The First of the Magi, one of the most powerful practitioners of the Art in the world, who arrives in Adua claiming to be the legendary founder of the Union and demanding access to the royal library. He is old, irritable, occasionally charming, and completely accustomed to getting what he wants. Everything about Bayaz is carefully constructed to suggest the benevolent wizard archetype, and Abercrombie spends three books systematically dismantling that suggestion. What Bayaz actually is, what he actually wants, and what he is willing to do to get it is the trilogy's central revelation, and it reframes everything that preceded it.