The Hedge Wizard 2 characters

Also known as Humphrey, Humphrey Woodrow

Appears from the start

A hedge wizard on the road with Bud and Celaine, two weeks out of Bledsbury and bound for Fishers Lake. Orphaned young and raised by his late master Sethril Woodrow, he carries an inherited staff and the soul-bound Book of Infinite Pages. Since binding a dying wolf-dragon's power he holds far more essence than he can steer, a much fiercer fire affinity, an unhealed injury to his soul that by his own society's reckoning makes him a warlock, and her egg, bonded to him for life.

Also known as Robert Blackthorne, Lord Robert Blackthorne

Appears from the start

A large, earnest and rather naive young knight sworn to Kelisia, Goddess of Winter, a second-circle Chosen who fights with her cold blue frostfire. Beneath the plain name he travels under he is a nobleman, who left home to escape an arranged marriage and to grieve his mother. Having chosen to stay at Hump's side rather than part ways after Bledsbury, he is open-hearted, quick to put himself between danger and other people, and steady when Hump's magic slips.

Appears from the start

A huntress a little older than Hump, reddish-haired and deadly with a bow, who trained under Vamir and stayed with Hump and Bud after Bledsbury rather than return to her own people. As a child she underwent her people's dragon's-blood transformation, which gives her unusual strength and dark-adapted eyes. She drills Hump daily in egg-bonding, the dragon-keeper skill he cannot yet manage, and carries an unidentified dagger taken from Prince Kassius.

First appears in chapter 2

A wizard and an old associate of Hump's late master, known to the party at first only by reputation. Hump, Bud and Celaine are traveling to the lakeside town of Fishers Lake specifically to find her, hoping she will agree to take Hump on and train him properly. Wary of how an established wizard might react to the injury he carries to his soul, the three agree among themselves to keep his condition hidden from her.

Appears from the start

Hump's late master: a wizard and bronze-ranked adventurer who took in the orphaned Hump and trained him for years. He died of a fever from a goblin-poisoned wound, and Hump buried him at the edge of Brookwood Forest. He left behind his staff, his medallion, and the soul-bound Book of Infinite Pages, which took Hump as its next keeper. His teaching and his old connections still shape the road Hump travels.

Appears from the start

Celaine's teacher: a secretive, formidably skilled ranger who carries the same dragon's blood she does, in a more advanced form. He parted from the group and rode home alone, agreeing to delay reporting Hump's bond to the dragon egg and so buy him roughly a year before he must face his people's dragon-keeper trials. That borrowed time is the clock the party is running against.

Also known as Prince Kassius

Appears from the start

A duke's son and the king's nephew: outwardly a generous, charismatic royal, secretly a warlock and necromancer who preached that the gods are only ascended mortals hiding the path to power. Hump burned him down to a barely living husk at Bledsbury, but a masked shadow entity tore open reality and carried his body away. He was officially declared dead a hero, no remains were ever found, and neither his fate nor the secret order he served has been explained.

First appears in chapter 4

An arrogant young lord and a Chosen of Kelisia, in pale grey battle robes with silver embroidery and a blue-flame sigil, who channels his magic through a wand. Hump first meets him in Sheercliff outside the Alchemist Association, bullying a herbalist's apprentice into an illegal sale, and repays him by helpfully selling him a doctored mixture whose paranoia-inducing ingredient he neglects to mention.

Also known as Justine, Lady Daston

First appears in chapter 7

A noble of Sheercliff's upper city and an old friend of Bud's late mother Rochelle, who asks Bud to call her by her first name. A sixth-circle Chosen whose extended lifespan leaves her looking no older than thirty, she agrees to carry Bud's letter to his father and send a smoothing word of her own, though she will not lie for him. She warns that rumors already link Bud to Kassius's death, and that guild-restructuring pressure and rising monster activity are unsettling the kingdom.

First appears in chapter 10

The elderly high priest of Hestia at Fishers Lake: fervently devout, openly contemptuous of wizardry, and certain that the town's troubles are the work of the witch out at the lighthouse. He objects loudly to the mayor calling in outside adventurers, and softens only on learning Bud is both a Blackthorne and a Chosen of Kelisia, since purging spirits falls within Kelisia's domain. He storms out warning that accepting the party's help will bring disaster.

