Aud was cautious in her reply. The question verged on theology and, like most magicians, she was agnostic on many issues of divinity. That the Powers existed was undeniable, but that did not mean one should worship them. She merely noted that, while human souls could be separated from the body, even to keeping them in jars, no-one had yet kept a spirit in a jar. It might be, she speculated, that land-spirits were the souls of the land.


    “It is too vast for our comprehension,” declared Sebres, “yet it is evident in the world itself. More,” he went on, “if the world has one soul, then humanity must have one too, else whom would it treat with on what is allowed or denied? The animals never despoil the land, but wax and wane in correspondence with the seasons, both of rain and dry and dearth and plenty. Yet we are not so bound by our nature, but by the world itself.”


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    “More faith than hope. You are good at magic, and you were not alone.”


    “I need to go back,” Aud said. “There is still the matter of the man who pushed me from the path – if it was a man, and I think a nature spirit up there is misbehaving.”


    Aud gave a wry smile. “Someone has to, else machinery will keep breaking down.”


    Anatomy of the Spirit World and the latest available copy of the Compendium of Powers, Lesser, Greater and Ineffable.