Relics of War

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Father!” he called, though he was unsure what he would say if Grondar called back. He could his father’s coat, the shoulders white with snow, moving through the woods ahead.

  And beyond, deeper in the forest, just barely visible through the snow, he saw two figures that he thought must be Ishta and Tesk huddled beneath an improvised shelter, a broad length of white fabric stretched between two sturdy branches somewhat above head level. Garander could not hear them—the snow muffled all sounds—but they appeared to be chatting amiably, untroubled by Grondar’s approach.

  Tesk must have detected his approach, though; he was shatra, with supernatural senses.

  Even as Garander thought that, he saw Tesk look up, suddenly alert. Then he moved, with that strange, smooth speed, leaping out from under his shelter to grab a tree limb, then swinging himself upward. He seemed to not so much jump as flow from branch to branch and tree to tree, moving higher and farther away with every transfer. It should have looked absurd, a man jumping around in the trees, but it didn’t; it looked graceful and terrifying.

  Then he was gone, lost amid the snow-covered trees, and Grondar was bellowing, “Ishta! Who was that with you?”

  Ishta started. She was still sitting under the improvised shelter; she did not seem to have absorbed yet what was happening. She looked up, trying to see where Tesk had gone, but it was far too late for that.

  “Ishta!” Grondar repeated.

  “Father!” Garander called.

  Then Grondar was at the shelter, where he reached beneath the fabric and grabbed Ishta’s arm, dragging her out into the snow. “Who was that?” he demanded. “What is this thing?” He turned his attention to the cloth.

  Garander could not see his father’s face, but he had the impression that Grondar was staring. As he watched, Grondar released Ishta’s arm and stretched out a hand to tentatively touch the shelter. “What is this?” he asked.

  Then Garander was finally able to catch up to Grondar. “Father,” he said, “are you all right?”

  Grondar turned, startled. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I told you to go inside!”

  “I thought you might want my help,” Garander said, realizing even as he spoke how ridiculous that was. He quickly improvised, “In case Ishta was stuck up in a tree or something.”

  “What would she be doing in a tree? For that matter, what is she doing here? Who was that? How did he…how did he do that? What’s this thing made of?”

  “I don’t know,” Garander said. “Father, it’s snowing awfully hard now; I think we should all be getting back.”

  “In a moment,” he said. “Your sister has a few things to explain first. Ishta?”

  Ishta had finally gathered her wits enough to answer, “Yes, Father?”

  “What is this thing?” He pointed at the shelter. “How did it get here?”

  Ishta turned up an empty palm. “I don’t know, Father. It was here when I got here.”

  “And you’ve been sitting under it?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Did you notice that it’s warm? And dry? The snow isn’t sticking to it. At all. It should be cold and wet and covered in snow, and it isn’t.”

  “It isn’t?” Ishta seemed genuinely surprised. She turned to look at the shelter. So did Garander, coming up beside their father. Ishta was not tall enough to reach it easily, but Garander was. He raised a hand and cautiously touched his fingers to the white cloth.

  The fabric was indeed warm and dry.

  “That’s magic,” Grondar said, feeling the cloth with the palm of his hand. “Wizardry, maybe.”

  “I don’t…” Garander began; then he caught himself. “Maybe.”

  “So, Ishta,” Grondar said, glowering at his daughter. “Who was that you were talking to? How did he jump like that?”

  Ishta looked at Garander, but he was not offering any help with this; he shook his head very slightly, hoping his father wouldn’t notice the movement.

  She decided there was no point feigning ignorance. “He said his name was Tesk… I mean, Kelder of Tesk,” Ishta said.

  “Where’s Tesk?” Grondar asked.

  Ishta turned up a hand. “How should I know?”

  Grondar frowned. He glanced at Garander. “I never heard of it,” Garander said. “But I’m not very good with geography.”

  “Did you see the way he bounded up into the trees, and leapt from branch to branch?” Grondar demanded. “He didn’t look human!”

  “He looked human to me,” Ishta said defensively.

  “Where did you find him? Did you know he was out here?”

  Ishta hesitated. “I found him right here, sitting under the cloth,” she said.

  “Did you know he was there? Did you come here looking for him?”

  “I never saw the cloth before!” Ishta said.

  “Did you ever see him before?”

  Ishta looked to her brother again, but once again, no help was forthcoming. “I might have,” she admitted.

  “So you’ve been sneaking into the woods?”

  “Father,” Garander interrupted, hoping to distract Grondar before he could work up serious anger, “shouldn’t we be getting in out of the snow? It’s coming down pretty hard.”

  Grondar looked up. The sky overhead was solid gray, and largely hidden by swirling snow. Then he looked at the shelter again. “We’ll take this with us,” he said. He grabbed the edge of the fabric and tugged.

  It stayed where it was. It flexed in his hand, and the branches it was draped on bent slightly, but the cloth stayed firmly attached to the wood, though Garander could not see any pins or cords or other attachments.

  Grondar’s eyes widened, and he pulled harder. The fabric still didn’t yield. He reached over and grasped the edge right next to one of the tree limbs, and yanked at it.

