Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 3: The Thousandfold Thought

by R. Scott Bakker

The Final March
Chapter 16
Shimeh

Welcome to Chapter Sixteen of my reread. Click here if you missed Chapter Fifteen!

Hi, JMD Reid here. Sorry for how long this took to get out. Not only was this one of the longest chapters in the series, but this is also one of the longest writeups. On top of that, I went on vacation for two weeks in March and then I got sick this week. Between that and getting my novels published, I haven’t had the time to put to it. But I’ll be diving into the final chapter of Thousandfold Thought this Weekend and hopefully, it’s not as long!

Please leave comments because it is a great motivator to continue this. And please, check out my fiction. I’ve learned a lot from Bakker on characters that I’ve applied to my writing. I’m not promising his style of fiction, but I’ve learned many lessons from the greats in the genre to make my own!

Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion.

Verily, it is conviction that kills.

—PAARCIS, THE NEW ANALYTICS

My Thoughts

A very astute observation. It’s one of the themes of Bakker’s series. Doubt is something the wise do. They use their brains and question things. Seek to understand things. When you can step outside your own world view you understand others. Empathy forms.

The best way to counter things you don’t like, bigotry or hatred, isn’t to demonize but to socialize. To engage. To get to know your opponent. Speak to them. Host dialogues and share your ideas. You can open up both your minds and discover maybe you were a little close-minded, too. That common ground can be forged.

The zealot always believes they are right. And that always leads to violence when the “blasphemer” disagrees.

This leads directly to the goal of the Thousandfold Thought. The Dûnyain see the easiest way to unite humans is to make them all zealots for the same thing.

Spring 4112 Year-of-the-Tusk, Shimeh

Bowmen huddle in the sewers of Shimeh with a Cishaurim. Above, the buildings burn. The sounds of the Scarlet Spires sorcery has gone quiet. The bald Cishaurim commands the bowmen to douse their torches and cover their eyes. They do. The world goes black.

Then impossibly bright. A thunderous crack.

“Move!” the Waterbearer cried. “Climb! Climb!”

Suddenly all was blue, illuminated by a coin of incandescence that flared on the Waterbearer’s brow. They jostled forward, spitting at the dust. One by one they shouldered their way past the blind man, struggled up a slope of broken and blistering stone, then found themselves dashing through fiery ruins.

Moënghus concludes that the voices Kellhus hear are not from the Thousandfold Thought. Kellhus responds by demanding to see the captives. Moënghus asks what Kellhus will do if he refuses. Kellhus asks why Moënghus would.

“Because I need to revise my assumptions, to explore these unforeseen permutations. I had discounted this possibility.”

“What possibility?”

That the Wilderness would break rather than enlighten. That you would come to me a madman.”

Water, endlessly dropping, pounded air and stone. The thunder of inevitability.

“Refuse me anything, and I will kill you, Father.”

The Kianene boil out of the ruins of the collapsed city wall and race out to attack the Ainoni flank. The Tydonni who spotted the attack keep sounding the alarm, but the dust and smoke have hidden this attack from the rest of the Holy war. The Kianene cross the Jeshimal River, including war mastodons dragging rafts to make improvised bridges. They Tydonni charge into hopeless numbers.

Moënghus leads Kellhus through “absolute darkness,” leaving behind the waterfall. Kellhus explains all he had inferred about his father that he’d gleaned from Cnaiür then speculates what Moënghus did after leaving the Utemot. Unlike Kellhus, his father had carved the swazond into his arms meaning he would find no safety in the Nansur Empire forcing him south to the Fanim. This was before the Battle of Zirkirta, so while they didn’t love the Scylvendi they also didn’t hate them. Moënghus was first a slave, but after his “conversion” to Fane and with his intellect, he was freed by his master. Moënghus made his master love him. Soon, Moënghus’s knowledge of scripture outstripped the Fanic Priests. “Those who would whip you now implored you to travel to Shimeh… to the Cishaurim, and the possibility of power beyond anything the Dûnyain had conceived.”

Five steps. Kellhus could smell the water drying across his father’s bare skin.

