My time in oblivious, dreamless sleep didn’t last long. Apparently, I wasn’t allowed a bit of peace even after such an eventful day. Perhaps I could have gone throughout the night without one if left to myself, but ever since that first nightmare on the mountainside my dreams weren’t always my own.

That night I dreamed. Felt the brush of too long fingers around my neck, the night sky under my feet and the Silver Forest overhead. It was as if I had never left the Night Cave. The wish maker’s voice was still the grinding, rustling mix of rocks and rustling leaves.

“Call me mountain spirit, call me entity or wish maker. Try to keep your distance and stifle that wish that burns ever brighter in your heart. Try. But when your desire becomes need and you can deny yourself no longer, call me as the men did: Minhel. I will answer your call and help you give rise to your wish.”

Her cloying fingers slid away from my skin and I snapped awake. Scowled at the ceiling and carefully sat up against the wall so I wouldn’t wake Prevna with my movement. The wish maker might not leave the inner valleys, but I didn’t appreciate how far she could reach with her dreams.

She might think herself clever in hinting that my turning to her was inevitable. That pushing me away might instead draw my interest in her, but I was fully willing to accept the challenge. I’d keep my distance. If not due to Mishtaw’s warnings or the threat of drawing the goddess’s ire, then because of sheer stubbornness.

The entity might think she could manipulate me. Push me until I caved to desire and asked her to give me everything I wanted, but I didn’t need some mystical wish to get what I wanted. Not did I like the thought of being handed what I wanted. I’d earn my respect, plain and simple.

And everyone else who thought they could twist my goals to their own ends could choke.

The Lady of Calm Waters. Esie. The wish maker. Any and all the whisper women who might want to take advantage of my blessing. Part of me raged at the idea that they thought I’d simply go along with what they wanted or couldn’t see what they were trying to do.

I’d always known that the Lady of Calm Waters hadn’t shown interest in me out of the goodness of her heart. That wasn’t how the world worked. But her favor had helped and I didn’t like to be in debt. Now? After learning her identity? Part of me was even more interested in meeting with her, learning what she was trying to do, what knowledge she might have. The rest of me was bitterly bracing for the moment when I learned why she had selected me, why she kept indebting me with favors, why she had sent me into the wish maker’s path. And if the true goal of that had been our meeting or if the stone really had more significance than any of us knew. Or both.

The same went for Esie. Despite myself, I liked her—she made it easy. I wanted to learn more about poisons, see what she could teach me, but I could also never quite forget that she was the Lady of Calm Water’s intermediary. She had her own agenda and she was apt at not showing her hand unless she wanted you to see it. I wasn’t sure if she saw me as a person or if I was merely a tool for her Lady’s will in the end. Again, perhaps both.

They both seemed to be the type to have multiple purposes for everything they did.

I’d keep with them for now. Learn what I could and determine whether it really was in my best interest to go along with their plans. Still, if I broke with them I was under no illusions: if the Lady of Calm Water’s patronage could keep my place in the Seedling Palace, then her enmity would likely ruin my chances as a whisper woman quicker and more throughly then Jin’s ever could.

Overall, our trip to the lower Broken Spear Peaks had been eye opening in a way I hadn’t expected. From seeing how the bands lived in the Cut to the villagers hidden away in the valleys, the inner valleys themselves, the wish maker and Azabel’s abandoned audience chamber…all of it served as reminder that what I knew from growing up in the Gabbler Shore tribe wasn’t how the whole world worked even if it made the most sense to me.

Just as it served as a reminder that the goddess’s power and influence wasn’t as omnipotent as it often felt. I waited to be struck through by a pine tree root, but seemed either the goddess’s had more important matters to tend to than my thoughts or she didn’t have the wish maker’s ability at infiltrating minds.

It was easy to forget that there was another whole territory to the east, just as massive as the goddess’s, when living in Her territory was all I knew. But the inner valleys had been nothing like Heliquat’s territory. Apparently, the goddess’s sister was inspired by more than pine trees, snow, and scrub land.

More and more, it was difficult to live with the notion that we lived in complete isolation from the other half of the world. Especially when Azabel’s Envoys were stealing harps and there was fear they might do something with the throne.

Just like my naive notion that all whisper women were strong and respected and powerful had been mostly disabused. That might be true in comparison to a tribe member, but in the Seedling Palace itself? That was hardly the case.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Each sect had their own hierarchy within themselves and in relation to each other. Hundred Eyes seemed to be the most prominent given that the High Priestess came from their number, with the Peacekeepers as a close second given all the influence they accrued from fighting the goddess’s battles. The Scales were third, though their position of power could surge higher depending on the situation, like with my trial. After them came the Beastwatchers. The Caretakers and Seekers placed among the bottom rankings, though I hadn’t quite been able to pinpoint which one everyone else considered to be at the true bottom. Their members were both fragmented between different locations or interests and that seemed to curtail the influence they could have on the other sects.

