The Trials of Caste (31 page)

Durik and Trallik stood facing the wooden box that
was the ‘sarcophagus of Kor.’  It didn’t seem to have anything unusual about
it.  Examining the edges of the lid, neither of them could find any tripwires,
strange substances, or marks of any kind.  Then, after a moment, Durik stepped
back.

“Trallik, look at this” he said, pointing to the
wooden floor at the base of the sarcophagus.  “Watch as I push down on the
lid.”  The sarcophagus seemed to sink ever so slightly into the floor.

“I see,” Trallik said.  “It seems the sarcophagus
is on a separate platform.  Well, I guess we’ll have to see if we can open it
without shifting the weight of it.”  With one on each end of the lid, they
rotated it on top of the sarcophagus being careful to keep the weight of it on
the sarcophagus.  Once they had moved it perpendicular to the sarcophagus, they
stopped.  Durik came up to the edge of the sarcophagus and peered in.  Inside
was a large metal key with a black piece of cloth on it.  Trallik also saw the
key and, holding his breath, reached down with both hands and placed one of his
daggers on the bottom of the sarcophagus at the same time he picked up the
key.  Nothing happened.  Trallik stood back, key in hand, with a triumphant
look on his face.  Moments later the two yearlings were headed back toward the
door.

Going back the way they’d come was easy enough. 
Both of them were agile enough to make it past the stumps without much
difficulty.  The door on the other side stood open still and they both
approached it cautiously, not knowing if anyone else was around.  Trallik poked
his head out the door and said, “all clear, Durik.”  Then, standing back, he
let Durik go ahead of him.

As Durik passed him, Trallik brought his remaining
wooden long knife out and stabbed Durik squarely in the back.  Above them, the
trainer in the crows nest yelled “Durik!”  In disbelief, Durik turned and
stared at Trallik.

“What did you do that for?!  We had a deal!” 
Durik blurted out in frustration.

Trallik stepped past him and headed for the
entranceway, leaving a stunned Durik behind him.  “You’re right, we did.  I got
the key.  And you…” Trallik exhaled sharply as a padded arrow struck him dead
in the stomach.  Standing in the passageway ahead of him, Arbelk pulled out
another arrow and brought his bow up again, not quite connecting the fact that
Durik had just gotten a kill on himself.  Before Arbelk could get a good aim,
Durik escaped through a separate passageway and was on his way back to his
starting point.

From the top of the stands, Durik’s family had
seen the entire thing and were stunned and outraged at such an underhanded
maneuver, while seated not far down in the same row of benches, Trallik’s
father had been too involved in breaking up a fight between his older whelps to
notice.  The female he had taken as a lifemate when Trallik’s mother had died
noticed, but it only reinforced her already dim view of her adopted son.

For Arbelk, who held the field as his two
competitors ran off to the start points, there was nothing but elation.  Though
he didn’t know it at the time, he was the last of the no-points yearlings to
get a kill.  All he knew was that he had a kill, and so would not be relegated
to the servant caste at the end of the trials.  As he went to pick up the black
key, all he knew was life was good.

In a moment of sheer inspiration, Keryak could see
in his mind what needed to be done.  Taking the two boards, he laid them
end-to-end with the ends overlapping by an arm’s length or so.  He then lashed
them together by wrapping them with the rope as many times as it would go,
finishing off the lashing with a hitch.  Picking up this now much longer board,
he carried it over to the platform and set it on its end.  Hoping it wouldn’t
break on him, Keryak lowered the boards as slowly as he could toward the
platform across the ditch from him.  Halfway down, the boards were more than he
could handle and Keryak had to let go.  The makeshift bridge came crashing down
on the far side and it was all Keryak could do to hold the near end of the
boards in place to keep them from falling into the ditch.

When the dust settled, the makeshift bridge was in
place and more or less secure.  Keryak smiled at his effort and set about
placing square stones on the near end of the bridge to keep it in place and to
help it hold his weight.  In a few minutes, he was satisfied with his effort
and slowly began to cross the bridge.  Halfway across, as Keryak made his way
over the joint of the two boards, the bridge began to bend more than he thought
it should.  Keryak stood still… it still seemed to be bending.  As quickly as
he could, Keryak scrambled across the boards toward the other end. 

Feeling the bridge begin to slip, Keryak threw his
javelin and spear toward the far platform and jumped for it, catching the edge
of it with both hands as the boards fell into the ditch.  Eyes wide open,
Keryak pulled himself up to the platform and looked back at the boards, stones
and rope that now lay in the ditch.  With Trallik’s and Jerrig’s kills on him
already, he knew that one wrong move and he’d be out of the competition. 
Shaking his head, he walked over to the pedestal with the yellow key on it and
secured it in his belt.  Turning back toward the ditch, he walked over to the
pile of materials on this side and began to rummage through them.

“Great!  Another puzzle.  Let’s see… a ladder
that’s too short, a skinny pole three kobolds long, a pile of bricks, and a
boar’s hide.”  After a minute of looking at the various items, he picked up the
pole and tried to bend it.  To his surprise, it seemed quite flexible, yet
strong at the same time.  Thinking back to one of the events that Manebrow had
used during this past year to weed those who would be servant caste out of the
yearling group, Keryak decided to try pole-vaulting across the ditch. 
Examining the platform, Keryak noticed with chagrin that there was a divot a
little bigger than the tip of the pole in the wood near the edge of the
platform.  Looking around at his surroundings, he noticed how the ground sloped
gently down from the pedestal to the platform.

