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Reread

Reread of The Judging Eye: Chapter Nine

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Reread of The Aspect-Emperor Series

Book 1: The Judging Eye

by R. Scott Bakker

Chapter Nine

Momemn

Welcome to Chapter Nine of my reread. Click here if you missed Chapter Eight!

A beggar’s mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king’s mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.

—TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES

My Thoughts

So, pretty self-evident. Rulers’ mistakes (or politicians passing ill-thought-out laws) cost their people. This is an Esmenet chapter, so it primes you to watch what she does. What decisions will she make in this chapter that will cause others to suffer?

Let’s read and find out!

Well, I read this chapter and I thought this was referring to Esmenet. But the only decision she makes is to leave Kelmomas in favor of her audience with Sharacinth. It’s hard to call that a mistake. She doesn’t know he’s a homicidal homunculus pretending to be a little boy. Whether or not Sharacinth lived or died, would not stop Nannaferi cementing her control over the Yatwerians via such a blatant demonstration of the Dread Mother’s power.

So is it Nannaferi the leader? No. She doesn’t make a decision. She’s just Yatwer’s puppet. So is this a critique on Yatwer? A lot of people are about to suffer from her actions. And she is making a mistake in opposing Kellhus.

Kellhus doesn’t appear to make any mistakes here, either.

Honestly, the only mistake is Esmenet with Kelmomas and trusting him. It’s going to lead to him becoming the No-God. That’s a lot of people suffering.

Of course, there will be real mistakes that are made in this storyline ending in Esmenet and Maithanet feuding. Either way, this is a quote that we should pay attention to.

Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), Sakarpus

Her face seemed numb for tingling.

Kelmomas asks his mother if Samarmas hears them. She’s clutching tight to his hand as she says, yes because he’s a god’s son. She has her cheeks marked with a line of her dead son’s ashes. She would do this every full moon until she no longer wept.

Even now, she could feel his residue across her cheeks, burning, accusing, as though transmuted, Samarmas had become antithetical to his mother, a kind of poison that her skin could not abide.

As though he had become wholly his father’s.

She has to wear these because the tradition goes back thousands of years as she inters her son’s ashes in the High Royal Ashery in the Temple Xothei. She doesn’t get to keep him in her household’s shrine. This makes her grief public and not “tender and private.” The mobs have gathered to watch her procession to the temple. It’s a “seething carnival of mourning and anticipation.” Even in the bowels of the temple, she can hear them.

What would they say when they saw that her cheeks were dry? What would they make of an Empress who could not weep for the loss of her dearest child?

They pass niches for those interred here, including Ikurei Xerius and Conphas. Theirs are unadorned. She finds it ironic to put her son’s ashes by Conphas. She ignores the offerings left before his urn.

Someday, she thought, all her children would rest in this immobile gloom. Static. Speechless. Someday, she would reside here, cool dust encased in silver, gold, or perhaps Zeümi jade—something cold, for all the substances that Men coveted were cold. Someday the heat of her would leach into the world, and she would be as dirt to the warm fingers of the living.

Someday she would be dead.

She feels relief at the thought and is shocked by it. She sways and is on the floor before she realizes it. Kelmomas watches. She tries to smile. He seems vulnerable like his dead brother. Then he spoke and asks her if Samarmas hears them. She sees her dead son lying broken on the spear he’d landed on every time she sees Kelmomas. The boy clarifies that he means when he thinks things, does Samarmas hear them. He starts crying and she hugs him. She feels like her soul has been split in half, one half grieving with Kelmomas, the other numbed and confused.

How could she protect him? And if she could not, how could she love him?

She laid her head across his scalp, blew at the hairs stuck to the seal of her lips. Her cheeks were wet, but whether the tears were her own she could not tell. No matter. The mob would be appeased. Her Exalt-Ministers would be relieved, for the Yatwerian matter had become far more than a Cultic nuisance. Who would raise voice or hand against a bereaved mother? And Kellhus…

She was so tired. So weary.

“The dead hear everything, Kel.”

Iothiah…

A life lived, no forgotten.

And in its place…

A man in a small room is confused as he stares at a young woman nursing an infant. She grows concern at him and calls him love, asking if he’s fine. She says he looks like he’s dreaming. He gets up and heads to an open doorway and walks outside. He reaches the gate. The baby is crying now as the woman rushes after him, asking what he’s doing. She keeps asking if she did something wrong. He batters her from him and keeps walking.

Two hundred and fifty-seven years before, a Shigeki builder had saved twenty-eight silver talents by purchasing brunt brick form farther up the River Sempis, where the clay was riddled with sand. Aside from the tan hue, the tenement he raised was indistinguishable from the others. Over the course of the following centuries, the flood-waters had twice risen high enough to lave the southernmost pylons. Though the damage appeared minimal, sheets of material had fallen from the base of outermost support, lending it a gnawed looked, which for some reasons, seemed to attract urinating dogs.

It toppled exactly when it should, drawing with it an entire quadrant, collapsing four floors of apartments and crushing all the unfortunates within. There was a roar, a collective peal of screams punched into silence. Afterwards, dust sweeping out and up. The earthen clap and tinkle of raining bricks. The streets packed with shouting passers-by

The woman and her infant were gone.

A life forgotten…

The man walks away, threading through a crowded market place without ever once jostling someone, taking the perfect path. He spots an old woman begging and marches up to her. She looks no different than the other wretches in the temple’s shadow. A poorly thrown coin at the beggar causes her to look up at the right moment and see the man. He helps the old woman stand. She has childish awe on her face and identifies herself as Nannaferi.

The pulse and fork of blood. A voice so close the speaker could not be seen. The pulse and fork of blood behind this place…

“I am the White-Luck… I walk. I breathe.”

Nannaferi says they are siblings while quivering like a girl just past menarche. He wipes away her tears for “a life forgotten.” He calls her beautiful.” She sheds more tears for “what stood in its [a life forgotten’s] place.”

Momemn…

Esmenet, gazing at her stand mirror, glimpses Kelmomas lurking in the corner of her room. She’s thinking about plans, hardly noticing her reflection. She’s gazed at herself too many times for her appearance to hold her attention. She is about to meet with Hanamem Sharacinth, the Yatwerian Matriarch. Kelmomas is spying on her and she pretends not to see him. She remembers how Samarmas and Kelmomas had played this game before. Grief grips her. Finally, she acknowledges her son. He doesn’t answer her right away and she dismisses her body-slaves. Then she asks him where his nursemaid Porsi is before remembering that the woman had been scourged and fired. When he still doesn’t answer, she turns back to her appearance, making sure her clothing is perfect.

