Lightsong
also known as Lightsong the Bold
A Returned god of the Court of Gods, styled *Lightsong the Bold*, who in life was a scribe named Stennimar — Llarimar's brother, who drowned saving his brother's daughter Tatara from a storm and was offered Return because he had seen the great war to come. In a cell beneath the court he remembered all of it, took the God King's hand through the bars, and spent his divine Breath to heal him — the one healing every Returned has the right to give. STD:WB:Ch 57
A Returned god of the Court of Gods, styled *Lightsong the Bold* and famed for his idle wit, deflection, and refusal to take his own divinity seriously. In life he was a scribe named *Stennimar*, an accountant for a local moneylender and Llarimar's brother, who died rescuing his brother's young daughter — the girl he sees in his visions. He still holds the Command phrases for a quarter of Hallandren's Lifeless army. STD:WB:Ch 53 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 57
A Returned god of the Hallandren Court of Gods, called Lightsong the Bold after the noble death his priests say earned him his Return. He is broad-shouldered, a head and a half taller than his servants, draped in red and gold; he has held a palace and a hundred servants for the five years since he came back, and he remembers nothing of his life before. He is also, by his own private admission, the world's only god who does not believe his own religion. STD:WB:Ch 3 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 53
Known facts
- returned-five-years-agoReturned five years before the present day and remembers nothing of the life he died in — only fragments of dreams (a beach, a ship leaving without him, sometimes a woman's face) that his high priest Llarimar dutifully records.STD:WB:Ch 3
- disbelieves-his-religionBy his own private admission probably the world's only god who does not believe in his own religion — sceptical of divination, of his own predecessors' visions, and of the story that his Return was earned by some heroic, exemplary death.STD:WB:Ch 3
- holds-lifeless-commandOne of only four gods in the Court of Gods entrusted with a Lifeless Command — the fragments of the core Command that let priests move the city's Lifeless on his authority. He gives Llarimar a noncombat, one-day-expiry phrase ("Fledgling fruit") to arrange the welcome for the incoming queen.STD:WB:Ch 3
- red-sea-dream-vividHis red-sea morning dream returns to him in sharper detail on the queen's arrival day: a T'Telir in flames, the bright sea bloodied with its reflection, a ship burning, soldiers fighting in the streets and people crying out — a nightmare the priests will treat as prophecy whether he likes it or not.STD:WB:Ch 5
- recurring-war-dreamHas been dreaming for years of T'Telir burning in a war his city is supposed to win easily, an omen his high priest Llarimar takes as meaningful and he refuses to.STD:WB:Ch 12
- petition-refusedRefused, on the day before Siri's presentation, the petition of a T'Telir mother begging him to die for her dying infant — and then ordered the rest of the petition line sent home.STD:WB:Ch 12
- controls-quarter-lifelessHolds the Commands for roughly a quarter of Hallandren's Lifeless — about ten thousand tireless soldiers — by virtue of his place in the Court of Gods, and is therefore a prize Blushweaver needs if she is to swing a war vote.STD:WB:Ch 16
- joins-blushweaver-plansDecides on his way down from Truthcall's Tarachin balcony that he can no longer do nothing — that gods blunter than Blushweaver are already plotting against the new queen, that the Idrian queen will have no other allies, and that the only safe place he can do good is from inside whatever Blushweaver is building.STD:WB:Ch 22
- knows-when-lied-toDiscovers in the servants' corridor of Mercystar's palace that he can simply *tell* when a priest is lying to him — a certainty that arrives without explanation, from some instinct he had not realised he had. The reveal does not unsettle him; it excites him, in a way that feels almost familiar.STD:WB:Ch 23
- deduces-not-an-idrianReads the scene of the break-in at Mercystar's palace and rules out an Idrian intruder: no Idrian would Awaken a Lifeless squirrel as a diversion, and no common thief could afford to burn a permanent Breath on one. Whoever broke in was rich in Breath, skilled enough to drain the colour out of the floor on his way out, and after something specific in the back hallway — not the gallery up front.STD:WB:Ch 23
- investigative-instinctsWhoever he was before he Returned had the instincts of an investigator — he interviews witnesses one at a time out of earshot of each other, separates story from invention, catches a lie from posture and a hidden wound, and uses the word *case* without ever having heard it used that way before. The instincts arrive unbidden and disturb him; they imply his prior life was, against all his hopes, useful.STD:WB:Ch 26
- warns-siri-not-to-rely-on-himPulls Siri aside at the arena and tells her, with what he insists is absolute sincerity, that whatever plot is closing around her she must not depend on him when the moment comes — he will fail her. The advice is given as a kindness; she takes it as one.STD:WB:Ch 27
- war-dreams-as-idrian-foot-soldierLightsong's prophetic dreams have shifted from recurring symbols — the glowing red panther, a tempest, a young woman's face being absorbed into darkness — to a long waking nightmare in which he is an Idrian foot soldier on a battlefield where every man dying beside him is a close friend. He reports only the safer images to Llarimar — Blushweaver's flushed face, Llarimar asleep, the God King crying.STD:WB:Ch 38
- rejected-godhood-from-the-day-he-returnedLightsong tells Blushweaver that the flippant, self-undermining persona is not a pose he adopted for amusement; from the day he Returned he refused to believe he was a god, and has acted accordingly — and grown more practised at it — every year since. Whoever he was before, he says, hated unexplained things, hated secrets, and that man keeps prompting him to dig.STD:WB:Ch 38
- holds-allmothers-lifeless-commandLightsong gives Allmother his own Lifeless command- phrase, *bottom line blue*, intending it as a counterweight to Blushweaver's two sets. Instead, she returns the gesture and entrusts him with her own phrase, *verdant bells*. He leaves the audience the second god in the court holding two sets of Commands — and the only one who holds the same two as she does.STD:WB:Ch 42
