So. No wizardry. In that case, she'd just have to be valuable some other way, prove she was worth feeding even without magic.

When the next harvest comes, she's old enough to help. She does everything she can, but she can't swing a scythe like her brothers, and she's exhausted within half an hour. She goes to thresh the grain, and again she's clearly weaker than everyone around her, and quickly collapses. Her father beats her, and she gets back to it, but every day she's worse, the aches growing, her failure ever more apparent. She hears people saying it's the schooling, that if she'd been ignoring the books instead of reading them she wouldn't be so useless. She can't tell them they're wrong. She isn't sure they are.

The harvest is still enough to feed everyone that year, and the next, but it's getting worse. The next... still fine, but less so.

The year Silvia turns 13, the harvest is bad. It's not the worst it's ever been, but taxes are always higher than last year, even as the priest tells them to pray to Asmodeus. He doesn't seem to be helping, she carefully doesn't think. She eats last at their table, and every say she's a little more tired, a little less capable. She slips in classes, and she's beaten more, never really recovered from one before the next failure gets her more punishments. Nobody needs her, nobody wants her, and she knows this is how she'll die.

Then one day Sergi Mata, the boy from a few houses over, goes hunting. In the Wood. Apparently, she thinks, he wasn't beaten enough when he was young, because he comes back with a dead deer, scraped and torn arms and legs, and a story of killing a plant-fey's pet, twisting out of her grasping vines, and fleeing with its body. Which he brags about, in public, in front of the birds and the trees and anyone he can get his hands on. Silvia may be useless but she knows better than that, and so does the rest of the village. They see the trees start rearranging themselves in the night, and animals moving in unnatural patterns. This isn't a year they can afford even a little weevil-eaten grain, so the village puts together an offering, stretched though they'll be at the end. (Including no small amount of Sergi's blood, though he does survive it.) The offering does need to get to the forest, though, and they aren't going to send Sergi after he already angered the fey. Who else can they afford to lose?

When she hears what they're looking for, Silvia knows how this is going to turn out. She volunteers; she knows her place, and at least if it doesn't go badly, people won't be angry she made them wait. She goes in, carrying what they could afford to scrape together, milk and blood and a few precious drops of honey and all. When she reaches the flat stone that apparently used to mark the border of the forest, where some people said they used to trade with the fey, she looks around. The woman walking out of an oak tree and the wolf springing out at her are about what Silvia expected. When the wolf turns into a person — an elf, maybe? A nymph? Probably not a devil, those are the wrong stories — and, along with the woman, sits on the other side of the rock, she's surprised. When they take the offering peacefully and feed her a berry which fills her like she hasn't been full in years, when the still-open cuts on her back heal, she's baffled. When they give her back the basket, now holding ten of the same sort of berries, introduce themselves as Leafswirl and "the druid", and tell her where to find them, she almost breaks down in tears except for her years in school. She comes back, tells the villagers the fey are appeased as long as they stay careful, and eats the berries over the next week. (They need her now. She won't starve, she reminds herself. Eventually, two days before they were going to spoil, she slips a few berries into their dinner, and again the day after. Her family makes it to the harvest — not well, exactly, but better than average, definitely.)

The priest of Perafita is worthless, weak, and either doesn't realize what it would mean to write to the Church of Asmodeus requesting help with some minor nonsense in the forest or doesn't care about the inevitable torture and, worse, being sent somewhere even less relevant. Unfortunately for Arbat, his rivals have apparently seen the chance to do something about him and somehow convinced their superiors to acknowledge the request, actually consider the posting high-risk, and supposedly decide Perafita "must be watched by one recognized more highly by Asmodeus", by which they mean they're sending Arbat, now second-circle after turning in one of his colleagues for spying on their mutual superior (entirely on fabricated evidence, of course, but Asmodeus favors the successful deceiver above the fool who waits for his claims to be true), to this pointless backwater adjacent to the Barrowoods. Nobody there will know anything relevant, he won't have access to the slip markets when he scrapes together the paper (soon! He's quite sure he'll manage it within the year, and he thought it was but six months away!), and, of course, he'll be stuck there, isolated, bereft either of ways to defend himself from the intrigues of civilized society or to make moves himself. And he heard of all this the day he was required to leave, because the message was "delayed" by some mysterious trickery. Well, if he's being exiled, he'll just have to find ways to keep an eye on where things really matter, and at least nobody important will own any pieces in Perafita yet. As long as he makes sure that doesn't change, well, there's yet some benefit to being shuffled off.

