Maigraith

Maigraith, also known as the Numinator, is a fictional character in Ian Irvine's "Tales of the Three Worlds" series. She is a major character in "The View from the Mirror" quartet, and serves as a background character in "The Well of Echoes" quartet, set centuries later, as the Numinator, the shadowy puppet-master in control of the Council of Scrutators. The Numinator is revealed to be Maigraith in the second book of the "The Song of the Tears" trilogy ("The Curse on the Chosen") where she once again becomes an important character, though of a more antagonistic nature.

"The View from the Mirror"

As a younger woman, Maigraith is described as being slender, of average height, having straight, shoulder-length chestnut-coloured hair and smooth amber skin. Her eyes, an unusual colour combination of carmen and indigo, mark her as a descendant of the Charon race. Under command of her liege Faelamor, leader of the Faellem race on Santhenar and the person to whom she owed her freedom to, she regularly consumed a drug to hide the revealing colour of her eyes. Faelamor's unsympathetic nature and disciplinary rule over her protege resulted in Maigraith's downcast personality, and her fear of failing to please Faelamor.

Maigraith was kept ignorant of her heritage by Faelamor, but eventually discovers she is triune: an extremely rare human descended from three of the four human species (one-third Charon and one-third old human from her maternal grandparents, Shand and Yalkara, and one third Faellem from her father, Faelamor's son). As a result, she has a powerful talent for the Secret Art, trained by Faelamor.

Eventually, Maigraith escapes Faelamor and falls in love with Rulke. It is revealed at the end of the quartet that she became pregnant to Rulke before his death at the hands of Tensor, and hints to a pregnant Karan (the only known triune other than herself, but of Aachim heritage rather than Charon) that their children would be well-suited for each other.

"The Well of Echoes"

In "The Curse on the Chosen", more is discovered about the fate of Maigraith and the other survivors of the Time of the Mirror, Karan and Llian. Yggur reveals that after Rulke's death, Maigraith became completely obsessed with "creating" a new human species of "quartines", descended from all four current species of human, as a memorial to her dead lover. Originally, she had planned to "mate" her son with Karan and Llian's daughter to achieve this, but became aggressive after Karan refused to give her daughter to Maigraith's violent son Rulken. Maigraith's relentless attempts to ensure her success in mating their children eventually drove Karan to kill her children, Llian, and herself, by hurling them into the roaring rapids of the river Garr.

After her failure to mate the two triune children, Maigraith manipulated the collapsing Council of Santhenar into reforming as the Council of Scrutators, and controlled it from her isolated bastion of the Tower of a Thousand Steps, far south on the frozen island Noom, dropping her old name and taking on the title "The Numinator". She allowed the scrutators to rule as they will, on the condition that every birth on Santhenar was recorded in bloodline registers. When the war with the lyrinx began, rather than winning it straight away as the council could have done, the war was stretched out over 150 years at the Numinator's command simply to allow her use of breeding factories in trying to create a quartine child. The scrutators, who kept supreme authority as long as the war continued, did not complain at the prolonging of the war, though it cost millions of lives.

The Numinator was not mentioned until the last book of the quarter, "Chimaera", when it is revealed that Xervish Flydd's horrific scars were from punishment for his enquiry into the Numinator. As a result, Flydd holds a deep desire for retribution for the continual pain the scars cause him.

"The Song of the Tears"

Ten years after the end of the lyrinx war and the collapse of the Council of Scrutators, Flydd informs Maelys and Nish that their only hope in finding an antithesis to the Profane Tears of God-Emperor Jal-Nish lie with the Numinator. In "The Curse on the Chosen", the allies finally reach the Tower of a Thousand Steps, but the Numinator is mostly apathetic to their cause and instead uses Flydd's chthonic flame to open a portal to the Nightland. There she seeks Emberr, Yalkara's Charon son, but arrives moments after his death, caused by contact with chthonic flame on Maelys's body after the two slept together. The Numinator expresses plans to keep Maelys prisoner in case she became pregnant to Emberr, but Yalkara arrives and demands that any child from Emberr would be hers. The two battle over Maelys, but she escapes out of the Nightland and away with the other allies to Gendrigore, where the god-like Stilkeen finally breaks into Santhenar and demands that the chthonic flame, its "soul-core", be returned to it. The Numinator pressures Yalkara and discovers that the theft of the Stilkeen's flame was her fault.