Path of the Whisper Woman

Ambervale slumped as soon as my blood flaked into the air, as if something vital had been cut. Then she started to writhe. I would have thought she was trying to make an ill informed attempt to escape if it wasn't for the fact that she was clearly in pain. Eyes squeezed shut tight, mouth opened to scream, but no sound came out. She scrambled at her tunic, as if she was trying to get at something on her back, but she couldn't contort herself to reach with the way she was tied.

Yolanda reached down and shoved Ambervale's tunic up to display her back so we could all see her bless mark on her lower back. It was two water droplets curled around each other, but rather than being the usual deepest black it was changing to a dark red tinged with a hint of yellow, like infected blood. Adding to that impression, lines were crawling out from the mark distorting its shape and making it look like a wound that had gone way too long without treatment.

But the changes Ambervale was undergoing didn't stop there. Her skin grew thin and frail and when she opened her eyes for a brief moment I saw they had become clouded over with white as if she had aged in the space of a breath. Slowly, her pain seemed to ease, only to replaced by her shivering, stronger than before. Every light breeze caused her teeth to chatter and she curled in on herself as if to protect some semblance of warmth.

Yolanda snapped her fingers next to Ambervale's ears and she didn't react. The Scales sect head smiled slightly, pleased at how the first part of Ambervale's judgment had played out.

She announced, "The betrayer's gifts have been rejected. No longer will she know the comfort of being at ease with the elements, the convenience of seeing through the dark or hearing our words on the wind. No longer will she be welcome in the shadow paths or move through the water with unnatural speed."

I stared. I had thought her blessing and boons would be suppressed, reduced back to a normal person at most, not…this. But I should have known better. The goddess didn't do things in half measures and clearly She had gotten Her own bit of revenge against the woman who dared betray Her.

Ambervale was now as blind and deaf as one could be and it seemed the goddess had made her vulnerable to the slightest temperature change. She wouldn't be able to use her boons, that was true, but she wouldn't be able to do much of anything else either, especially with little time to get used to her sudden change in circumstances.

She stumbled and would have pitched forward onto her face if Yolanda hadn't kept her vise like grip on her shoulder as she marched the condemned woman forward. They crossed into a pine tree's shadow and Ambervale recoiled as her foot touched down on it. She cried out, overly loud, and tried to pull herself back into the sunlight but Britta clasped her other shoulder and together they were able to keep her marching forward.

Yolanda spoke over her shoulder to the rest of us. "Let us continue to our destination so that we may complete the second phase of the betrayer's judgment."

From the way Ambervale was doing everything she could not to touch the shadows, I doubted that this couldn't be counted as the second phase but no one corrected her. As the Scales sect head she had more experience than the rest of us when it came to judgments and punishments.

It took us hours to reach the shore. We found some fish along the way but they were quickly dispatched between the small crowd of tribesfolk and whisper women. Ambervale was kept back from the fighting since the second half of her judgment was supposed to happen on the shore. Though it was also debatable if she knew any fish were nearby given that she couldn't see or hear anything and all of her attention seemed devoted to staying out of the pine trees' shadows—a near impossible goal given the way the woven paths used the trees for support.

She was flagging by the time we reached the shore, barely upright and only because Yolanda and Britta had kept their hold on her the entire way. She shuffled one small step forward at time, looking more like a shamble man than any living creature.

There was no easy way down to the silt covered shore from the bramble paths. The trees grew sparser and sparser, along with the undergrowth the Beastwatchers had cultivated, until there was only a sandy, muddy mixture of dirt that looked ready to swallow someone up to their knees and waves of salt water brimming with fish. Even the flood waters hadn't been enough to wash them all away once they broke on the ocean's waves. Some fish were half crawling their way up the muddy shore but most were smart enough to stick to the water channels. Luckily, they hadn't swarmed up them that far yet, but it was only a matter of time before the current weakened again and they could undo all of our hard work.

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When I had given my judgment, I had pictured Ambervale hale, still too convinced of her own genius, if a bit cowed when she realized this was a situation she couldn't escape from and more than a little aghast when the fish attacked her rather than welcoming her in. I wanted that feeling of vindication when she realized how much of a fool she'd been. It might have amounted to a death sentence but in the end she would have gotten what she deserved for thinking there was anything remotely credible about going against the goddess's wishes in Her own territory. Though claiming a demigoddess She had a hand in making was in any way Her superior would have washed away any goodwill she had remaining too.

