Chapter 19 - Part 1

CHAPTER NINETEEN – GETTING THERE IS HALF THE FUN
The 21st of Sypheros, 993 Y.K., mid-morning, a magically created cave in the Demon Wastes

Orphan lifted the flap just a little bit, but all he could see was more swirling snow. The warforged shut the flap quickly, before Delegado could complain about the warforged letting the warm air out. It wasn’t east to tie the cord in place while wearing gloves designed for beings with five fingers, but he managed it.

The warforged cinched the drawstrings of his coat together tighter as he walked back to his companions. The half-orc and the half-daelkyr were in coats and snow pants that Delegado had bought for the trip, and Feather was wrapped up in a thick blanket, as were the horses. Brittle wood made a poor fire in the center of the cave, underneath the ventilation holes that Thomas had fashioned.

The half-orc and the half-daelkyr were sharing a bottle of whiskey as they ate a breakfast that was only warm because it had just been conjured. They had used up the last of the scrolls that created food and water, starting at lunch it would be the stores that they had.

“Let me guess,” Delegado said dryly. “It’s still snowing.”

“I just thought I’d look,” Orphan shrugged. “I still can’t figure out how you can predict the weather so well.”

“No one can predict the weather perfectly,” Delegado said. “Especially here. But I told you the night before last when it started that it would still be going, and it is. It’s not going to stop until noon at the earliest, and probably not until nightfall. And we’re not changing that with the stick Oalian gave us unless we want to notify every rakshasa in the Wastes.”

“You were planning on a quick exit from this area before something came, weren’t you, Orphan?” Thomas asked. “Don’t worry, it’ll slow down everybody, coming and going. Here, you want some of this brandy?”

“It’s whiskey,” Delegado insisted. “Brandy is sweet. Thomas, you come from Karrnath, you ought to know your booze.”

“I know what I like,” the half-daelkyr shrugged. His stormstalk poked out from under his coat, then retreated back into the warmth. “You want some or not, Orphan, it’ll warm you up.”

“I can’t drink this, I don’t digest them,” Orphan explained. “It would just puddle out.”

“But you drink potions,” Thomas noted.

“The magic enters me, the liquid just seeps away,” Orphan explained. “Potions are just spells in a bottle, really, the liquid is only a preservative.”

“We are going stir-crazy with cabin fever,” Delegado chuckled. “We’ve run out of things to say.”

“Then let’s tell stories,” Thomas said. He’d suggested the same thing the day before.

“No thank you, I don’t like to share,” Delegado said. He’d said the same thing yesterday, but with more prickliness. The sitting and waiting was obviously getting to him as well.

“What do you do when you boast, then, hm?” Orphan asked.

“Oh ho, a funny warforged,” Delegado said.

“Well, I’d love to hear some,” Thomas said. “I liked it when my mother told me stories.” There was a painful pause, and Orphan was afraid that Delegado was going to say something totally inappropriate, but the half-orc kept his mouth shut. “I mean, I’ve not got a lot to brag about. I have nothing but regret for what I’ve done in my life. There’s little that wasn’t evil, except the years I spent by myself.”

“What’s the most wonderful thing you saw in your years as a hermit?” Orphan asked, trying to get some conversation started.

Thomas thought a bit. “I saw a rainbow that filled a whole valley once, right after a storm,” he said. “The air smelled so clean, and the sun came back and the wet earth smelled so good, and the rainbow sat like a crown on a king.” He looked up at the warforged, hesitant.

“That’s beautiful,” Orphan said. “You should be a poet.”

“No, no, I can’t,” Thomas said. “You talk instead. Did you see anything beautiful where you were, um, forged?”

“Whitehearth was a fairly utilitarian place, no,” Orphan said. “But I saw many wonderful sights when I crossed the Talenta Plains with Sensei Visha.”

“You were forged in Whitehearth?” Delegado said, looking up rapidly.

“Yes, what’s your point?” Orphan asked.

“That’s the most top-secret Cannith facility known in the world,” The half-orc said, taking the whiskey bottle from Thomas. “You never told me that.”

“You never asked,” Orphan said. “There’s a whole conclave there, although now that I think about it there were plenty of places where movement was restricted even to the humans. I didn’t know its significance.”

Delegado took a swig of alcohol. “Orphan, for such a smart guy you really are oblivious sometimes.”

“I wasn’t exactly allowed to sightsee,” Orphan said. “For most of my week there I was in an underground cell.”

“Tell us about Talenta,” Thomas said. “I passed through that land briefly, long ago, but I snuck around at night, and I saw little.”