When Arbat arrives, the old priest bows and scrapes and offers to spend a day showing him the place, as if there was any possibility of doing anything else. When he wakes in the morning to a distinct lack of any moving trees or angry animals or... oddly staring birds? the idiocy of all of this... the priest hems and haws and says it seems to have stopped just a few days ago and the forest really must be watched and and and... So either his rivals bribed the priest with something or they found some way to make things look scary, and either way this makes Perafita less secure. He'll have to be careful about that, but it's better to know. Arbat sends the priest back, introduces himself to the villagers with a competently delivered sermon (from their reactions, he's sure they've never heard one in their lives, but what could he expect?), and tries to move in. When he finds out how long it takes to keep the place clean and make food (how does anyone survive without food sellers? Backwaters), he demands the villagers send him a maid in his next sermon. He's sure he doesn't need to tell them what will happen if they can't

The new priest is supposed to be coming because of the forest, but the forest has been quiet for months. Silvia doesn't know who carried the letter. Apparently, whoever it was didn't know enough to lose it on the way, and now someone has heard and is coming. Nothing to do about it any more.

When he arrives, Arbat tells them of all they have failed in for the past year. Many things, apparently. Everything, almost. He orders the punishments in school all doubled for the week, tells them nobody will get away with this much with a "true servant of Asmodeus" watching them. The next week is bad, but Silvia mostly avoids punishment. (She sees Sergi returning bleeding almost as badly as he was for the offering. Everybody knows whose fault this is.)

A week later, when he demands a maid to "spend your mindless hours and not my valuable ones", she knows again who it will be. The forest is quiet. They don't need her any more. Again, she volunteers.

The next day, she walks to his house and knocks on the door, trembling.

Ah, delightful, they've sent him someone. Thirteen, maybe? Fourteen? Arbat knows farmers don't spend their time on education, because they're all unambitious and can't take a bit of pain, but she'll still be in school, so he makes a note to ensure she attends and learns at least what she needs to be halfway useful. He also realizes she's picked by the village, and apparently someone got to the forest, which means they might have gotten to the villagers as well. Best to check if she's been talking to anyone else, or paid by them. He can't guarantee a Zone will stick on her, but if he orders her not to resist, it's not like she'll know that... But he doesn't have one prepared today. Tomorrow, then.

At the end of the day, the cleaning is poorly done and dinner is lightly burned, and he doesn't have time to clean blood off the floors. He channels. Her skin blackens, burnt, raised lines break out along her exposed skin like long-passed whip scars, and, of course, being useless, she falls unconscious. He did prepare a Cure Light Wounds, and if she dies it'll be a pain to get a new one, so he gets her back up, regretfully, and tells her to go home and learn to handle it next time. He can see she hates him, so she probably isn't anyone's or they would have found someone better at it. He'll check anyway.

"Do not resist. Answer my questions 'yes' or 'no' unless I instruct you otherwise."

Zone of Truth.

"Have you ever spoken with an Asmodean priest besides me?"

"Yes."

...what? That was...

"Who? ...Not a yes or no."

"The previous priest."

Who was technically Asmodean, however wasted it was. Right.

"Have you spoken with any Asmodean priest who was not assigned to Perafita?"

"No."

"Have you gathered any information about me?"

"No."

"Has anyone attempted to have you gather information about me?"

"No."

"Have you ever spoken with an agent of the Crown, besides the tax collector?"

"No."

"Do you hate me?"

"... ... ... Yes."

Good, all working as expected.

"We'll be doing this every week. If someone tries to get you to work for them, know that I will do worse than they can."

That should keep her loyal.

The next few months are, of course, worse. With Arbat watching her, Silvia can't even avoid going to school. Having to spend hours cleaning and cooking for him means she has no time to try to memorize her books, and her placement slips. Whippings from classmates aren't too bad compared to Arbat's Asmodeus-granted fire-and-pain-and-terribleness thing, whatever it is, but while she can usually handle the terribleness, she can't manage both in the same day. As she keeps coming back, keeps almost collapsing in Arbat's... he calls them "channels", one time... and in school, and keeps surviving the Zones, she gradually figures out how to handle it. The channels are more survivable when she thinks about them like this. School is still bad, and during the harvest there's almost nobody there to distract them from her, but if she does this she can memorize things while cleaning. And she's fed, even  when the harvest is weak, because nobody else wants to be the next to try to serve him.