“I c-can be Sammy…”

She heard these words more with her breast it seemed than her ears. A flush of cold about the heart. Even still, she continued to face the mirror.

“What do you mean? Kel, what are you saying?”

Our children are so familiar to us that we often forget them, which is why the details of their existence sometimes strike us with discomfiting forces. Either because she watched him through the mirror or in spite of it, Esmenet suddenly saw her son as a little stranger, the child of some unknown womb. For a moment, he seemed too beautiful to be…

Believed.

Kelmomas cries that if Esmenet wants him to be Samarmas he will be. Heartbreak fills her, and she realizes she’d been selfish in wallowing if she was truly mourning Samarmas or not. She tries to speak but is too choked as Kelmomas continues that he looks just like his twin. She rushes to him and sees how her “circles of self-pity” had let her ignore Kelmomas’s pain. Though she grieved, she also knew the truth that children died in a cruel world. She had an internal strength to weather it, but she realizes that Kelmomas has lost himself and doesn’t understand.

I’m all he has left, she thought, stroking his fine, golden hair.

Even still, something dark in her recoiled.

Children. They wept so much.

Esmenet is in the Imperial Audience Hall. It hasn’t changed, other than the banners, from when Xerius was emperor. She remembers something Kellhus told her: “Monuments were as much prayers as they were tools, overreaching arrested in dwarfing stone.” It proves the men like to look strong especially when dealing with Gods. Esmenet is going to need this for her audience with Sharacinth.

She sits on her throne in the center of all the frozen pageantry. Behind her, the sunlight streamed over her, forcing people to see her against the bright sky, especially at sunset when the sun is setting behind her. It makes her feel more powerful as they squint to stare at her. Above, birds fluttered. Some would get caught in a net to keep them from nesting in the rafters. They would struggle to escape, their shill shouts hurting the ears and not inspiring compassion. Sometimes, at night, she would let Samarmas help free the trapped birds.

Orisons (an archaic word for prayer) rise from the galleys, singing praise to Kellhus. This announces the Matriarch’s arrival. Thinking of Samarmas now makes her think of Kelmomas whom she left sobbing and begging her to stay while promising he would be Samarmas.

“We l-love you, Mom-mommy… So-so m-much…”

Hearing him use “we” still makes her emotional. But she can’t afford this as Hanamem Sharacinth, the figurehead of the Cult of Yatwer, approaches. Despite custom saying Sharacinth should dress in poverty, she has wealth on her. Maithanet is accompanying her. As the orisons fade, the pair reach them. The Matriarch kneels and addresses her. Esmenet tells her to rise, saying they’re all “children of the Ur-Mother.” The Matriarch agrees and rises. For a moment, she glances at Maithanet as if questioning why he’s not helping her stand then remembers who he is. She’s used to being around subordinates and has trouble showing deference. She acts defensively.

Esmenet bluntly asks about the White-Luck Warrior. Sharacinth isn’t surprised that this is why she’s here. She says she’s heard the rumors. Esmenet calls it treason and Sharacinth agrees. Esmenet is annoyed that Sharacinth speaks to her as an equal. The Matriarch didn’t even offer condolences. Esmenet swallows it and presses Sharacinth for information.

A calculated pause. Sharacinth’s eyes seemed bred to bovine insolence, her lips to a sour line.

Esmenet struggled to draw breath around her outrage. Arrogant ingrate! Treacherous old bitch!

Was this what she had imagined all those years ago, sitting on her sill in Sumna, enticing passers-by with a glimpse of the shadows riding up and down her inner thighs? Knowing nothing of power, Esmenet had confused it with its trappings. Ignorance—few things were so invisible. She could remember staring at the coins she had so coveted, those coins that could ward starvation or clothe bruised skin, and wondering at the profile of the man upon them, the Emperor who seemed to stand astride her every bounty and privatization. To hated. Not feared. Not loved. These were passions better spent on his agents. The emperor himself had always seemed… far too far.

She remembers her life as a whore as she tried to imagine what I was like for Ikurei Xerius III to sit here and she can’t quite understand how she got here. She thinks once when she showed Samarmas a silver coin and asked who was on it. He couldn’t even though it was herself on the coin. She feels grief now. It’s easy picking at her wound to find the pain. She hopes her makeup hides it as she presses Sharacinth for what she’s heard about the White-Luck Warrior. She answers that she’s heard many rumors.

It’s obvious that the plan of honoring the prideful Sharacinth with an audience to swell her ego and make her pliable is not working. Esmenet changes tactics and rebukes Sharacinth, and receives a sneer in answer. This sends terror through her, one only someone with a position of power can feel. A reminder that one day someone else will be in charge. Sharacinth has reminded Esmenet that power “came down to recognition.”

It was all naked force otherwise.

Maithanet roars at Sharacinth with the force of his position. She begins to talk back to him when she is seized by fear. She wheezes as a bright light appears above her. It spirals outward, too bright to look at. Esmenet shields her eyes with her forearm. When she looks again, Kellhus has appeared just as she remembers him, the two demon heads dangling from his belt. He descends to the ground, his presence almost shaking the building. Sharacinth stands stunned while Maithanet kneels. Esmenet doesn’t stare at her husband as he takes his place to her right. She projects confidence like she knew this would happen. She can’t let anyone know it surprises her.

With a mild rebuke that carries the penalty of death, Kellhus asks why she’s standing. She throws herself sobbing to the floor, begging for his forgiveness. He asks if she’ll oppose the sedition and blasphemy. She wails yes.

“For make no mistake, I shall war against you and yours.” The grinding savagery of his voice swallowed the entirety of the hall, battered the ear like fists. “Your deeds I shall strike from the stones. Your temples I shall turn into funeral pyres. And those that still dare take up breath or arms against me, I shall hunt, unto death and beyond! And my Sister, whom you worship, shall lament in the dark, her memory no more than a dream of destruction. Men shall spit to cleanse their mouths of her name!”

The old woman shook, arched back as if gagging in terror.

“Do you understand what I say, Sharacinth?”

“Yessssh!”

He tells her to obey Esmenet and Maithanet and to stop being a figurehead but claim the leadership of the Cult then root out the faction opposed to him. It seems like the entire world is behind Kellhus as he orders Sharacinth to hunt down Psatama Nannaferi and end her. Sharacinth begs for Nannaferi. He roars at her demanding if she would offend him in his house. She shrieks and pisses herself. The world seems to return to normal and Kellhus moves to Sharacinth and tells her to taste the air, for her every breath is at his mercy. He tells her not to embrace humiliation and the “shrill poison” of conceit. He tells her to embrace the life he offers her.

