A stab of panic filled me at the shaman’s words. Did he know about the ojain’s spirit? If he did, I couldn’t imagine that he would be okay with me bonding it. In fact, I was certain that he’d want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. After realizing that the woman could be a valuable source of information, though, I wasn’t as eager to drive her out.

“What do you mean?” I asked as innocently as I could.

He sighed heavily. “You have a problem, Freyd, and a choice to make. That choice will steer your path going forward, and it’s a decision you need to make.” His voice was grave as he spoke, and I gave him a slightly suspicious look.

“What problem, and what choice?” I asked warily.

“Your problem is that you made a willing bond with that hunt spirit rather than binding it to your will. And the choice you have is whether or not to maintain it.” I felt a wave of relief at his words; he was worried about the hunt spirit, not the ojain. Of course, he could just be saying that to give him a chance to drive the ojain out of me, but that didn’t seem to be the shaman’s personality.

“Is that the reason that it’s been affecting me?”

His eyes widened, and his face took on a startled expression. “Yes—you realize that? You can tell that it’s affecting you?” He seemed genuinely surprised by that fact.

“It’s pretty obvious,” I replied, not mentioning that Sara had to point it out to me. “I’ve been feeling odd urges lately, and I’ve been a lot more predatory and aggressive than I normally am. The only thing that’s changed is bonding a spirit that’s probably naturally predatory and aggressive, so…” I held out my hands. “It seemed to fit.”

“That’s very perceptive of you,” he said after a few seconds of silence. “Most people can’t tell that they’re being affected by a spirit that way. The spirit slowly takes over their thoughts, convincing them that their choices and actions are perfectly reasonable, and they refuse to hear any suggestion otherwise.” He sighed, some of the tension flowing out of his body as he slumped slightly. “That makes all this much easier.”

“All what?”

“The choice I mentioned.” He straightened and turned to look at me again. “What you’re dealing with is something all letharvisa face, Freyd. This is why most choose to bind spirits rather than bonding them.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked. “Realistically, I mean?”

“Binding a spirit means subjecting them to your will, whether by compelling them or making a deal with them. You gain the ability to tap the spirit for power, and it has to follow your commands for as long as the binding lasts—which is usually your life. Compelling them is simpler, but any spirit will fight a compulsory binding, and they’ll attempt to pervert your commands to harm you or benefit them. A willing binding is harder to manage, but you don’t have to worry about the spirit trying to break the binding, and it will happily perform for you.”

“Why would any spirit agree to that? You get to drain them of energy, and they get—what, exactly?”

“Power, Freyd.” He sighed and looked up at the sky overhead. “Spirits are alive, in a sense, but they don’t live as we mortals do. They’re immortal, but they change very little over centuries, and their growth is measured in millennia. Life energy, the energy all mortals possess, is like the sweetest drink to them, and a small amount of life energy provides them with more power than a lesser spirit might gain in a hundred lifetimes. That’s why blood will always gain their attention: they crave that energy. When they bind with us, they gain a small measure of our life energy, not enough for us to notice but more than they might receive through millennia of natural growth. For them, our lives are an eyeblink; what matter if they serve for what would seem like seconds to us in return for that sort of power?”

“That’s the little pulses of power you saw going from Aeld’s spirit into his bound spirits,” Sara said in an awed voice. “They’re constantly draining a little power from him.”

“Is the hunt spirit doing that to me?” I asked. “Or the ojain?”

“Not that I can tell, no,” Sara hedged. “If the drain’s small enough, though…”

“I’m not,” the ojain interrupted abruptly. “I’m not gaining anything from you—although the bonding stopped the pain I was feeling. I don’t know about your other spirit. That explains a great deal, though.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“I’ve always wondered why any of the great spirits would contaminate themselves by bonding with mortal flesh,” she replied. “It’s unnatural and unclean, and the spirits are pure and perfect beyond out understanding. If it grants them even greater power, though, then it makes sense.”

I had a feeling I just got an insight into the Oikie religion—and that little glimpse might explain some of the basis of the war between the two species. The Menskies seemed to see spirits as valuable and useful tools, but nothing more; if the Oikies worshipped them like gods, then this whole thing might be nothing more than a religious war. Of course, if it was, I wasn’t about to end it; on Earth, at least, religious wars were often the worst kind, with each side feeling justified in committing practically any atrocity in the name of their faith. Hopefully, that wasn’t my job here.

I turned my focus back to Aeld. “When you put it like that, I wonder why every spirit out there isn’t clamoring to bind with us,” I chuckled.