Moënghus responds that he had good reason to believe this. Kellhus agrees, pointing out that the worldborn are “less than children to us.” They see deeper in all their philosophies and sciences. Moënghus assumed becoming a Cishaurim and “taking up the Water” would be just as easy. He didn’t know that Psûkhe was all about emotions.

“So you let them blind you, only to find your powers proportionate to your vestigial passions. What you thought to be the Shortest Path was in fact a dead end.”

The Scarlet Schoolmen who are holding back from the main fray as Watchers feel the Chorae moving in the ground before the Thesji Bowmen appear. They cried warning but were confused by what to do. “Not since the Scholastic Wars had the Scarlet Spires waged such a battle.” Rimon is the first salted and killed. They scatter.

Their shouts catch Eleäzaras’s attention. He sees their fear but doesn’t feel any. Instead, he feels relief because the Cishaurim was finally fighting back. He sees the demolition of the city around him, creating a ring where they could fight the Cishaurim.

“They come!” he boomed in a laughing, sorcerous voice. “At long last, they come!”

Arrayed across the pitched ruin, so small beneath the fires they had kindled, the Schoolmen of the Scarlet Spires cried out in exultant acclaim. Their Grandmaster had come back to them.

Then threads of incandescence, blinding blue and white, lashed through the encircling walls of flame.

Kellhus continues explaining that though Moënghus, going by Mallahet, was respected by Seökti and the other Cishaurim openly, they all secretly think he’s cursed for having so little Water. Worse, losing his eyes reduced his ability to “discern what comes before.” He could only see pinholes through them. He did what he could with his intellect and rose high, but whenever he left the powerful, the whispers about his weak powers would undermine his work.

Kellhus determines he first found the skin-spies twelve years ago. It shocks the Cishaurim and they blame the Scarlet Spire. What other school would dare to do this? But Moënghus understood that these weren’t made by sorcerers but “were engines of the flesh.” Though Moënghus couldn’t stop the Cishaurim from sending their assassins to kill the previous Scarlet Spire Grandmaster, starting the Holy War. Kellhus’s words are cut off.

Just then, Kellhus inadvertently kicked something lying upon the graven floor. Something hollow and fibrous. A skull?

Kellhus continues without giving the skull another thought, explaining how Moënghus had tortured the skin-spies and learned the truth about them, discovering about the last two Inchoroi, Aurang and Aurax, the Consult, and how they corrupted Meketerig and perverted Shaeönanra.

“These words you speak,” Moënghus said from the black, “‘wicked,’ ‘corrupted,’ ‘perverted’… why would you use them when you know they are nothing more than mechanisms of control?”

Kellhus ignores his father and explains how Moënghus would have thought of the Consult as long dead or Mandate delusion, but discovers the skin-spies story is too consistent. Moënghus became troubled learning that what he had dismissed as nonsense might be true. He had rejected the Sagas. After all who would be mad enough to destroy the world. What could you gain?

“But the skin-spies explained it all. Speaking in shrieks and howls, they taught you the way and wherefore of the Apocalypse. You learned that the boundaries between the World and the Outside were not fixed, that if the World could be cleansed of enough souls, it could be sealed shut. Against the Gods. Against the heavens and the hells of the Afterlife. Against redemption. And, most importantly, against the possibility of damnation.

“The Consult, you realized, were laboring to save their souls. And what was more, if your captives could be believed, they were drawing near the end of their millennial task.”

In the absence of light, Kellhus studied his father through the lens of different senses: the scent of naked skin, the displacement of drafts, the sound of bare feet scuffing through the dark.

“The Second Apocalypse,” Moënghus said simply.

Moënghus says the Consult has to be stopped. He spent years in the Probability Trance and is the only person who knew what the Consult was up to. Who could detect their spies? Kellhus thinks that this labyrinth is a place prepared for him by his father. He then says Moënghus began “contemplating what would become the Thousandfold Thought.” Moënghus agrees. Things change suddenly. They are in a larger room where a few things live but more have died.

“We have arrived,” his father said.

