The Trials of Caste (18 page)

Bait thought for a few more moments more then
looked up in remembrance.  “Is it Arena?” he asked, remembering that the Trials
of Caste took place in the gen’s arena.

“No, Bait,” one of them said, getting a frustrated
look on his face.  “Look, why don’t you just go back and help in the search.”

Bait got a frustrated look on his face.  “Hey,
just because I’m slow doesn’t mean I’m not a warrior, too!” he said.

“Alright, alright,” the other guard said.  “Didn’t
mean to upset you.  But without the password, we can’t let you pass.  Khazak’s
orders.”

“I’m no yearling.  You let me pass!” Bait
insisted.

The two guards looked at each other for a moment. 
“Did he just say what I think he said?” one said.

“I think it was on accident,” said the other.

“I say we let him pass,” the first one said.

The other one nodded.  “Very well.  Bait, you can
pass.”

Looking rather proud of himself, Bait walked past
the two guards.  Now that he knew the password, or at least a pass-phrase, it
would be a simple matter to pass the guards placed between himself and the
caverns of the Wolf Riders Warrior Group.  As he walked away from the guards,
the façade dropped, and Mynar’s features replaced those of the simpleton Bait.

W
ith
all the intrigue and the many preparations for the Day of Beginnings and its
main event, the Trials of Caste, few rested well during the last handful of
nights before the largest celebration of the year in the Kale Gen.  For the
yearlings, their fate hung in the balance.  For most of the gen, the
preparations had been lavish; for the trials, the quest, and for the
celebration to follow the trials as well.  Through it all Khazak Mail Fist and
the Honor Guard had done all they could to protect their lord and master from
the worst of it.  Despite their best efforts, however, it was in the most
opulent of quarters that the greatest disquiet had occurred.

For several weeks Lord Karthan, Lord of the Kale
Gen, had not slept well.  A sense of unease and anticipation had grown in his
heart for some time.  At first he’d tried to put it out of his mind.  Then
after a while, when it had grown instead of subsiding, he began to ponder on
it.  He’d had somewhat similar feelings before, especially during times of
upheaval in the gen.

Often over the years feelings of unease had served
to warn him of impending danger.  He was not the most popular of leaders after
all.  He’d been named lord of the gen upon his father’s death, and had
immediately set about reforming the gen.  On multiple occasions turbulent
feelings had been pre-cursors to assassination attempts.  After the first
attempt, he had not only listened well to his heart, but had also established
the Honor Guard Warrior Group to help ensure his own and his family’s safety.

Lord Karthan longed for the days of his forebears,
when the last Lord Kale had held the Kale Stone, their gen’s traditional token
of right to rulership, said to have been given to Kale, their gen’s founder, by
The Sorcerer himself.  Decades, even generations had passed without
insurrection.  But since Lord Karthan’s ancestor, the chamberlain of the last
Lord Kale, had taken over rule of the gen when his lord and the Kale Stone were
lost on a quest leaving no progeny to rule in his stead nor token of right to
rulership, it seems as though their history had been one of insurrection,
disloyalty, and rebellion. 

For weeks now, Lord Karthan’s loyal supporters had
been building the case against Trelkar of the Deep Guard, and trying to build a
case against his leader caste, Khee-lar Shadow Hand, who was none other than
the younger brother of Karthan’s lifemate Kiri, killed six years ago now in the
orc raid.  If Khazak’s information was right, then Trelkar and likely Khee-lar
were using their heritage as most direct descendants of the last Lord Kale’s
closest relative, a nephew, to gather support from the members of Lord
Karthan’s own gen council for what had to be an attempt to overthrow Lord
Karthan’s rule. 

Lord Karthan could sense that whatever was going
to happen would likely happen soon, but he was unsure of how to approach the
problem.  After all, there was obviously a larger organization at work here;
too much was going on for his reach to be limited to a handful of conspirators. 
He was growing bolder, which though Lord Karthan didn’t want to think his lifemate’s
brother Khee-lar Shadow Hand was involved, it likely could only mean one thing.

It was not these feelings that had bothered him
for the last few weeks, however.  Other feelings seemed to have come from deep
within the recesses of his mind, as if some long forgotten memory was
struggling to resurge.  As he had pondered on the pending Trials of Caste, and
the quest that he should assign the yearling group to complete afterwards, the
feeling only gained intensity.  A sense of having forgotten something grew on
him day by day, and an indecisiveness about the quest for the yearling group grew
along with it, until finally he had called for the Lore Master.

