Two days she spent picking her way from one small badly weathered remnant of the road to the next as the small dry isles around her grew in size until they were dark forest covered islands separated by deep slowly flowing waterways. Two days of deep mud and constantly damp clothes, thankfully the few small castings she knew and one that Aignew taught her on the first day made life bearable. Just being able to sleep warm and dry was a pleasure sent by the gods under these conditions.

Toward midday on the second day she saw a wall of fitted stones ahead through the trees, just the one wall, pierced through by the empty holes of a doorway and a single window with the rest taken up by a massive fire blackened hearth.

Aignew said, “Ah that is the place, I would suggest setting up camp a ways off and scouting first my witch. A dry and protected cellar will have certainly attracted something looking for a place to live, likely something large, hairy, and hungry. It would not do for you to become it’s lunch.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Water sloshed and bubbles carrying the stink of rotting vegetation burst through the iridescent film on it’s surface as she led Horse several islands away before hobbling him and pouring out a small pile of precious grain from his packs to keep him quiet and happy.

Moving as silently as a water soaked log she swam back, careful to disturb the water as little as possible. She’d seen some large somethings churn the deeper sections of water as she’d passed and didn’t want to find out what they were but she had to stick to the deeper channels where the water was moving to avoid the worst of the leeches. She’d seen one as long and as thick as her forearm driven away from Horse’s rump earlier and had given sincere thanks for the anti-vermin charm Aignew had taught her.

Branches trailed damply across her face and small rootlets tugged at her feet as she crept into a trailing willow’s concealing shelter. From here she could see the open hole that led into what Aignew told her was an underground room, surrounded by moss covered slabs of flat smooth stone that disappeared under encroaching weeds and grass at it’s edges.

The sun was still high in the sky so she had plenty of daylight as she settled in to lurk and watch.

It was humid and warm under the willow, all she could hear was the sounds of small insects in the branches and earth around her.

Her eyes drooped, closing for a moment before she started awake, it was so boring and so warm here under the tree after the heavy travel and stresses of the past days. Shaking her head she made the mark and spoke the words of the small casting to banish fatigue.

It may be boring, warm and comfortable here in the willow’s embrace but she’d seen sign all along her path that here were things in this swamp that would view Horse as a meal and her as a small snack. She really better pay attention.

Shadows were lengthening and the sun was dropping toward the horizon now and there’d been no movement in that time, so either the cellar was uninhabited or any inhabitants weren’t active during the day. She didn’t want to do what came next but she had to. Crawling on her belly she moved closer to see if she could find any indication of what lived here, if anything.

Once closer she could see hundreds of overlapping footprints pressed into the drifted dirt and mud around the cellar entrance, footprints she recognised. All children of the tribe were taught to track and while she’d never been the best student these tracks were one that every child had drilled into them over and over, the tracks of Goblins. Because Goblins ate children.

Her question answered she stood up and walked off without too much worry. Goblins were nocturnal by choice and would avoid daylight if at all possible but the sun was going down and they would be stirring out to hunt soon.

Speaking to Aignew as she swam and walked back to Horse she said, “You saw what I saw, do you have any advice? Goblins are small weak and cowardly creatures, if there are only a few I can exterminate them easily but… I may not have paid enough attention to the Hunter’s lessons in tracking to determine their numbers for myself.”

Aignew’s voice was still weak and thready as he said, “That will not be a problem, my witch. Once I regain a little more of my strength it will be but a moments effort to scout their numbers. I find it a little surprising that the cellar was taken by Goblins, some of the things that call these swamps home are much stronger. It is to our advantage though, those other stronger creatures would be much more difficult to dislodge.

“You must learn brewing and the first of the general enhancement brews, they will allow you to remove those creatures in reasonable safety. You will be brewing with makeshift equipment under difficult conditions because the proper equipment left behind by my other witches is in that cellar, but I am confident you will learn these skills easily. The brewing will take somewhere around a tenday and most of the materials can be scavenged from the garden my previous witch left, even run wild as it will have.”

Puzzled, she asked, “What’s a ‘garden’?”

“Oh, yes another thing the Fae Chanar have kept the tribes ignorant of. A garden is where you grow plants.”

Scoffing she said, “A Tribesman cannot grow plants. That is entirely in the hands of the Gods and they will be angered if a mortal attempts to do so. They and only they make certain the plants grow where they did the year before and the tribes must thank them for this bounty.”