Gothyelk leads the Tydonni in a charge against the Fanim as they cross the river. The Inrithi cry out to Gilgaöl while the Fanim charge at them. The Men of the Tusk cry out to Shimeh as they set lances. The two groups crash together in a maelstrom of hacking death. The Tydonni drive through the horde and reach the riverbank, scattering those who crossed. They regroup like “angry bees” and attack the flanks.

Inrithi lords cajole their men to hold the river crossing. The Fanim began breaking apart their makeshift bridges as archers on the far bank pelt the Inrithi. Despite reaching the river, Gothyelk realizes he can’t hold it and sounds the retreat.

Kellhus lights the room with sorcery. For a nonman room, it’s austere (which means it still is pretty ornate just not excessive). Kellhus realizes it is access to the sewage system and hence why it is not as decorated. There are workbenches and a cistern. In between are four skin-spies spread eagle. Two more hang above pits, all shackled with iron. Kellhus notes a funnel above one’s head that is a force-feeding mechanism. He wonders how long they’ve been here. He then studies them, their facial limbs held back by a system of ropes and pulleys allowing them to be manipulated.

Kellhus asks when Moënghus realized he didn’t have the strength to face the No-God. Moënghus thought it was probably from the beginning. Thinking about it lead him to come upon the Thought. Kellhus continua his examination and notes that the skin-spies are lobotomized and have needles inserted into their brain. He brushes one, causing the skin-spy to defecate.

Kellhus has deduced that his father has some power, hence sending the dream. Moënghus nods while Kellhus ponders the secrets his father had learned from the skin-spies. Moënghus explains he is better at Psûkhe that requires subtly such as Scrying and Calling. The dreams were almost beyond him.

“I was the Shortest Path.” [asked Kellhus.]

“No. You were the only path.”

Kellhus notes a dead child and woman nailed to doors hung before the skin-spies. They are recently dead. Kellhus wanders if it was an interrogation technique or feeding them. As he does, he asks about his half-brother. Kellhus can almost visualize his half-brother from the way he had heard him described. At the same time, he feels his father’s scrutiny.

He uses every heartbeat to reassess. His son has returned to him insane.

Moënghus nodded and said, “You mean Maithanet.”

Esmenet, cuddling beside Achamian, stares up at the tree above them. She’s recently cried. She is astounded by how the tree keeps branching to thinner and thinner limbs, “all reaching for a thousand different heavens.”

She sighed and said, “I feel so young.”

His chest bounced in silent laughter beneath her cheek.

“You are… Only the world is old.”

“Oh, Akka, what are we going to do?”

“What we must.”

“No… that’s not what I mean.” She cast an urgent look to his profile. “He’ll see, Akka. The instant he glimpses our faces, he’ll see us here… He’ll know.”

He turned to her. The scowling hurt of old fears unearthed.

“Esmi—”

He’s interrupted by a horse. Alarmed, Achamian creeps out to view. She follows and is shocked to see Conphas’s Kidruhil riding in formation. She thought he was dead and then realizes Achamian isn’t. She realizes Cnaiür told him about it and to sound the alarm. Achamian was just so shocked by it that he didn’t think about it. He tells her to stay hiding. His tone causes her to shrink back. She asks what he plans to do. He says he can’t let Conphas succeed. She doesn’t want him to go, but he is afraid for her since she’s Kellhus’s wife.

Just like Serwë was.

In her soul’s eye she glimpsed the girl trying to palm blood back into the gash about her throat. “Akka!” she sobbed.

“I love you, Esmenet. The love of a fool…” He paused, blinked two tears. “That’s all I’ve ever had to offer.”

Then suddenly he stood tall. Before she could speak, he had stepped over the broken foundation. There was something nightmarish to his movements, an urgency that couldn’t be contained by his limbs. She would have laughed had she not known him so well.

He walked out and among the cavalrymen, calling…

His eyes shining. His voice a thunderclap.

Conphas is in a good mood as he witnesses Shimeh burning. He’s with Cememketri and asks the guy what it says about men that they find destruction beautiful. “That we are bred to war, God-of-Men,” answers the Schoolman. Conphas disagrees, saying that they’re bred to violence. “War is intellect, and men are stupid.”

