Relics of War

Chapter Twelve

Garander had never imagined magic could be so dull. For over an hour Azlia had stood, or knelt, or sat, waving her silver dagger around and chanting unintelligible nonsense. The black box had turned out to hold nothing but a smooth pebble the size of a sparrow’s egg, and the gray cone was some sort of incense that burned with a faintly salty smell; Azlia moved the pebble about, sometimes holding it in one hand while her dagger was in the other, sometimes setting it on the ground, and the gray cone smoldered and burned on the floor in front of her, filling the root cellar’s air with smoke that made Garander’s eyes itch. There was also an occasional odd tingling sensation that he supposed was magic, but it was not especially powerful.

The candle-stub in the lantern flared and flickered in unnatural ways, and Azlia’s knife sometimes seemed to be glowing with its own blue light, but even that lost all interest after awhile. Ishta had fallen asleep after perhaps half an hour, and there were times when it took an effort for Garander to remain awake himself, but he held out, hoping something exciting would happen eventually.

And then the wizard picked up the little gray stone and held it out in front of her, and it began to glow a color Garander had never seen before. She released it, but instead of falling it hung there, suspended in the smoky air directly above the stump of the cone of incense.

“The spot I marked with the rune of location, at one hour before noon on the twenty-third of Leafcolor, in the five thousand and eighteenth year of human speech,” Azlia said in clear Ethsharitic, in her own natural voice.

Garander jerked upright and stared. “Ishta!” he hissed.

“Hm?” The girl stirred. Garander could not reach her to shake her awake, but Hargal took pity on her, leaned over the side of the bin, and patted her shoulder. Then he straightened up to watch the spell.

Ishta yawned and sat up; then she caught sight of what was happening a few feet away and stared, her mouth open.

The pebble was spreading, as if it was not a stone but a drop of oil upon a surface-and the surface was vertical and invisible. It became something like a pool or a window, hanging in the air of the root cellar before the wizard Azlia, an arm’s length from her face. Through it, Garander could see the forest-not as they had seen it today, on the eighteenth of Thaw, but as it had been on the twenty-third of Leafcolor, with snow falling steadily and blanketing the ground.

And there at the base of a tree, sitting side by side under that magical cloth, were Ishta and Tesk. There was no sound-or rather, no sound but the breathing of the four people in the root cellar, and the heavy tread of Hargal’s boots as he moved closer to the floating image. The long-ago Tesk said something, and the Ishta image laughed. Then she reached out to scoop up some snow and tried to fling it at the shatra, but he somehow managed to dodge it without rising, letting it splat against the trunk by his shoulder.

“Oh, no,” the present-day Ishta murmured. Garander saw Hargal turn to look at her before returning his attention to the conjured image. The soldier leaned forward, studying the vision.

“Can you make it show that part again?” Hargal asked. “Where he dodges the snow?”

Azlia shook her head.

Garander realized that the image was still expanding; that wintry forest now filled the entire far end of the root cellar. It was almost as if Tesk and the second Ishta were here in the storeroom with them.

The two had settled back against the tree again, talking silently and watching the snow fall. Garander watched in fascinated horror, expecting to see his father and himself appear at any moment.

But they did not. Tesk alerted at something, said something to Ishta-and then the image vanished, an effect midway between a bubble popping and smoke dispersing, and the entire root cellar was plunged into darkness. The candle-stub had finally burned out, and the incense had burned down to a small pile of ash.

For a moment the blackness seemed absolute. Garander heard his companions breathing, and heard a small plop, but he saw nothing at all-until his eyes adjusted enough to make out the faintest of blue glows where the wizard’s dagger gleamed.

“I’ll get the door,” Hargal said, and Garander heard the rustle of cloth and the creak of leather as the guardsman marched back up.

Then the latch rattled, the hinges squealed, and daylight spilled into the room, forcing everyone within to blink and squint.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t show you more detail, or repeat anything,” Azlia said. “The spell doesn’t work that way; you get maybe ten to fifteen minutes, just the way it happened, and then you’re done. I’d need to do the entire spell over to show you anything a second time, and there’s no way to change the angle or distance.”

“I think we saw enough,” Hargal said. “I’d say yes, that was a shatra.” He turned to glare down at Ishta, who crouched in the vegetable bin. “And I’d say that someone besides father and son most certainly did see it.”

“I didn’t…I mean, I didn’t know…” Ishta began.

“Leave her alone!” Garander said. “She’s just a girl!”

Hargal turned to face him. “I’d say you didn’t seem very surprised by what we saw. I think you knew more than you said.”

“He wasn’t in the image,” Azlia said.

“No,” Hargal agreed. “But…”

“But I would have been, in another moment,” Garander said, interrupting the soldier. There was no point in trying to hide anything anymore; these two really were magicians, and could find out all the secrets. Instead, he intended to tell the truth and hope he could convince them to leave Tesk alone. “My father and I found Ishta there, talking to the shatra. We didn’t tell you because she’s just a girl, and we didn’t want her involved.”