Esmenet had heard these words so many times they should have seemed more a recitation than something meant, an incantation that never failed to undo the knots of pride that so bound men. And yet each time, she found herself sinking through the surface, floating utterly submerged. Each time, she heard them for the first time, and she was frightened and renewed.

Over the years, her husband had ceased being many things to Esmenet. But he was a miracle still.

Sharacinth begs forgiveness over and over. Kellhus asks Maithanet to comfort her. He does while Kellhus turns to Esmenet and holds out his hand. She takes them, And he teleports them from the throne room to their quarters where he immediately collapses in exhaustion. She barely gets him to their bed. He calls her wife as he rolls onto his back. She asks how many times he teleported. He can only travel to where he can see, from horizon to horizon. “Many,” he answers.

Simple, her soul whispered. I must make things simple.

“You came…” she began, shocked to find she was already crying. “You came as s-soon as you heard?” She knew this could not be true. Each and every night Mandate Far-Callers spoke with him in his dreams, appraised him of all that happened on the Andiamine Heights and elsewhere. He had come because of the situation with the Yatwerians, because of Sharacinth. Not because of his idiot son.

There were no accidents with Anasûrimbor Kellhus.

She cries in his arms that they’re cursed. He catches her eyes and says it’s only misfortune. She finds his words to be a drug. She protests that the White-Luck is just that then adds Mimara has run away and can’t be found and now Samarmas is dead. She adds people celebrated his death. Kellhus cuts her off to tell her to do no reprisals over that. The Yatwerians are not a people who can be massacred. They are spread across the entire Three Seas, impossible to root out. He says only the Great Ordeal and conquering Golgotterath matters. He talks about how other problems might seem important. She cuts him off to protest their son is dead.

Her voice pealed raw across the polished stone hollows.

Silence. Where for others the lack of response augured wounds scored or truths too burdensome to ignore or dismiss, for her husband it meant something altogether different. His silence was always one with the world about it, monolithic in the way of framing things. Without exception it said, Hear the words you have spoken. You. It was never, ever, the mark of error or incapacity.

Which was why, perhaps, she found him so easy to worship and so difficult to love.

He then speaks her name with such warmth and compassion that she starts crying. He tells her that he doesn’t expect her to take comfort in the Great Ordeal’s importance but to know that it has taken precedence over even the collapse of the New Empire or the death of their son. For a moment, staring into his eyes is liking staring into her own. She understands this. He knows her better than herself and, in fact, had already known the words he told her. “His tone had told her so.”

She asks how much tragedy must happen and he says all of it so long as the world isn’t destroyed. She beats on his chest and asks why the Gods hunt Kellhus. Why they want to stop him unless they want toe Second Apocalypse.

She had chosen Kellhus over Achamian. Kellhus! She had chosen her womb. She had chosen power and sumptuous ease. She had chosen to lay her hand upon the arm of a living god… Not this! Not this!

Kellhus has knows Maithanet has explained this to her, but she is still confused. He talks about how they are different from others, thinking about the future and walking the Shortest Path through the Thousandfold Thought. The Gods are jealous Kellhus has this task. She hears his inhuman voice that had conquered not only the entire world but “first her thighs and then her heart.”

She thought of that final afternoon with Achamian, the day that Holy Shimeh fell.

She sobs that she doesn’t have the strength for this and asks him to put Maithanet in charge. He’s half-Dûnyain. He can handle it. Kellhus says she is strong and Maithanet has his task as Shriah. She demands why her.

“Esmi, you have my love, my trust. I know that you have the strength to do this.”

He says the White-Luck will break against her. She asks how he can know. He cups her face in a haloed hand. He says her fear and grief and regret makes her pure.

Iothiah…

“Cursed!” Nannaferi cried. “Cursed be he who misleads the blind man on the road!”

All old voices failed in some manner; they cracked and they quavered, or they dwindled with the loss of the wind that once empowered them. But for Psatama Nannaferi, the breaking of her voice, which had once made her family weep for its melodic purity, seemed to reveal more than it marred, as though it were but paint, hoary and moulted, covering something furious and elemental. It struck over the surrounding clamour, reached deep into the packed recesses of the Catacombs.

The Charnel Hall is packed with hundreds and lit by torches. Smoke ripples across the ceiling. She curses the thief who steals from those and causes starvation. As she speaks, she’s standing naked and wrinkled, her body covered in white sigils. She’s covered in sweat. Before her on a “slave’s chair” sits the White-Luck Warrior. She then curses the murderer who kills his brother as she parts her legs. Period blood runs down her thighs. She stands proud, showing off the strength of her womb. She is fertile once more. People weep at the miracle. Everyone is roaring as she next curses the whore for choosing “gold over seed, for power over obedience, for lust over love!” She smears her palm in period blood and raises it before the crowd.

“Cursed be the false—the deceivers of men! Cursed be the Aspect-Emperor!”

There are pitches of passion that are holy simply for the intensity of their expression. There is worship beyond the caged world of words. Psatama Nannaferi’s hatred had long ago burned away the impurities, the pathetic pageant of rancour and resentment that so often make folds of the great. Hers was the grinding hatred, the homicidal outrage of the betrayed, the unwavering fury of the degraded and the dispossessed. The hatred that draws tendons sharp, that cleanses only the way murder and fire can cleanse.

And at long last she had found her knife.

She approaches the White-Luck warrior and marks him with a line of period blood across each cheek. These are the wurammi, the counterpart to the lines of ash mourning mothers wear. She preaches about how those in the shadows are always giving because they are weak. But Yatwer knows why the weak are the ones abused. Why the strong do “everything save kill!” She mounts the White-Luck Warrior and impales herself on his penis.

“Because without Givers,” she shouted in a voice hoarse for passion—doubly broken, “there is nothing for them to take! Because without slaves, there can be no masters! Because we are the wine that they imbibe, the bread that they eat, the cloth that they soil, the walls that they defend! Because we are the truth of their power! The prize they would conquer!”

And she could feel it; he the centre of her, and she the circumference of him—an ache encircled by fire. Hoe and Earth! Hoe and Earth! She was an old crone splayed across a boy, her eyes the red of blood, his the white of seed. The crowd before them bucked and heaved, a cauldron of avid faces and sweat-slicked limbs.

“We shall stoke!” she moaned and roared. “We shall foment! We shall teach those who give what it means to take!”

It’s important that he’s young and the father of only one child. He was not yet broken by the world but not at his full strength either. She says that they will no longer just be the “sea that drowns” but the “knife that cuts.” The White-Luck is their knife. As she rides him, the earth kicks like an unborn child in the womb. As she does, she feels his strength filing him. She’s growing young while he becomes older. His youth is transformed into a man worn by the years while she becomes firm and fair. The pair reach their climax.