“Delegado can probably tell you more, he’s the world traveler,” Orphan said.

“I’ve never been to Talenta,” Delegado grinned. “You’re on stage by yourself, Orphan, sorry.”

“Well, let’s see,” Orphan said, remembering the first heady days of his life with the Balanced Palm. “We fled at top speed, Visha and Pienna had rescued me from a manor in the center of Cyre that Cannith owned secretly.”

“What do you mean, ‘owned,’ Orphan?” Delegado asked.

“I mean what I said,” Orphan told him.

“Dragonmarked Houses aren’t supposed to own land,” Delegado told him. “It’s part of their deal with the dead empire of Galifar. They have to rent and lease everything.”

“So maybe they leased,” Orphan said with a shrug.

“More likely they think the rules apply only to other Houses and not to them,” Delegado grumped.

“House Tharashk owns land,” Thomas said.

“Yeah, in the Shadow Marches, where Galifar never stepped,” the half-orc snorted. “That’s our country. But everywhere else in Khorvaire we have to pay. Well, except Droaam, they don’t give the Fury’s patience for Galifar.”

“Look, Thomas,” Orphan said in a loud whisper. “Delegado is sharing.” Thomas chuckled.

“Alright, wiseguy,” Delegado said, not quite blushing. “Tell your story.”

“We moved quietly at night, and by day we jumped on top of a moving Orien train,” Orphan said. “That was very exciting. I was surprised at what good jumpers halflings are.”

“You jumped onto the top of a Lightning Rail?” Delegado asked. Orphan nodded. “You are totally bonkers. Seriously. You are crazy. The electricity around it could have fried you.”

“It was either that or slavery, if not death,” Orphan said. “And we had to get over the border unnoticed.”

“You took the southern spur around Lake Cyre to Gatherhold?” Delegado asked.

“No, the northern spur,” Orphan said. “We got off at the first stop on the Talenta side, where a tribe had pitched some tents near the platform. Well, actually we got picked up. Once the train slowed down some flying dinosaurs came down and Sensei Visha and I hopped on. They took us east, then once we got behind some hills they banked southeast. The halflings were cheery folk, and they work well in unison, but pity the man who crosses them. In any event, we switched mounts several times, moving in a zig-zag pattern, and we spent the nights with various tribes who hosted Visha as a guest. They were a little puzzled that I did not eat their food.” The warforged sounded wistful. “I would have liked to. I cannot smell very well, only strong scents, but it smelled wonderful.”

“You left a wide trail for such a hunted pair,” Thomas noted.

“The Talenta people protect their own,” Delegado said. “When they don’t want to talk, you can walk in a crowd of a hunded of them and they’ll swear to every priest in the land that they never saw you. It gives the Deneith Sentinel Marshals fits.”

“And how does the Finding House get around that problem?” Orphan asked.

“Very, very carefully,” Delegado said. “It involves trade secrets, sorry, can’t say a word.”

“But you haven’t been there,” Orphan asked.

“Nope,” Delegado said. He took the whiskey bottle back and took another swig.

“Tell us where you have been, then,” Thomas said.

Delegado looked at Thomas, and Orphan could tell what the half-orc was thinking. His reticence to make small talk with the half-daelkyr on the flight to Greenheart had led to some bad blood that had almost split their band up. And the two of them had fought side-by-side for days when they were trying to find the warforged. And Delegado was bored. And he had been having more whiskey than he usually did.

“Fernia and Risia and everywhere in between,” the half-orc said with a laugh. Thomas grinned at that, although Orphan didn’t get the reference. “Well, I grew up in the Marches, born and bred. My father was old when I was born and had stopped traveling for the most part, although I did briefly visit Stormreach with him to see an uncle and check on some things.”

“Where’s Stormreach?” Orphan asked.

“Xen’drik,” the half-orc told him.

“What is that place like?” Thomas asked.

“Hot and forgettable,” Thomas said. “Or at least Stormreach was. Anyway, when I manifested my dragonmark, I spent a lot of time in the wild prospecting for dragonshards. Well, a lot more time anyway. I grew up loving the wild, loving moving through the wilderness. My mother says I wanted to crawl into the swamp right out of my crib.”

“I thought you grew up in House Tharashk,” Thomas asked, curious. “You didn’t live in a mansion?”

Delegado let out a deep belly laugh. The whiskey was definitely making him cozy. “Thomas, that high living is for the other Houses, not Tharashk. We live in the wild, or on the streets. Scions of my House are expected to thrive on the hunt, not on silk sheets.”

“But you wander now,” Orphan said. “Your first dragonmark manifestation was only for dragonshards, but later it worked on people?”

