Bair Stonehand

Bair is known for ordinary, specific human things: bad songs, dislike of turnips and tenderness toward his daughter.

Appearance

Bair is a kind man with a laugh too big for closed spaces and a miner's scarred, cracked hands.

In The Highlander

Bair Stonehand is one of Branok's newly assigned mine guards, husband of Ragna Stonehand and father of a young daughter. He had once carried Harl home after a fall, and sang so badly that Dagna banned him from watch songs. His name appeared on a strip of leash-words in the Ink Hollow, and the expedition found him there with his mouth stitched shut by black thread, carrying his runeblade point towards his own chest. Torin cut the thread with Sable's knife, and Bair screamed his own name.

In the infirmary the oath-eater rose through him. Eira asked what he had truly sworn for, and he answered that he wanted to come home and have his wife open the door without fear; that small truth helped break the creature. Yet the residue remained. For three days he cycled between himself and black pressure, once whispering "Open through me" in another voice. When Torin asked whether he could hold, Bair said he did not know, and Torin killed him as Bair asked to be sent home if possible. Ragna washed his body and charged Eira to speak his name whenever others said mercy: a man who liked bad songs, hated turnips and held his daughter like glass. His death led directly to Dagna's challenge.

Family

After the books

Dies before the end of the books. Killed during the Highlander crisis; remembered by name rather than as a case or a risk. The record insists that Bair's death is not evidence, method or mercy, but the death of Bair Stonehand.