Gods and saints

Healing Saint

She left ledgers instead of a doctrine, and meant to. Vessa of Rezg came out of the Emberwinter with a ward that had never closed and no doctrine at all. What she left is arithmetic on the ward wall in a hand her Houses still know: whose flesh paid for whose repair. Rezg keeps her skull, and her Houses argue in court that the wall is the greater relic. A donor about to be spent says her four words over it, Vessa spend me first, and the cutter writes the name down. Her own reformers say a saint of mercy left ledgers instead of mercy, and that a ledger can be read backwards until it prices a person.

Also called Vessa of Rezg, the Open Ward, the Ledger-Keeper. Oath: “Vessa spend me first.”. Their nature is disputed.

Buried One

It was here before the roll, the faithful say. Nineteen of Kilmoryn's twenty-three states outlaw the meeting, so a cell is five. Five people can carry five separate observations, watch one another prepare, and go home without needing a hall; no keeper holds the only copy. They gather where two measures contradict each other, and something answers often enough to be worth the risk. What it is, the cells argue about. On the wrong they agree: a census is not consent, and a grave is not permission to use the dead. The Vigil objects that no grave, name, date or accepted receiver makes the rite auditable. The Undersworn call that the point.

Also called the Unrecorded, the One Before the Roll. Oath: “It was here before the roll.”. Their nature is disputed.

Champion Saint

He died holding a wall for a city that refused him. Corin of Akh died in a breach at a city that had twice refused him citizenship. His Champions read that literally: they will garrison a wall for people who despise them, and they will not hold one for pay. In a siege they stand where the warstone's shadow falls and dare the besieger to make it a massacre in front of witnesses. Guilds complain that a Champion answers his order before his contract, and hire them the next season anyway, because the wall held and the accounts say so.

Also called Corin of Akh, the Breach, the Unbought Shield. Oath: “Corin stand with me.”. Their nature is disputed.

Dawn Saint

Aurel burned the anchor. Her arm has not come home. The court that hanged Aurel of Litur for burning a counter-anchor the benches had licensed canonised her forty years on, by which time every judge who condemned her was dead. The fire her rite warrants burns the retained dead and living flesh alike, though the retained suffer worse, so a Brand column is worth a company at a fracture site and much less against healthy men behind a wall. Her right arm went out to sieges in a silver case. It left Litur in 1469, and what the Brand offers to bring home now is a sealed Silver Sleeve.

Also called Aurel of Litur, the First Light, the Burning Assessor. Oath: “Dawn keep me.”. Their nature is disputed.

Forgefather

He is not asked for favor. Work is shown. He is not petitioned. A believer finishes a thing, leaves it where the work can be seen, and comes back at first shift to find out whether anything answered. Some mornings a seam has closed with no hammer mark in it. Most mornings nothing has happened, and nobody reads that as refusal. Small honest work counts, and so does a fault confessed while it can still be repaired. At a funeral the household shows one finished work of the dead and one unfinished, and whoever picks up the trowel picks up the debt. Families have split over a half-laid wall.

Also called the Shown Work, the True Mass, the Cold Anvil. Oath: “True weight.”. Their nature is disputed.

Green Mother

Her shrine is a cutting. Someone has to keep it alive. The Old Faith speaks to the Green Mother through anything grown under a hand: a kitchen herb, an orchard graft, a street's shade tree, the Heartwood in a guild's yard. What stands at her shrine is a cutting, and a keeper who has replaced a dead one is expected to say aloud where the new stock came from. A costly specimen is no holier than a sound local branch, and a quiet substitution is a lie about care rather than about plants. In Larith orchard households a partnership is witnessed over two objects: a cutting for what the two will keep together, and a tool one of them still owns alone.

Also called the Bough, the Standing Crop's Mother, the Rooted. Oath: “Root and hound.”. Their nature is disputed.

Lantern Saint

A struck lamp means a body was found and named here. Rone of Shiz carried missing-notices no court would seal, down roads where the frames had failed and the retained dead still stood in the fracture sites. He was found on the Kharb road with his lamp lit and his throat opened. The Lanternmen keep his route: night escort, letters, and the register of the unaccounted. Their light is not a blessing but evidence, and a corpse found under a struck lamp gets a name, a date and a grave. Shiz sells his oil at a markup and will not discuss the arrangement.

Also called Rone of Shiz, the Unstruck Lamp, Reader of the Missing. Oath: “By the lamp that stayed.”. Their nature is disputed.

Elder Void

The dark came first; the household still keeps watch. There are two names and no accepted third. Elder Void is the reverent one, Void Tyrant the hostile one, and in a Wethyrn room the choice tells you a man's politics before he finishes the sentence. The Wake's whole doctrine fits in one line: contact creates a duty of watching, not a right to rule. Its named wrong is yielding judgment to the answer. A voice, a moved mark or an impossible fact is evidence and never law. The Bowed Watch holds that what came first is owed obedience, kneels to say so, and is hunted for it by an order that works from the same rites.

Also called the Void Tyrant, the Prior Dark, That Which Was Here First. Oath: “By the dark that was here first.”. Their nature is disputed.

