Chapter 21 - Part 1

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – HONOR THY
The 25th of Sypheros, 993 Y.K., late afternoon, in the Demon city of Ashtakala

“You are Bartemain?” Ois asked, her mind reeling. “But that’s – ” She paused, trying to find a word that could be shaped into making some sense.

She didn’t finish her sentence. Delegado had drawn his sword and slashed through the bars. Snarling and growling the half-orc cut the bars to shreds like they were slow mayflies too foolish to know that a flame licked up at them.

“Son,” Bartemain said, stepping through the opening. He hugged the half-orc that towered over him.

“Poppa,” Delegado said. “Poppa.” He hugged his father back, his eyes shut tight. Ois knew that Delegado was holding back tears. She knew faces. She remembered his face when he had received word of his father’s death. The proud half-orc had not been afraid to show his sorrow then.

Ois was instantly suspicious. The finest augerers available to Tharashk had declared Bartemain dead, and the best trackers in Blood Crescent had found no trail. Why would he be here? Especially in a city full of shapeshifting rakshasa. She touched her soul to her mind, where the Silver Flame burned brightly. Her holy sense, carefully calibrated by her paladin training and adherence to the moral codes, detected no evil in Bartemain. There was plenty of the background evil that this place radiated, but none in Bartemain. He was no fiend. He was Delegado’s father.

She stepped forward and touched Bartemain’s side, which showed sore and bruised flesh through a hole in his shirt. Calling forth the power of her faith, she laid her hands down and cured the bruise. Curiously, it resisted her, as if something in this place did not want to let her heal the prisoner. It took twice the level of holy energy that it should have taken.

“Thank you,” he said to Ois. “My ribs, they feel brand-new!”

“Poppa, how?” Delegado asked. “The augerers said you were dead!”

“This land has strange magical twists to it,” Bartemain said. “Divination does not work properly. All I know is that we were ambushed by a force far larger than we had ever seen before. Instead of a few scattered fiendish animals, a disciplined force of these mindless things with melted bodies attacked us as we gathered narstones. We held them back, but they were a distraction. A great spider thing, twice as tall as our tallest warrior, slashed my hand off at the wrist with a foreleg that ended in a massive cleaver. Then its eyes shot this ray of strange light. I knew nothing. When I came to, I was here, and feeling returned to my body bit by bit. I had been turned to stone for the trip across the Wastes. The rakshasa closed the open wound in my wrist, and they began to question me.” He shuddered. “They kept asking me about a dream I had, a message in the dream. They tortured me endlessly at first, and then they lost interest. But they did not want to let me die.”

Ois considered this. “What message?” she asked.

“Ois, let him be!” Delegado thundered.

“Calm down, boy,” Bartemain coughed. “She’s doing her duty, obviously. What’s your name, miss?”

“Ois Silva,” she said. “Paladin of the Silver Flame, sworn to law and good.”

“You with that crowd now?” Bartemain asked his son, his eyes crinkling in surprise.

“No Poppa, Ois and I – well, we used to – we are friends,” Delegado stammered.

Bartemain smiled knowingly. “I see. How did you find me?”

“I have a greater dragonmark now,” Delegado said proudly.

Bartemain made a happy gasp and hugged his son anew. “That’s wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I could not be more proud.” Something occurred to him then, and he licked his lips. “Delegado, did your mother – is she still…”

“She is alive, she did not remarry,” Delegado said. “She was deep in mourning, she still loves you. But we thought you were dead.”

“You got the sword, I see,” Bartemain said. “I’m glad, there was so much protest when I gave it to you.”

Ois’ heart melted, but she forced her mind to be practical. She was happy for Delegado but something was wrong. There was no food in the cell, no outlet for waste, and no ventilation. Further, for a man of Bartemain’s age, he was unusually spry and quick.

But her ability to detect evil told her nothing. Bartemain was not evil, according to her paladin senses. However the senses she had developed years earlier as a thief told her something else. Something was not where it should be, the shape of the facts was all wrong.

“Bartemain, I don’t want you to exert yourself too much, but we must leave now,” she said smoothly. “There is no telling when the fiends will know that we have broken into this place.” She watched his chest carefully.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “But, Delegado let me see my sword, just one more time. Let me hold it.” His ragged shirt and the exposed skin underneath were not moving as he spoke.

Of course, she thought. If he can survive in an airtight cell, he doesn’t need to breathe when he talks, either. She said nothing, though, knowing that Delegado’s mind would still be reeling. The half-orc needed to be shown, not told. Ois rested a hand on a hidden dagger, one made of adamantine.

“Absolutely, Poppa,” Delegado said, handing it over, hilt-first. “I polish it whenever I can.”

“Mm-hm,” Bartemain said, taking a practice swing at the air. “You always did revere where you came from, Delegado.” He suddenly whirled and swung at his son’s head. Feather squawked in alarm.

Ois was already there, her lightning-fast draw parried the blade, and sparks flew where the two adamantine weapons clashed. Bartemain was far stronger than a man his age should be. “What are you?” Ois asked, shoving the longsword back, if only barely.

