The Book of Names

I walked there, once. To Teshaveht in the valley. It was a long and arduous journey, not in the least because it took me through high, narrow mountain passes. There was danger, certainly, in the navigation, but not in the form of the [craglions](craglion-article), surprisingly. Most days I walked by, watching them warily as they played with one another far below. Nor, truthfully, did I have to contend with the [windriders](windriders-article) and their brood. Neither predator seemed at all that interested in the easy pickings that a lone adventurer traveling the high passes provided.
I met pilgrims once or twice on my journey to Teshaveht. They were on their way back, walking the way that I had come. Their heads were hung, their shoulders slumped. It was a somber experience, watching these hulking creatures appear so defeated, so humbled.
One would think, did they not know better, that the Veldrani were a ferocious and vicious people. One wouldn't, necessarily, be wrong. But to say that that it is all the Veldrani are is a serious and grim misapprehension of their culture. As I understand it, maybe once upon a day this would have been true, but I have since learned that they are a far more complex and rich people than the legends would suggest.
I embarked to Teshaveht having heard of their entire people's quest for redemption. I had thought it so romantic, so noble. Granted, I had never quite seen the extent to which they took it. I had been to the gates of the Valley of the Lost, yes, and I had watched as the Voiceless streamed in their seemingly-endless numbers over the tops of the towering stone gate, only to be slain, dozens in every moment, by the Voices of War and the warrior tribes until all were gone, only for the cycle to repeat again the next day. And the next. And the next. But even that couldn't prepare me for the truth.
I did not know what I expected, walking into Teshaveht. The Veldrani tribe I had stayed with had mentioned the Book of Names, so I expected an old man poring over an ancient manuscript, painstakingly copying records to another, fresher volume. Looking back, I hadn't even begun to imagine the truth of what I would witness.
The Teshavehtë, as the tribe called themselves, were nice enough. They were a hospitable people — almost to a fault. One hesitates to call them naïve, but they were certainly trusting. They did not ask me much, did not question my motives. What they did ask after, was whether I wanted to sleep in a bed, or if I wanted, like the pilgrims, to sleep on the stone of the mountain.
They made sure I spent my time there in comfort, lit the sconces in the little hut I'd been given when the dark came. I knew they could see in the darkness, and thus, did not need to do such a thing, but they were accommodating, and so I thought I'd try my luck. The day after I asked if I could see the Book of Names, and at first, I thought them perturbed. They hesitated, and then left.
I feared that I had offended them somehow, perhaps by asking as an outsider, and my fears were not at all allayed when my attendants returned empty-handed. I had expected that they would tell me to leave or return with an old man bearing the Book of Names, but that was not what happened. They told to me to follow them, and took me to the caves in the back of the village.
As we approached I wondered if I had, in some way, committed a fatal mistake, and that they were taking me out of the way to dispose of me for offending them, but the killing blow I prepared myself for never landed. Instead, they gave me a glowing stone and sent me into the cave that we stopped in front of.
At first, I did not know what to make of the place. It seemed normal, to me. A cave like any other. But, it wasn't until I stopped and took a moment to properly look around that I realized what was around me. Names. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Even more than that, probably. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, names carved painstakingly in both the sinuous curves of High Centhiri and the angular strokes of [Veldrani](veldrani-language-article).
It was both remarkable and profoundly _moving_. I was under the impression that the names were of Veldrani who had been lost in the war, but as I wandered deeper, I realized how little sense that made. Why, I asked myself, would they ever write the names of their fallen in High Centhiri?
Nonetheless I was eager to go deeper, to see further into what lay beyond the reach of day, deep into the earth. I wanted to know where the names ended, which name was the last one to have been carved into the stone. But I didn't find what I wanted. My feet bumped into a small pile and sent bones, bleached, white and clean, scattering across the floor.
Ahead of me, was an old man, hunched over the floor with a small hammer and a chisel ostensibly made of bone from the way that it gleamed in the light of my stone. He chipped away at the cave floor without looking at me.
Beside him was a tattered, ancient tome. I could see parts of it crumbling to dust with the man's every breath. The Book of Names, I imagined it was. The original. More and more, though, I was beginning to think that the caves themselves were the Book.
How many more names were there, I wondered, in the half-opened book. How many more dead? How many more years would it take before every Highborn's name was written into the stone of these caves?
Unbidden, my feet carried me forward. As I approached, the old man looked up at me, his face covered with a brass mask. His eyes and mouth were gouts of flickering bluish-green flame. "Please take care not to step on the names," he said to me. His words will haunt me, I think, 'til my dying day.
I have never heard a voice so soft, so kind, and yet, so unfathomably sad. Perhaps, it had to do with the fact that I heard more than one voice. I heard hundreds, if not thousands. Each spoke with the same, deep sorrow.
I stopped. My feet stilled. My heart dropped into my stomach. I had never even stopped to think that I was walking all over a memorial to the dead. I didn't stay. I couldn't. I turned around and walked out. I wish I could say I had run, but on the way back, I made sure that my feet never even came anywhere close to the names carved into the stone.
It hardly seems fair now, the way that we celebrate our prosperity, the lives we lead with happiness, with freedom, with liberty, when in our own histories, there is a people that was denied all of that. When our kingdoms, our society, everything we hold dear, is built on the bones of an entire people.
What does it matter that they were tyrants? Surely, not all them were. Maybe the Veldrani have it right. Maybe it doesn't matter how much our ancestors suffered. Maybe, in truth, we should all regret that we let it go so far.
Maybe, just _maybe_ we should show a little bit of remorse for the genocide.

— Isa Temaros, Memoir of a Wanderer

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**Ve Maltassaron** ([cen. /vɛ-mæl.ˈtæs.sæ.ɾɔn/](centhiri-article)), the Book of Names in High Centhiri, pertains to two very different things which share, in some ways, a common purpose. The original Book of Names was a [Mulrakhan](mulrakh-government) government record of the names of every highborn citizen and those of meritorious lowborn citizens. The modern Book of Names, as the Veldrani know it, is a series of caves near the village of Teshaveht, a place of religious pilgrimage for the Veldrani, and the site of the life's work of the Voices of Regret, comprised by the chieftains of the Teshavehtë.