The Game of Fates

by Joel Babbitt

  From somewhere deep inside him, his mother’s voice seemed to be telling him to run, not walk, away from this fast-mover. He ignored the voice yet again.

  Trallik’s brow rose. “Well, the pair stand in front of the lord of the gen, they promise to give themselves to each other, then they exchange tokens of their love for each other. The lord of the gen then pronounces them lifemates.”

  “I thought you said you were exiled?” she said in her most unabashed voice, a coy smile playing across her face as Trallik began to realize what exactly she was suggesting.

  Digging into the pouch where he’d stuffed some stones and jewelry, Trallik dug out a necklace with a particularly large diamond set in the middle of it. Trikki had begun digging into her sack as well.

  “I have a token of my love for you,” he said.

  Holding up a length of golden wire twisted into the shape of a snake ring, its eyes shining with tiny, bright rubies, Trikki said, “I have mine for you as well.”

  The pair of genless kobolds knelt facing each other.

  “I give myself to you,” Trikki said, trying the ring on various fingers until finding that the only digit it would fit was Trallik’s left index finger. The two of them giggled the whole time.

  “I give myself to you,” Trallik replied, unclasping the necklace and placing it against the small scales of her bosom. As he did the clasp up behind her neck, she licked his ear, both of them laughing in the process.

  “With this, I, Trallik the Outcast, say that we are lifemates.”

  Kneeling and holding each other’s hands, Trikki asked, “So what now?”

  Trallik was looking down to where the diamond on its long chain had finally come to rest. “That’s the end of the ceremony.”

  Trikki giggled.

  Trallik’s mother’s voice had nothing more to say.

  The time that the young lifemates spent in that underground grotto would be forever frozen in Trallik’s mind and heart. Long after the tremendously emotionally impacting events of these weeks had become jumbled memories, the details of them being lost to history, the memory of those many hours spent with her in the twilight of phosphorescent light would remain sharp and clear. To the end of his mortal days, and forever after he had gone to join the ancestors in the worlds beyond, the light of green phosphorescence would bring Trallik a sense of exuberance, and other emotions that would be added over time.

  For now, Trikki was tired of the grotto. It was too cold for her liking, there was too much mud, and she wanted to see the sun again. Trallik wanted to stay, for this moment to last forever. After all, they had been keeping each other warm for some time, had found a dry spot of sand, there were fish in the pond, and the water wasn’t so bad, once you got used to the taste of limestone. She was insistent, however.

  Trallik was beginning to understand the different emotions that played across her countenance. Right now, standing before her, he could see that the same greed he’d seen in her eyes back in the well was beginning to return. She had been looking through her bag of jewelry and even as he looked in her eyes he could see that the possibilities it represented were spinning through her head at an alarming rate. Trallik was no longer the focus of her attention.

  “Alright, Trikki,” he nodded. “Let’s go. Do you know how to get out of here?”

  Trikki’s face lit up, the pouty frown disappearing. “Uh-huh! There’s a little river not far from here. Klimer and I found an old boat and moved it to the shore, but we weren’t brave enough to get in and chance the stream. But with you…” she said, sidling up to him. “I think that this is the same river that runs out below Demon’s Bridge. I think there’s an exit from the caves into the southern valley. From there the river goes to the caves of the outcasts below the southern gens.” Looking back up at him, she continued, “I want to go to your gen, though, Trallik. I don’t want to go back to my people.”

  “Alright. Well, let’s get going then.”

  Trallik looked back with longing one last time as they climbed through a hole in one wall of the grotto into the chamber beyond.

  Only a couple of chambers over from the grotto the pair came to the sandy shore of the stream. Sitting to wash the mud off of themselves from the mudflat they’d had to crawl through, Trallik looked over at the boat. It had to be ancient. It was well constructed, being built from planks with oars set in brackets, but it had the look of something that had thinned and been made fragile with the passing of many decades, perhaps centuries.

