Thom Merrilin

A gleeman lives by his craft, and Thom's craft is polished to a shine. His juggling is quick and exact, his tumbling nimble for a man of his years, and his patched cloak, hung all over with bright scraps of cloth, does its own advertising the moment he steps into a village square. In the Two Rivers, where entertainment of any kind is a rarity, a gleeman is something close to a holiday. He has come to Emond's Field for the Festival, and the Green before the Winespring Inn is exactly the sort of stage he knows how to fill.

Yet the cheerful patter is not the whole of the man. He once served as a Court bard, a station far grander than juggling for farmers, and something of that other life clings to him still. He notices things. Strangers in fine clothes draw his eye, and around Moiraine and her hard companion Lan his easy manner cools into watchfulness, the kind of caution a man learns rather than is born with.

The result is a figure of pleasant contradictions. He is lanky and white-haired, a wanderer past his prime by the look of him, and he plays the carefree entertainer with complete conviction. But the wit is sharp, the eyes more so, and behind the mustaches and the flourishes sits a mind that has clearly weathered more than village greens. He grumbles about small comforts, tosses off jokes, and keeps his own counsel about everything that matters.