Grabbing his spear and walking up to the pedestal
area, Keryak dug a small hole in the firm dirt around the pedestal, about the
same size as the divot in the platform.  He threw his spear off to the side,
grabbed the pole and walked back to one of the side walls with a pensive look
on his face.  Measuring the distance in his mind for his practice run, he took
the pole in both hands and suddenly sprinted forward.  As he came up on the
divot next to the pedestal, he placed the tip of the pole in it and leapt into
the air. 

The crowd let out a collective gasp as Keryak
appeared flying almost straight up into the air on the far side of the
obstacles from them.  Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, Keryak fell head
first toward the earth and disappeared again down into the obstacles.  The
entire crowd let out a gasp followed by looks of pain and sympathy.  For
several moments, there was much murmuring and pointing in the crowd.

After several more moments, Keryak again appeared,
rising above the obstacles.  This time, however, he seemed to be going not so
much straight up as away from the crowd.  Additionally, he seemed to have come
down feet first this time.  This only caused more speculation among the masses
of the gen.  Finally, only a minute or two later, Keryak again appeared in the
air, this time going in a different direction.  This time, the crowd was
expecting it and they cheered as he flew through the air.

Though Keryak’s father and mother could be heard
cheering loudly above the din of the crowd, Durik’s sister Darya seated not two
rows away from them was just as proud of him and watched with perhaps more
anxious anticipation.  The excitement of watching her first love work toward
accomplishing what he’d been training an entire year to accomplish shone
brightly in her young eyes.

Safe, though somewhat bruised, and now on the
other side of the ditch, Keryak collected the spear and javelin that he’d
thrown over before his pole vault and headed toward the entrance to the
obstacle.  With one key down, but much wasted time, he wondered if the rest of
the keys had been found yet.  Not wanting to be last to the Tower of the
Chalice, Keryak turned left upon reaching the perimeter of the obstacle complex
and looked for the fastest route to the center of the obstacles.

Durik wasted no time getting back to his starting
point.  After picking up a bow and a quiver of five arrows, he ran over to
Gorgon’s starting point and picked up the spear that Gorgon had not taken. 
With spear in hand and bow and quiver slung over his back, Durik took off at a
dead run into the nearest corridor. 

After passing two intersecting corridors, he crept
quietly toward the opening to the obstacle ahead.  The stench of sulfur was
detectable from far down the corridor as he approached what he knew must be the
Brimstone Obstacle. 

The Brimstone Obstacle was one of the most
controversial obstacles in the trials.  It was really quite a simple obstacle. 
Basically, it was just an empty room with log walls and a log roof.  The cracks
between the logs had all been sealed up with tar, and large smoking pots of
sulfur dust had been placed in each of the four corners.  The task itself was
simple; the key was usually on a high shelf above a tapestry on the wall.  However,
there were twelve tapestries and twelve shelves, and with the smoke as thick in
there as it was, one had to climb several tapestries to find the key.  While an
encounter with a particularly nasty stench may not have seemed a menacing
obstacle to anyone else, kobolds with their heightened sense of smell had a
particular vulnerability to such acrid odors.

The controversy surrounding the obstacle was
two-fold.  First of all, it stank.  It smelled like rotten eggs and the hole in
the roof that sucked out the cryweed smoke from the Smoke Obstacle and the sulfur
smoke from this obstacle didn’t clear the air completely, so that the crowd
actually got a smell of it from time to time.  The smell seemed to linger for
some time, usually being slightly detectable even after several moons in the
area of the arena where the obstacle had been.

The second point of controversy surrounding the
obstacle was that it took away a kobold’s sense of smell for several days
thereafter, sometimes up to a week or more.  Though many kobolds rarely relied
on their sense of smell, it was considered essential for scouts and critical
for small patrols.  For that matter, many of the Deep Guard, as well as several
from the Trade Warrior Group, had trained their noses to the point that they
could track by scent alone.  Everyone knew that, whatever the quest may be,
every future warrior would need to be at their best for it and taking away a
warrior’s sense of smell for a week could hamper the mission.

Though he was certainly no skilled tracker, it was
mostly because of this second reason that Durik was less than enthused about
trying to get the key from this obstacle.  But, as he had reasoned with
himself, someone had to do it, and at the moment he was in need of a key.

Reaching the entrance, Durik looked around
cautiously.  Across the center of the clearing was a wall as tall as the
surrounding walls.  In the center of it was a kobold-size door.  As he watched,
the door opened slightly.  Durik put his spear against the wall and took a step
back into the shadows, drawing his bow and an arrow while keeping his eyes on the
door.  After a moment, the door opened the rest of the way and Troka came
running out snorting and sneezing, headed for a passageway off to Durik’s
left. 

“Troka!” Durik yelled.

Troka turned and assumed a defensive stance with
his wooden broadsword in both hands.  Durik stepped forward, bow at the ready. 

“I’ll put my bow down and we can go at it in hand
to hand if you’d like,” Durik called.  Durik thought it a more than fair offer,
considering the fact that Troka was much taller and perhaps a bit stronger than
him.