringing had waned. Being his father’s second son, and always in his older brother’s shadow, had helped to twist his ambitions. Eventually Trallik’s rejection of his family made him bitter. If his father’s ancestors were so powerful, why had his father ended up as a servant caste? His father wasn’t even a warrior, much less a leader of warriors. No, he was a fungus farmer, one who smeared sheep dung on the walls of the lower caverns to grow the thick shelf-like fungus that the poor of their gen ate. He could only imagine that his much more powerful ancestors must have never tasted the wretched stuff.

  When Trallik had entered his year of training, he had been utterly determined to do whatever it would take to match, and perhaps exceed, the power and positions his ancestors had held. Now as he sat listening to his father’s recital of the story of Mintraub, Trallik’s great grandfather who had gone on a quest with the last Lord Kale, and like Lord Kale, had never been heard from again, Trallik shook his head and stood up. He had no time or patience for his father’s ramblings anymore. He had taken the necessary steps to ensure his own destiny, and had no use for this house anymore.

  “Trallik!” his father said, “We’re not finished here. Get back here!”

  Trallik looked around at his younger siblings. He could see that most of the younger ones looked up at their father with the same look of wonder that he had felt at one time, back when life was much simpler. But he felt that wonder no longer. Now, he felt only the shame of what he felt was his father’s failure in life and the emptiness of a house without his mother, and the utter determination to leave this past far behind him. He shook his head at the naiveté of his younger siblings.

  “Trallik? Come now, what’s wrong? Are you nervous about the Trials of Caste?” his father asked, seemingly oblivious as always to what Trallik thought and felt.

  Trallik looked at his father with nothing but disdain. He barely contained his anger and his desire to spit in his father’s face.

  His father saw the look in Trallik’s eyes and recognized it for what it was; the same fire and hate he’d had at Trallik’s age. The old familiar hope welled up in his heart, that somehow the storms that raged in his son’s soul would pass and that Trallik would not end up wrecking his life as he had done. Fearing an open confrontation, Trallik’s father spoke before his son could, his tone very different.

  “Trallik, you’ve heard these stories before, and I’m sure you’re still recovering from your adventures in the underdark. Why don’t you attend to your preparations for the trials?”

  Trallik did not speak. He threw his bag over his shoulder and, with effort, turned his mind toward the tasks ahead, even as he turned away from his family.

  Chapter 4 – Strengths and Weaknesses

  The kobold known as Spider watched in morbid fascination as the mass of brown fur and whip-like tail writhed about on the floor in agony. In a moment of reprieve from the intense pain, the large subterranean rat raised its head and sniffed about, its blind eyes unable to fully reflect the fear and anger it was trying to unleash on its unseen attacker.

  Spider raised his club, ready to strike at the creature just in case it recovered enough of its senses to be a danger to him.

  Suddenly the rat cried out again and fell to the floor as if skewered by a javelin. For several moments it lay twitching on the ground, its tongue lolling out of its mouth as its shallow, raspy breaths echoed off the walls of the tiny chamber. After only a few moments, the rat let out a final gasp, then all was still.

  Smiling in cruel satisfaction, Spider poured the remaining Fang Cap mushroom spores from the little bowl where he had coated the piece of meat with them into a small leather bag he had prepared for just this purpose. Grabbing his club, the bitter young kobold struggled to his feet. Even after recovering
from the accident this past year during his preparation for the Trials of Caste, Spider still had a limp. For that, the master trainer had not let him back into the year of training.

  “Not that I wanted back in, anyway,” Spider muttered under his breath as he climbed up the walls of the flue he’d used to trap the rat and over the lip of stone he’d greased with animal fat. “I can still climb like a spider anyway,” he muttered.

