The Trials of Caste Read Online Free PDF Page B

what
she had read the night before in the Lore Master’s library, she answered.  “The
Trials of Caste is a tradition dating back to the time of The Sorcerer, when
our race began.  Anciently it was called the Time of Trials, and it was said to
have been started by Kobold, the First Sire himself, to determine which of his
progeny would inherit the Place of Beginnings, or Palacid as it was called in
the ancient scrolls, where kobolds first came to be, and thereby become the
next leader of the race.”
    Manebrow smiled.  “Right you are, my young lady,”
he said.  “Now this year’s Trials of Caste may not be for such a grandiose
prize, but these young trainees have still gone about their preparations with a
ferocious intensity,” Manebrow said.  “Follow me.  I’ll take you around the
arena and let you see close up some of what lies in store for the yearlings
tomorrow.” 
    Manebrow and Kiria walked through the Lord’s Box
at the front of the stands and down the stairs that led into the arena.  Still
slightly favoring an aching leg and nursing a few other aches and pains
elsewhere, Manebrow took the stairs more slowly than he might have otherwise. 
For Manebrow, who was now thirty years old, the effort required to drive these
yearlings was getting greater and greater each year.  With this rather talented
group of yearlings, and toward the end of the year especially, he felt as if he
had spent more effort trying to keep up with them, rather than driving them;
that to him was the sign of a good group of yearlings that were ready for the
Trials of Caste.
    As they reached the bottom of the stairs and made
their way toward a large patch of sawdust with a tall wooden stand next to it,
Manebrow continued the tour.  “Every year, each group of yearlings gives it their
all, for to fail any of my tests during the year, or to not complete the
training for any reason, is to become part of the servant caste.”
    Kiria nodded in troubled understanding.  One of
the few household servants her father kept had mentioned this in passing when
she was younger, and the absoluteness of such a judgment had struck her then as
it did now.
    “This year thirteen yearlings started the year of
training, probably about a third the number of the next smallest year-group
I’ve trained,” Manebrow continued with perhaps a hint of wistfulness.  “But the
small size of the group was to be expected, considering the drought and famine
of almost sixteen years ago now.  You’re the same age as these ones, you know.”
 Manebrow smiled at her.  “You were all progeny of hope, conceived in a time
when we didn’t know if we would survive the winter.”
    “You were already a young warrior, past the
trials,” Kiria said, her emotions still brewing.
    “Aye, or rather it was the year before my turn at
the trials.  Now in two days the remaining seven will undergo the Trials of
Caste.”  Manebrow paused as he considered the six who had not measured up, and
therefore had not made it through the year of training.
    “You mean that almost half of the yearlings didn’t
make it through the training?!” Kiria asked, flustered, her emotions flowing
freely.  “But the gen’s council is always talking about the need for more
warriors!  Knowing the need, how can you send so many of the yearlings to the
servant caste?”
    Manebrow thought for a moment before answering the
Lord of the Gen’s young daughter.  He could clearly see that, like the
yearlings who had failed, all of which were her same age, she had no
understanding of what challenges awaited the defenders of this gen in the large
world outside their gen’s home caverns. 
    “You must understand, my lady, that there are much
bigger and nastier things in the world than kobolds.  To send a kobold out into
that world unready and incapable of facing those threats… I would have signed
his death sentence, for he would not survive long, and a dead kobold is of no
use to