Beaten and battered she had been tipped in libation. And now the dread Goddess raised her, a bowl cast of gold.

A vessel. A grail. A cup filled with the Waters-Most-Holy. The Blood and the Seed.

“Cursed!” she shrieked in a singer’s heart-cutting voice, high and pure, yet warmed by the throngs, a never-diminishing pool that was passed from palm to palm. She watched the Ur-Mother’s children mark their cheeks with the red line of hatred…

“Cursed be he who misleads the blind man on the road!”

My Thoughts

Esmenet’s guilt is on full display. It’s why she can’t stand having her son’s ashes on her because it reminds her that she was too busy running the kingdom and not paying attention to her son like a mother should have. Now Samarmas has become like Kellhus, something she rebels against. It’s one of the biggest insights into just how much she has come to hate Kellhus over the years.

Who is leaving offerings to Conphas’s ashes? No idea. But it’s also very East Asian. Leaving food is a common thing in Japan and China. I was at the temple where the Forty-Seven Ronin are buried with their lord and his wife. Though they died in 1702, their descendants are still leaving offerings to this day. Cans of Asahi Beer, lit incense, and canned salmon from Hokkaido. If you ever go to Japan, visit the Sengakuji Temple.

Esmenet’s going to outlive most of her children. By the end of this series, Samarmas, Theliopa, and Inrilatas are dead. Serwa is badly wounded. No idea if Kayûtas is alive or dead. Kelmomas is the No-God. Is there anything left of him?

If the dead hear everything, then she must feel even guiltier for feeling this revulsion to Samarmas. In death, he’s become a Dûnyain. No longer human. What she’s always feared. Now she’s afraid Kelmomas will suffer the same fate. He’ll stop being human become something inhuman.

And with that, we switch to the White-Luck Warrior. A young man with a young wife and a new child who has just forgotten everything. He’s about to die with his wife. His life is about to be over, but now Yatwer has possessed him. She has stolen everything from him to make him into the perfect warrior. Beyond a mere Narindar.

We see how the gods see the world. They know the history of everything at once. The history of the building, the man who throws the coin badly, are all known to Yatwer at once. She can guide him through the marketplace because she knows where everyone is going to move because, to her, it’s happened, is happening, and will happen all at once. She delivers the White-Luck Warrior to Nannaferi. At this point, the readers have to understand the Gods are real and are moving against Kellhus.

“Our children are so familiar to us that we often forget them, which is why the details of their existence sometimes strike us with discomfiting forces.” Bakker is addressing the reader using present tense with this sentence before turning it back to Esmenet. He’s including himself in it. This is probably something he’s realized with his own children (I suspect he’s a father, but I do know he’s married).

Kelmomas plays Esmenet like his fiddle. He gets her out of her inward grief and gets her to channel it to him so he can be at the center of her world again. After all, he killed Samarmas to have her all to himself. He can’t let her own pain steal her away either.

Even still, she finds his grief a burden “Children. They wept so much.” She can’t find herself morning for Samarmas because he feels to Dûnyain to her know that he’s dead. It’s like Kellhus has stolen another of her children.

Monuments are like prayers and both overreach. They both seek to go beyond the mortal life. A monument will outlast the man who erected it. A prayer reaches to the Outside to sway a divine being into intervening on this world. They’re both grasping beyond our reach.

Kelmomas failed to capture her attention. He sprung on her right before her audience. This is a test. But she goes with obligation and goes to see Sharacinth. Is it any wonder that the little shit murders her next. He’s killed one person for her love. It’s so much easier to kill the next.

Esmenet is a reminder that the people we see in power, the politicians and presidents and prime ministers, and even the famous actors, might seem remote. Might seem wise and authoritative. But they’re just people. They’re no different than you save, “A beggar’s mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king’s mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.”

Remember that lesson. They get mad. Angry. They get offended. They make mistakes. They’re not savors. They’re not mighty. This is the very lesson the Frank Herbert wanted to show with Dune and Paul Atreides over the first three books. He’s a good man. Heroic, even. He’s the sort of man that you want to be your leader. And he couldn’t stop the results of his actions. He could barely keep the ship going straight.

Not surprisingly, Samarmas couldn’t recognize his mother on a coin. The parts of his brain that lets humans see images in patterns might not work with him. He might be able to tell faces apart (yes, that is something that can happen to you where all faces are the same to you because our brains spend a lot of time processing other’s expressions and if that gets damaged this happens). This might also be a hint at the theory that the Anasûrimbor line has nonman blood in it. Nonman cannot see two-dimensional, frozen images. Their art shows things blurring through motion and always has some level of three dimensions to them. Their brains just do not work like ours.

Power is an illusion. You have it because people give it to you. When they stop giving it to you, you either use actual power (violence) to force them to capitulate or you reveal just how empty it truly is.

As ever, Kellhus knows how to make an entrance. This both sets up the end of Book 3 when he returns to her as well as the fact that he can teleport. We’ll see this used greatly in the next books. It also reminds of his planning. He has anticipated when things will happen. When they’ll go wrong. When he needs to act.

Even hating Kellhus, even knowing the truth of him, Esmenet still worships him.

And poor Sharacinth. She got a brute force lesson in dealing with a Dûnyain. No time to pussyfoot around. Break her, remake her, and send her on her way to root out the cult plotting against him. And if it wasn’t for one crazy child, it might have done something.

Probably not since the White-Luck Warrior is already born and hooked up with Nannaferi and she’s about to find her tool in Fanayal.

For one moment, Esmenet wants to believe she’s married to a human. That her husband came because their son is dead. But then she remembers, he doesn’t love. Well, he does, but so weakly as not to matter. He cares for her, but their children, there appears no evidence of that.

Kellhus is never wrong the God is never wrong. How can you love something that isn’t human? That doesn’t make mistakes. That you can’t affect emotionally. She said those words to hurt him because he’s not showing pain. He should be grieving with her, but he can’t. How can she love something like him?

She chooses her children, power, and prestige over Kellhus and is learning how this hasn’t worked out. All her children are not human save Mimara who hates her. She has the power but realizes how hollow it is. The ease comes at the stress and fear of ruling. What seemed luxurious from the outside only reveals more problems. The idyllic life she wanted for herself and children was a lie. Now she has the Gods wanting to kill her family.

It’s clear she regrets not going with Achamian, that she thinks she’s made the wrong choice. Of course, Kellhus never would have let her go. He needed her womb.