Conphas feels everything is going perfectly. He had a smooth landing of his troops this morning and is arriving at just the right time to seize the day. He is delighted to see the Scarlet Spires fighting in the city and that the Holy War split, one half pouring into the city as the Tydonni are trying to stop Fanayal from outflanking them. He has achieved tactical surprise.

Whom do the Gods favour now, hmm, Prophet?

A defect carried from the womb… Please.

He laughed aloud, utterly unperturbed by the ashen looks of his officers. Suddenly it seemed he could see the future to its very limit. It wouldn’t end here, oh my, no! It would continue, first to the south, to Seleukara, then onward to Nenciphon, west to Invishi—all the way to Auvangshei and the legendary gates of Zeüm! He, Ikurei Conphas I, would be the new Triamis, the next Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas!

He scowls, realizing those around him couldn’t see anything but “their precious Holy City” burning. His thoughts are interrupted by General Areamanteras who is startled by Achamian walking towards them. Conphas realizes he’s casting sorcery and grabs his Chorae moments before fire engulfs him. Someone cries out to him and he realizes he’s no longer on his horse but on burned grass, Cememketri floating above protected with “ethereal ramparts.” Meanwhile, Achamian is destroying his troops with lines of light “more perfect than any rule.” His men are being butchered.

A blinding light rewrote all the shadows, and through upraised fingers Conphas saw a sun falling from black-bellied clouds, plummeting onto the figure of the Mandate Schoolman. Bursting fire, ribbons of it, arching off in all directions. Conphas heard himself cry out in relief elation…

But as his eyes adjusted, he saw the flames twining away into nothingness about an invisible sphere, and he glimpsed him, as clear as night beneath the Andiamine Heights, or in the Sapatishah’s Palace in Caraskand: Drusas Achamian, unharmed, untouched, laughing about incandescence as he sang.

From nowhere, a massive concussion. The air just cracked.

Cememketri is buckling, Achamian’s “parabolas of light” are tearing down the Saik Schoolmaster’s wards. Cememketri panics and stumbles on his words. He cries out for Conphas to run. Conphas does as Cememketri is ripped into bloody pieces.

The lone guardsman left to defend the Umbilica curses as he hears something. He’s terrified of what he sees. A figure that doesn’t look right “like a moth’s pupa or a bundle of collapsing cloth.” He wants to run, but he’s a Hundred Pillar. He feels enough shame at being left behind. He draws his weapon and demands it halt.

And miraculously, the thing ceased moving.

Forward, anyway, because it somehow clawed outward, as though soft inner surfaces were being peeled back, exposed to the needling sky.

A face like summer sunlight. Limbs barked in fire.

Reaching out, the thing grasped his head, skinned it like a grape.

Where, bolted a voice through his smoking skull, is Drusas Achamian?

The Scarlet Spire battled beneath the First Temple, led by “the thunder of their Grandmaster’s voice.” They are outnumbered by the Cishaurim. Everywhere, sorcery is unleashed. Cants are sung. Wards are strengthened. The Javreh shield-bearers struggle to block incoming Chorae arrows, but some get through. One kills Hem-Arkidu who, somehow, was perfectly balanced to remain standing as a “pillar of salt amid sizzling ruins.”

The Scarlet Schoolman retreat to each other, uniting their wards to create directed defenses. Protected, they counterattacked with Dragonheads belching fire, Memkotic Furies attack, and Meppa Cataract devours air. Cishaurim die while others are dragged away wounded. The Scarlet Spires own Chorae crossbowman reach the battle and, though they are buried beneath the rubble, killing dozens. The Cishaurim do not falter because “unlike their wicked foeman, they cared not for their lives.”

In the midst of their enemy, they spilled their Water.

The slaughter was great.

The Tydonni knights are in retreat now, pelted by Fanim arrows as they rout. Kianene cavalry overruns some. However, the infantry has formed lines and grow stronger with every moment as more and more men join the ranks. Standing amid a crumbling aqueduct, the ready to face the enemy. Some of the Ainoni are joining them now. The surviving knits reach their lines and ready to fight again. The heathens advance.