Inside her mind Aignew sighed, a cold draught blowing through her thoughts.

He said, “The Gods care nothing for the growth of plants or the tribes that venerate them, I’ve met Skysister and she, like all Gods, is limited by what she is. Trust me when I say that plants will grow wherever they find conditions that suit them and the Gods have no hand in it. The Fae Chanar have kept the tribes ignorant, superstitious, and unquestioning of the God, who they then impersonate. You might wonder why? The Fae Chanar war on each other constantly over slights imagined or real, those wars need troops to fight them, some of those troops are raised by leading gullible tribes into a ‘Holy War’. The lucky survivors are returned to this realm with their tribe shattered, the unlucky are killed out of hand or enslaved.”

Raelea could feel the truth of his words and a sullen swell ran across the sea of deep and burning anger which had never really left her since that sham of a trial. These creatures, these Fae Chanar used her people, all of them, as the false god sought to use her former tribe? That, that, that could not be forgiven! But she was just one person and untrained, she had no chance contending with those who imitated Gods, did she? She sighed because she didn’t. Not yet.

“I can feel the truth of your words and I know you don’t speak falsely. Why is that?”

“Ah my witch I suspected as much, you have the Gift of Truth and none can lie to you, it is a rare ability that only the strongest of witches ever develop. I myself have only ever known of it in song and story, even in my long existence I have never met someone with it.”

Nodding she said, “The Gift of Truth? That sounds… right.”

As she pulled herself from the water Horse looked at her and nickered softly, mildly offended he had been left alone for so long, but more that he’d run out of grain.

Drying her clothes with a small casting she bustled about setting up camp.

*******

The sun was high in the sky as she slipped into the water the next day, swimming back to the ruins again.

Once there she crept past the dark void of the cellar hole and behind the wall.

Aignew tutted at the messy jungle of plants they saw and said, “Such a shame, my last witch was extremely proud of her garden and rightfully so. She grew some things that none of the others had ever been able to. You have your bag?”

Raelea nodded.

“Good, lets get to it. The quicker you’re done the lower the chance those creatures will discover you.”

Under Aignew’s instruction she smelled, tasted, touched, rattled, rubbed, grubbed, clipped and chopped until she had a full bag of various seeds, leaves, and roots.

Swimming back to the island of last night’s camp she floated the bag ahead of her, carefully keeping the opening above water because the sides of the repurposed foodbag were waxed leather and waterproof.

As she pulled herself from the water she said, “I’ll need to move camp, Goblins range a long way from their hovels every night in search of food and have very sharp eyesight. The last thing I need is to have to fight a hunting party.”

Aignew said, “I don’t know Goblins too well so I will defer to your greater knowledge, do as you see fit.”

As evening closed in and much further away she set up the (hopefully) temporary camp she’d be at while she brewed.

Over the next eight and a half days, she spoiled much but she learned much more. She learned Aignew was a fussy perfectionist who would make (and had made) her repeat an action over and over until she could perform it blindfolded the instant she woke from a dead sleep, she learned that incorrectly preparing some of the herbs she was using would (and had) led to violent vomiting and diarrhoea just from incautiously smelling the fumes as she prepared them.

From that she also learned Aignew would allow her to make mistakes no matter how unpleasant if she would learn something. He stopped her when the mistake would actually be harmful or fatal though and instead lectured her at length, she’d also learned she’d prefer the physical discomfort of her belly’s betrayal rather than his cold whispering disappointed words.

Almost the instant she capped the last bamboo section of potion she collapsed and slept like the dead for nearly a full day because she had spent the whole time she was brewing at the beck and call of a strange tyrant. Though he was tyrannous that tyrant was not Aignew, it was a small container that would topple when a stream of water would fill it to a certain point. Used to measure how long things had to simmer, be stirred, boil or most annoyingly sit and do nothing… but sit and do absolutely nothing for a precise length of time.

Every single one of the time intervals seemed designed to not allow her to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time over the days she had to spend. Part of that was the make-shift equipment, a proper cauldron, oven, and distillery instead of a simple pot formed of magic would allow her to have the equipment do that time intensive work. But, that would be later.

Now, she had her potions and a salve. She just hoped they would be enough. The salve would give her skin the resilience of boiled hide armour for a quarter of a day, one potion would give her the strength of five men and the speed that came with it, the other was a simple potion of numbing. If she found herself injured it would take away her pain completely, as dangerous as that was it may save her life.