“Esmi, you have my love, my trust. I know that you have the strength to do this.” I think these are true words from Kellhus. He does love and trust her. He rescued her from the collapse of the New Empire. I do not think he faked the fatigue. Teleporting all that way is tiring. Serwë, half-Dûnyain and a prodigy with the Gnosis herself, could only teleport a single time without needing rest. To come fetch her at the end of the Great Ordeal, he had to travel four or five times as far. He then spared Kelmomas for her. Love is both what lets Kellhus choose to save the world over stopping his damnation and what also causes him to fail because he could never love enough. He put his all into saving the world and ignored his family. His sons who were of no use to him.

You can tell Esmenet still worships Kellhus because she still sees the halos.

So the White-Luck Warrior sits on the slave chair. He’s here to be bound to Yatwer’s will. She has stolen him from his life, wiped it from his memory, and made a perfect warrior out of him. It is the feminine dominating the masculine in this ritual. The woman’s sexuality conquering the males with her talk of “gluttonous Phallus Eater.” We also see the beginning of her fertility returning to her. Once again, her womb is being washed clean by her menstrual blood to prepare for another egg to be released and another chance of creating life.

Nannaferi rails about slavers who take even as she is taking from the White-Luck Warrior on the chair. He is giving her his seed, his youth, so that she can be young again. She is conquering him with her sexuality.

Knife that cuts is martial force. The power of the few that dominates the many. The sea that drowns is the multitude that sweeps over and no amount of force can stop the tide of sheer numbers. The poor and abused have always been the later, only able effect change through mass riots instead of precise use of force. The White-Luck Warrior changes this. He’s their knife.

If you want to keep reading this, click here for Chapter 9!

And you have to check out my fantasy novel, Above the Storm!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To save the skies, Ary must die!

If you love the works of Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, and Steven Erikson, then check out my first ever Fantasy novel!

You do not want to miss out on this awesome adventure!

You can buy or burrow Above the Storm today!

Reread

Reread of The Judging Eye: Chapter Eight

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Reread of The Aspect-Emperor Series

Book 1: The Judging Eye

by R. Scott Bakker

Chapter Eight

River Rohil

Welcome to Chapter Eight of my reread. Click here if you missed Chapter Seven!

The will to conceal and the will to deceive are one and the same. Verily, a secret is naught but a deception that goes unspoken. A lie that only the Gods can hear.

—MEREMPOMPAS, EPISTEMATA

My Thoughts

Well, I think we know the big secret for the chapter: that Achamian is leading all these men to their deaths to satisfy his own obsession. But is that the only secret, the only deception, among the Skin eaters? We have who Cleric is and what his arrangement is with Kosoter. And that ties into why an Imperial agent had traveled into the wilderness to find Kosoter at the start of this book.

There are a lot of lies going on in the Skin Eaters.

Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), Sakarpus

The Skin-Eaters are taking a reliable rough up the River Rohil up to Ochain Passes to cross the Osthwai Mountains and enter the Meörn Wilderness. Once they’ve passed the Fringe, the edge of “skinny country” things would get deadly. For two nights, Achamian made his own camp and cooked his own meals. On the third night, Sarl invites him to Kosoter’s fire where Kiampas and the Cleric are dining.

Though Achamian was apprehensive, it goes how it could be expected, Sarl babbling on about anything with Kiampas speaking caution and the Nonman giving cryptic and strange observations. Kosoter says nothing. The next night, Achamian has to eat alone, which annoys him because he’s becoming lonely. He didn’t expect “heartsickness” to be one of them. However, he is moping by himself, wanting to belong.

They’re camping in a place often used by scalpers. Achamian can see them all, drifting from men sharing camaraderie. As the night goes on, he starts realizing how precious these interactions are. “They seemed at once precious and imperiled, like jewels mislaid across open ground, something sure to be scooped up by jealous enormities.”

People notice him watching. A Nilnameshi notices Achamian watching. After pointing it out to his friends. Then he heads over to Achamian. He keeps himself clean-shaved like a Nilnameshi caste-noble. He’s a handsome man who “inspired husbands to be more gracious to their wives.” He studies Achamian.

“You’re not one of them,” he said, nodding with raised brows towards the Captain’s fire. “And you certainly aren’t one of the Herd.” He tipped his head to his right, in the direction of three neighboring fire pits, each of them crammed with younger flame-yellowed faces. Most sporting long Galeoth mustaches. “That means you must be one of the Bitten.”

“The Bitten?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling broadly. “One of us.”

“One of you.”

The generous Nilnameshi invites Achamian to join him with the others, using a strange turn of phrase “punch of smoke.” Confused what it means, Achamian follows him. He soon learns that it refers to hashish and he’s handed a pipe. Out of nervousness, he inhales.

The smoke burned like molten lead. They roared with laughter as he hacked himself purple.

“See!” He heard Somandutta cry. “It wasn’t just me!”

“Wizard!” someone growled and cheered. Others took it up—“Wiz-Wiza-Wizard!”—and Achamian found himself smiling and choking and nodding in bleary-eyed acknowledgment. He even waved.

He’s told he’ll get used to it, joking that they have only the best. As the drug sinks in, Soma introduces him to the other. They’re “strangers hammered into families by the privations of the road.” With a newcomer, they’re all showing off, excited to have a new face in the Bitten. Galian is the oldest, an ex-Nansur soldier who fought at Kiyuth. A large man called Ox (Oxwora) is a renegade son of Yalgrota Sranchammer. Xonghis was an Imperial Tracker and prized by the captain and gets special privileges since he keeps them alive in the wilderness. Pox (Pokwas) is a disgraced Zeümi Sword-Dancer. Soot (Sutadra) is a Kianene who won’t talk about his past. He’s a possible Fanim heretic. Last is Moraubon, a former Shrial Priest from Galeoth. They joke he’s half-skinny.

These seven are the original members of the Skin-Eaters formed up by Kosoter ten years ago. After so many slogs, they feel gnawed upon by danger. All of them have literally been bitten by Sranc and have the scars to prove it. (Pox has his on his butt-cheek). The make raucous jokes about it. Achamian matches their humor.

Somandutta was the first to howl. Then all the Bitten joined in, rocking on their mats, trading looks like sips of priceless win, or simply rolling their eyes heavenward, shining beneath the eternal arches of the night.

And Drusas Achamian found himself friends with the men he had in all likelihood killed.

Achamian is surprised his old body is not only enduring the march but keeping up with the Skin-Eaters. His hard life for the last twenty years has given him the strength for this march. They march down the trail, passing inbound companies of half-starved men who, despite looking like the living dead, are jubilant to be reaching Marrow. They were trapped on the other side of the mountains by winter snows. Soma tells Achamian the Ochain Passes have been more unpredictable the last few years. The passing scalpers trade jokes, news, gossip, and complaining about skinnies.