I had not accounted for the goddess's vindictiveness. I should have. It was there in all the myths from the people who wished Grislander into being getting turned into shamble men and all the dread that came with the Era of Night.

Ambervale was already broken. She had been since the goddess first punished her with the inverse of all of her boons. Even if, on the slimmest of chances, the Lady Blue accepted her she would be of little use. What knowledge she had of our defenses and the inner workings of the Seedling Palace could be negated or accounted for and that was assuming she even got the words out in the first place and didn't perish from the cold water. Death from sickness and exposure would kill her if a fish didn't get to her first.

Any attempt to appear haughty had long since crumbled and Ambervale twitched at every movement she felt as if she thought someone was going to toss her into a shadow. Threats, bargaining, pleading, all of it had been shredded into a terrorized silence before we had even reached the halfway point on our walk to the shore.

I wasn't sure what kind of pain or horror she was experiencing every time she stepped into a pine tree's shadow, especially since the false pines' presence was muted to my senses, but I hoped I never had to experience it for myself. Whatever it was it seemed to put all her other difficulties to shame.

Whatever fight she had was gone and I couldn't help but feel a bit guilty as she was lowered to the sandbar below us in a net. Ziek pressed the smallest eating knife I had ever seen into her hand, leaving her tied up. Ambervale took a wild swing in her direction but Ziek dodged easily. That was more of a fight than I expected from Ambervale but Ziek gave her a light push so that she stumbled out of the net and fell flat on her face. And that was that. By the time Ambervale picked herself the tribesfolk got the net pulled up and Ziek rejoined us on the walkway, so she had no easy escape route from her predicament.

Her wild attack not withstanding, her will crumbled to nothing after that. She didn't even try to cut through her bonds. She just stood there, at the water's edge, knife in hand and shivering as if she'd never be warm again.

It didn't take long for the fish to notice her. A lone figure in whisper woman robes and holding a knife. A tempting target. If the horde was truly smart they might have thought she was too good a target, a lure for a poor ambush given the way we were all arrayed above her.

They might have seen the robes as a sign of a threat to be avoided. They might have hesitated.

If they had, Ambervale might have had a chance to make her case. Somehow reason with the creatures or display her loyalty. As it was she didn't know she was getting attacked until the fish were on her. One latched onto her leg to pull her into the water while the other headbutted her in the chin as it surged out of the water.

Ambervale lashed out and I saw some hint of the training she'd undergone to become a whisper woman. Despite being newly deaf and blind she managed stab the fish grabbing onto her leg in the eye and it recoiled, releasing its grip. She scrambled further back onto the sandbar but muddy, viscous ground hindered her movements and there wasn't much of anywhere for her to go. She nearly stumbled into the water on the other side and a fish's spear burst from the water to scrape along her hip as she just managed to jerk away. She was lucky that most of the fish in the delta didn't seem to have spears. The mystery of that tugged at my mind but I kept my focus on the fight.

Still, her wound caused her to limp badly and her already precarious balance failed her. Between the terrible footing and her exhaustion, her leg buckled and the next fish that went for her got her halfway into the water before she recovered from the fall. Far from hesitating at killing the fish, Ambervale drove her tiny knife into the fish a handful of times.

"I. Am. Your. Chosen. Stop attacking me!"

If the fish understood her, they didn't show it. The spear plunged into her belly as another fish pummeled her face. The one dragging her into the water ignored its wounds to keep at its efforts to bring her to a watery grave.

Ambervale screamed obscenities at them as she struggled, lasting longer than I thought possible, but even adrenaline boosted strength could only last so long. She flagged again and the spear wielding fish stabbed her in throat. She wiped at the blood, not seeming to understand what was happening.

Then she broke into a frenzy and battered the fish away from her. I thought she missed on her last attack but the next moment I knew I was wrong.

The fish all froze before focusing on a spot by her side. Ambervale abandoned her little knife to cup whatever it was in both hands and bring it her mouth. She swallowed.

And I realized that in all the excitement we had never checked the few pouches on her belt. She had slashed one in that last attack and I only needed one guess based on how the fish had reacted to know what it was.

She had kept a blood crystal for herself.

Ambervale gave us all a rictus grin and then she began to change into an abomination.