Missiles rained among them, like hail across tin.

“Here!” Earl Gothyelk roared. “Here we stand!”

But the Fanim parted before them, content to release storms of whirring arrows. The knights of Kishyat, their faces painted dread white above their square-plaited beards, had exacted a terrible toll on their flank. But even more, Cinganjehoi recalled well the obstinacy of the idolaters once their heels touched ground. As yet only a fraction of the Fanim army had crossed the Jeshimal.

Fanayal ab Kascamandri was coming. Lord of the Cleansed lands. Padirajah of Holy Kian.

Proyas’s men are losing their discipline More and more are raping and plundering the city. He’s given up, his heart grieving as the battle madness consumed them. He “understood what it meant to wager one’s life, and the bestial license that men took as their prize.” He’s realizing Shimeh isn’t any different. He finds himself separated from his soldiers and wandering through a market. Above, the First Temple is wreathed in smoke.

He enters a house and finds several dead men. Cringing in the corner is a woman and a young girl staring at him in fear. He is wearing his war-mark, hiding who he is. He realizes he’s splattered in blood. Memories of the fighting feel him mixing with his memories of kneeling before Maithanet. He approaches the mother. She’s crying out in her tongue and draws something on the floor. The tusk.

She keeps drawing the tusk and begging for mercy. He knows this is wrong, but the girl looks so young and inventing. He feels this urge for the “daughter of his enemy.” He wants to enjoy her, to take her.

An enormous crack shivered the air, thrummed through the building’s bones.

“Run,” he murmured, though he knew she wouldn’t understand. He pulled her back, held a soiled hand out to raise the mother. “You must find a better place to hide.”

This was Shimeh.

Moënghus explains that Dûnyain blood is the most precious commodity, but children born to worldborn women lack their full range of abilities. Maithanet isn’t Dûnyain. “He could do no more than preparing the way.” Kellhus feels a pang as he thinks of Esmenet’s name.

“Only a true son of Ishuäl could succeed,” his father continued. “For all the Thousandfold Thought’s innumerable deductions, for all its elegance, there remained countless variables that could not be foreseen. Each of its folds possess a haze of catastrophic possibilities, most of them remote, others nearly certain. I would have abandoned it long ago, were not the consequences of inaction so absolute.

“Only one of the Conditioned could follow its path. Only you, my son.”

Could it be? A tincture of sorrow in his father’s voice? Kellhus turned from the hanging skin-spies, once again enclosed his father within the circle of his scrutiny.

“You speak as though the Thought were a living thing.”

He could see nothing in the eyeless face.

Moënghus says thought is alive. He uses the Nilnamesh game viramsata (“many-breaths”) as an example. It is a game of truth. They have taken jnan so far, that they spread lies about each other and the person will act out those lies, “especially when they are elegant.” It blurs the line between what is fiction and lies. The best tale is declared Pivirsut (“this breath is ground”). It is a lie that has become truth, the foundation everyone walks on. Kellhus sees the connection to Inrithism and Fanimry.

“Precisely. Lies that have conquered and reproduced over the centuries. Delusional world views that have divided the world between them. They are twin viramsata that even now war through shouts and limbs of men. Two great thoughtless beasts that take the souls of Men as their ground.”

“And the Thousandfold Thought?”

Moënghus sees the Thousandfold Thought as a way to change history and transform the two religion into something new. Moënghus realizes to survive what is to come, then everyone must “all act of one accord.” Religious division cannot be allowed but must surrender to a “new delusion.” Kellhus asks where is Truth in this.

“There is no Truth for the worldborn. They feed and they couple, cozening their hearts with false flatteries, easing their intellects with pathetic simplifications. The Logos, for them, is a tool of their lust, nothing more… They excuse themselves and heap blame upon others. They glorify their people over other peoples, their nations over other nations. They focus their fears on the innocent. And when they hear words such as these, they recognize them—but as defects belonging to others. They are children who have learned to disguise their tantrums from their wives and their fellows, and from themselves most of all…

“No man says, ‘They are chosen and we are damned.’ No worldborn man. They have not the heart for Truth.”