Over the next year and a half, Silvia carefully avoids ever talking to anyone new, just in case they're Asmodean priests or "agents of the Chelish government" or anything. She risks leaving a note for the druid and Leafswirl (school does mean she can write, at least), but makes sure not to see them again. Everyone makes sure to stay away from the forest. She stays alive, keeps answering the questions correctly. Keeps hating Arbat. Every once in a while, he leaves letters open where she can see them. She makes sure not to tell him about it, but she can't tell anyone about him, so she doesn't know what to do with it. Then one day, there's a letter about planning a logging expedition. Into the Barrowood. ...right through Leafswirl's tree. If that happens, she'll have to go back into the forest, and the trespassers won't even make an offering. She'll die, and then the village will too.

...and this isn't information about Arbat, and she doesn't think the druid is a priest of Asmodeus, and Leafswirl definitely isn't. And if she warns them not to ask questions about him, they probably won't. Better odds than she has any other way, at least. And if Arbat can't get an army through the forest, he'll look ridiculous. All the better.

The next day, she goes into the forest.

Silvia knows where she's going, this time. She walks in, watching the forest life scurry out of her path. It's calm, in a way Perafita never was. She sits at the stone, closes her eyes. When she hears the wolf growl, she knows at least the druid is here.

"If either you or Leafswirl are priests of Asmodeus or agents of the Crown, don't tell me. Don't ask me any questions about the new priest of Asmodeus. A week from tomorrow, the city is going to come try to cut down the trees. They plan to start from the Mata farm, straight into the forest. I don't know if you can do anything, but... you should know. They'll eat much of what we have, and the harvest won't make it up this year. I know you can't help us, not with the church watching. If this is worth anything... give the village a little more space for hunting, I guess. That will help."

She opens her eyes. The druid is sitting across from her, and Leafswirl is standing in the trees. They nod and wait. "...That's all." She turns and leaves.

Finally, Arbat has convinced someone he has succeeded at his task, and the forest is quiet enough for them to use. He might have staked his reputation on it working, somewhat, but he's made sure nobody knows that, so nobody should be trying to make it fail. A group of Hellknights should be able to crush whatever meager forces the Barrowood will hold — he's seen neither hide nor hair of a real druid, and nothing else can coordinate the forest. Within a week, he'll have demonstrated ability, and then he can build up the leverage to get back into real civilization. He doesn't even beat the maid, only checks she's still giving the right answers in the Zone of Truth. He checks twice, the day before the logging will start, just in case she managed to resist it. Everything seems fine.

The Hellknights come, and march into the forest. Animals jump at them from all sides, but that was expected. Less so was the immediate swarm of abyssal smoking vines grabbing at them, the ambushes from beasts which seem to see straight through the smoke and undergrowth, and the trees twisting to catch them. Thorns were expected, but thorns piercing their armor was not. Arbat provides what healing he prepared, but at the end of the day, two Hellknights are dead, and the forest is still far too dangerous to log in. The backlash for such a clear failure won't send Arbat anywhere new, not when he's already on the edge of a forest with no subordinates, but his chance to come back is dead and damned. Maybe in another three or four years they'll have forgotten about it. How could his enemies have known this operation was so important? ...well, there's an obvious guess.

"Do not resist. Answer my questions 'yes' or 'no' unless I instruct you otherwise."

Arbat waves his hands, mutters something, and the floor beneath her glows. Silvia tries to resist it, but can feel it failing.

"Have you spoken with any Asmodean priest who was not assigned to Perafita?"

"No."

"Have you gathered any information about me?"

"No."

"Has anyone attempted to have you gather information about me?"

"No."

"Have you talked to anyone about the logging operation yesterday?"

...and I'm dead.

"Yes."

"Who? Not yes or no."

"I've spoken about it with my father, my mother, my oldest broth—"

Arbat cuts her off. "Obviously. Don't finish that. Have you spoken with anyone you hadn't met a year ago about the logging operation?"

...a year ago...

"No."

"Have you done anything you believe would have increased the likelihood another priest would have known about the logging operation?"

"No."

"Have you ever spoken with an agent of the Crown, besides the tax collector?"

"No."

"Do you hate me?"

"Yes."

Arbat spends the next month furious. He channels every day. Some days, he whips Silvia more, including a few carefully timed spells which draw out her pain and prevent her from escaping into unconsciousness. But while it comes close a few times, she never quite dies, and by the time he's getting tired of it, she think she's managed to handle the pain a little better. She can't describe quite how, but the whips and burning pain seems to be taking less out of her, and she doesn't collapse at all in the last week.