“Well, first objects, then people, yes,” Delegado said. “I was stalking fugitives before my dragonmark expanded, though. The first one was an orc born from an orc mother and a demon father. He led a lot of Dragon Below cultists and killed a number of innocent people, some of them Tharashk workers. The House struck back. There’s none of your precious law in the Marches, Orphan. It’s all strength, and Tharashk had to show that anyone who worked for them would be avenged, or else others would start trying the same galig. We broke his army with some Gatekeeper assistance, and I was with a team that pursued him all the way to the Droaam border.” The half-orc paused, lost in his memories.

“What happened?” Thomas asked.

“I was sixteen,” Delegado said softly. “I was the scout. The other three were warriors, great orcs, great fighters, honorable and brave. The one in charge sent me ahead a bit while they fanned out. Shaidan – the orc born from fiends – caught them. They died harshly. I shot Shaidan with an arrow, gave him a scar. He unfurled his wings…and I hid. He didn’t try to hard to find me because he didn’t want to stick around. If he had had the time, he would have, and I’d be dead long ago.” Delgado took another swig. “I was ashamed, but I had to return and report. Most commended me for trying, some blamed me for failing. My father told me there was no shame, and that he was glad I was alive. Still, that was the last time I lost a quarry.” Delegado tipped his head back and drained the bottle.

“Whatever happened to Shaidan?” Orphan asked.

“I ran into him last Olarune, and I took his head from his body,” the half-orc said. “But in the process, a good – a nice – someone that meant a lot to me died.”

“But you think from what Drorin said that maybe she’s alive,” Orphan said, several things clicking together in his mind. Delegado’s response was not exactly an expected one.

“STAY THE KHYBER OUT OF MY HEAD!” the half-orc roared, rising and hurling the empty whiskey flask. Orphan dodged it instinctively, and the glass shattered on the cave wall behind him. The horses whinnied in fear, and Feather shrieked as he flew upwards into a niche.

Orphan scuttled backwards and got to his feet, even as Delegado glared at him. The warforged cursed himself for not thinking before he spoke. Delegado was visibly hurt, and badly angry.

“Easy,” Thomas said, his voice soft. “Easy.” The half-daelkyr slowly stood, and held his hands out between the half-orc and the warforged as if to separate them.

“I’m sorry,” Orphan said sincerely. “I do not always understand male and female relationship feelings or taboos. I truly did not mean to offend.”

Delegado blinked, his nose flaring, and then breathed deeply. “Let’s change the subject,” he said, sitting back down.

“No arguments here,” Thomas said, also sitting down again. Orphan hesitated, but then sat back down where he had been as well.

“I’m sorry,” Orphan said again.

“Me too,” said Delegado. “Now change the f’testing subject.”

“What does f’test mean?” Thomas asked. “I’ve always wondered.”

“It means that a male helps activate a female belly forge,” Orphan said.

Delegado slapped his forehead so hard that the horses started again. But this time the half-orc was laughing. After a moment, Thomas joined him. Orphan had no idea what they were laughing about, but he was beginning to think the half-orc had no tolerance for alcohol. “Orphan,” Delegado said, stopping to breathe. “You are going to kill me one way or another, seriously.”

Orphan was puzzled. The last time he’d seen people go from extreme anger to extreme laughter he had been with the Balanced Palm, and he had gone into the women’s bath area. He had explained to the women there that he couldn’t understand why they bathed separate from the men, and he was just curious, and they threw soap at him. Mentioning women and reproduction to Delegado seemed to bring forth the same extreme range of emotions.

“So if you didn’t leave the Marches going after Shaidan, when did you?” Thomas asked as Delegado’s laughter began to subside.

“Several months later, and not on purpose,” Delegado said. “I was tracking a fence with some stolen dragonshards. He went through a byeshk mine in Droaam, and I crossed the Byeshk Mountains into the Eldeen Reaches. I remember my first really good look at the Reaches. Verdant meadows, rolling hills, glorious trees of all types everywhere. I tracked the fence all the way to Varna, staying on his trail with my dragonmark focusing on the shards he’d stolen. Met some good friends in Vadalis along the way, too. I finally caught the guy, and the Triumvirate was very pleased with me.”

“The what?” Orphan asked.

“Tharashk has three people leading it instead of one,” Thomas said. “You didn’t know that?”

“I know little of the Houses save Cannith,” Orphan said. “And of that one I wish I knew less.”

