Quaithe presents herself only as a woman of Asshai-by-the-Shadow, wrapped in a red lacquer mask carved with slits for eyes and mouth, and every other fact about her — her age, her birth, the source of whatever power lets her speak in riddles that keep turning out to be prophecy — the Citadel is obliged to leave blank. No maester has verified so much as her true face, let alone her history, and this encyclopedia will not pretend otherwise by inventing what the sources withhold.
She first attaches herself to Daenerys Targaryen's retinue in Qarth, offering counsel wrapped so tightly in riddle that its meaning only becomes clear well after the moment it might have been useful — "to go north, you must journey south; to reach the west, you must go east" being the sort of line the Citadel's archivists have learned to record verbatim rather than attempt to paraphrase. She reappears at intervals afterward, always briefly, always cryptic, and always gone again before anyone can press her on what she is.
Reader and maester alike have spent years arguing over whether she serves the same cold or fiery powers as other shadowbound figures encountered east of the Free Cities, whether she is friend or a very patient kind of enemy to the dragon queen she watches, and whether her mask hides scarring, sorcery, or nothing at all. None of it is settled. The honest entry on Quaithe is short because the honest sources on Quaithe are shorter still.