“Sire,” the bent and feeble old kobold had said as
he struggled to stay erect, “I would look to the exiles your grandsire sent
into the underdark.”

Lord Karthan had watched uncomfortably as the ancient
kobold, his bronzing scales flaking about as he swayed before his lord, kept himself
from falling only by a stout cane.  A handful of students piled rolls of
writing skins, codices of parchment, and bindings of metal plates on the table
between them.

“Please, won’t you be seated, Lore Master?”

“Eh?  Yes, I’ve eaten.”  The Lore Master
reflexively held a goat’s horn up to his oversized, pointed ears, his own horns
having curved back and forward again in the last decade or so.

“Won’t you be seated,” Lord Karthan had asked
again.

“Probably wouldn’t be able to get back up,” the
Lore Master had waved dismissively.  “Hear me now, young Karthan, look to those
that were exiled; the descendents now of the illegitimate whelp of the last
Lord Kale and those he led into the underdark.  For too long there has been no
word of them, but I do not think they should be forgotten any longer.”

Lord Karthan had pleasantly dismissed the Lore
Master’s concerns.  Seeing that his students stood patiently waiting, having
already emptied the handcart of its load, the old kobold had doddered out of
the room, leaving Lord Karthan alone with the writings he had requested.

Though the Lore Master’s intentions were good,
Lord Karthan’s father had sent parties to scout for these lost exiles and had
found only degenerate souls who had forgotten the gen they’d come from and had
become a dark and filthy people, suitable for driving before the Deep Guard on
their expeditions and not much more.  No, he had decided, that was not what was
troubling his heart.

For weeks Lord Karthan had scoured all of those
writings, as well as every other scrap of records and remnants of ancient books
the Lore Master’s library had to offer, mostly pouring over the writings of
former lords of the gen, the Scrolls of Heritage, and the Chronicles of The
Sorcerer, hoping to find what it was that seemed to be calling to him.  But his
thirst was not quenched, and so Lord Karthan began to despair.

Now, late in the evening, before the council where
this year-group’s quest must be decided, his daughter Kiria had entered the
library where Lord Karthan, known throughout the gen as a kobold of action and
decision, sat surrounded like one of the Lore Master’s pupils by stacks of
books, with no idea of what quest he was going to send these yearlings to accomplish.

“Father,” Kiria started hesitantly as Lord Karthan
looked up from a roll of sheep skin he was perusing.  The look of tired concern
on his face seemed to melt away as he looked into Kiria’s eyes and smiled.

“You look more and more like your mother each
day,” he said.  “How proud she would be to see you all grown up.”

Kiria smiled with the attention, “Oh father, you
flatter me.”  Then, placing a book on the table in front of her father, she
leafed through the yellowing pages until she found what she was looking for; a
picture of a human warrior dressed in metal armor, with a sword and shield in
hand.

“I found this book among some of mother’s old
things and I was wondering if you knew why a human would be wearing the kobold
leader caste symbol?”  She asked, pointing to the human warrior’s shield.

After so many hours of looking through books and
scrolls, Lord Karthan had to pick the book up and bring it closer to focus on
it.  As he did so, he saw that the warrior had a tower with a glowing eye above
it emblazoned on his shield; this was the same symbol that all male leader caste
in his gen had branded on their chests.  In his youth, his father had explained
that it was an ancient symbol that meant leadership and that he had been told
that it served as a reminder to the leaders of the gen that they were to watch
out for the well being of the gen.  Never having seen a picture of a human
wearing that particular symbol in any of the ancient histories of the gen, he
tried to make out the smudged writing that appeared below the picture.

Bertrand, the first Watcher we met.  This human
led us to the Council of Watchers.  These Watchers state that they look after
not only the eight stones of power that were gifted to the other races, but
apparently the Kobold Stone as well, though I don’t see why the lost stone of
our sister gen would be so important.  They were surprised to learn of the Kale
Stone and of its gift to our gen from The Sorcerer himself,
he read out
loud.  He pondered on this Council of Watchers for a moment.  “Hmm… How strange
that these watchers should use the ancient symbol of leadership as well.  I’ve
never heard of this Council of Watchers.  Have you?”

Kiria’s short snout wrinkled slightly as she
thought, “I’ve heard the name… perhaps somewhere in the ancient writings.”  She
thought for a moment then her face brightened.  “Yes, I remember now, when The
Sorcerer first gave the stones of power to the other eight races, he
established a Council of Watchers to ensure the stones were not misused, or
maybe to ensure they weren’t lost.  Something like that anyway.”