“Poppa?” Delegado asked weakly. He seemed frozen. Feather had hopped to a corner and was cawing.

“I am Bartemain of House Tharashk,” the old man said. “Or I was.”

He swung at Ois instead, and she ducked backwards. “Delegado, stop him!” she yelled, tossing the half-orc her adamantine dagger. He caught it, but barely. He seemed numb.

Ois drew two more daggers and threw them in rapid succession, then she pulled her flametouched longsword free. The daggers were not enchanted, but they were well-balanced, and they both struck Bartemain in the chest. She heard a slight whisking sound, and then her dagger fell out onto the floor. No blood appeared, and from Bartemain’s face, he hadn’t even felt it.

Delegado roared on seeing that, and stepped around, flanking the thing that wore his father’s face. He obviously had decided the man was a rakshasa, although Ois was not sure. Delegado stabbed deep with the adamantine dagger Ois had given him, and sank it up to the hilt in the man’s spine.

Bartemain’s eyes showed no pain. He whirled and slashed, and Delegado barely stepped back in time. As it was a scratch across his cheek drew blood. Had the half-orc been a fraction slower, it would have cut his head wholly open.

Ois focused, and called upon the Silver Flame. “Evil shall be burned!” she declared. She smote, crouching as she did, slashing strongly at the back of Bartemain’s knees. Her sword passed through them, but left no wound. Bartemain’s flesh closed over the cuts, leaving him standing. She thought she smelled spilling dust, but the weapon seemed to deliver no damage to the elderly human.

The flickering flame that she called up with her smiting was another matter. It danced and burned, and Bartemain howled. He turned back to Ois, trying to cut at her, but Delegado took advantage of the situation to grab at the older man. The half-orc was not as smooth a wrestler as the warforged, and he almost took another slash in the shoulder, but he got behind Bartemain’s sword hand and grappled with the thing that appeared to be his father.

“Who are you?” Delegado snarled.

“I am your father, boy!” Bartemain said. “You are named after my brother, who died when a chuul attacked our home when I was a teenager. I took you to Stormreach in the early summer of 973 Y.K., and we bought that glass bowl with the moving paint oils in its walls for your mother. I showed you how to shoot a longbow, and I bought you your first one after you took down the rabid boar from four hundred feet.” He was twisting as he said this, but spry as he was, he could not match his son’s strength. Delegado pinned his father’s hands, and Ois took the adamantine longsword away.

“I feel sand within you!” Delegado cried. “Not flesh, not blood! Who are you?”

“I am your father,” Bartemain said. He stopped struggling and looked sadly at his son. “The fiends took my flesh, and replaced it with dust. The process was incredibly painful, but now I am like a Cannith war machine. I need no air, no food. I cannot control all of my actions. They have programmed me to attack intruders who seek to free me.”

“We’ll free you of this,” Delegado said.

“You can’t, boy!” Bartemain said, bitter laughter escaping cracked lips. “They only did it to keep me alive! I’m too old for this! I should be dead! They didn’t want me to die, because they hadn’t figured out the riddle that they tortured out of me hundreds of times!”

“No!” Delegado yelled. “There has to be a way!”

“The pain, boy, you don’t know the pain,” Bartemain said. “You have to bludgeon me, the dust they stuffed me with shoves aside swords and spears. You have to crush my skull.”

“No!”

“We came here for the riddle,” Ois said. “Tell it to us, and we will do our best to help you.”

“We’re not killing him!” Delegado roared.

“When the greatest jewel is obscured by clouds, the chance for peace will be in balance, and the steel cap must not be opened,” Bartemain said. “I don’t know what it means. Neither do the fiends. Now kill me.”

“We’re going to tie you up and bring you with us,” Delegado said, his eyes wet. “We’ll find a way to turn back what the fiends did to you.”

The stone set high in the wall over Bartemain’s bed began to hum. They all looked at it.

“That’s them asking me to report on anything here,” Bartemain said. “If I don’t respond, they’ll be here in minutes. If I do respond, their programming of me won’t let me lie. Kill me, Delegado. That’s an order.”

“I can’t,” the half-orc said. Ois could tell Delegado was breaking down.

“You will!” Bartemain ordered.

“I can’t.”

Bartemain turned his eyes to Ois. “You there, do you know how much evil will triumph if you are caught?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Grab a mace from in there and crush my skull, then!” he told her. To Delegado he said “Son, I love you, but I can’t control myself. You let her do what she has to do.”

Ois saw Delegado nod, and then she ran back into the storeroom. She found a mace quickly, a well-balanced thing with an Eberron dragonshard in it. She returned and found Delegado still pinning his father. Bartemain’s head was clear.

“Do it right,” he told her.

“It will be too fast for you to feel any pain,” she said.

Ois swung, and Bartemain’s head cracked like an eggshell. He went limp in his son’s arm, and dust dribbled from his wound instead of blood.

Delegado retrieved his sword, and handed Ois her daggers. He then lifted his father’s body. “I’m not leaving his body here,” he said, his eyes red.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she said softly.

They ran out of the room, and bolted down the curving ramp to the tower’s base.