“Cannith, Lyrandar, Jorasco, they’re all family names,” Delegado explained. “Groups of people who manifested a mark and stuck together. ‘Tharashk’ is an orc word, not a name. It means ‘United.’ Three clans formed the mark, and we joined. Some smaller clans developed the mark and joined as well, but that came later, and they are swallowed up by the numbers of the three clans. Each clan’s chief is a Triumvirate member. They make decisions together.”

“What are the clans?” Orphan asked. “You mentioned an Ash-something once, didn’t you?”

“Torrn, Aashta, and Velderan,” Delegado said. “Most in my House claim one of them.”

“You don’t,” Thomas noted.

“I am a son of my House,” Delegado said. “My family tree is very mixed, the clans marry with each other. Technically my father was a Velderan and my mother from a smaller clan, but my grandparents and my great-grandparents are all evenly divided among the three clans. My family is known within the House to proudly claim everyone in their blood.”

Orphan nodded, beginning to understand why Delegado had so vehemently defended Greoche.

“Then you got used to traveling, seeing the world?” Orphan guessed.

“Yeah,” the half-orc answered. “The lure of the new and the thrill of the hunt. I’ve been to Breland, Aundair, Darguun, and Thrane along with the Reaches. I’ve spent time in Droaam, and I’ve been to Karrnath, and once very briefly to the Mror Holds. I’ve been to Cyre, gorgeous country even with the battles raging, and once to Valenar. Most of my time has been in Breland and Aundair, the Reaches, Droaam, and Cyre tie for third place. Beyond that I couldn’t tell you much, I don’t really keep notes.”

“The time in Valenar is when I met you?” Orphan asked.

“No, that doesn’t count, I wasn’t on the ground long enough,” Delegado said. “This was earlier.”

“I heard you two tried to kill each other when you first met,” Thomas said.

Delegado sighed, and Orphan could tell the half-orc felt caught. On one hand it would make bad blood with Thomas to refuse to tell the story, on the other hand the half-orc was afraid of rubbing the warforged the wrong way.

“It was a war zone,” Orphan explained. “It was mutual self-defense, really.” He could see Delegado look grateful at that.

“Darguun had shot across the bay to come at Cyre from an unexpected direction,” Delegado explained. “They burned their way through Valenar to do it, putting the Fury’s own heat into the elven horse-lords. Cyre found out they were coming and met them with warforged on Valenar soil. The Valenar rode around the two huge armies with wizards and raiding bands, and a bunch of halfling opportunists showed up to pick off stragglers. It was a four-way fight involving thousands.”

“And my order was beneath it all,” Orphan explained. “We were digging under a hill, searching for an ancient tablet. We’d actually been digging under that hill for almost a century, trying to keep it quiet.”

“What did the tablet say?” Thomas asked.

“I’ve no idea, it was never found, and Sensei Visha kept her own counsel on the matter,” Orphan said. “In any event, it became a combination search and refuge. Everywhere the Balanced Palm was, it was being attacked and harassed, so everyone fled to the cave. Only the hills above the cave then came to be a battleground.”

“You were trying to find the tablet?” Thomas asked Delegado.

The half-orc shook his head. “I was trying to find a Thrane who knew the name of every Thrane intelligence agent in Breland, and the Brelish intelligence services were spending a lot of money to get him alive, and alive only. Breland paid for an airship, and we flew to this cave system, having gotten word that the Thrane spymaster would be there, posing as a member of the order of monks.”

“He was a member, incidentally,” the warforged interjected. “But he was using a false name and hiding his purpose. He used our order for duplicitous purposes, often having us unwittingly send messages for him. When Sensei Visha saw the evidence, she was most upset.”

“Long story short,” Delegado said. “A Brelish wizard conjured me down to the battlefield, and I hid, but then a headless warforged fell onto me, followed by a psycho Valenar chief with an adamantine double scimitar who wanted my head. I talked him down but wanted shelter, and fighting him would have meant drawing fire from every goblin on that side of the hill even if I beat him so I agreed. I brought him to the hidden cave and we were challenged by the Balanced Palm. The elf went nuts and started a fight. He died in the process, but killed a monk and the other was out for my blood so I brought him down.” Delegado paused. “I shot him in the back as he ran to get help. It was a survival thing. I thought I had no choice, he wasn’t listening to me because of that Khyber-kissing Valenar.”

Orphan said nothing, but remembered Edmen, the man Delegado had killed.

“But the other monks attacked anyway,” Thomas said.

“Yeah,” Delegado coughed, not comfortable with Orphan’s silent gaze. “One of them cast a sleep spell on me and was going to slit my throat, mind you. Orphan tried to get them to back off but they wouldn’t. Orhan and I fought, it was close, and then a warforged titan fell into the hill.”