Achamian listened without comment, both fascinated and dismayed. Like all Mandate Schoolman, he looked at the world with the arrogance of someone who had survived—fen if only in proxy—the greatest depravities circumstance could offer. But what happened in the Wilds, whatever it was that edged their voices when the Skin Easters spoke of it, was different somehow. They too carried the look and posture of survivors, but of something more mean, more poisonous, than the death of nations. There was the wickedness that cut throats, and there was the wickedness that put whole peoples to the sword. Scalpers, Achamian realized, dwelt somewhere in the lunatic in-between.

And for the first time he understood: He had no real comprehension of what was to come.

Achamian finds one scalper slump to his knees, too weak to continue. Achamian sees he’s starving and goes to help him, but Pokwas stops him and says there is “No pity on the slog, friend.” If you can’t keep going, you die. Achamian asks what sort of soldiers leave their fellows. But scalpers are “soldiers who aren’t soldiers.” Achamian realizes that the Wilds is a place is too deadly for normal human behavior. Achamian accepts this and resumes walking.

Achamian the talker, the asker of questions, had died a long time ago.

Despite his acceptance, the collapsed scalper lingers in Achamian’s mind. It reminds him how easily men can die anonymously. He should know this since he’d seen so much death in his dreams and during the First Holy War, yet that stranger still weighs on him. He wonders if it’s a premonition or if he’s growing soft. He knows that compassion can weaken the elderly as much as their aging body. Will it be his spirit that fails him?

Something always failed him.

He walks the rest of the day in silence despite Soma’s best effort. That night, Achamian sits by Pokwas. Everyone’s in good spirits since Xonghis killed a deer. He asks Pokwas about the Rules of the Slog and if he would have helped Galian if he had fallen on the road. Pokwas interrupts Achamian to say he absolutely is even though Pokwas’s considers Galian his brother. Confused, Achamian asks what about the “rules of brotherhood.” Galian is the one to answer and says only the rules of the slog matter. He says brotherhood’s great so long as it doesn’t cost anything. Survival is all that matters. Achamian comments that it “sounds like something our glorious Aspect-Emperor would say.”

Aside from the vague intuition that discussing the Aspect-Emperor was generally unwise, the old Wizard really didn’t know what to expect.

“I would help,” Soma blurted. “If Galian were dying, that is. I really would…”

The eating paused. The ring of faces turned to the young Nilnameshi, some screwed in mock outrage, others sporting skeptical grins.

With a guileless smile, Soma said, “His boots fit as fine as my own!”

Soma’s jokes are usually bad especially when he’s trying. The others shake heads or roll eyes at this one. Oxwora throws a bone he gnawed at Soma. Soma shouts and Oxwora grins. Then the rest start throwing their bones at Soma and laughter bursts out. Pokwas tells Achamian, “Loot thy brother.” and then welcomes him to the slog.

Achamian laughed and nodded, glanced out beyond the circle of illuminated faces to the night-hooded world. It was no simple or mean thing, the companionship of killers.

Two days later, Xonghis reports that a woman is following the company. Achamian gets alarmed and asks who knows about it. He’s told Moraubon and a few members of the Herd. Achamian sets off in run down the path, preparing to unleash his sorcery. He hears scalpers laughing with “malice and open-mouthed eagerness of men bent on rutting.” A woman cries out with defiance. Achamian climbs into the air and runs across “the echoes of the ground.” He bursts through the canopy and spots Skin Eaters racing down the trail towards where three of them have a hold of Mimara. She’s kicking and thrashing as they pin her down. Moraubon is undoing his breeches, preparing to rape her. Achamian steps into her midst and hits the ex-priest with the Odaini Concussion Cant. It doesn’t kill him but throws him away.

Angry, Achamian unleashes his sorcery to teach the Skin Eaters. He revels in the violence, taking enjoyment in them seeing his power. The Skin Eaters retreat from him. He destroys the surrounding trees with the Compass of Noshainrau. This drives the Skin Eaters further back.

Achamian stood over her, bright in the sudden sunlight, showered by the twirling green of innumerable spring-early leaves. A Wizard draped in wolf skins. The bulk of once great trees lay heaped about them. Forked trunks and limbs gouged the ground beneath the shags greenery.

Mimara spat blood from her lips, tried to pull her torn leggings to her hips. She made a noise that might have been a sob or a laugh or both. She fell to her knees before him, her left thigh as bare and pale as a barked sapling. A laughing grimace. A glimpse of teeth soaked in blood.

“Teach me,” she said.

Achamian marches back in a silent rage, Mimara trudging behind him. The Skin Eaters watch their approach, all staring at Mimara. He pulls her into his embrace to shield her. Moraubon races ahead to Lord Kosoter who is watching from a boulder. Cleric isn’t around. As Moraubon talks to Kosoter, Sarl glares at the Skin Eaters. Mimara, sensing the Chorae Kosoter is wearing, asks who he is. Achamian tells her to be quiet.

At first it seemed the Captain had simply reached out and seized Moraubon’s chin—so casual was his movement. Achamian squinted, trying to understand the wrongness of the image: Lord Kosoter holding the man mere inches from his face, not so much looking into his eyes as watching… Achamian only glimpsed the knife jammed beneath the scalper’s mandible when Lord Kosoter withdrew his hand.

Moraubon crumpled as if the Captain had ripped out his bones. Blood sheeted the boulder.

Sarl then demands of the company what’s the rule for peaches is. “The Captain always gets the first bite,” answers Galian. Sarl reminds them that following the rules is what lets them “eat so much skin.” Everyone, including the Bitten, roars their agreement, not caring their friend is dead. Achamian thinks them all mad.

Kosoter wipes his blade clean on Moraubon while studying Achamian and Mimara. Then he rushes to them, suddenly animated, and demands to know who she is. Achamian says his daughter. Achamian does not flinch from the murder in Kosoter’s eyes. Mimara feels too much like Esmenet for him to betray her. Kosoter nods after a moment and heads back up the trail.

“Either she carries her weight like a man,” he shouted as he walked away. “Or she carries our weight like a woman!”

The Skin Eaters lust for Mimara as they resume the marches. He’s most suspicious of those with blank faces and eyes remembering her being pinned down. No one bothers with Moraubon’s body. Mimara asks in a whisper who Kosoter is.

“A Veteran,” he murmured. “The same as me.”

Achamian and Mimara trail behind and then have an argument. He wants her to leave. She refuses to return to her mother. Achamian says Esmenet loves her. “Not so much as she hates what she did to me.” Achamian tries to justify Mimara being sold into slavery as saving her life. She threatens to tell her about her life and claims she can bear the Skin Eaters taking her. Achamian says she wouldn’t survive these men. She says she’s lucky to have him then.