  The limb beneath the fabric bent, but the cloth remained solidly attached.

  “I don’t see any nails,” Garander offered. “Maybe it’s glued.”

  “Maybe it’s more magic,” Ishta said. “It’s Tes…Kelder’s; maybe it won’t let anyone else move it.”

  Grondar looked up into the trees where Tesk had vanished. “Do you think he might come back for it?”

  “Why would he?” Garander asked, hoping to discourage his father from staying out in the snow.

  “If it’s magic, it must be valuable,” Grondar said. “He wouldn’t just abandon it. He’ll come back eventually. So if we wait here—”

  “Father,” Garander said, trying not to sound desperate, “if he wanted to talk to us, he wouldn’t have run off in the first place—and if he does come back, he might bring help. If he’s got a magic cloth like this, he might have magic weaponry, too, or magic to summon allies. Or he might be a magician himself. I really think we should just leave it and go home.”

  Grondar glared at the cloth. “Maybe we could break off the branches and take the whole thing with us.”

  “Father, if he’s a magician, or even if he just has magical allies, do we really want to steal from him?”

  Grondar hesitated. “If he has allies or weapons, what’s to stop him from killing us all in our beds?”

  “Common sense, Father. Why would he want to kill us? If he meant us harm, he could have come any time—why would he come now, in the snow, when he would leave tracks?”

  “He didn’t leave any tracks when he ran away.”

  “There aren’t a hundred trees around our house to hide in; he’d leave tracks there.”

  “Not if he has the right magic. Maybe he can fly, or tunnel through the earth.”

  “Or poof, just appear! But why would he want to?”

  “Why was he sitting out here in the snow, talking to your sister?” Grondar shouted. “Who is he?”

  Garander flinched. “Can we talk about this at home, please? It’s cold, and the snow is covering our tracks, and I don’t want to get lost in the woods, and Mother’s waiting.”

  Grondar took one last look eastwa
rd into the depths of the forest, then turned and said, “Fine. We’ll go. But we will talk about this when we get home, Ishta, and I expect a good explanation!”

  “Yes, Father,” Ishta said in the scared-little-girl voice she used when she was trying to appease her parents. Garander was amazed that that still appeared to work. It didn’t work on him, and hadn’t for years; it just annoyed him. Their parents, however, seemed more susceptible.

  Together, the three of them turned and began trudging back toward the family farm, leaving the miraculously warm and dry shelter where it was. The tracks that Garander and his father had left were still fairly clear, despite the heavy snowfall, so there was no immediate danger of losing their way.

  They had gone perhaps a hundred feet when Grondar paused for a few seconds to look back at the abandoned shelter, allowing Ishta and Garander to get a few yards ahead of him. That gave Garander a chance to lean over and whisper, “You idiot! What were you doing out here in this storm?”

  “I wanted to be sure Tesk was all right!” Ishta whispered back.

  “He looked fine to me, the way he went jumping through the trees. Why didn’t he see Father coming and get away sooner, before he was spotted?”

  “He thought it was you,” Ishta said. “He said it was you. With the snow and everything, I thought it was you, too—you’re more like Father than you think. I didn’t know it was him until he started shouting.”

  Garander was not sure what to make of that. He asked, “So why did you stay out here once you knew he was safe?”

  “We were talking!”

  “You shouldn’t have been! Not when you’d left tracks.”

  “I didn’t know anyone was going to come looking for me! Why did he, anyway?”

  “Mother wanted you for a fitting; she’s cutting down one of Shella’s dresses for you.”

  Grondar’s voice interrupted. “What are you two whispering about?”

  Garander looked back to see their father catching up. “Ishta was wondering why you were looking for her. I told her Mother wanted her for a fitting.”

  “That’s right, she does! I’d almost forgotten about that; she’s going to be annoyed it took this long to fetch you.”

  “Then I’ll hurry!” Ishta broke into a run.

  Garander ran after her. Grondar, he noticed, did not; their father was not as young and energetic as they were.

  That was fine with him. That would give them another chance to talk.

  The two burst out of the woods into the farmyard, leaped across the snow-filled ditch, and veered leftward around the woodshed. Beside the barn Ishta abruptly slowed, looking back to be sure they were out of their father’s sight, and ahead to see that no one had come out of the house to see what was taking so long.

  Garander came up beside her, and matched her pace.

  “Ishta!” he said. “Maybe we should tell them the truth.”

  She glared at him. “Are you crazy?”

  “He saw that cloth! He knows that’s magic. You think he’s going to believe you went into the woods in the snow for no reason, and just happened to find a mysterious stranger sitting under a magic tent?”

  “It’s not a tent.”

  “Well, whatever it is, that’s not the point! The point is that he won’t believe it if you say that’s what happened.”

  “All right, fine, but we don’t need to tell them he’s shatra, do we? Can’t we just say he’s a magician?”

  Garander hesitated.

  “I mean, how would we know anything about shatra?” Ishta said.

  “Because Father told us about them, silly! You think he won’t remember that?”

  “Maybe he won’t!”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Well, you…you…you’re right.” She sighed. “But I’m not going to say the word until someone else does.”

