Maret the Water-Reader

The elder of Dustmere Hollow who has watched the Drovers' Spring fail for twenty years and is certain — correctly — that the spring and the Vault's widening runnels are the same water.

Maret has lived at Dustmere Hollow since her mother brought her here as a girl and she has no intention of dying anywhere else. She learned to read water the way Asheni gravesingers learn the prophecy — by listening to it before she learned to distrust her own ears. The spring is slower this year than last, slower last year than the year before, and it runs a colour she does not like at the height of midsummer when the Vault's runnels run widest. She has told this to every passing scholar, warden, and grave-digger for ten years and none of them have acted as if it mattered. She would like someone to go down into the Drinking Sink and check what she already knows to be true, before the hollow is empty of water and she has to leave the place she plans to die in.