  Standing, Trallik walked through the sand to examine the boat further. There were a number of small bundles in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in various cloths and skins. Opening a couple of them, he found they were mostly full of rations, clothes, and various tools and other goods.

  “You’ve been planning this for a while, haven’t you?” he remarked.

  Trikki looked up at him innocently. “The orcs didn’t miss this stuff. They’re very careless with their things. It only took a few weeks to gather this stuff.”

  Trallik wondered if, perhaps, she would have loved him the same if he hadn’t been her ticket to freedom, as he now saw that he was. It was as if his arrival and her desire to escape had coincided perfectly. He only hoped that her love for him would last once they were back in the relative safety of the Kale Gen.

  They were lifemates! Trallik shook his head. The doubts that had begun to percolate into his mind were completely unfounded. After all, he had wanted her just as much as she seemed to want him. They had made a vow and were lifemates. That, alone, was all that mattered. Breathing deeply, Trallik got back to the task at hand.

  Looking at the bottom and sides of the boat, he could see that the planks were mostly intact. A couple of the planks had loosened somewhat, but someone had lathered them with tar giving them some chance of staying together, the tar-stained bowl and stick that had been used to mend the boat laying off to one side.

  “Well, I think it will work alright. I’m not skilled with such things, but it can’t be all that hard. I think we each take an oar, point the boat down the river, then go.”

  Loading their stuff into the boat, Trallik pushed the boat into the stream then jumped in. It wasn’t long before Trallik figured out that he and Trikki had no idea how to make the oars work. So, instead of leaving them in their brackets, he pulled the oars out and, sitting in the bow of the boat, he used one of them to push the boat away from the walls of the channel it seemed to be following and tried to keep it straight it in its journey as it floated gently down the river.

  The spring runoff had begun in earnest, and it wasn’t long before the swollen stream began moving faster, the roof above them beginning to press down on them as they went down a slight slide. Trikki put her arms around Trallik from behind. She was talking in excited, fearful tones, but Trallik wasn’t listening. He was too busy trying to keep the boat from slamming into the jagged rock walls to hear her above the churning of the water around them.

  Suddenly, the ceiling of the passage lowered down almost to the waterline. Ducking to the floor of the boat, and knocking Trikki down in the process, Trallik braced himself. Within moments a jarring crash split the bow of the vessel and the boat was stuck between the rock of the ceiling and the water that pushed the boat upwards. The ice-cold water of the spring runoff began to flow into the boat with alarming speed.

  Trikki was panicking, screaming in part from fear, and in part from the extreme cold of the water. Trallik yelled for her to help him push. Placing his hands and feet against the ceiling, he pushed down with all his might. Ice water was flowing in around them. Trallik continued pushing, hoping that this little dip was it, that he wasn’t simply pushing them to their deaths.

  After several moments the water had almost completely flooded the little boat. Trallik could see that it was a lost cause. At that moment the boat began to slide down. It was a chute! Grabbing hold of Trikki, who in turn had a death grip on her bag of jewelry, Trallik took a deep breath. The current pulled the pair
down the chute along with it, both of them holding to each other in the freezing water as they plunged downward within the shell of the ancient rowboat.

  Completely submerged in the freezing water, the pair held onto each other as they rolled downward, buffeted by the boat that had carried them this far. Suddenly, the boat wedged itself between two large rocks, creating something of a barrier to the massive stream, the flow of water slackening for one precious moment. In that moment, Trallik and Trikki shot out of the chute, flying through the falling water into a pool at the bottom of the flow. The pair floundered around in the bottom of the pool for a moment, Trikki not wanting to release her death grip on her bag, and Trallik doing everything in his power to drag the both of them up to the surface in the freezing darkness.

  Suddenly, just above Trallik the hull of their boat sliced through the water. Grabbing hold of it, the still somewhat buoyant wood dragged the pair to the surface along with it. Trallik and Trikki coughed and choked as their heads finally popped out of the water. Seeing that Trikki was almost spent, the coolness of her figure showing dull gray in the darkness, Trallik tried to guide the boat to the edge. Once within just a step or two’s distance of the shore, he let go of the boat and dragged his almost comatose companion to the shore.