Stepping from between his faceless captives, Moënghus approached, his expression a mask of blind stone. He reached out as though to clasp Kellhus’s wrist or hand, but halted the instant Kellhus shrank back.

“But why, my son? Why ask me what you already know?”

Esmenet watches Achamian battling the Nansur. He no longer seems like Achamian, but different. Something “godlike and all-conquering.” She’s witnessing “the War-Cants of the Ancient North.” Despite the supernatural cadence of his voice, it’s still Achamian she’s hearing. For the first time, she’s seeing the presence that has always shadowed their love: the Mandate Schoolman. The Nansur are reeling in confusion and panic. They are breaking, but she knows that soon they’ll bring up Chorae bowmen.

She was about to watch him die, she realized. The only man who truly loved her.

He’s attacked by new sorcery, the barrage causing her to stumble backward. Four Imperial Saik Schoolmen are approaching. He kills them one by one with “blistering precision.”

The Cishaurim’s surprise attack kills dozens of Scarlet Schoolman. “Entire cadres were swept away in deluge after glittering deluge.” Chorae bowmen on both sides kill Schoolmen and Cishaurim. The Scarlet Spires coordination is disrupted and a sorcerous melee erupts. Schoolmen are fighting on their own for their own survival. Lesser Cishaurim are killed, but the Scarlet Spires had no idea the true strength of the Nine Incandati, the Cishaurim “whose backs could bear the most Water.” Their power is driving back the Schoolmen.

Eleäzaras is in a battle with two Cishaurim, including Seökti, the High Heresiarch. All Eleäzaras can do is sing his Wards. He uses all his knowledge to protect himself. He couldn’t afford despair. Then he is saved by Prince Hulwarga and his Thunyeri are rushing into the battle under the blare of horns.

Men of the tusk, come to save them.

On the field, the Holy War’s troops watch the Kianene horsemen maneuver to attack them. “All that remained of a proud and fierce nation, come for a final reckoning.” The Men of the Tusk began singing. The Kianene rode faster, howling in rage and anger.

So many wrongs suffered. So many deaths unavenged.

The Kianene charge fast and crash into the ranks of the Inrithi. A wild melee erupts.

“Even the Dûnyain,” Moënghus said, “possess vestigial versions of these weaknesses. Even me. Even you, my son.”

The implication was clear. Your trial has broken you.

Kellhus wonders if he had broken while bound to Serwë’s corpse. The memory of walking away alive when he should have died and all the Inrithi staring at him in awe fills him. He reminds his father that there is more than this world.

He [Kellhus] could remember the voice.

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Even without his eyes, his father’s face still seemed to scrutinize. “You refer to your visions, the voice from nowhere. But tell me, where is your proof? What assures your claim over those who are simply mad?”

TELL ME.

Assurance? What assurance did he have? When the real punished, the soul denied. He had seen it so many times in so many eyes… So how could he be so certain?

Kellhus starts to feign that he’s wavering in as he brings up his “prophecy” of the Shrial Knights coming to pass. Moënghus calls it a “Correspondence of Cause.” It was just happenstance. He repeats that a cause always proceeds an effect, not the other way around. Kellhus knows this is true because if it wasn’t, if what came after could affect what came before, he wouldn’t have risen to power. “The Principal of Before and After simply had to be true.”

His father had to be right.

So what was this certainty, this immovable conviction, that he was wrong?

Am I mad?

Moënghus continues that while the Dûnyain are wrong about the world, and there is something Outside. He calls it “fractured and distorted reflection” of the material world. Moënghus hasn’t found any contradiction to Before and After. He explains that men, thanks to their limitations, can’t see this. They only pay attention to what confirms their basis and dismiss anything that contradicts them. “They are bent upon affirmation.” Moënghus has studied the world and realizes nothing from the outside acts on it.

“The God sleeps… It has ever been thus. Only by striving for the Absolute may we awaken Him. Meaning. Purpose. These words name not something given… no, they name our task.”

Kellhus stood motionless.

“Set aside your conviction,” Moënghus said, “for the feeling of certainty is no more than a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom. Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived.”