She was nothing like Esmenet, he had come to realize. She tilted her head in the same way, as though literally trying to look around your nonsense, and her voice stiffened into the same reedy bundle of disgust, but aside from these echoes…

“Look. You simply cannot stay. This is a journey…” He paused, his breath yanked short by the sheer factuality of what he was about to say. “This is a journey without any return.”

She sneered and laughed. “So is every life.”

Achamian feels like she is begging, even daring him, to hit her. Nothing like Esmenet. Mimara then asks Achamian if he told the scalper that this is a journey they’ll all die on. He hasn’t and instead promised them the Coffers. She is incredulous that they don’t know they are searching for the origins of the Aspect-Emperor whose bounty feeds them.

“Murderer. That makes you a murderer.”

“Yes.”

She threatens to reveal this to the others. He counters that if he is a murder he could just kill her. She knows he won’t because of who she looks like. He threatens to tell Kosoter who she is. But she reminds him that the captain would get a better reward turning her in than bleeding for the Coffers.

This infuriates Achamian. He thinks her insane and she mocks him, saying he can’t win. That even though he vowed never to teach again (because his teachings lead to disaster), she won’t give up. Threats and reason won’t work. She vows to be a witch or dead, saying she only has the Gift.

“Didn’t you hear me? My teaching is cursed!”

“We’re a fine match then.”

Impudent! Impudent! Was there ever such a despicable slit?

Achamian sets up his camp with Mimara away from the others. It’s silent not only between them but all the Skin Eaters except Sarl. He keeps babbling on like nothing had happened. Achamian feels eyes, even among the Bitten, staring at them. They whisper about her body, speculating about how great it will be to turn her into a whore. Mimara hears it, too. A more innocent woman might be oblivious, but Mimara knew and she seemed at ease, unlike worried Achamian.

She had been raised in the covetous gaze of men, and though she had suffered beneath brutal hands, she had grown strong. She carried herself, Achamian realized, with a kind of coy arrogance, as though she were the sole human in the presence of resentful apes. Let them grunt. Let them abuse themselves. She cared nothing for all the versions of her that danced or moaned or choked behind their primitive eyes—save that they made her, and all the possibilities that her breath and body offered, invaluable.

She was the thing wanted. She would find ways to make them pay.

Achamian is disturbed. Though he doesn’t much like Mimara, she reminds him of Esmenet and he feels like he’s falling in love with her all over again. Memories of the First Holy War assault him. He wants to go back to those times. To bury his memories, he starts teaching her about the Gnosis. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s easier to instruct than thinking about Esmenet.

The trail in the mountains is difficult. As they walk, he teaches her Gilcûnya, the nonman tongue Gnostic Mages yous. She would have to learn an inhuman tongue, something very difficult for an adult. But he doesn’t have the heart to tell her she probably will fail if not take years to master.

Why this should seem a crime was beyond him.

Skin-Eaters are always watching them. If they could, they would walk around them feigning friendliness and proper behavior, but with Achamian, he catches predatory glimpses. They know he’s a threat to them enjoying Mimara. Their chivalrous gestures are all tor prove she doesn’t need Achamian. She can rely on them. She pretends not to notice what they’re up to.

They halt early for the day and Sarl tells Achamian that Kosoter needs to see him. There’s bad news. Achamian follows Sarl up, struggling to maintain his pace up the steep heel. He reaches the ridgeline, the Osthwai Mountains spread out before him. Kosoter and Cleric are watching Kiampas talk with a stranger nicknamed Feathers. Another group of scalpers lounge nearby. After talking with Kiampas, Feather and Kosoter clasp arms, two “storied Scalpoi” sharing respect with each other. The first time Kosoter has done so with anyone Achamian’s seen.

Achamian learns that a spring blizzard has closed the pass. They are stuck for at least two weeks if not longer. This is the end of Achamian’s expedition. It’ll be impossible to reach Sauglish by summer’s end now. Kiampas is relieved.

Cleric suggests the Black Halls. He says there is a way through the mountains. He remembers it. Achamian knows what the Nonman suggests but the shock of hearing his mission is over keeps him from voicing concern. Kosoter asks Cleric if he’s sure. Cleric says he lived there with his cousins before Men came. Kosoter asks if he is sure he remembers.

The cowl bent earthward.

“They were… difficult days.”

The Ainoni nodded in grim deliberation.

Kiampas is shocked. Scalpers who go into the Black Halls never return. But Kosoter cuts off the man’s words with a glance. Sarl cackles and boasts how they’re the Skin Eaters. They’ll do what others haven’t. Kiampas protests about the rumors. Achamian asks about those.

“Bah!” Sarl cackled. “Men just can’t countenance mystery. If companies get eaten, they have to invent a Great Eater, no matter what.” He turned to Achamian, his face wrinkling in incredulity. “He thinks a dragon hides in the Black Halls. A Dragon!” He jerked his gaze back to Kiampas, red face thrust forward, knobbly fists balled at his side. “Dragon, my eye! It’s the shinnies that get them. It’s the shinnies that get us all in the end.”

Achamian asks how he can know that it’s Sranc. Sarl says their clans get through the mountains somehow. Especially in Winter. It’s believed they use the Black Halls. Kiampas says he knew two from another scalper band who says their company died in there, but Sarl mocks and says they were just telling stories to get drinks. Their company died on the Long Side. The two men glare at each other. Kiampas seems like the only sane person in the Skin Eaters.

“We take the Low Road,” Lord Kosoter grated. “We enter the Black Halls.”

His tone seemed to condemn all humanity, let alone the petty dispute before him. The Nonman continued to stare off into the east, tall and broad beneath his mottled cowl. The mountain climbed the climbing ground beyond him, a white sentinel whispering with altitude and distance.

“Cleric says he remembers.”

Achamian finds Mimara surrounded by Skin Eaters. Oxwora and Pokwas tower over her like guards. She is not looking at the gathered men. Achamian sees she’s scared but the fear hasn’t disabled her. The two Bitten around her are joking about Kosoter sodomizing Achamian. Their laughter makes Mimara smile.

The laughter was genuine enough to make Mimara smile, but utterly unlike the raucous mirth that was their norm. Soldiers, Achamian had observed, often wore thin skins in the presence of women they could neither buy nor brutalize. A light and careless manner, a gentle concern for the small things, stretched across a sorrow and an anger than no woman could fathom. And these men were more than soldiers, more than scalpers, even. They were Skin Eaters. They were men who led lives of uncompromising viciousness and savagery. Men who could effortlessly forget the dead rapist that had been their bosom friend.

And they would try too what they could not take.