  Trikki lay on the sand coughing and vomiting for some time, dry-heaving until her aching stomach and burning lungs had released all that was in them. Trallik had fared much better. He sat next to her, rubbing her arm and digging up the sand where she had vomited, throwing it back into the stream, not wanting the sight and smell of it to induce more vomiting. Not long after, Trikki had curled up in a ball and fell into a fitful sleep, her wet bag of jewelry held firmly to her bosom.

  Looking around the chamber, Trallik began to forage for something, anything to keep her warm. He wandered a couple of chambers away, climbing up and around a high outcropping of rock to find where the wind seemed to be going. As his head lifted above the shelf onto the platform of rock that served as something of a balcony to the chamber beyond, he could see several large, bright forms lying about on the floor, probably twenty of them. Though the wind was against him, he could still smell the slightest hint of orc.

  Trallik observed the sleeping forms for several moments. They certainly seemed to be sleeping, even the one orc who sat at an entrance opposite to his own, supposedly the lone guard they had posted. Scattered about the orcs were their kits; swords, spears, bags of rations, and… blankets!

  Checking his equipment to ensure he would make no sounds to wake up the unwary guardians of the blankets, Trallik climbed slowly over the lip of the balcony, staying low and against the wall. He knew that orcs could see in complete darkness, but they didn’t see heat, rather they saw the same as they would in the light, but in shades of gray.

  Padding slowly along the wall, he passed the first couple of sleeping orcs. They were obviously warriors out on a patrol or raid. They slept in their armor, their weapons near at hand with a scattering of shields propped against the walls next to them. As Trallik passed by their shields, he saw that one of the orcs must have rolled around quite a bit, the deer fur that served him as a blanket having mostly fallen off in his sleep.

  Trallik carefully tip-toed through the sand to where the sleeping orc lay. His feet were caught in the fur. Frowning, Trallik thought for a moment. The last thing he wanted to do was take a chance of waking up the orcs, but prodded on by the thought of his love freezing to death down in the lower pool chamber, Trallik lifted one of the orc’s feet up by the pant leg, then carefully lifted the fur off of the orc’s other foot and from around the foot he was lifting, looking back carefully at the orc’s face to ensure it wasn’t waking up. Finally, after several moments of intense stress, Trallik pulled the last corner of fur away from orc, then wrapped it up around his two arms, ensuring that none of it was dangling down where he could trip on it.

  Seeing a bag of dried meat sitting open by the next orc over, Trallik stuffed the deer fur under one arm and carefully grabbed the sack of dried meat by the neck. Taking another look around to ensure that no one was awake, Trallik padded softly through the sand back toward the balcony where he’d come from. Smiling to himself about how easy it was, he looked back to where the orcs lay, completely unaware of what he had just done. Then, turning back to the balcony, he let out a yelp as he was stopped cold by a spear pointed at his neck.

  Standing in front of Trallik the kobold warrior holding the spear began to look worried. Trallik’s yelp had woken up the orc that was supposed to be standing guard. Now, as he looked beyond Trallik, he could see that the orc guard was going to see them.

  “Ye go!” the kobold spearman whispered urgently, pointing with his spear to the slope Trallik had crawled up. Trallik couldn’t tell, but he thought the kobold with the spear might actually be trying to help him escape.

  Not bothering to look behind himself, Trallik hurried to the balcony’s edge, jumping down onto the slope, the slate rock of it giving way, causing him to slide to the bottom amidst flows of slate and loose dirt. The spearman was right behind him.

  Getting to his feet, Trallik gathered the deer fur and the bag of dried meat. From up where they’d come from the voice of the orc guard was yelling something in orcish and both kobolds heard the sound of orcs being roused from their sleep. Not waiting for the other kobold, Trallik stumbled through the rubble and loose rock of the chamber toward the far entrance.