  Garander glanced back to see Grondar rounding the bushes. “Fair enough,” he said. “Now, come on, let’s get inside where it’s warm.”

  Together, brother and sister trotted toward the house.

  Chapter Eight

  Once inside, there was a brief dispute over priorities.

  “Ah, there you are! Get over here and try on this dress,” their mother said, looking up from a jumble of green fabric.

  “There’s something I need to discuss with these two,” their father answered.

  “It can wait,” the elder Shella said, raising a needle and thread. “I want to get this done, so we can eat lunch!”

  “I think—”

  “You can talk while we’re working. Ishta, put it on!”

  Ishta threw her father a quick glance, then began taking off her coat. She didn’t hurry.

  Grondar fumed while his children removed coats, scarves, gloves, and boots, and put them all neatly away; he rushed to strip off his own outerwear, and stood waiting as Ishta ducked into the room she shared with her sister and changed into the green dress.

  Garander, once he had his own gear put away, looked out a window. The snow was still coming down; the overcast so thick it was hard to believe it was midday. Quite aside from delaying any discussions of Tesk, he was glad to be safely inside; this snowfall was turning into a far worse storm than any of them had anticipated, worse than it had any right to be so early in the season.

  He hoped the shatra would be all right, out there in the snow—but Tesk had lived alone in the wilderness for twenty years; he must have survived worse storms than this. And he could safely retrieve that magical cloth, now that Ishta and her family had gone.

  That cloth had been a surprise; Garander had never seen anything like it. His father had guessed it was wizardry, but from everything he knew, Garander thought it must be sorcery—all of Tesk’s equipment appeared to be sorcerous, not wizardly in nature.

  Then Ishta emerged, the green dress hanging loosely on her. She stepped up on the stool as her mother approached with a mouthful of pins.

  “Now,” Grondar demanded, “how did you meet this Kelder of Tesk?”

  Ishta glanced at Garander, then said, “I met him in the forest.”

  Her mother had been pinching in the fabric under Ishta’s left arm; now she held that with one hand, took the pins from her mouth with the other, and asked, “Who’s Kelder of Tesk?”

  “Someone our daughter has been meeting in the woods.”

  “A boy?”

  “A grown man, from what I saw of him,” Grondar replied. “Not that I got a good look.”

  Ishta saw the stricken look on her mother’s face and said, “It’s nothing like that! We just talked. He never touched me.”

  “You’ll swear to that?” Grondar asked.

  “Of course I will! He didn’t, I swear by all the gods!”

  “Then why was he talking to you at all?”

  “He was lonely, I guess.”

  “All right, then I’ll ask again—how did you meet him?”

  “I…I was wandering in the woods, and there he was, sitting on a branch.”

  “What were you doing in the woods?”

  “Getting out of the sun. I knew if I went in the house Mother would find something for me to do, and if I went in the barn you would, and besides, I liked being outside in the fresh air. It’s nice in the woods.”

  Grondar frowned. “Out of the sun? When was this?”

  “A couple of months ago.”

  “Months?”

  Ishta nodded.

  “You’re forbidden to go into the woods!”

  “I know.”

  “And you went anyway.”

  She nodded again.

  “And you’ve…all right, so you met this Kelder of Tesk in the forest, and you talked to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you talk to him about?”

  Ishta turned up an empty palm, which tugged at the fold her mother was pinning. “How the trees grow, and what colors the leaves were, and what animals lived in the trees. Things like that.”

  “Did you ask him
where he was from, and what he was doing in the woods?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “You did ask?”

  She nodded again.

  “You didn’t think that was suspicious?”

  “I like him!”

  Grondar growled. “Of course. So you met him in the woods, and you talked, and then what?”

  “Then I went home for supper.”

  “And what did he do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you saw him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “How often?”

  Ishta looked decidedly uncomfortable. “A few times.”

  “Every day?”

  “No!” She hesitated. “Maybe once or twice a sixnight.” Garander thought it had probably been more often than that, especially before they had realized he was shatra, but he didn’t say anything.

  “How did you know where to find him?”

  “I didn’t always; sometimes he’d find me. Sometimes he’d mark a trail for me, though.”

  “But he was always out there somewhere?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Where does he live?” Ishta’s mother asked, as she tugged at a seam.

  “In the woods, he says.”

  Her mother glanced up at her. “He has a cabin somewhere?””

  “I don’t think so,” Ishta said. “I think he sleeps in the trees, on the branches.”

  “Blood and death, why would he do that?” Grondar asked.

  Ishta turned up a palm.

  Grondar frowned again, and said, “From what I saw just now, he dresses strangely.”

  Ishta nodded.

  “All in black.”

  She nodded again.

  “Does he always dress like that, or was it because of the snow?”

  “He always does.”

  Ishta’s mother had finished pinning one side, and transferred her attention to the other.

  “It looked like he was carrying some things.”

  “He has a pack, and he carries stuff on his back,” Ishta said. “He doesn’t have a home, so I guess he carries everything with him.”

  “So he doesn’t have a home, but he does have belongings.”