“Hmph.” Hargal frowned at him, and then at Ishta. “You befriended that thing?” he asked her.

“He’s not a thing!” Ishta protested. “He’s nice! Nicer than you, anyway!”

“The baron doesn’t pay me to be nice.”

Just then Sammel leaned in the door. “I heard the latch, and the voices,” he said. “Did the spell work?”

“It worked,” Azlia said, as Grondar and the other soldier appeared on either side of the sorcerer. “It seems that the young lady here made friends with our Northern abomination.”

Garander could see that his father looked miserable. “He’s not an abomination,” Garander said. “He’s a shatra, but he knows the war’s over. He won’t hurt anyone.”

“He’s nice!” Ishta insisted.

“If it’s really a shatra, it’s half-demon,” Sammel pointed out.

“You’ve spoken with it,” Hargal said to Ishta. “I saw that.” Then he turned to Garander. “Have you spoken with it?”

Garander nodded.

“And you?” The soldier looked at Grondar.

“No,” Grondar said. “I saw it with my children, but it fled at the sight of me, leaping up into the tree, just as I told you.”

“You saw it with your children.”

“Yes.”

“And how did that happen?”

“Ishta slipped away, and Garander and I followed her tracks in the snow.”

“She slipped away.” He turned back to the girl. “Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to be sure Tesk was all right. I didn’t think he had anywhere to go to get out of the snow.”

“Tesk. Tesk?”

“That’s what we call him,” Garander volunteered. “We can’t pronounce his real name correctly.”

“It’s Northern,” Ishta added. “It doesn’t sound like anything Ethsharitic.”

“You knew it was there? And that it was a Northerner?”

Ishta threw Garander a look, but he turned up an empty palm to indicate he didn’t know how to help her. Then he decided that yes, he did know, and he spoke before she could. “We knew,” Garander said. “We had met him before, and we figured out he was a shatra. But by then we liked him.”

“I’ve never, ever heard of anyone talking with a shatra before,” Azlia said.

“They usually didn’t get a chance,” Sammel said. “Most people who met shatra didn’t get a chance to do anything but die.”

“That was during the war!” Ishta protested. “It’s different now!”

“But it’s still a shatra,” Hargal said. “It’s still a half-demon monster.”

“Sort of,” Garander said. “He doesn’t seem like a monster.”

“But it’s still half demon?”

“Yes,” Garander reluctantly admitted. “But the man part is completely in control of the demon part.”

“How do you know?” Sammel asked.

“Tesk said so!” Ishta exclaimed.

“And you believe it?”

Garander and Ishta exchanged glances. “Yes, we do,” Garander said.

“I didn’t,” Grondar said. “That was why I warned the neighbors.”

Sammel paid him no attention as he focused on Garander and Ishta. “You do understand that demons lie, don’t you?”

“So do ordinary people,” Ishta pointed out.

“I don’t think he was lying,” Garander said.

“He might just be wrong,” Azlia suggested. “Maybe he thinks he has the demon under control, but it could take over if the circumstances call for it.”

“Excuse me,” Grondar said, “but what does it matter? What can you do about it, in any case?”

Sammel and Azlia exchanged glances as Hargal replied, “Lord Dakkar sent us to determine whether you really saw something dangerous in the woods, and to deal with it appropriately.”

“We didn’t think it was really a shatra,” Sammel added, “but we thought it might be a monster of some sort, and we were authorized to kill it if we thought it posed a threat to anyone.”

“You think you can kill a shatra? The four of you?” Grondar asked.

“We don’t know,” Azlia admitted. “We don’t have the sort of high-order destructive spells that the old combat wizards had during the war, and we don’t have any dragons handy, but I’m a wizard, and Sammel is a sorcerer. I think we might have a decent chance.”

“I don’t,” Grondar said.

“Can you even find him?” Garander asked.

“Now that we know what we’re looking for, I believe we can,” Sammel said. “I have talismans that can track anyone if I can find a trace to start with, and there are probably still traces around that tree.”

Ishta threw Garander a worried look at that.

“We haven’t seen Tesk all winter,” Garander said. “He may not even be in the area anymore.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Sammel said.

Azlia was staring at Ishta. “You really do like it, don’t you?”

“Yes!” the girl replied. “He’s nice! And he keeps the mizagars away.”

“He…what?” Azlia looked to Sammel for an explanation.

“Mizagars,” Sammel said. “Another Northern monster. They weren’t remotely like people, though; they were crawling horrors, about the size of steer but with much shorter legs, a little like giant lizards. And they had plenty of teeth and claws-they ate people, if they could get them.”

“You’re saying ‘had,’ not ‘have,’” Grondar said. “Why?”

“So far as I know, they’re extinct,” Sammel replied.

Grondar looked unconvinced. “There’s a lot of unexplored country out there.”

