At last, though, Garander was able to go looking for his sister, and he found her in the barn, petting the old gray tomcat that kept mice from overrunning the place. She looked up at his approach, but stayed seated on the barn floor.
The cat looked up as well, but stayed sprawled comfortably where he was.
“Ishta,” Garander said, “I wanted to talk about what Father told us at breakfast.”
Ishta turned her attention back to the cat. “What is there to talk about? Tesk is a shatra; so what?”
“So he’s dangerous,” Garander replied. “Very dangerous. You should stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a half-demon Northerner!”
“So? If he wanted to hurt me, he would have done it already.”
That was an excellent point, but Garander said, “We don’t know that. He’s half-demon; we don’t know how he thinks. Maybe he’s waiting for something-waiting until he can get all of us, perhaps.”
“He asked us not to tell anyone he’s there. You offered to bring him in to meet the family, and he said no.”
“Fine, maybe he’s not trying to get all of us, but we don’t know, Ishta! We don’t know what he wants, or why he’s there, or anything. We don’t know whether we can believe a single word he says.”
“Why would he bother lying?” Ishta’s expression made it clear that she thought her brother was being silly.
“Because he’s a shatra!” Garander exclaimed. “He’s a Northerner! Even if that doesn’t mean he’s evil, what do you think Father would do if he found out? He fought in the war, remember? If Father found out there’s a shatra in the woods he’d tell the baron, or maybe send a message to Lord Edaran if he doesn’t think the baron can handle it. You heard what he said; they would bring dragons or wizards to kill any shatra they found.”
“Where would Father find a dragon or a wizard?” Ishta demanded. “There aren’t any around here!”
“That’s why he’d tell the baron or the overlord! They have lots of wizards in Ethshar of the Sands.”
“That’s fifty leagues from here! Why would they care what’s in our woods?”
“Because he’s a shatra!”
“He’s not bothering anyone! The war’s been over for twenty years!”
“Honestly, Ishta, I don’t think that matters. If anyone finds out he’s there, they’re going to send for help. They’re going to send magicians to kill him. And Tesk is going to fight back, and a lot of people could get hurt.”
She lifted the hand that had been stroking the cat and turned up an empty palm. “So we won’t tell anyone he’s there!”
“All right, we won’t, but you can’t visit him again. Someone might see you.”
“Nobody has yet!”
“I have!”
Ishta hesitated. She obviously wanted to say that Garander didn’t count, but at the same time, he had followed her without her knowledge, and if he could do it, so could Shella, or their father, or one of the neighbors.
“I’ll be more careful,” she said. “I didn’t know it was important before. Now I do. And you can tell people things so they won’t follow me.”
“I don’t want to lie for you,” Garander protested.
“But you’re my brother! And Tesk was nice to you!”
“Yes, he was nice to me, which is why I don’t want us to get him in trouble.”
“He’ll worry if I don’t come back.”
Garander hesitated. He had not thought of that.
“All right,” he conceded. “You can visit him again, so he won’t worry, but you should tell him you won’t be back.”
Ishta didn’t answer; she just looked silently stubborn.
“Come on, Ishta, can’t you see how dangerous this is?”
“I’ll be careful,” she said.
“Talk to him about it, if you insist on visiting him,” Garander suggested. “See what he thinks.” Tesk was an adult; he would probably have the sense to realize how difficult his position would be if anyone else found out he was in the area.
“I guess I should,” Ishta grudgingly acknowledged. “But I don’t want to upset him. If he’s really half-demon, upsetting him really might be dangerous.”
Garander decided not to point out that this more or less contradicted Ishta’s earlier assertions. “Good,” he said. “Just be careful.”
“I will,” Ishta said, as she bent down to scratch the tomcat under his chin.
Garander hesitated, then turned away. Any more argument would just make her more stubborn, he was sure.
He really, really hoped she would be sensible and break off her contact with the shatra.
Chapter Six
A sixnight later, while the two of them were feeding the chickens, Garander asked Ishta if she had spoken to Tesk.
“About what?” she asked.
“About him being a shatra,” Garander said, struggling not to shout.
“Oh. No. We talked about when we were likely to get snow, and whether he needed a winter coat, and stuff like that.”
“But you’ve talked to him since we found out he’s a shatra?”
“Sure. Twice, I think.”
“And you didn’t mention it?”
“It didn’t come up. I didn’t want to bring it up out of nowhere, as if I’m accusing him of something!”
Garander flung the last handful of grain, upended the bucket, then turned and told his sister, “We are going to go talk to Tesk right now.”
“What?”
“We are going to talk to him. Both of us. Now. He needs to know about this.”
Ishta blinked uncertainly, then said, “All right.”
Garander hung the bucket on its hook, pulled his jacket tighter, and marched out of the barn.
The weather was cold, the wind biting, but as yet there was no snow on the ground. A brief flurry had fallen two evenings before, but nothing had stuck. Garander’s feet crunched on frozen leaves as he headed for the forest.
“Not that way,” Ishta said, tugging at his sleeve.
Garander stopped.
“Father could see you,” she said. “Come this way.” She pointed to the north.
Garander followed as his sister led him around the barn, behind a woodshed, across a ditch he had forgotten was there, and then behind a big oak-a route that he realized kept them hidden from the house and most of the farm almost the entire way. Ishta had clearly given this matter some thought, and had not just been ducking into the forest from wherever she happened to be. Garander was not sure whether to be relieved at her sense, or worried by her deviousness.
Ishta moved through the woods with surprising stealth; she was obviously familiar with her surroundings. Here and there she paused and looked at something, usually a tree or stone, and after a few instances Garander realized that she was following signs of some sort, presumably markers Tesk had left so she would know where to find him.
He looked for the signs himself, and now that he knew there was something to find, he could usually locate them. Sometimes it would be a forked twig hooked over a branch, or a rolled-up leaf stuck in a crotch, or some other bit of debris that would not have looked at all out of place if Garander had not known there were markers; sometimes he could not find the marker at all. There was never anything as obvious as a mark carved into bark.
He did not have all that much time to look, though, because Ishta was hurrying deeper into the woods, not waiting for him. They were a good hundred yards or more into the wilderness, perhaps more, when Ishta waved-not to Garander, but to someone ahead.
A moment later Garander spotted Tesk, sitting comfortably in a tree, about eight feet off the ground and a hundred feet deeper in the forest. The shatra waved, but stayed where he was.