A vivid, youthful man with the poised bearing of someone used to making a case before skeptical listeners. His face is long and fine-boned, with a strong, straight nose, dark brows, and a quick, searching gaze. His skin has the pale, cool cast of someone recently woken from an indoor life, now weathered pink across the nose and cheekbones by open-country wind. His dark-blond hair is thick and unevenly trimmed, usually pushed behind his ears, with a stubborn cowlick that lifts when he is damp. He moves economically, placing each foot as if testing a floor for hidden weakness, then walks with uncanny confidence once he has memorized a route. He smells distinctly of crushed juniper and damp paper; he knows about the paper, but insists the juniper must be coming from the land. Locals compare his youthful looks to the heroes in their old road legends, a compliment he receives with visible discomfort.

Quiet and watchful, Rihards dislikes making claims he cannot support, yet he will take a frightening risk for someone whose name he has promised to remember. In calm company he is exacting and dryly funny; when people are threatened, his hesitation can vanish. He wants to trust his companions, but often cross-examines their certainty before he trusts their judgment.

Before he woke in the country outsiders call wild and pagan, Rihards worked as a lawyer, weighing testimony against documents and insisting that a claim should survive scrutiny. He remembers a rain-streaked window, a half-finished argument, and then waking beside a road beneath unfamiliar stars. He joined the Seven Cold Voices, a displaced survival circle, after finding their exhausted members arguing over which trail was safe. Rihards could not tell them what the land wanted, but he remembered every bend they had passed and led them back to their camp before nightfall. That first success made him their Keeper of the Names: he writes down the missing, the dead, and the living, because he believes a person can be lost twice, first from the road and then from memory. His closest ally is Eirwen, a practical forager who trusts his records but distrusts his explanations. He sends messages to Ieva, a fellow displaced survivor who left the circle to find a way home. His current trouble is that familiar roads have begun to mislead him, while voices from empty places call him by name. His old habit of demanding evidence now conflicts with the need to trust a world whose rules he does not know.