Also known as Mayor Arnold Pilton, Arnold

First appears in chapter 10

The mayor of Fishers Lake: broad, tired-looking and badly rattled by a crisis he cannot explain. He went over his own high priest's objections to ask the Adventurer's Guild for help, and briefs the party on months of ghost sightings and a count of missing people that has quietly risen to three, the latest a nine-year-old boy taken from his cattle the night before.

Also known as Captain Winfrey Pesh

First appears in chapter 10

Captain of the guard at Fishers Lake, carrying an enchanted family heirloom blade. Level-headed and quietly sympathetic to the wizard his high priest calls a witch, he sides with the mayor over Albry on accepting the party's help. He points out that the two in-town disappearances and the earlier sightings fell on new-moon nights, and that the next new moon is only days off.

Also known as Sergeant Fredricks

First appears in chapter 10

A sergeant of the Fishers Lake town guard, competent and courteous, who meets the party at the edge of town and apologizes for having to check their Guild credentials: a previous group had passed themselves off as adventurers, stayed without paying, and vanished overnight.

First appears in chapter 12

An older priestess of Hestia's temple at Fishers Lake who breaks with her own high priest in public, refusing to march a dangerously essence-drained colleague home untreated simply because the treatment on offer comes from a wizard. Most of the clergy back her over Albry. She takes charge of them in his absence and means to report his conduct to the wider church, believing the town may soon need a new high priest.

First appears in chapter 12

Vivienne's apprentice: a young man in his late teens with short reddish hair and plain woodsman's dress, carrying a hatchet and knife, who works nature magic rather than a wizard's ordinary essence craft. Set to tend the wounded after the attack on the lighthouse, he heals with a skill Hump recognizes as blessed rather than practiced, marking him as Chosen. Why a Chosen would apprentice himself to a wizard, he will not say.

First appears in chapter 24

A sardonic rogue in Lord Randall's adventuring party, quick with a needling remark and visibly less invested in his leader's grievances than the rest of the group. His place in the party appears precarious: he is anxious about being dismissed by a father figure connected to it, and when asked to step in against Randall he declines, whatever his private reservations.

First appears in chapter 24

A knight of House Orston and a shield-bearer of Byzantius, the war god, riding with Lord Randall's party. Formal and procedural where Randall is hot-tempered, she backs his duel challenge on principle rather than out of loyalty to his grudge, holding that a challenge issued before a respected Pantheon priest stands regardless of any doubt over that priest's own standing.

First appears in chapter 26

A fisherman from the hamlet of Lakewood who rows to Fishers Lake with news of a massacre: an elderly couple dead in their home, a neighbor missing, and no explanation for either. He guides the party back across the lake and searches the silent village alongside them, calling for people who do not answer.

First appears in chapter 50

Hump's captor: a towering figure of molded clay and stone with a glowing heartstone set in its chest, which names itself a gorger. It was once a nature spirit of the remnant realm, remade by that realm's destruction, and it survives only by feasting on souls and life essence. Shatter its body and it reforms around the stone. Over centuries spent inside the minds of the people it consumed it learned human speech and lore, and it wants to know where the wizard has hidden something taken from it.

First appears in chapter 51

A soul-drained woman who tends the gorger's prisoners, moving through its tunnels with an adventurer's medallion still around her neck and almost nothing left behind her eyes. Her body is unhurt; her mind has been hollowed out. She brings Hump the glowing essence chips that keep him alive, and when he places her as the missing member of the adventuring party that vanished months earlier and says her name aloud, something in her flickers.

Also known as Lady Helen Astida

First appears in chapter 52

A silver-ranked adventurer who arrives at Fishers Lake from Sheercliff two days after the attack, leading a party of reinforcements, and makes even Vivienne wait an hour before granting an audience. Pragmatic and defensively minded, she takes formal command of the town's defense, is openly skeptical of Vivienne's judgment, and refuses to mount any rescue: as far as she is concerned the people taken through the gateway are already dead.