“Tesk says there are still mizagars in the hills,” Garander said. “We don’t see them because he ordered them to stay away.”

“Is that possible?” Hargal demanded.

“I don’t know,” Sammel said. “I don’t know if anyone knows. We don’t know much about Northerners or their creations, not really.”

“Tesk says mizagars were trained to obey Northern officers, and shatra were all officers,” Garander said. “He showed us his rank talisman.”

“It glowed,” Ishta added.

“It could be true,” Sammel acknowledged. “We just don’t know.”

“If it is, and you kill Tesk, you’ll be letting dozens of mizagars come down from the hills and attack us.”

Sammel glared at Garander.

“That’s right!” Ishta said. “You can’t hurt Tesk, or the mizagars will get you!”

Garander suppressed a sigh. Ishta was not helping her own cause. “Listen,” he said, “Tesk has been out there in the woods for twenty years and he’s never hurt anyone. Why is he suddenly a problem just because a couple of us saw him?”

“Because the baron says it is,” Hargal answered.

“But what if we could show you that he really is harmless?”

Hargal snorted. “A shatra is not harmless.”

Garander could hardly deny that. “All right, not harmless, but what if we could prove he doesn’t want to hurt anyone? I mean, if you’re right, and he’s dangerous, and you try to kill him, you might just make him angry. You don’t know whether you can kill him-you said so yourself.” He gestured toward Azlia. “You might get yourselves killed, instead.”

“How would you prove he’s not dangerous?” Azlia asked.

“I…I would just…” Garander stopped. He had not thought this out yet.

“You could talk to him, and see for yourselves!” Ishta exclaimed. “You’d see that he’s nice and doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“We might just see that it wants us to think it’s harmless,” Hargal said.

“We might see that the man means us no harm,” Sammel said, “but what of the demon?”

“He controls the demon!” Ishta insisted.

“You don’t know that!”

“What if we could prove he does control the demon?” Garander asked.

“How would you prove that?” Hargal asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Garander admitted.

“Well, you think of a way to prove it, and we can discuss it further,” Hargal said. “Right now, I see our duty as determining whether the shatra is still in the area, and if it is, we need to either kill it or drive it away.” He looked at Azlia, deep in the root cellar. “Have you got the magic to do that?”

“I can find it,” Sammel said from beyond the cellar door. “I’m not sure I can destroy it.”

“I don’t know what I can do,” Azlia said. “I have things I can try, but whether they’ll work on something that’s half-demon, I don’t know. Other kinds of magic sometimes interfere with wizardry.”

“You’ve never fought a demon?” Garander asked.

“Of course not,” the wizard said. “I’ve never seen a demon. Since the end of the war the only demons in the World are the ones demonologists summon.”

“And left-over shatra,” Hargal added.

“And left-over shatra,” Azlia acknowledged. “Anyway, there aren’t any demonologists around here. I’ve never met one, or a shatra, so I’ve never seen a demon.”

“Are there other shatra nearby?” Ishta asked.

Azlia shook her head. “Until your father warned your neighbors,” she said, “we didn’t think there were any shatra left anywhere. Now, can we get out of this cellar and get on with our business?” She gathered up her black box and other belongings and started toward the door.

“Of course,” Hargal said, stepping aside into the barn.

Garander watched the soldier and the wizard leave, joining his father and the others in the main part of the barn; then he clambered out of the vegetable bin.

On the far side of the cellar Ishta was climbing out of her bin, as well, and the two of them met in the central passage. There they both paused, looking out the open door at the adults.

“We need to warn Tesk,” Ishta said.

Garander nodded. “We need to find out what he thinks about all this,” he said.

“If we warn him, he can go hide up in the hills.”

“I hope so,” Garander said.

He did not say anything to Ishta of what might happen if Tesk was unwilling or unable to hide, but he was thinking about it. Tesk might think he was in control, and he might know the war was over, but when it came down to the facts, shatra were created to kill people. Could Tesk really overcome his own nature if these magicians and soldiers attacked him, or would he fight back and slaughter them all?

“We need to find him before they do,” Garander said.

“I can do that,” Ishta said.

Startled by her confidence, Garander turned to look at his sister. “You can? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Any time you want?”

Ishta hesitated, then said, “I think so.”

Garander started to ask how, then caught himself. If she wanted him to know, she would have already told him. He looked out at the adults again. They did not look as if they were going to take immediate action, and the day was wearing on.

“If they haven’t done anything by bedtime,” he said, “I think we should slip out and find Tesk. If we try to get away now, though, they’ll notice.”

Ishta nodded. “All right.”

“I’ll wake you. When I do, be very quiet-we don’t want to wake Shella.”

Ishta nodded again.

“Now, let’s get out of here before they realize we’re up to something.”

Ishta nodded again, and hurried up the three steps to the barn. Garander followed close behind, trying to look innocent.