Kellhus looked to the halos about his hands, wondered that they could be light and yet cast no light, throw no shadow… The light of delusion.

Moënghus continues that they can’t fall into this trap because of the Inchoroi who have twice tried to destroy the world and will do so again. Kellhus nods and says the No-God “speaks to me as well.” Moënghus seems as shocked as a Dûnyain can be before he proclaims Kellhus insane.

Conphas is dazed from Achamian’s sorcerery. His men are shouting, thinking he’s dead. Some are not happy to be fighting for “Fanim pigs” and risking damnation. Then they notice he’s moving. He’s gripping his Chorae in a bloody hand and thinks he’s dead before he gathers himself and orders his mean to kill Achamian. He realizes the blood is Cememketri and thinks he’s useless.

He continues to order for Achamian death, but no one will look at him. He then glances at the battle and sees his Saik Schoolmen dying. Conphas has split his Schoolmen up among his columns. They don’t have the massed numbers to take on Achamian and his Gnosis. He didn’t expect to have a sorcerous battle. Not with the Scarlet Spire and the Cishaurim fighting.

This isn’t happening… not to me!

“My Chorae,” he said numbly. “Where are my crossbowmen?”

No one could answer—of course. All was in disarray. The Mandate filth had obliterated his entire command. The Emperor’s own standard had vanished in an eruption of fire. The sacred standard destroyed! He turned from the spectacle, scanned the surrounding fields and pastures. Kidruhil fled to the south—fled! Three of his Columns had halted, while the phalanxes of the farthest, the Nasueret, actually seemed to be withdrawing.

They thought he was dead.

Laughing, he pressed his way through the clutch of soldiers, opened his bloodied arms to the far-flung ranks of the Imperial Army. He hesitated at the sight of white-garbed horsemen cresting the far rise, but only for a heartbeat.

“Your Emperor has survived!” he roared. “The Lion of Kiyuth lives!”

The Cishaurim shift their attacks from the surviving Scarlet Spires to engage the Thunyeri rushing at them. Eleäzaras watches stunned as “one barbarian, his beard and hair aflame, stumble across the pitch of fallen walls, still holding a Circumfix banner high.” Then he realizes he’s not being attacked. He strengthens his wards while realizing the Cishaurim are stronger than they are. He spots Yalgrota Sranchammer strangling a Cishaurim, protected by his Chorae. Seökti retreats to the Sacred Heights while the surviving Scarlet Spires renew their attack. Eleäzaras orders his Schoolman to fight while he realizes only one shield-bearer remains and he cowers on the ground.

Cursing the fool, the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires stepped into the smoke-rent sky.

The Fanim led by Fanayal and the Inrithi battle outside the city. It’s a brutal fight, but then the Fanim retreat. The Inrithi cheer, shouting, “Wait! You forgot your blood!” The Men of the Tusk, seasoned by two years of fighting, regroup with ease as they see the Fanim massing. The sight shocks them.

Horns signaled. Someone, somewhere, resumed their song.

We shall raise glory to the morrow,

we shall bring fury to the now.

As the Fanim form up, they are charged by the outnumbered Shrial Knights lead by Gotian. The Men of the Tusk cheer at the disorder this causes the enemy. The Fanim faced the Inrithi as “the sons of Fane and Sejenus regarded one another.”

Sunlight showered across the fields, gleamed from clammy metal. Blinking, men looked to the heavens, saw vultures circling the glare.

Mastodons screamed among the Girgashi. An anxious rustling passed through the lines, both heathen and idolater. Spotters along the aqueduct’s crown shouted out warnings: heathen horsemen seemed to be re-positioning themselves behind their motionless brethren. But all eyes were drawn to the Coyauri, where the banner of the Padirajah himself pressed forward through the ranks—the Maned Desert Tiger, embroidered in silver on a triangular bolt of black silk. The rows parted and, draped in golden mail, Fanayal himself spurred his black onto the intervening ground.

“Who?” he cried to the astonished onlookers—and in Sheyic no less. “Who is the true voice of God?”