“Simple. Most don’t care.” He looked down again as he spoke. “Many among the Menskallin see spirits as ancient beings, wise beyond our imagining. And while to some extent this is true, what they don’t realize is that spirits are also selfish, narrow-minded, and utterly obsessed with whatever concept forms their essence. They don’t understand mortals; they don’t care about us; they have no interest in us. Most prefer to ignore us; some few see us as a plague to be exterminated. But none are benevolent or kind toward us.” He chuckled. “And that’s a secret that I’m not supposed to share with any Menskallin who isn’t a letharvis, but it’s one you’ll learn quickly enough by dealing with them.”

“Okay, so what did I do that’s different?” I asked. The ojain raged silently within me, sputtering about “blasphemy” and “profanity”, and I mentally confirmed that yep, this was a religious conflict. Yay for me.

He remained silent for a long moment, as if thinking how to say his next words. “You created a willing bond,” he finally said. “A binding is a superficial thing. You gain access to a small part of the spirit’s power; in return, it gains access to a tiny bit of your life energy. Even an unwilling binding doesn’t give you access to much of the spirit’s power. The spirit has very little influence over you, and in return, you can make only relatively simple demands of it.

“A bond, however, is a deeper and fuller connection. With a bond, you share fully in the spirit’s power. You can draw on it as deeply as you want, and you gain benefits from it that you wouldn’t from a shallow binding. However, in turn, the spirit has more complete access to your mind and thoughts, and it can draw on your energy to affect the world around it—as the hunt spirit has been doing.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I almost asked him what he meant before my tired brain put the pieces together. “The attacks we went through on the way here,” I said quietly. “Bregg as much as admitted they weren’t normal but wouldn’t explain what was going on. It was the spirit, wasn’t it?”

“Very good,” the shaman said approvingly. He reached down and scooped up a handful of snow, holding it up between us. “You’ve learned a little about the spirits today, Freyd. Here’s another small bit that’s very important. The snow in my hand contains a spirit of ice, a tiny, weak thing that’s barely aware and has no idea I’m holding it. It doesn’t know that either of us exist, it doesn’t know that there’s a world around it, and yet, it has a single desire. Given time and sufficient power, this barely intelligent thing would freeze the world and bury us all in snow and ice.”

“It wants to kill us?” That startled me a bit, I had to admit; I knew that spirits surrounded us, and while Aeld and Bregg told me they could be petty and spiteful, I didn’t know they were malevolent.

“No, because it has no understanding of us. It doesn’t even know there’s a world around it. If you tried to speak to it, you’d get nothing but impressions of ice, snow, and cold—the only things that matter to it.”

“Lies!” the ohjain raged silently. “None know the will of the spirits! Their minds are beyond our comprehension!”

“Wait, you can’t speak to them?” I interrupted her rant.

“I—what?” she demanded. “No, of course not! We’re only mortals. No mortal can speak to a spirit!”

“I’m speaking to you right now,” I pointed out.

“That—that’s different. I’m not really a spirit, not like one of the ancients.”

“I’ve spoken to a spirit of stone,” I told her. “It understood me and talked back, as well. And I spoke to the hunt spirit I’ve bonded, too.”

“That…” She fell silent, and when I realized she wasn’t about to speak more, I returned my focus to Aeld.

He dropped the snow and brushed off his hands. “The same goes for any spirit, no matter how powerful and intelligent. Your hunt spirit wants to turn this world into its private hunting preserve, and to do that, it has to be rid of all the other predators that could challenge it. So, it tries to do just that, blasting out a challenge that drives them to attack us to protect their territory and relying on you to defeat them. Each victory makes the spirit a little stronger, gives it a little more access to you, and expands what it considers its territory, the place where its presence can be felt.”

He sighed again. “And here we reach the crux of the problem, Freyd. Each night, when we set up camp, I shield us with a circle designed to hold spirits out and keep us from being detected by those outside. Your spirit, though, drawing on your obviously considerable strength, breaches my barrier every time. I’ve managed to mute that call, but as your spirit gets stronger, I’ll be able to do less and less to control it. It’s even worse, now, thanks to those circles you drew.”

“What do those have to do with anything?” I asked suspiciously.

“When a letharvis draws that sort of circle, we usually channel the power we take into a working of some kind. That’s what I did before the attack on the Oikithikiim camp: I pushed the power I took into the spell I was creating. You didn’t, though; you took all that power into yourself, and some of it went to feed the hunt spirit. It’s stronger than before, strong enough that it’ll break any barrier I put up without tapping far too deeply on the valskab.

“Here near the North Ocean, it doesn’t matter. Any predators here sleep so deeply that they don’t hear your spirit’s call. We’re about to travel south once more, though, and eventually, we’ll be back in the lands where great predators prowl. With your spirit even stronger, it might draw something that would badly wound or even kill one of us. And so, you have a choice you must make.”

