Torin Steelvein

Long hair tied back, black ink around his eyes and one long, near-elven ear with an old scar behind it: Torin Steelvein is controlled and severe, an oath-brother whose clarity makes the red-black power sound reasonable.

Appearance

Torin keeps his long hair tied back, revealing the long point of one ear and an old scar behind it. His eyes burn red, and black ink gathers tightly around them and along one temple, cleaner and more controlled than Branok's. He fights with a red and black runeblade, and after his duel with Dagna Wolfmere he carries her cuts across his shoulder and cheek.

In The Highlander

Torin Steelvein is Branok Stoneheart's oath-brother, who survived the sealed north beside him and came back demon-touched. Where Branok is thunder, Torin is a drawn line: controlled, precise and unsettlingly honest. He swore the same containment oath as Branok in shorter, colder words, and his blade answered with a narrower light. He described the demon in him as offering conclusions before the heart could object, and said he knew which thoughts were his own because his were slower.

He made his first impression in the practice ring, disarming young challengers without injuring them, and later taught children to disarm without breaking wrists. He was drawn to Eira Ironvale and she to him; he warned her plainly that he was a cliff, stopped whenever she said no, and they became lovers at the outer forge. He sparred in words with Dagna Wolfmere, whom he respected. He argued against panic over the Ink Hollow, which made him seem to shield it, and his mark appeared on records found in the mine.

When Branok became First Blade, Torin received authority over oath rot, emergency duel right and command of road-warden rolls. He took command in the collapsing Ink Hollow, cut the black threads from Bair Stonehand's mouth with Sable's knife, and was saved by Dagna when a demonic tendril nearly turned his blade on himself. Days later, when Bair could not say whether he could hold against the oath-eater's residue, Torin killed him, and admitted to Eira that part of him had been relieved to have something he could cut. Ragna Stonehand made him name what he had done.

Dagna then named him oath-rotted, and he invoked duel right. At Wolfmere Pass he killed her by turning the people she protected into terrain, then washed her blood from his blade in public while Ragna denied that it was clean. He looked stricken, and Eira saw the black in his blade begin to win.

After Eira killed Varkhul on the southroad, Torin came with three riders. He told her the tournament was over and Alerion Solastis was dead, spoke Dagna's name at her demand, accepted her blow, and gave her the axe charm Dagna had entrusted to him before the duel. He let her go on to Luna and returned north to Branok. The book leaves him loyal, remorseful in fragments and unredeemed.

In The Godless Priest

Torin Steelvein was mentioned in The Godless Priest only through Sable's warning from the Iron Mountains, which said that he was not absolved. The warning described a voice that he answered privately and a mark that influenced his precision, restraint and desire without removing his responsibility. His passenger had apparently cut one thread of the cloth around the message, the Highland sign for refusal while still in service. Crowbrook's reply stated that Torin remained responsible. When a buried courier's passenger was asked about him, it said only that the blade chooses. He stayed a speaking host in the north.