Soma says that Mimara is one of the Bitten in a tone that will brook no disagreement. Achamian realizes that the Bitten have been waiting to claim Mimara and bring her to their fire. Achamian wonders how far they can be trusted even as he says the pass is closed. He sees them realizing that the coffers are lost.

“The decision has been made,” he said, trying hard not to sound satisfied.

“We brave the Black Halls of Cil-Aujas.”

My Thoughts

Really can relate to Achamian at being excluded. Watching everyone else bonding and being all alone thinking no one cares about you. All his other problems are more remote, but this lack of human connection is an immediate problem. It’s not important to his mission, but his instincts don’t know that. They just know he’s being excluded from social bonding.

So, Bakker uses Somandutta’s name in the narrative before he tells Achamian his name. It’s used as if Bakker has already introduced him to us. I feel like this is a slight editing error.

Also, Somandutta is the skin spy. Is he one now? Let’s watch out for any clues to his true identity before his reveal. It is interesting that he’s the one who brings a Mandate Schoolman to the Bitten. Is he trying to lull Achamian in with friendship and learn information from him? Is he even a skin-spy yet? I think he is. After all, the Nonman King is with the Skin-Eaters. Of course, a skin-spy would be slipped into them. And then he gets thrust into this surprising situation of Achamian joining the group. He’s on his own with no contact with Golgotterath. And then we’ll get that strange comment about a prophecy involving Mimara.

Lots so strange things going on with this skin-spy.

Achamian has been invited to the cool-kids campfire. Bakker is showing us the important characters to pay attention to. The rest are “the herd.” The background characters who we don’t need to care about. As an author, you only have so much page space, time, and mental energy. Easier to have a reason why Achamian only spends time with the important characters and then have the unimportant ones be grouped in the background.

The Herd.

Also, do the Bitten seem like frat brothers?

“He hunts with both bows strung,” is the comment Pox makes about Moraubon and why he’s half-Sranc. He gets erect while fighting. It’s a dick a joke. Also, this is a character I’m going to be keeping an eye on. I cannot remember who tries to rape Mimara at the end of book two among the Bitten. Going to try and keep their backgrounds more in mind. Soma is the only one that really stands out in my memory.

(Okay, Moraubon tries to rape Mimara in this chapter. This explains why I don’t remember him.)

Good foreshadowing with Achamian realizing that the scalpers are both the perpetrators of genocide in their wholesale slaughter of the Sranc, and the victims of it. They are just as likely to massacre as to do be massacred. They carry both in their souls. The guilt of murder and the guilt of surviving.

The doubts are already happening. Achamian is feeling the weight of it all. He never feels up to the challenges before him. He found his strength in the First Holy War, now it’s being tested again.

It’s sacrilegious to eat pregnant animals, and yet the Skin-Eaters don’t care. These men are beyond any sort of limits of morality. They have peered way, way too long into the abyss. They’re friendly and jocular now, but these are men who don’t care about taboos. Nothing is sacred to them. They are not to be trusted. They seem like they’ll be Achamian’s allies against Kosoter in what’s to come. Ironically, the reverse will bear out.

As you see in the following conversation, the friendship of Brotherhood the Bitten has isn’t true. A facade. They will turn on each other the moment they have to. Surviving the Sranc is all that matters. They have become Sranc. We’ll see this with the Great Ordeal. Those men will become like the Skin-Eaters by the end. To stare into the Abyss is to have it stare back into you. The Consult, the Sranc, and all the other creations of the Inchoroi are so evil, they destroy all who come in contact with it.

The Bitten uses humor to deflect from really bonding with each other. It’s all surface level. The moment Achamian brings up something deep, a joke is made. They don’t really want to bond with each other because they all know they are really a group of individuals looking out only for themselves.

Mimara still wants to be taught Gnosis. She is stubborn. Almost raped, needing to be rescued, and still wants him to teach her. Now she will be the leverage used against Achamian. She is the violation of the Rule of the Slog. The one that not only Achamian breaks but Kosoter.

Because Kosoter isn’t a true Scalper. He’s a fanatic. He’s here for a mission. I’m more and more convinced that Kellhus placed him in the scalper post nearest to where Achamian lived to be in position for when Achamian would try to reach Ishuäl.

Finding out that Moraubon is with Mimara is what sends Achamian into a run. As I mentioned above, that dick joke about Moraubon is a signal this is a man not to be trusted.

Bakker is getting a lot of things done with the Moraubon sequence. He’s showing us the true nature of the Skin Eaters, how ruthless discipline is maintained, and reveals the true motivations of Kosoter. Skin Eaters don’t have a problem eating a pregnant animal. Raping and murdering the Empress’s daughter shouldn’t be an issue for them, either. Who will know out here in the wild? Kosoter protects her because he’s not a real scalper.

I believe Kosoter recognized who Mimara is because he backs down from Achamian.

Oh, Achamian, you and Kosoter might both be Veterans, but you are not the same.

Mimara is like the mother but broken. Esmenet had been worn down by her life as a prostitute, but she didn’t suffer like her daughter. Mimara cracked and she might never be whole. As it is, she sees no value in her life. It had been stolen from her long ago.

We can already see the conflicts Mimara’s presence sparks. She’s confident in the Wizard and thinks she understands these men. That she’s been around men like this for most of her life. She has no idea the abyss these men have bathed in.

I think Achamian believes it’s a crime that Mimara probably will never master Gilcûnya and those never make use of her gift is simple: she’s intelligent. She would probably make a great sorceress. She’s not able to use her talents to their fullest. That despite all her passion, all her drive, she’ll fail at the one thing she thinks she has in her life.

So, if you’ve read Lord of the Rings, this is getting very familiar. Need to cross the mountains, but the snow chokes out the passes. Luckily, there’s an abandoned underground city that you can pass through. Only full of ancient horrors. Like much of The Second Apocalypse, Bakker takes the familiar fantasy elements and twists them to his grimdark world. Cil-Aujas is harrowing in ways Moria is not.

Now we see the Bitten are acting like the guardians to Mimara. They’re pretending to be the good ones. The ones she can trust to protect her from the Herd, never mind that the guy who tried to rape her was one of them. The Bitten have forgotten about Moraubon.

How long before they forget about Achamian? He’s wondering that even as he is pleased that the quest will continue. They’ll be protecting Mimara for awhile. Bakker is setting up the powder keg that bursts at the end of Book 2.

Click here to continue on to Chapter 9!

And you have to check out my fantasy novel, Above the Storm!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To save the skies, Ary must die!

If you love the works of Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, and Steven Erikson, then check out my first ever Fantasy novel!

You do not want to miss out on this awesome adventure!

You can buy or burrow Above the Storm today!