Miraleth Rootspeaker is a diplomat and healer from the eastern groves of Eilvaran, where a stream runs out of the forest toward the Hearthkin valleys. She is the Eilvaren link of the Quiet Paths: where Hearthkin escape routes end, her sanctuaries begin. In the Council of Nine Groves she speaks for the Open Bough, and she has made more friends for the forest, and more enemies within it, than almost anyone.
Appearance
Miraleth is of middle height for an Eilvaren, slender but sturdy through the shoulders from years of carrying the sick and the tired, with deep brown skin and a broad, open face whose laugh lines show more easily than her age. Her near-black eyes are warm, and she has a habit of looking at a stranger's hands before their face, the way a healer checks for wounds. Her thick black hair, streaked with early silver, falls to her shoulders, with two narrow braids at the temples tied off with a Hearthkin reed knot on one side and a small Stonebound copper bead on the other. Her faded blue and green wool is patched with Hearthkin homespun, and her sash holds pouches of herbs, honey salve and bandage linen. Her fingertips are stained green from crushed leaves, and she carries a staff of living wood that has put out a few leaves near the top, and a bundle of safe-conduct letters.
What she believes
Miraleth believes that the web of debts and kindness between peoples is the only thing that has ever kept the forest alive. She wants to bind groves, valleys and mountain holds together by mutual obligation, so that none of them ever has to stand alone. She will not close the forest to the hungry, and she will not turn sanctuary into a weapon. That makes her hated by purists on every side, and every refugee she shelters becomes an argument they use against her.
Her place in the story
Miraleth works hand in hand with Mara Brambleheart's refuge routes, and neither of them commands the other. She keeps sanctuary networks with the Stonebound of the Deep Anvil Compact as well. In council she shares Aelwen Thornsong's faith in alliances but argues with her over how many warriors the groves should promise. Against Caerith Ash-Bow she warns that his calls for collective punishment would turn the people she shelters into targets, while he calls her sanctuaries a gate for enemies. Her deepest quarrel is with Sylvaren the Pale Leaf, who would close the very paths she keeps opening. And the Greenfold paths of Toman Reedwhistle and Elsi Honeyhand, the courier and the healer, run naturally toward her door.