  He liked his name; Spider. His long-dead father had given it to him when he was born. It was the only legacy of his father that his mother had kept. It almost sounded like an honor name. Of course, there was little honorable that he’d ever done in his life, but that was beside the point. If Trelkar’s promise was true, he would soon have a place to fit in, a purpose for continuing his miserable existence. It certainly wasn’t an honorable one, but it seemed valuable to Trelkar and his master, Khee-lar Shadow Hand. And who knows what valuable things he could acquire because of it?

  Struggling again to get to his feet now that he was at the top, Spider hobbled off in the direction of the main caves, intent on making the meeting that he was sure would change his fortunes in life.

  Gorgon, the strongest of this year-group, was not concerned with the Trials of Caste. He knew the others well. After a year he knew their strengths and weaknesses entirely too well. He would perform well and not make a fool of himself. Of that he had no doubt.

  His concern was about making elite warrior. Indeed, just making it to the trials meant he would at least be a warrior. But there would be only one from this group that would be chosen to receive the rank of elite warrior within the warrior caste; just one of seven future warriors. If anyone from this group should take that honor, he knew it was him. He didn’t feel it was pride that made him think so, just simple confidence in his own abilities and the attention he paid to the training. He easily mastered the weapon skills that the Master Trainer had taught him and had honed his body to a fine edge.

  He flexed his arms and stretched his fingers, watching the scales on his forearms ripple as the muscles flexed and stretched in turn. Subconsciously, he rubbed at the base of his left horn, which was short, even for a member of the Kale Gen. His short tail swished back and forth reflexively as he thought of the upcoming Trials of Caste. He was born to be a warrior and a leader among his fellow warriors, honed in the forges of the training caves. Soon he would see his purpose fulfilled. The trials would be his finest hour.

  His regimen complete, light as it was in anticipation of the events of the coming days, Gorgon picked up the bag of roots he’d collected earlier in the night from a nearby glade in the forest. His mind was rested from the rooting, and his body was loosened by the regimen. As he strode toward the entrance to the stony cave, he could feel the warm current of air coming from the fiery crack that heated the large cavern complex. This was the ancestral home of the Kale Gen, but more than that, it was his home. A feeling of pride in his people welled up in his heart; pride in the generations of those that had trod the path to warrior before him and pride in the strength of the Gen, built over these hundreds of years.

  They were not as the wild gens to the north, who were little better than wild beasts of the forest living in dismal, dirty, smoke-marred caves, subsisting mostly on the moss and lichen that grew on the roots of trees and in the deepest of moist caves, smearing their own dung on the walls to grow hairy fungus for their food.

  No, the Kale Gen was strong because it was smart. Whereas most of the kobold race had long forgotten their beginnings and their heritage, having no knowledge of letters and writing, his gen maintained the ancient scripts and traditions of their ancestors. Their learning had caused them to keep their language intact, to the point where it was hard to understand many of the babbling, unlearned gens.

  This learning did not stop with history and tradition; it was a standard that was only more amplified with the crafts of the hand than with the crafts of the mind. Smiths and weavers were found among his gen, as were those who worked with wood, trainers of the black-pelted wolves that their scouts and cavalry rode, makers of crockery, and several more besides.

  Gorgon’s father had achieved his elite warrior status through several exploits in his younger days, though now he was one of the best at one of those crafts. His shop was a black smithy in a cavern of commerce, with a chimney above the forge that vented through many feet of stone to the air above. It was to his father’s shop that Gorgon’s feet took him now.

  As he passed through the various passages and chambers emerging from deep within the bowels of the complex he focused intently on his surroundings. After two moons in the underdark evading the various dangers to be found there, he found himself padding up to corners and peering around, trying to notice everyone before they noticed him.

  His preference in dealing with problems had been to rush in horns first. But though he could lift a stone the size of a melon over his head, Gorgon was still a kobold, and kobolds were still rather small compared to most things in this world. Indeed, the last two moons of training had changed him, for a kobold caught unaware often was a dead kobold.

