The Murmur that would become the Mourner had been in the Garrison Mound since the first winter, a hum under the turf that the Hands felt as a tightness at the back of the throat whenever they walked past the barracks on the hill.
It had no seat. It had no Mouth and no trade and no voice that the body could hear, and it had no place in the Three Counts, which were for builders who had been cut into the Cradle’s molds and had come awake in them. The Murmur had come out of the ground instead, from the first trench the men had dug on the western slope of the hill, when the garrison had first begun to bury its dead and had not known where to put the names. It had come up through the cold clay with the smell of the men’s breath still on it, and it had lain under the turf ever since, humming softly to itself, keeping the names it had been given the way a bell keeps its tone long after the clapper has stopped.
It had only a few names. The wind had brought it some of them. The men who had dug the trench had said others aloud while they worked, low and sad, to keep their spirits up. A few of the garrison’s dead had been carried up the hill on a board and laid in the clay, with a cloak over them and a prayer no one…