“A what?” asked the daelkyr half-blood.

“A machine that can cause tremendous devastation,” Orphan explained. “They’re huge, and very difficult to destroy. It came tumbling in and brought hundreds of goblins with it as the ground collapsed into our caves. Then I knocked Delegado out. I took him to Sensei Visha, and found that we were being flooded with goblins fleeing the battlefield. Battles erupted everywhere in the tunnels, which were vast things, many centuries old if not older, and the Balanced Palm was forced to retreat. Delegado came to, tied up and his weapons taken from him, and Sensei Visha pronounced that he would be left there while we made a stand in the records room. She said if he survived he was innocent, if not he was guilty.”

“And?” Thomas asked, clearly immersed in the tale.

“I survived,” Delegado said. “I killed a bunch of goblins and went in after the Thrane. I got him and called the airship with a signaling device. The halfling sensei and Orphan were the only monks left alive – except for the Thrane. I was paid to get him alive and I did.”

“How?” Thomas asked.

“I wondered that myself,” Orphan noted.

Delegado merely grinned. Orphan could tell the half-orc was going to keep some ‘trade secrets’ to himself.

“What happened to the Thranish spy?” Thomas asked.

“Actually,” Orphan said. “I never found out. What happened to him, Delegado?”

The half-orc shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. I did the job. My House got paid. I moved on to the next job.” He took a big bite of food. “If he had any brains he sang like a canary.”

“So Breland uses long pain as well,” Orphan said with disgust in his voice.

“Orphan,” Delegado said with a tone of voice that indicated a mustering of patience. “War is about survival. Breland needs to survive. Everyone needs to survive. They do what they can.”

“Maybe that’s why there is so much war,” Orphan said.

Thomas shook his head. “No, there is war because people want what other people have. What do you do if not fight? Lie down and die? Run away to some unexplored portion of a distant land? Most people are not like you and I, Orphan. They cannot simply flee. They need the land where they are to grow food. You don’t have to eat, you don’t understand hunger. You don’t understand desperate.” Thomas’ voice sounded almost pleading, and the warforged could tell that the half-daelkyr was thinking of his own crimes next to Delegado’s dubious actions under the hill in Valenar.

“I suppose,” Orphan said after a while.

“Let me ask you a question,” Delegado said, all serious. “Let’s say you’ve captured a nut. I mean a real whacked-out, homicidal, true believer nut, maybe from the Emerald Claw, maybe a cultist who worships the Dark Six or the Dragon Below or something. And they’ve placed a magical device, like a dragonshard holding a fireball in it, somewhere in a town full of innocent people. It’s going to go off in five minutes. You have no way of evacuating the hundreds if not thousands of innocents in time. Would you torture the guy? Would you use long pain to make him tell you where he hid it?”

Orphan contemplated that. “I suppose I would,” the warforged finally admitted. “It is a horrible thing to think about, though.”

“Horrible but real,” Delegado told him. “Breland is home to some pretty large cities, including Sharn. You would not believe the number of people who live in those towers. Some seventy-five years ago, in the early days of the war, somebody brought one down. Thousands died. Since then Breland has vowed never to let it happen again, no matter what the cost. The Brelish spend so much effort at counter-intelligence that House Medani could have no client other than Breland and still be wealthy.”

“You know a lot for someone who claims to think so little of bards,” Thomas joked.

Delegado laughed in a way that said he was finally letting something go. “Most of them are worthless fools who refuse to do honest work. I had a second cousin named Eusyram who got it into his head that he would be a bard. He didn’t mine, he didn’t hunt, he didn’t fish, he didn’t go prospecting, nothing. He sat on his behind and drank and gambled and collected stories. He’d beg or try to make money entertaining people, but his stories were horrible. They’d start out okay, but then he’d change them, and he started putting himself in them. To hear him tell it he was involved in everything and the great heroes of the stories went to him for advice on everything and he always saved the day, but he never went more than a mile from the City of Stilts. He eventually got eaten by a chuul.”

Orphan did not ask what a chuul was, the look on Thomas’ face told the warforged enough. “We know you can’t give away trade secrets,” Orphan said to the half-orc. “But there’s still more time to talk. Have you got any more stories?”

“I am not going to sit here and provide entertaining exposition for the two of you until it stops snowing,” Delegado grunted.

“I would like to hear about Aundair,” Thoams said. “I’ve never been there, and you said you spent a lot of time there. Did you ever find anything interesting there?”

Delegado’s face grew strangely dark. “Maybe we’d be better off taking another inventory,” he said. His tone of voice told Orphan that the conversation was over.