Ishak was a Bazhir and member of the tribe of the Bloody Hawk. Because of his gift the tribe's shaman Akhnan ibn Nazzir convinced the tribe of Ishak's danger. Thus he along with two gifted girls, Kara and Kourrem, were considered outcasts and only tolerated because the headman Halef Seif wouldn't allow his tribe to abandon its young members. When Alanna of Trebond joined the tribe and became its new shaman, she adopted the three young people as her students and trained them so they could take over as shamans and learned to control their gift. Out of the three he was the most impatient, always wanting to go ahead and do more powerful things. He was also arrogant and thought, like most Bazhir men, very little of women and their daily tasks. Of the three, however, he had the most control and mastered the lessons Alanna gave them more quickly. Often, he would become bored, eager to learn more advanced material. He would also ask Alanna if he could weild the Crystal sword, arrogantly thinking he could control what she could not. In some ways, Ishtak foreshadowed what would happen to Thom - arrogant in magic, destroying himself.
One day he took Alanna's Crystal sword, saying that he desrved it more than her because she didn't use it. When he took it out of the scabbard to shout a spell at Alanna, her shield reflects the spell back at him. The power consumed him and he vanished.