- mentored-after-return-by-calmseerLightsong was mentored in his earliest weeks as a Returned by Calmseer — the one Returned he ever knew, he now thinks, who came closest to actually being divine. Her memory still pricks at Blushweaver, who knows he holds it apart from her.STD:WB:Ch 46
- changes-lifeless-phrase-to-red-panther-aloneStanding in the dark of his warehouse in the Lifeless Enclave, Lightsong dismisses Llarimar and the other priests and transfers his ten thousand Lifeless off *bottom line blue* — the phrase he has already given Allmother — onto a new word, *red panther*, kept this time entirely to himself. He intends to take Allmother's ten thousand the same way and stand alone as commander of the full Hallandren army.STD:WB:Ch 46
- withholds-vote-on-warFaced with the pantheon voting overwhelmingly for war on Idris, Lightsong declines to cast his own verdict. He tells Blushweaver that without his Lifeless Hallandren cannot win, that he holds the right to defy the Will of the Pantheon as any of them does, and walks back to his palace having neither approved nor refused.STD:WB:Ch 49
- has-no-swordsmanshipCharging the dungeon to free Blushweaver, Lightsong grabs a fallen guard's sword and discovers he cannot use one — his lunge misses by inches, his block is fumbled, he is tackled and run through the thigh. Whatever skills his former self had, swordsmanship was not among them.STD:WB:Ch 51
- command-phrase-was-red-pantherHeld in a cage and forced to watch Blushweaver killed in front of him to demonstrate the conspirators' seriousness, Lightsong gives up his Lifeless-army Command phrase — *red panther* — to spare Llarimar the same fate.STD:WB:Ch 53
- remembers-his-lifeRecovers the memory of his mortal life and his Return. He was Llarimar's brother Stennimar, a scribe-detective hired to find lost or stolen money in ledgers. On a borrowed pleasure boat — the *Red Panther* — caught in a sudden night storm, his niece Tatara was swept overboard. He leapt with a rope, looped her ankle, and drowned. *Beyond the void* a calm voice offered him the chance to come back because he had seen a coming war greater than the Manywar.STD:WB:Ch 57
- dies-investing-breathReaches through the bars of his cage and takes the God King's hand as a Pahn Kahl sword is poised to strike, smiles, and gives away his divine Breath: *My life to yours. My Breath become yours.* It is the Returned's one-time healing, the second life he had been holding all along.STD:WB:Ch 57
Events
- STD:WB:Ch 27 Lounges in his red and gold pavilion, trades self-deprecating barbs with Siri, helps her work out that both recent God Kings died right after producing an heir, and pulls her aside afterwards to coach her on persona and to warn her not to depend on him.
- STD:WB:Ch 32 Hosts Siri in his arena box, deflects her question about his title with grape-fed jokes about a drunk monkey and a panther, presents Hoid as the surprise, and breaks Siri without meaning to by suggesting aloud it might be best if Susebron died and let her go home.
- STD:WB:Ch 40 Wanders past Siri's table on the court green while she is eating, uncharacteristically distracted; he returns her wave but does not come over to chat.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Lies on the rubble of the dungeon, color drained out of him as if he were Lifeless, eyes closed, at peace, Llarimar holding his head in his lap.
Backreferences
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 3
- factLlarimar
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 5
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 7
- factReturned
- factReturned
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factCalmseer
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 12
- factBrighthue
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 14
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 15
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 16
- factReturned
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factStillmark
- factMirthgiver
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 18
- factLlarimar
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 22
- factTruthcall
- factTruthcall
- factTarachin
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 23
- factMercystar
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 26
- factNightblood
- factAwakening
- factReturned
- factBattle of Twilight Falls
- factLolan
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 27
- factSisirinah
- factAllmother
- factAllmother
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 30
- factReturned
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factHopefinder the Just
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 32
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 34
- factNanrovah
- factAllmother
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 38
- factLightsong
- factLightsong
- factMercystar's Palace
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 40
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 42
- factReturned
- factLifeless
- factLightsong
- factAllmother
- factAllmother's Palace
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 46
- factThe God King
- factLightsong
- factLightsong
- factCalmseer
- factCalmseer
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 47
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 49
- factLightsong
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factThe Pantheon of Returned
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 50
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 51
- factLightsong
- factCourt of Gods Tunnels
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 53
- factLightsong
- factLlarimar
- factLlarimar
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factBlushweaver the Beautiful
- factKindwinds the Honest
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 54
- factBluefingers
- factBluefingers
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 55
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 57
- factReturned
- factSusebron
- factLightsong
- factRed Panther
- factTatara
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 58
- factReturned