  The kobold spearman grabbed his arm. “No! Ye go!” he said urgently, though not with a commanding tone, pointing with his snout toward a side passage. “Ye snik!”

  Trallik didn’t have time for this. Trikki was cold, and he needed to get back to her.

  “No,” he said firmly, “I’m going back to my lifemate in the other chamber. She’s cold, and I have a fur to help her get warm. Besides, I need to wake her up so the orcs don’t find her.”

  The spearman looked at Trallik for a second, the sharp look in his alert eyes softening somewhat. “Right, but let’s hurry,” the spearman said, his speech changing from that of the degenerate northern gens to clear Sorcerer’s Tongue.

  Trallik looked at the spearman strangely as he walked backwards toward the entrance. “You’re not a northerner,” he stated.

  “Neither are you,” The spearman replied, coming up beside Trallik. “No, my heritage is Kale Gen, or at least that is where my line comes from.”

  Trallik turned back to the path. “So am I, and so is my lifemate Trikki.”

  The other kobold was surprised. “Trikki, you say? You’re with Trikki?”

  “Yes. Why? Do you know her?”

  “I know of her, yes. She grew up among the outcasts as did I. She is from a different family than mine, but our families have traded some over time.”

  Behind the pair, as they picked their way quickly but carefully through a rockslide that formed the floor of the far entrance, the orcs were making a good amount of noise. They didn’t seem to be rushing toward the balcony that the pair had recently left, nor was there any indication that the orcs had seen which exit they’d taken from this connecting chamber.

  “She said she never knew her father. She didn’t say anything about any relatives other than her mother,” Trallik said, confused by this talk of families.

  “No, you don’t understand. Among the outcasts we form families from those who cross our paths. Though my family is almost all related by blood, most families are usually not blood relations. It’s kind of like… a warrior group I believe you would call it.”

  Trallik looked at the spearman curiously. “You’re telling me there are that many outcasts down here?”

  The spearman was taken aback. “You don’t know? There are hundreds of us! In fact, though we’re scattered, if you count the Deep Gen, there are probably more kobolds in the underdark beneath these two valleys than there are in the Kale Gen.”

  Despite the noise that the orcs were making two chambers away, Trallik stopped and looked into the spearman’s eyes.
For all Trallik could tell, the spearman wasn’t playing with him. Trallik turned and continued hurrying across the chamber, reaching the cave entrance that led down to where his love lay shivering.

  Within a short time he was at Trikki’s side again, unfurling the deer fur and wrapping her in it, rolling her off the cool sand and into the fur as he did so. Trikki looked up at him, a smile crossing her face as she recognized Trallik. Nuzzling her ear and holding her close for a moment, he finished wrapping her in the fur and stepped back as she drifted back to sleep.

  The spearman, who had been standing observing the two, found a seat in a sand-covered hollow of rock. Once Trallik saw that Trikki was asleep again, he came and sat next to the spearman.

  “I had no idea there were so many of you. How did there get to be so many?”

  The spearman shrugged. “In my case my great-grandparents were exiled by the chamberlain of the last Lord Kale, though we’ve kept our Kale Gen identity even down in the underdark. That’s probably how most of the outcasts came to be down here, castoffs from either the Kale or Krall Gens, that or they’re descendants of outcasts from previous generations or descendants of bandits and adventurers who had bases in the underdark and just never left.

  “The Deep Gen, however, is different. When the last Lord Kale disappeared, his chamberlain proclaimed himself Lord of the Kale Gen. That was a couple, maybe a few generations ago.”

  Trallik nodded his head. He’d heard of that, of course.

  “A few of the outcast families and the Deep Gen are the descendants of the many kobolds who split off from the Kale Gen back then. There was literally a whole warrior group that just up and left for the underdark. My great-grandfather was their leader, but leadership of that gen has passed to others since my great-grandfather’s day. Down there, they’ve grown over all these years. There’s got to be a few thousand of them now.”