A little under a tenday later she’d finished the kitchen garden, it was cleared, deeply fertilised with well watered beast dung and she’d replanted it. It smelled earthy, like potent but waiting growth. Except for the few plants she’d managed to save nothing showed in the neat tilled rows but the seeds were there, all it would take now was watering and waiting.

The Witch’s garden had also been nearly finished but it would be another tenday at least before she knew if the beds were correctly made. Many of the useful herbs and plants were fussy in their needs and others needed very specific conditions to develop their useful properties.

She was working on the last bed mixing sand and coarse gravel into it to make it a home for a plant that grew only in the wet but poor soil at the margins of riverbeds when she heard a voice hailing her from the treeline.

Looking up she saw a large green creature raising a hand in greeting, she waved back and he approached surrounded by a swarm of spirits. Mostly small and generally inconsequential but a few potent ones followed him closely and watched her very carefully.

The hound who was never far away these days stood and watched him come.

The hound was never far away because Aignew’s harassment had increased to the point that even during the day whispers intended to upset her thoughts sounded almost constantly. At night they became howls and screamed angry words, breaking her rest so she always felt tired. She knew it for what it was Aignew himself had taught her that tactic. Tired people made mistakes and were much easier to deal with, some it would even drive slowly mad. Mostly it just annoyed her because after the intense training she’d gone through she barely knew where her limits were when it came to remaining awake, aware, and effective any longer.

Stopping at a polite distance he said, “You would be the witch, I take it? A Fae man said I might find someone of interest here, near that scar on the world.”

“A Fae man? What was his name?”

Throwing his head back the strange looking man barked a laugh and the hound which had settled again bolted to it’s feet watching him with intent eyes. He said, “You know, I never bothered to ask. He was a tall strongly built blonde in a fancy metal suit with a large sword sheathed across his back. A blunt manner of speaking, but only if you were being polite.”

“That does sound like a Fae man I know. Why did he send you here?”

His smile fell and he became sombre saying, “I am the last of a murdered tribe, murdered for our refusal to bow before the Fae Chanar. Most of us were murdered as we fled the hunt they called, the rest a short while ago when something cold, malevolent and evil, strangled them in their tents. I have no reason to value my life, no purpose. But the Fae man said you seek to end Fae Chanar rule over this Realm, that seems a reasonable purpose and use for whatever is left of my life.”

Raelea nodded and said, “We do but fair warning our conspiracy has only barely started. You would be our fourth member.”

“I consulted the spirits for many days after the Fae man left me at my lost camp, asking for their guidance. They said the rebellion was just beginning and the outcome was uncertain but for any chance of success I was needed. Spirits only view the future imperfectly so I do not take their pronouncements as a given, they also have a habit of saying things that will push their chosen tools onto the path they desire. Whether that path is best for their chosen instrument or not.”

Voice dry she said, “I have some experience of spirits and their duplicity.”

“I can feel you as I would a spirit, you inhabit the spiritworld as much as this world. You are far more spirit than any mortal should ever be.” He shook his head, “I am not surprised that you have some knowledge of spirits but there is something I don’t feel that the Fae man specifically mentioned. He said you felt potent. You do not, you feel reduced instead. As if you are less then you should be? I can’t explain my feeling in words any better than that.”

“You see far more than most don’t you. Even without the aid of the Shaman’s Mantle, your spirits are present so, why are you not Mantled? I can see them watching, evaluating but they’re doing nothing.”

“First meetings are always a tense time, I had no wish to appear even slightly threatening or duplicitous. Many react poorly when a Shaman is Mantled expecting an attempt at manipulation, not without justification it must be said.” Pointing at the hound he said, “I notice you have no desire to appear nonthreatening. That is possibly the most dangerous thing I have ever met. I don’t know if it’s a creature or just a bundle of magic given form but it is death itself. How do you have death itself following you?”

“My friend made it, honestly I know only a very little about it. He made it to protect me from someone who wants me dead.” She paused thinking, “I don’t know if I can trust you but you have told me no falsehoods and our need is great. My previous familiar is the one who wants me dead. He is also why I feel reduced, my magic has been taken from me, sealed in some manner.”

Frowning the Shaman said, “You say he? Familiars are spirits right?”

She nodded.

“Spirits are spirits, never male or female. They have no gender.”

Raelea shook her head slowly saying, “That is not what we were taught by the Shaman of my tribe, they taught some spirits were gendered. A very small number that is true but some.”