He fell silent, and I waited to see if he’d continue. When it was obvious that he wouldn’t, I sighed. “I assume one of the choices is to go off on my own, away from all of you, so I don’t endanger you,” I guessed.

“That’s an option, yes. If you choose it, we’ll give you enough food and sufficient supplies to make your own way out of the High Reaches, assuming you survive the predators. You’ve earned that by what you’ve done for us.” He grimaced. “You’ve earned more, in fact, but that’s all I can offer.”

“And my other choices?”

“You could sever the bond and release the spirit. That’s probably the safest option for us but also the worst one for you—and probably the spirit.”

“He can teach you how to sever the bond?” the ojain asked eagerly. “Choose that!”

“Why would it be bad?” I asked, ignoring the woman.

“Because the spirit has already taken some of your life energy to strengthen itself. That shared power is the bond. To sever it, you have to cut that power out of the spirit. With as much power as it’s gathered from you, that would likely be fatal to it, but even if it isn’t, that sort of wound will damage you, as well. You’ll be left weakened, and the spirit will certainly try to kill you if it can before it dies.”

“I can see what he’s talking about, John,” Sara confirmed. “He’s right; if you sever the bond, you damage both of you. The same goes for the ojain, and as injured as her spirit was already, she’d probably die the moment you severed her.”

“Isn’t she already dead?”

“Her body is, yes, but I’m talking about her spirit. It could lose too much essence to remain coherent. It would still exist, but she wouldn’t.” I waited for the spirit to reply but felt only a spike of fear risinig from her. It sounded like she wasn’t so keen to be severed anymore.

“Any other options, then?” I asked a little tiredly.

“There are two. I could draw the spirit out and forcibly bind it. In the short term, you’d lose much of the strength the spirit gives you but would stop calling predators. In the long term, nothing would change since eventually, the spirit would break free of my binding, and you’d have to deal with it then instead. Or…” He let his sentence fall away, but I figured out the gist of what he meant.

“Or I could try to do that myself,” I guessed.

“Yes. You could try to bring the spirit out and bind its will to yours. That would stop its influence over you and the call it’s sending out while still letting you draw on its power. If it breaks the binding in the future, you could simply reestablish it.”

And what’s the downside of that?” I chuckled. “There has to be one.”

“There are several, Freyd. First, there’s no guarantee that you’ll succeed. As I said, the spirit has grown stronger, and it will fight what you’re trying to do. Second, if you fail once, it will make the spirit even stronger and make it harder to succeed in the future. Third, it will likely weaken you, as binding will reduce the spirit’s strength. Fourth…” He stopped and drew in a deep breath. “Fourth, it might be better to remain as you are Freyd.”

I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously. “Why?”

“Because you have a strong will and inherent talent. You can tell what the spirit is doing, and that means that in time, you might be able to gain control of it without binding it. You’ll be stronger that way, and so will your spirit. If you continue to bond and control spirits without binding them, you’ll become much more powerful than you would otherwise.”

“But I might also be totally controlled by those spirits.”

“It’s possible, but the more spirits you bond, the less likely that becomes, as none of them will wish to lose their place to another, and spirits are rarely capable of sharing.” He chuckled. “In fact, that is technically another choice. You could find and bond a spirit just as powerful but less aggressive than the hunt spirit.”

“Could you help me do that?”

“Realistically, no. A land spirit like those surrounding us wouldn’t suffice. You’d need another close spirit, one of something like healing or sleep, and you won’t find anything like that around here. Of course, you could also bond an elder spirit, but not only won’t you find one, I’ve never heard of anyone willingly bonding an elder spirit—I don’t even know that it’s possible. They’re immensely powerful, after all.”

He looked up at the stars above us. “So, you must choose. Go your own path, keep bonding spirits, and hope to grow strong enough to control them all; sever your bond; let me bind your spirit; or bind it yourself. And you must choose before we travel any further.”

I closed my eyes, my thoughts whirling. Really, I only had two choices. I wasn’t going to weaken myself drastically just to protect the hunters. I wasn’t in this world to help just them, after all, and I suspected I’d need every bit of strength I could get to do whatever needed doing. For the same reason, I wasn’t going to let Aeld bind my spirit—well, that and I had a feeling it might give him a hold over me that I was definitely not okay with. He seemed decent, but a lot of terrible people seemed decent at first. That left going off on my own or trying to bind the spirit myself. I could see ups and downs to both, but the fact was, I’d already had the argument with myself about going off alone. I would do it if I had to, but that would be a last resort. Finally, I sighed.

“Okay. How do I bind this thing?”