The harvest that year is good, better than any Silvia remembers. She has a guess at what happened, but she can't tell anyone. She can hear the whispers, though, and some people guessed what she did. Nobody says anything, of course. That would just make it worse next time.

Knowing what Arbat will do makes Silvia bolder. She starts gathering information more actively, memorizing what she sees in the letters. She makes sure only to share information about Cheliax's plans, not about Arbat, but gives everything she can to the druid. Every once in a while, when she goes to scratch another message on the stone, there's another berry. More importantly, though, the harvests keep being good. She keeps being fed, and the village still needs her.

A few years after the previous failure, there's another attempt at a logging party. Silvia reads about this one a month in advance. Again it fails completely, and this time Arbat isn't even angry about it — she isn't interrogated any more than usual, and the next month is almost painless. She reaches the age where not even Arbat expects her to be in school — which means he expects her to work more, of course, but with no more need to memorize things while both her hands are occupied, she's still less stretched. The regular beatings and channels are just how her week goes, now, and the interrogation hasn't been scary for a year. (It's a Zone of Truth, apparently. Arbat boasts when he's drunk, sometimes, and his second circle spells are his favorite thing to talk about.) She gets enough to eat, and everyone's well fed enough that nobody even resents her for it. She doesn't expect to get married, but as long as Perafita needs to keep her fed, life is fine.

It's been five years since his catastrophic failure, and three since his enemies tried to pull it off and failed the same way. It's good to know it isn't just him, but everyone failing means success will demonstrate competence far beyond a village priest, and get him somewhere important. Arbat does some research on druids and their known abilities, and organizes his next attempt carefully. He gets a replacement for a month, which he spends back in real civilization making plans with people who know what they're doing and how the Barrowoods will respond. With strong evidence he can pull it off this time, the Hellknights are again willing to back him. He's in the middle of the city, of course, and his rivals do try to assassinate him once, but he fights them off, and the next morning he can even prepare another second circle spell, a clear sign Asmodeus favors his plan. With a full squad of Hellknights, a couple cheap wizards looking to repay their debts without being eaten by demons, and three first-circle priests who he can order to prepare healing spells, the forest won't stand a chance. He comes back to Perafita at the head of the closest thing to an actual military force this benighted village has ever seen.

When Arbat left — "temporarily", he said — he sent Silvia back to the fields, and his replacement didn't want her. (Didn't need her? Either way.) She knew that was a bad sign, but all she could do was warn the forest something might be happening soon. When he returns, followed by warriors in heavy armor and carrying good steel weapons, she can't get word out fast enough. They don't even spend a night in Perafita before marching on the forest. The response is still aggressive, but nothing is ready in advance. The plants are less sharp, the grasping vines merely grasp rather than puncturing and smoking, and there are fewer animals to divert and misdirect them. Silvia sees them vanish into the forest, and she hopes hopes hopes but she knows hope isn't a strategy, she wants to pray but Asmodeus wouldn't listen...

They come out of the forest triumphant, and announce it cleared. Nobody, they say, needs to fear the inhabitants now, and they assign people to start cutting down the trees. They'll start in three days.

The next day, a messenger comes to recall the knights and wizards. Cheliax is at war.

After two more days, people start going into the forest. Arbat is still there, and tells them a war is no excuse not to take the chance when they have it.

After another three days, another messenger comes to say the war is over. The country, apparently, is now owned by an archmage, who tore the ground beneath the capital and slew the queen and... many things, supposedly. Arbat says it doesn't change anything, but Silvia isn't sure, and neither is the rest of the village. He orders them into the forest, though. Nobody's happy about cutting down the trees, but they go.

Three days later, not much tree cutting has been done. Perafita knows to be cautious of the forest, and with the queen dead, they might not send the knights again if something happens. Silvia hopes the forest will survive. But when she comes to Leafswirl's tree, she sees Sergi Mata standing over it with an axe, laughing. "And that's what you get, taking my blood! No more than you deserved! ...Ah, Silvia! Finally, the fey who caused us trouble all those years ago is dead! It is a joyous day today!"

Silvia may not be from the cities, but she still has Chelish control of her expression. She turns and runs off into the forest before she breaks down in tears.

