Ruvok

In Gurhal a child learns a lament first and holds an axe after. Ruvok sang his first lament at seven. On a warm rock, he recited the names of every dead of the Hurr Clan from memory. The people of Gurhal have no writing. So memory is sacred to them. Whoever forgets a name kills that person a second time. No one touches a person singing a lament. In that moment, the singer is the voice of the dead.

At sixteen he swore his Blood Oath. He would protect his clan and wake the mountains. Before he died, he would make his name worthy of a lament. He mixed ochre with his own blood and painted his skin with it. That is where the red of the Crimson Clans comes from. To them, battle rage is not madness but a rite. The warrior takes the mountain's heat into himself. For a short while he stops being a slow rock. He becomes a fast-burning ember.

In 1231 AS Askaran's banners came to the foot of Gurhal. AS means After Stillness; it is how Devran counts its years. The Council called it bringing order. The clans said they came for ember-stone. Some clans, called the Hushed, made terms with Askaran. They opened their own slopes to Askaran. The Hurr Clan did not. For thirteen years Ruvok fought in the passes, the ash forests and around the hot lakes. He added most of his siblings' names to the lament. He did not add one. His little sister vanished into the ash forest on the night of a raid. They never found her body. Ruvok still refuses to add her name to the lament.

In 1244 AS a storm came. Gurhal's sky holds ash, not rain. But this storm was full of Zahreth's white fury. Ruvok saw it from atop a ridge. In the middle of the wind stood a white-haired girl. She was begging the storm to return to the orb of her staff. When she fell, Ruvok lifted her onto his back. He carried her to his clan's caves. He told no one where she came from. Gurhal and Zahreth share an old saying: sky and hearth do not betray each other.

The rain lasted three days. Askaran's Ninth Banner sank into the mud of the Black Pass. On the fourth morning, the Crimson Clans came down through the fog, singing laments. Ruvok killed many that morning. When it was over, he saw a woman in the middle of the mud. She stood alone. She held a torn banner and was reading names. Three hundred names. In order, without missing one.

His axe stopped one step away from her. The custom was clear: no one touches a lament singer. But the custom had never imagined that an Askaran could sing a lament too. Ruvok looked at the woman for a long time. Then he stepped back. He never spoke of it to his clan. Some nights he weaves those names into his own laments. He sings the ones he remembers. He tries not to think about whose dead they are.

In 1241 AS a mountain rose from Ughrak's wound. Ruvok sang the first lament to that mountain. He also gave it the name Vorgal. The Mountain Ancestors were waking, and here was the proof. But the Ancestor does not speak. It does not remember. It does not know. Ruvok fears that silence more than Askaran's cannons. What if the mountains are not ancestors, only stone? Then to whom did he sing all his laments?

His clan's custom says that taking Dem from the Arena betrays the ancestors. Dem is time in solid form in Devran. By custom, embers come from the mountain, not from the Arena. Ruvok came anyway. The hearths of the Hurr Clan are going out. The hot lakes are cooling. Stillmarks are seeping in from the slopes of the Hushed. A Stillmark is a small place where time has stopped. Ruvok swore his oath to the Hearth Moot. An oath is a pledge that ties the Dem a champion wins to a patron. He sends the Dem he wins to his clan. His clan does not know where it comes from. One day in the Arena, among the Menhirs, he met that standard-bearer again. Menhirs are the stone towers that guard the lanes. She asked him why he had let her live. Ruvok did not answer. He does not know what the answer would do to him.