I knew that there more intricacies than that as well, with the different groups that crossed sect lines, but I’d never truly put in the effort to memorize the names and faces, suspected goals and interests. I’d liked doing my own thing, focusing on my own select group and skills, just like I had growing up. It was what I was used to, if nothing else.

But now we were poised to join the larger whole, because while I might still cling to my independence, there was no denying that joining a sect would change things. Nor could I opt of making the decision. I doubted that whisper women that failed to pick a sect stayed whisper women for very long, unless, at that point, they were assigned a sect and forced to make the best of it.

I’d likely find out. Since, even if I picked a sect, there was no guarantee they’d welcome me.

Perhaps, it’d be best if I spent the remaining time we had to use my memory for something other than plants and myths. If I made myself have the patience to listen and pay attention, I’d likely have much a better idea about the sects by the time it was time to pick one.

But my memory tent wasn’t endless. Nor could I set my knowledge there and ignore it. Everything had to be reviewed periodically, checked to make sure the associations and other tricks I had to keep knowledge fresh still were strong and not turned fuzzy. If I was turn my attention to whisper women as a whole, the knowledge would likely rival my garden of plants outside the tent or my storage of the myths and legends. Something would have to be cleared to make room for the new knowledge.

And did I really want to have such clear recall of faces and relationships? Would I even be able to make use of the knowledge if I did, or would my previous actions and attitude thwart me? I could use such knowledge as she did, to blackmail or threaten, and be all the more hated for it. Nor had she really risen higher than her position as the tribe’s healer.

I didn’t want to be like that woman.

Not in the least.

But going in blind wouldn’t be smart either. Already my lack of information was hampering my decision on which sect would be best to join and this wasn’t a decision that could be easily changed once made. Mishtaw was the only whisper woman I knew that might have changed sects during her time as a seedling.

First came earning my last two boons, and seeing how Esie’s proposition to use those new boons played out, but then my time to make a decision would rapidly run out.

It wasn’t something I could decide now, in the gloom of Mishtaw’s home, while I was still processing everything that had happened in the mountains. That was fine. To be expected, really.

It didn’t mean, however, that I couldn’t prepare.

My memory tent unfolded around me in my mind’s eye until I was there. The large pot that held my recent memories off to one side, the various other lessons and memories stored along its edges. The sack stuffed full of memories of Prevna shoved in one dark corner. I ignored them all and stepped out of the tent to take in the sprawling landscape of plants.

Each a testament to a childhood’s worth of training and learning. Each still kept relatively fresh by an indulgent habit of reviewing information I could no longer use. I could see the points where I had marked out information useful for poisons, or that might not count as healing, general information such as the plant’s name and key characteristics that didn’t affect healing one way or the other.

I could cut out the parts I could no longer use. The knowledge wouldn’t immediately be gone but I would no longer have a way to renew it easily. Less temptation that way to use my healing knowledge while learning under Esie about poisons. I could keep only the knowledge about what would hurt others.

Turn my back on everything she had taught me. Destroy that last bit of legacy.

But could I?

Being a healer’s daughter might have hurt me, but healing itself had given me the best refuge I’d ever known. Could I abandon it again, fully this time, without rage and loss pushing me beyond reason? It was lost to me, had been for years, but the outside world had no hold on what I kept in my memory tent.

Clinging to their desires and fear of what the world held for them had done the villagers no favors in the end. The wish maker was just as constrained by her nature despite her fervor in opposing the goddess. The fire dancers had been forced to continue their dance long after their maker abandoned them.

Was my refusal to let go of my knowledge similar?

Did it even matter?

Would I be able to accept the future that was coming, whether I liked it or not, better if I stopped holding onto the past? Or could my healing knowledge still prove useful in the end?

I set my jaw. No matter what I might still secretly wish at times I had no future as a healer. I refused to be limited.

I drew my eating knife from my belt. Knelt in front of the first plant: a frostbite berry bush. Then I ruthlessly cut through the branches that represented how it could be used to heal until all that was left a few scraggly branches that would served as a reminder on how it might be identified and used to poison.

I knelt in front of the next and cut. Over and over again. It was more than time to let go of the past so that I could better embrace the future. If there were tears, well, there was no one else to see in the privacy of my mind. Not even the wish maker would be able to peer in through a dream now that I was cutting out the last bit of wishful thinking by the root.

Now I would have the space to spare for whatever I might need to learn. Now I wouldn’t need to fear following the poisoner’s path in case my hand strayed too close to healing. The goddess might not be omnipotent but it was more than clear that Her will was absolute.

- End of Book 4 -