The figures who move through Song of the Dreamer: orphans and generals, scholars and tormentors, and the gods who wear mortal faces. These are the principals of the first book; many more walk the saga.
An orphan farm-boy from a fishing village at the edge of the map, who wants only to be counted a man. Then a raid burns away the life he knew, and a power he never asked for begins to wake in him.
An exiled Va'al channeller who has kept a lonely vigil longer than kingdoms have stood, sworn warden of an ancient relic the world was never meant to see again. When her charge is broken, she takes the road north.
A Riverlander veteran who wore steel long before he ever called himself a farmer. Quiet, unhurried, impossible to rattle: he becomes the steadying spine of a band thrown together by disaster, and the closest thing Aeron has to a brother.
Khor's most respected general and its most powerful living channeller: the man who refused a crown and made an emperor instead. When a new throne moves against him, he answers with the cold precision of a soldier who has never lost.
Carradon's daughter, and the youngest to pass the three Trials in a single moon since her father did. Gifted with rare depth of power and burdened by the name she carries, she wants only to be "just Elah", and to stand on her own.
An ancient scholar of the Citadel of Djedu whose healing borders on the miraculous and whose quiet correspondence reaches further than any general's army. Mentor to the powerful, keeper of old secrets, and far more than he appears.
Carradon's oldest comrade-in-arms and the mind behind his every campaign: a lean, scarred officer who cannot channel but reads a battlefield, or a ledger, better than anyone alive. When exile comes, she volunteers before he can ask.
A towering warrior of the Tru'Kante of the southern Blood Valley, painted for war and bound by an honour older than the Empire itself. Where his people walk, the desert seems to rise at their backs.
Carradon's trusted secretary and envoy: a patient keeper of ledgers and letters who carries his lord's word further than any blade could reach. By the close of the first book, his road has become one of the saga's earliest mysteries.
Taken from her mother as a child for a gift that surfaced too soon, Syrina survived twelve years inside the Hall of the Promised on cunning, fury, and refusal. Shaped by cruelty but defined by none of it, and about to be handed a destiny she never asked for.
The bishop who administers the Hall of the Promised: a cold, exacting servant of the One Church for whom every soul is first a matter of doctrine, and only then a person.
A master of the Hall whose discipline shades into cruelty, and the architect of much of Syrina's childhood. Some debts, she has sworn, will one day be paid in full.
General Wulfrik Crenikson, raised to command the One Church's 11th Legion (the "Fist of Heaven") and turned north toward the frozen frontier. A soldier of faith at the sharp end of a holy war.
"Gods whisper, the dead rise, and truth becomes the most dangerous weapon of all."