  Jerrig was an outsider to most of his peers, never fully accepted in anyone’s social circle. Certainly his cousin Durik was kind to him, always watching out for him and such. And though he could tell Durik, and to some degree the other yearlings, were helpful to him, none of them had really taken him in and included him in their activities or made him their friend. Considering his history, however, he couldn’t blame them.

  It had not been long since he had passed through a time of extreme turmoil in his life. As if the coming of age had not been enough with the raging hormones and great physical changes it brought, several other stranger things had happened to him. It had all started about the same time the coming of age had occurred, more than two years now in the past. About once or twice a day, usually when beginning to relax, he could feel a surge of energy begin to form in his head.

  At first, he’d not known how to control it, and after a couple of months of this, the problem only got worse. One night as he lay trying to get to sleep in his bed, he had felt a surge of energy stronger than any other before. Not knowing how to control it, he had begun to cry out for his mother. Instead of sound, however, a pure wave of force seemed to project from his hand, shredding a hole straight through the curtain that surrounded his bed in their dugout house.

  His parents had not believed his story, nor did they understand why their son had ‘become so clumsy,’ breaking pots, chairs, and on one instance shattering a pitcher of root tea while reaching for it during a quiet, late summer evening story-telling. What no one had noticed was that his hand had been an arm’s length from it.

  For a time, Jerrig had not slept except when he was so exhausted that he could fall asleep immediately. He had found that, when exhausted and weak, the energy would not come. After a couple of weeks of this, he had been helping his father as an apprentice in his leather shop when he stopped to rest for a minute. Almost without warning, the energy had welled up within him and burst forth, cracking the cauldron his father used to boil leather and throwing it onto its side. The hot oil had spilled throughout the entire shop, scalding two warriors that had been in the shop looking at his father’s goods. Jerrig had felt like his world was coming to an end.

  Exhausted from the release of so much energy and frightened by the accident, Jerrig had run from the scene of the accident out of the caverns and into the wilderness, and continued running until he was far from home. For several months he had lived in the forest, using his limited knowledge of the wilderness to live off the land. That time in the forest had taught him much, and the fact that he’d stayed out there alone had gained him some semblance of self-confidence, despite narrowly escaping being eaten by giant hunter ants, despite almost having been found and killed by a raiding party of orcs, and especially despite his poor ability to feed, warm, and protect himself.

  After many moons had passed and the cool winds of winter had come,
he had returned to the gen. This time, however, Jerrig had finally gained a measure of control over this power. As he had explained what had happened that day in his father’s shop to his father’s warrior group leader, he had been called a liar and only under condition that he never speak of this power again was he allowed to enter the year of training and participate in the Trials of Caste. From that time forth, there had been only a couple of instances where he’d not been able to control the energy, both of which, fortunately, had been while no one else was around.

  As time passed, Jerrig not only learned to stop the energy, but also learned how to bring on the energy. Practicing alone from time to time in a secluded glen in the woods, he had learned to focus and manipulate the energy, slowly at first. It was not long before he had learned to amplify the energy and focus it on his favored weapon, the javelin, seeming to be able to correct the course of its flight from afar and cause it to strike harder. Some time after that, he’d learned to bring on greater amounts of the energy, stripping the bark from mighty trees with his repeated focuses and shattering young saplings from several steps away.

  The pinnacle of his efforts thus far had come just before entering his year of training. As he stood focusing on a tree one quiet winter afternoon, he had felt to raise his hands and, forming a triangle with his fingers, he focused on the space between his hands. From within the triangle, a swirling flame had begun to appear, growing slowly as he moved his hands apart. Cupping his hands behind it, Jerrig had focused on projecting this flame toward the tree he had been practicing on.

  The flame had sped like a dart toward the tree and struck it with a loud crack, blasting a hole and causing the trunk of it to burst into flames. Fortunately for Jerrig it had been a cold spring and there was still snow on the ground. After several minutes of throwing snow at the fire until it was out, a mentally and physically exhausted Jerrig had gone home pondering on the power within him.