Lord Karthan thought for a second, “Well, let’s
take a closer look, shall we?”  He carefully opened the aged book.

Inside the cover, in a bold, flowing script the
author’s name was written.

Lord
Kale, Lord of the Kale Gen.  This is the journal of my quest to seek knowledge
of The Sorcerer’s will for our race.

“Father, I’ve never read of one of the Kales going
on a quest of this sort.  Which one could it be?”  Kiria asked.

A strange sensation was beginning to grow within
Lord Karthan.  It was as if his heart burned within him.  His interest was
piqued.  He closed the cover and examined the leather wrapping on the outside
of the book.  Seeing nothing of note, he thumbed through the pages.  The book
itself could not have been more than a hundred or so years old, judging from
the condition of it.  Reaching the back of the book, he discovered a loose
piece of parchment, folded up in the back.  Seeing that it was well aged and
that the creases had begun to separate, he carefully unfolded it.  Detailed on
the parchment was a route west to the coast and then north, to an area labeled
as human territories.  In the author’s same flowing script were the names of
what appeared to be settlements of some sort.  Lord Karthan wondered at the
fanciful names as his finger traced the route on the map.  Then, abruptly, as
his finger traced the return route which wound its way back from lands unknown
to him to the northern rim of the valley just to the north of theirs, the line
ended.  No more details, names, or terrain features were given from that point
back to the starting point labeled Kale Gen.

“This may be something of a clue to solving which
of the many Lord Kales wrote this journal,” Lord Karthan spoke softly as he
handed the map to Kiria to study.

Lord Karthan pondered for a while then he
understood.  Noting the age of the book, and seeing the map and where the
return route ended, it was now clear to him which of all the many Lord Kales in
his gen’s history had written this book.  Though he was not the most astute of
historians, Lord Karthan knew very well how the Kale Gen came to be ruled by the
Karthans.  His father had told him the story before he died of how the last
Lord Kale had taken upon himself a quest of exploration, a mapping of the
closer areas which he discovered had eventually led to the establishment of
many of their caravan routes.  Though some of his companions had returned, Lord
Kale himself had died on this quest, ambushed by a party of orcs well over a
century ago now.  His father had explained to him that that was how the Kale
Stone had been lost.  It was a portion of their history that Lord Karthan had
spent much time pondering and searching for further details.

Since that Lord Kale had yet to produce any sons
with legitimate claim to the throne, and since there were no relatives of age
with close enough blood lines to claim the title, Karthan’s ancestor, who was
Lord Kale’s chamberlain, who had been left in charge of the gen in Lord Kale’s
absence, had simply continued in charge of the gen. 

Lord Karthan explained his thinking to Kiria. 
What he did not mention, however, were the quests that had been quietly
launched by the Karthan line to find the lost Kale Stone over the many years
since its loss.  The memory of his own quest for the Kale Stone threatened to
open wounds he had thought long healed.  It was with trepidation that he
continued leafing through the pages.

“But why haven’t we seen this book until now?”
Kiria asked, wonder evident in her voice.  “Such a monumental quest forgotten
in a century?”

Lord Karthan was still pondering on the feeling in
his heart.  He skimmed quickly through much of the book.  It described the long
journey in detail, and how the object of the company’s quest had been found in
a great human city at the farthest point of their journey.  In the journal it
detailed the meetings that Lord Kale’s company had had with representatives
from the Council of Watchers, which were apparently humans that lived in that
city.  Here, Lord Karthan slowed down and began to read more thoroughly,
reading parts of it out loud to share the discovery with Kiria.

In the several meetings Lord Kale had detailed in
his journal, he mentioned that the Watchers had shared many prophecies from The
Sorcerer, the same being who had created the Kobold race, prophecies which had
originally been given to great members of their order and had been handed down
through their order for centuries.

Lord Karthan pondered on what he had read for a
moment.  Among the writings of the Kale Gen there were many things that
referenced the past, but there was no record anywhere that Lord Karthan was
aware of where any kobold in the last several generations had received any sort
of prophecy from The Sorcerer.  Indeed what little communication they had
received from him beyond his grave, a thousand years old now, mostly dealt with
events that had been in the future many hundreds of years ago when it was
received, but which now seemed clearly to be history.  After The Sorcerer’s
several prophecies through their ancient progenitors, the future had become a
hazy cloud, remaining impenetrable since then to the kobold race by whatever
powers there were.