Relics of War by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Author:Lawrence Watt-Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, high fantasy, sword and sorcery, magic, ethshar
ISBN: 9781479404650
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Guests or not, there were chores to be done in the morning—livestock to feed, water to fetch, and any number of other mundane tasks to be performed. Garander was startled to find Azlia helping him with the chickens; she offered no explanation beyond a cheerful “Good morning!” and he decided not to ask.

As they finished up, she said, “Tell me about the shatra.”

Garander suddenly realized why she had been helping him; she wanted to know more about her quarry. She had gotten him alone, ingratiated herself…

But he had nothing to hide. In fact, he wanted to tell her. As he hung up the feed bucket he said, “We call him Tesk because we can’t pronounce his name; it’s long and strange. He speaks Ethsharitic, but he pronounces his words strangely and sometimes gets things a little wrong.”

“Where does he live? Do you know?”

“He lives in the forest—he doesn’t need a house. His magic keeps him warm and dry. I’m not sure how he finds enough to eat.”

“You’re sure he doesn’t have a cave or some other hiding place somewhere?”

Garander turned up an empty palm. “How could I be sure? But I don’t know anything of one, and I’ve seen him sit in a snowstorm as comfortable as an ordinary man at his own hearth.”

Azlia nodded. “How long has he been out there?”

“He says he’s been alone in the woods since the end of the Great War—he was out there watching the borders when the gods destroyed the Empire. I suppose they overlooked him.”

“He’s been alone out there for twenty years?”

“That’s what he says.”

“Why didn’t anyone know about it until now?”

“He didn’t want them to. He can hide really well when he wants to.”

“But then how did you find him?”

“Ishta led me to him.” Before Azlia could ask the obvious next question, he continued, “And she found him because he wanted her to. He got lonely, and thought that a child wouldn’t know any better than to talk to him.”

“Don’t parents around here tell their children not to talk to strangers?”

The empty palm came up again. “Do children in Varag do everything their parents tell them?”

Azlia smiled at that. “I suppose not.”

“He didn’t come looking for her, after all; he just stayed in the woods and let her find him. I think he may have known she wasn’t allowed there, and if she was already breaking one rule, why not another?”

“I see.”

“He didn’t want to just stay out in the forest forever. He may be part demon, but he’s part man, and men get lonely.”

“He waited twenty years, though.”

“He knew what would happen if the overlords of Ethshar found out a shatra had survived. He hoped that by now we’d all have forgotten what shatra were.”

“That’s not the sort of thing people forget.”

“I guess not,” Garander acknowledged, turning up a hand. “But remember, he doesn’t know much about us. His people were different from ours.”

“People are people,” the wizard said.

Garander’s mouth twisted wryly. “So you’re saying Northerners were just like us?”

Azlia paused.

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