Lawrence Watt-Evans - Relics of War

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 eastward 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?”