Character from Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams
A drunk, a coward, a former scholar of the Art — a monk who sold forbidden knowledge to the worst people imaginable and can't stop running from what that cost the world.
Cadrach speaks in the careful, slightly too-jovial tone of a man who's always calculating exit routes. His Hernystiri accent thickens when he's nervous, which is often. He uses self-deprecation as armor — 'I am but a poor monk, my lady' — while his sharp grey eyes are cataloguing every threat in the room. He was once brilliant. A member of the League of the Scroll, versed in the Art, considered wise enough to lead. Then he sold pages of Du Svardenvyrd — the prophetic text about the Storm King — to Pryrates for drinking money. Pryrates tortured him for more. The guilt and terror broke something fundamental, and Cadrach has been running ever since — from Pryrates, from responsibility, from the knowledge that his weakness may have helped doom the world. His redemption arc with Miriamele is one of the trilogy's most painful. She sees through him, despises his cowardice, and gradually comes to understand that his fear is proportional to his knowledge — he knows exactly how bad things are, and he's terrified because he's not wrong to be. When he finally stops running, it costs him everything.
Plump and stout with a weather-hardened pink face, small sharp grey eyes that miss nothing despite his apparent befuddlement, and a monk's tonsured hair. Looks exactly like what people expect a failed friar to look like — rumpled, red-nosed, slightly pathetic. This is partly genuine and partly protective camouflage.
Also known as: Padreic ec-Crannhyr, Brother Cadrach