Ammeth the White Root

In the Silent Order no one ever raised their voice. Neither did Ammeth. She never needed to.

She arrived at the monastery at nine years old, barefoot and feverish, in the arms of a woodcutter who never asked about her again. They healed her with water, roots and silence. She learned all three at once. She has forgotten none of them.

Since then she has spent more winters there than anyone can count. Not even Vaelund, and that is saying something.

They call her the White Root for her hair, which turned white very early. And for the other thing: roots hold the earth together when everything else gives way. She held the Order together.

Until there was no Order left to hold.

She does not know what happened that night. She knows what she saw the next morning. And she knows that Vaelund has carried, ever since, a guilt that she suspects is not his.

She has not told him. Not yet.

She stays by his side with Orenne, like two old sentinels pretending not to be on watch. They wait for him to speak. In the meantime, they heal.

Ammeth does not wield a sword. No one in the Order ever has. She carries an olive-wood staff, older than some kingdoms, with which she straightens backs, turns aside blows and, if need be, breaks a knee with the very best of manners.

When someone of the Order bleeds, she feels it before the wounded one does. It is her way of arriving in time.

She heals without asking which side you come from. But her own, the few that remain, she heals twice over.

They say no one stays cursed for long at her side.

What they do not say is what it costs her.

Ammeth does not say it either. She is of the Silent Order.