Pursing his lips the Oruc said, “The only spirits I know of that are gendered are the shades of the dead who linger at the edges of the spiritworld either refusing to make their final journey, or forced not to by some magic. They behave as any other spirit in nature but they carry whatever desires they did in life, a good man becomes a protector guarding the unwary from spirits that do not know and can have never known morality. An evil person seeks to prey upon those same unwary people embracing the lack of morality and continuing the predation they practised in life. I do not wish to say your Shaman were necessarily misguided or misinformed but I have seen more than a thousand winters since I first drew breath and been a Shaman all my adult life. Also the many teachers I have had over that time drew on more than thirty generations of shamanic knowledge. Respectfully, I think I may know more of spirits than your tribe’s Shaman.”

“You speak truth. I don’t know how I feel about that. For turnings I have been bound to the lingering soul of an evil man and did not know.”

He smiled and shrugged lightly, “You could not know and truthfully they act as any other spirit except for carrying their own desires. Desires you seem to have fallen afoul of. You did not answer my question though not really, how do you have death itself following you?”

Pointing where the Goblin snoozed in the shade of the cottage wall she said, “Pif wanted to protect me from my former familiar and somehow gave his death realm magic that form, apparently it takes all of his strength to maintain it but it has prevented attempts to take my life at least a dozen times a night for the last few nights.”

“You have no spirit wards?”

Shaking her head she said, “No, I was very tired on my first night here and only placed a temporary one. My magic was sealed before I could perform the rituals for more permanent ones.”

“I can’t make a full dreaming circle for you, there is far too much spirit stuff in you for that. You couldn’t even cross it to get to your bed but I can have some spirits dampen any disturbances in the spiritworld.”

“Those spirits will need protection, Aignew is a predator of them.”

The Shaman looked surprised and a little apprehensive, “Really? Just what did you bond with? There is nothing normal that eats spirits, not other spirits, not men, nothing.”

Surprised she asked, “What? What do you mean, surely that can’t be right? Everything has something that preys on it.”

The Shaman shook his head, “I have never heard of anything that views spirits as food, they gain strength by learning and age. The older and more learned the spirit the greater their ability to tap into the spiritworld’s energy and the greater the energy they can maintain.”

She said, “My familiar had only a very little power of his own and it built very slowly, to affect the world reliably he had to borrow my magic and it left me weakened for days afterwa-”

“What! That is not possible.” Immediately he apologised, “Forgive me, I should not interrupt you when you are speaking, that was very rude of me. But what you said is impossible by everything I know or have been taught. Spirits draw their power from the spiritworld and cannot use anything else. Just what were you bonded with? I am asking that seriously, I really would like to know. This ex-familiar of yours breaks rules generations of Oruc Fae Shaman know.”

“He was also able to gift me with any power taken from the spirits he ‘ate’ in much the same way you gain the power from a spirit drained in a ward.”

In an outraged voice he said, “Your wards drain spirits? Reducing their strength? That is a monstrous act, the spiritworld is not an inexhaustible well. Spirits agree to the bonds with Shaman to gain access to their magic, this allows the spiritworld to be fed and prosper. To take so and use that energy it weakens all spirits and the spiritworld itself. It’s wrong, an evil vile act.”

Taken aback she said, “I was taught how to build the wards by Aignew himself and I honestly thought all spirit wards wards could do that if set for it. I-I must examine all the things I've been taught. What other perverse magics have I been taught as something completely normal and everyday? I mean I know the dark secrets of my calling but they were taught as such, taught as something dark, corrupting and only to be used in extreme circumstances.”

“At the least you are willing to examine what you have been taught, many would not and would consider what they were taught to be the way things should be.” He sighed and said, “Is there somewhere I can set a tent or a building I can use, I must get my dreaming circle set and it seems inscribe some wards for my spirits as I am certain this Aignew will not take my presence lightly. Once done I must talk with the spirits, seeking deep and far for wisdom, many things here are wrong, unnatural. I need guidance.”

“Oh, anywhere for your tent or any of the buildings other than the cottage. The only ward in place is a cleansing one on the barn door as the ground here is filled with a pestilence that strikes at anything with hooves, the ritual cleanses Horse every time he walks through.”

He nodded once slowly and said, “I thank you.”

Walking off he peered into one of the empty buildings, then nodding walked inside.

Very shortly afterwards, the building took on an air of menace. She shivered as something within her recoiled from it.

She realised Pif had slept right through her meeting the Shaman, typical. Though it would be interesting to see what the small green creature thought of the very large green creature who’d just moved in.

With plenty of daylight left, she tried to ignore the ominous seeming building and bent to her gardening. There wasn’t much else she could do.