Lifegiver

Three faiths thank three things at one tree. Lifegiver is the name a Heartwood's answer goes by wherever three faiths meet. The Old Faith says it is the Green Mother wearing an office. The Vigil says whatever answers a Heartwood has never given a name and should not be handed one. Avasul names no Power and speaks of a duty to give back what can be given back; outsiders call that the Lifegiver too. The three rites leave the same frost and the same spent stores, and matching frost has never named a respondent. Four centuries on, a Larith gardener, a Warden and a shore keeper can stand at one tree and thank three different things.

Also called the Unnamed Answer, the Third Claim. Oath: “Give back what was taken.”. Their nature is disputed.

Mercy Saint

She cut down eleven in one night. They made her a saint. Halda of Boulde cut the supports on eleven retained dead in a single night, her brother among them, because Boulde could not feed them and would not free them. The Vigil made her a saint for it; the Black Vigil calls that night the first killing the church ever blessed and keeps her name as a curse. Her Mercies arrive when a household's dead has outlasted its stores, with a writ, two witnesses and a knife. They say they never knock; local law, guards, rulers, and kin still admit or bar them.

Also called Halda of Boulde, the Eleven, the Last Custody. Oath: “Halda be quick.”. Their nature is disputed.

Mourning Queen

Two coins ask what grief still owes the living. The Black Vigil broke from the Vigil over one question and has never widened it: who is entitled to say that a person kept going by other people's work has stopped being one? Her sign is a pair of coins left on a flat stone, and people who reject the church leave them at graves anyway. Households read the pair differently; the reading nobody quarrels with is that two coins are enough for leaving them there to cost something. She has no temple anywhere. Where a case is doubtful her church wants custody widened rather than closed, and her oath says the rest: none of mine goes out.

Also called the Two Coins, the Queen Without a Temple, the Keeping Grief. Oath: “None of mine goes out.”. Their nature is disputed.

Pilgrim Saint

Ask nothing, carry anything, cross before the thaw. In the second winter of the Guttering, Talia of Menergalo came down off the ice to the Bittern with a child whose city was no longer on any roll. She asked nothing of the towns she passed and took what was offered. Alone of the eight, her relic was never housed: the boots travel, and a Pilgrim house is wherever they are that season. The Vigil's own procedure says an unaudited reference is a false concord waiting to happen, and its canonists have pressed the point since 1201 C. The Pilgrims have not answered it, and the boots have not stopped.

Also called Talia of Menergalo, the Winter Walk, Mother of the Unenrolled. Oath: “Carry me over.”. Their nature is disputed.

Renewal Saint

The first tree nobody licensed. Every guild repeats her. Ismer of Zindush planted the first Heartwood nobody had licensed: a graft cut from a dying hallow, in a town the registers had struck off in 1051 C. Every guild that plants a tree now repeats her crime and calls it a charter. Her Replanters graft, prune, and burn diseased growth in public so the neighbors can watch it burn. What Ismer never settled is whether a tree grown from stolen stock owes anything to the orchard it was cut from. The Larith say yes, at length, and price their cuttings accordingly.

Also called Ismer of Zindush, the Unlicensed Graft, the Second Orchard. Oath: “Ismer take root.”. Their nature is disputed.

Rotting Sovereign

A crop can be brought in early. So can a person. The Harvest Court addresses the Rotting Sovereign over compost, a sick byre, a plague room, a field the week after harvest. A formal reception sets a changing specimen beside an untouched one and keeps a living receiver in the room. In a kitchen it is one gesture: the bruised portion set aside before the sound food is shared. Court children learn the prohibitions before any prayer: do not touch a swollen carcass, do not drink downstream of a burial yard. Its workers tell the joke about the first basket, one bruised fruit and three officials arguing whether to count it.

Also called the Standing Crop, the Sovereign of Field and Fallow. Oath: “All is his field.”. Their nature is disputed.

Warden Saint

A lord's binding waited its turn behind a carter's. Both of Edrin of Kharb's hands are kept in the chapter house there, and both were broken. He was nine days into holding an anchor garden after the register went silent when a lord's men came to move a name up the line. The line held. Edrin died four winters later of nothing worse than a winter, and his Wardens have set the order in which the dead are caught at a Heartwood ever since. The Vigil says Edrin answers a rite. Kharb's own masons, who are not irreligious, say he answers an honest ledger.

Also called Edrin of Kharb, the Ninth Day, Keeper of the Queue. Oath: “Warden hold me.”. Their nature is disputed.

Wild Huntress

The kill is thanked, eaten, and never called free. The Wild Huntress is thanked over a killing somebody chose to make: a cull, a winter slaughter, a hunt that fed a village. What was taken is eaten or worked. The tally written afterward names the animals, the wounds, the meat and the losses, on a bad day as on a good one. Her Red Hunt keeps no house and raises no tax, so it eats where it is hired, in cattle, iron, road shelter and winter stores. Most Old Faith households hunt nothing, thank her at a slaughter, and bind at a Heartwood like anybody else. Her curse travels further than her rite: may the hound have your name.

Also called the Cull, the Winter Share, the Hound at the Door. Oath: “May the hound have your name.”. Their nature is disputed.