The Meltwardens

Frost-bound recluses who guard the meltwater source in the high northern cave and have gone half-feral tending a deep cold wound they will not let anyone disturb — or seal.

No one sent the Meltwardens; they accreted, the way ice does — runaways, exiles, a broken Choir cantor or two — around the thing that groans under the Karth's source. They believe the cold wound down there is fading on its own, correctly and slowly, and that any hand laid on it (to seal it, to wield it, to study it) only wakes it worse and makes it last longer. So they ward the cave's throat against all comers and speak to outsiders in the fewest words frost allows. The Asheni claim the whole north under the barrow-prophecy and resent a cult that answers to no Ash-Father; the Meltwardens answer that the prophecy is just another hand reaching for what should be left to melt.