Character from Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Shield Anvil of Fener's Grey Swords who took the grief of an entire people into himself — the Malazan world's purest expression of compassion as an act of war against despair.
Itkovian's defining act — embracing the grief of the T'lan Imass, three hundred thousand years of accumulated sorrow from an undead race that had forgotten how to weep — is the emotional apex of the Malazan series. He is the Shield Anvil, the one who takes the pain of others into himself so they don't have to carry it alone. He dies of compassion, literally, and in doing so becomes something more. He is the proof that in Erikson's universe, the most powerful act is not killing or conquering but simply saying: give me your pain, I will hold it for you.
Tall, grey-haired before his time, wearing the battered armor of the Grey Swords. His face carries the particular exhaustion of a man who has felt too much for too long and refuses to stop feeling.
Also known as: Itkovian, Shield Anvil, Shield Anvil Itkovian