Malkah

The early years
In her youth, she met with great favour. None could deny that she was her father's darling girl, and he sought to wed her well, to use her to elevate his family, yes, but also to see her happy and content. Fate, or perhaps the gods, had other plans, and just as the time came for the prince to arrange Malkah's betrothal, madness bloomed. Voices no one else could hear began to whisper, and visions crept into her mind. There was naught he could do but confine her to her quarters and tell the world she was ill. His family's reputation could not survive such naked insanity. His daughters would be doomed to marry paupers, his sons barred from the politics of Haresh.

Physicians and priests could find no cure for the child, and in her isolation, she retreated further into the voices that had begun as gibberish. And then came that fateful night, or perhaps it was the morning that proved fateful. Her governess found her amidst bloody sheets, and her screams echoed through the sprawling estate, drawing down the girl's father. Word of what happened in that room never reached any ears, though rumours abounded. In the days that followed, two things happened: a strange woman arrived at the estate and took the girl away, and two young men were severely beaten and tortured to death.

Thus began Malkah's life with the Ahibanu. Unlike many young women, she was glad to join them, but even then, she clothed herself in arrogance, claiming that she had already met Seht and that she belonged to him. Few believed such adolescent foolishness, and she was treated as any other neophyte. Her first draining she met with fury, drawing down spirits onto the Sister that dared to do so. Unfortunately for the Sister, with her power drained, Malkah was unable to call them off once she understood the reasoning for it, and it took some doing of a few spirit-skilled to assure the angered ones that the child was not harmed.

While the lack of faith in her from the Sisters frustrated her, it did not diminish her zeal for Seht nor her lessons. She immersed herself into temple life: taking on advanced studies of literature and mathematics for she'd had more education than her peers before arriving, and accepting even the draining for it allowed her to slowly learn to communicate with the spirits. Within a couple months of arriving at the temple, she was found to be with child, a state frowned upon for neophytes. While most were certain she would claim that Seht was the father, given her early propensity for such tales, she surprised everyone by refusing to name the father. Timing made it difficult to say whether she had conceived before or after arriving at the temple, but in due course, Malkah gave birth to a blue-eyed daughter who was sent to a temple far to the south.

Although the child was born healthy, if small, its birth took its toll on Malkah who was bedridden for some weeks after her labour. When finally she was able to move from her bed, she disappeared into the caves beneath the temple for several days, long enough that more than a few Sisters sought the still-neophyte girl, but none found her. She would not be the first Ahibanu to get lost in the dark winding caverns, and even those skilled in spirit could only go close to where they thought she might be, their senses always pointing them to walls which had no passage.

When she finally emerged nearly a week later, the illness no longer gripped her, her skin bright and healthy and her eyes content and zealous. Questions to her whereabouts simply met with the cool reply that they would not believe her so there was no reason to explain, but when pressed by the Sister overseeing the neophytes, she admitted that she had seen Seht and it was he who had healed her. Whether it was madness again or not, the girl's return to health could not be denied nor could her instincts. Allowed more freedom in her studies and placed under the direct tutelage of another skilled in spirit, Malkah progressed quickly, and within the next half year, rose to the level of Initiate.

Additional
Possible theme