Silvia doesn't know what fey funerals are like. She goes to the stone, hoping to talk to the druid, but nobody comes. She breaks a few branches off Leafswirl's tree — not just her tree, even, that was Leafswirl as much as the body she's usually in — that evening, tries to make a marker for them even if Leafswirl's real corpse will be being cut up and used for houses or something. With Arbat watching the logging and everybody else used to her working for him, Silvia can spend a day in the forest, and she does. Then she spends another. The third day after Leafswirl is cut down, Silvia is building one last pile of stones to hold the last branch she rescued, before Sergi and his family dragged the tree away.

She sees motion out of the corner of her eye, higher than any animal she thought lived in the woods now. If it's a bear, she's dead here, but she can't do anything about it. She turns and sees... Leafswirl? Her eyes are sunken, though, and her ribs are showing. She looks like she won't survive the night. But she can speak, quietly.

"...ah. Silvia."

"Leafswirl! You're alive! ...are you alive?"

"...no. No, not truly, not without my tree. I searched for another, but the Barrowoods is full. No tree here can hold another dryad, not without leaving them all to sicken and die."

Silvia's momentary relief breaks. And... Leafswirl kept her alive, that day. Twice, even. That means she must need Silvia, so... Silvia should see what for. "Can I help you somehow?"

Leafswirl smiles at... something about that. "No. At this point, my death is certain. I'll be dead by the end of tomorrow. But I did travel a ways through the forest, and... The government no longer supports Asmodeus's clerics. And your cleric needs to die, or he will keep pushing the village into the forest until everyone he can reach is dead. Here." She hands Silvia a wooden stake. "This comes from my tree, and it remembers the ground. Soon, it will also remember blood. Gather a group who are willing to kill him. Tomorrow, come to his house like normal. When you get the chance, push this through his heart. I will know when it tastes blood, and tell the group to come. He may still have time for one channel, but he will not manage more than two. I will be there, and I will make him sleep so he cannot kill them all, and the others will be able to finish him even if you cannot. ...The stake will survive my death. Water it, leave it in the ground at least once a week, and it will repair itself for you. I cannot help you personally beyond tomorrow, so keep it as my gift."

Silvia... cries. And nods, and takes the stake, because there is nothing else to do.

The forest is falling! Success! Apparently something happened to the crown, and, more worryingly, the new crown does not smile on the church. Wood is still of value, though, and the crown will see his success where others have failed, and the shall favor him and he will grow again in power, as his rivals have fallen. Arbat returns to find his house poorly cleaned, and no dinner prepared for him. Worrying! Silvia shows herself the next day, though. and says she was in the forest as they were ordered. He still beats her, but only slightly. He sends her to make him a good meal, turns away, and —

And feels a stabbing pain in his back, and knows he is betrayed — who? Who could have reached her? How did she escape the truth spells? — but now he needs to fight, and he has no healing prepared, he Channels and she staggers but stands, he hears banging on the door, again he Channels and she falls at last, but the door slams open and the farmers storm in with their axes, and he sees a woman with sunken eyes and skeletal limbs and protruding ribs behind them, and she gestures at him —

And he collapses to the floor, suddenly exhausted, and when the crowd storms in to surround him, he cannot gather the will to Channel again —

And the scythes cut down, and the axes fall, and —

"Do you know your name?"

With Arbat dead, nobody quite knows what to do. The dryad using her magic to kill a priest does convince them not to keep cutting down the trees, though, and the harvest still must be taken in. Apparently, the last few years have been blessed by the fey (the trees? The druids? Someone), and this one will be the last, so they should save what they can for the worse years to come.

Everyone is cautious of Silvia, but with nobody detecting their thoughts or searching for disloyalty, she doesn't mind. They make her a pot, to keep some soil in, and she plants Leafswirl's stake and waters it daily, even if she only said it needed it every week. She helps with the harvest. There's enough, and nobody denies her food, but she knows they're uneasy. And nobody needs her. The fey have left, there's no more priest demanding a servant, and she's still weak and she's still always a little tired and she still knows she will eat last.

When the Convention pamphlets arrive, she knows who Perafita will send. Once again, she volunteers. There's no competition.

After she's elected, apparently there's another phase? A hundred more people, most of them like her... but she does get some time to talk to them. Three of them are nobles, and they're terrible. Every one of them wants to kill the forests, sweep through the Barrowood and murder everything in their way, with no respect for the fey and no consideration of the villages nearby. The villagers are terrified, one and all, and she tells them her story, says she'll be the one to take whatever test the new crown has for them. She also tells them what the nobles plan to do. 

When the final election results are clear, Silvia is unsurprised to hear she's the elected delegate to the Convention. She packs her pot, her stake, and her clothing and sets off for Westcrown.