The Fanim charge. The Inrithi brace for the attack. Fanayal’s words have shaken up the Inrithi and they are breaking through the Holy War’s lines. The Tydonni knights, lead by Gothyelk, charge into Fanayal’s horseman. Gothyelk and Fanayal find themselves face to face. Fanayal “swift blade” kills Gothyelk.

Death cam swirling down.

Kellhus asks his father what the No-God is. Moënghus states Kellhus was broken by the trial. Kellhus persists, saying if the No-God was destroyed, how can it send him dreams. Moënghus just says he mistakes his inner voice for something without, like any madman. Kellhus then asks what the skin-spy say.

Though walled in by the flesh of his face, Moënghus seemed to scrutinize him. “They do not know. But then, none in this world know what they worship.”

Kellhus asks what his father has considered about the No-God, but his father presses on the madness then starts to say something about Kellhus’s training when the sounds of others approach. Moënghus thinks Kellhus brought them while Kellhus recognizes Cnaiür by his heartbeat. Kellhus presses on and says that he’s been chosen to be the Harbinger.

“These voices,” Moënghus said with slow deliberation, “what do they say of me?”

His father, Kellhus realized, had finally grasped the principles of this encounter, Moënghus had assumed that his son would be the one requiring instruction. He had not foreseen it as possible, let alone inevitable, that the Thousandfold Thought would outgrow the soul of its incubation—and discard it.

“They warn me,” Kellhus said, “that you are Dûnyain still.”

Moënghus asks if this is why he has to die. Kellhus, glancing down at his hallowed hands, then says when the Inchoroi prove to Moënghus that damnation is real and the Dûnyain are all condemned to eternal punishment, his training as a will lead him to side with the Consult. Moënghus will “come to see tyranny in what is holy.” Kellhus assesses his father’s physical capabilities and knows he must strike fast.

“To shut the World against the Outside,” the pale lips said. “To seal it through the extermination of mankind…”

“As Ishuäl is shut against the Wilderness,” Kellhus replied.

For the Dûnyain, it was axiomatic: what was compliant had to be isolated from what was unruly and intractable. Kellhus had seen it many times, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought: The Warrior-Prophet’s assassination. The Rise of Anasûrimbor Moënghus to take his place. The Apocalyptic conspires. The counterfeit war against Golgotterath. The accumulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Sranc. The Three Seas crashing into char and ruin.

The Gods baying like wolves at a silent gate.

Kellhus isn’t sure if his father has seen this probability, where his plan would lead. Or maybe he had and merely accused Kellhus of being mad to throw off Kellhus. He then declares that His father is Dûnyain. Moënghus starts to say so is Kellhus, but he stabs his father in the chest before he can finish his words.

“I am more,” the Warrior-Prophet said.

Achamian realizes that he’s routed the Kidruhil and that the rest of the imperial army will soon march over the hill. He expects there to be Chorae bowmen and realize he’ll be killed as his Mandate Training kicks in. He then remembers Esmenet and is fearful for her when he sees how close the ruins are. She was alive, watching him. She had witnessed him fighting.

It shamed him for some reason.

She bursts out of cover to race for him as he yells at her to stop. Then the Ciphrang attacks from above. A powerful wind knocks Esmenet to the ground. As the demon descends, Achamian knows it is Iyokus’s doing.

Proyas finds a still-standing building and gazes out across the burning city of Shimeh. He watches the Scarlet Spire and Cishaurim fighting while everything below was destroyed. The First Temple stands untouched overall.

A loud crack almost knocks Proyas to the ground. He sees a pair of Scarlet Schoolman. They are sending sorcery at a floating Cishaurim. They unleash devastation that is answered by water-like energy from the Cishaurim that slams into their wards. The glare is bright. The Cishaurim rises until he’s level with Proyas. The sorcerery battle clashes before Proyas. The Cishaurim wins, killing the two Scarlet Schoolman.

“Sweet God of Gods!” he cried to the acrid wind. With bare hands he tore the Chorae from the chain about his neck.

“Who walk among us…” He drew back his sword-weary arm, secured his footing.

“Innumerable are your holy names…” And he cast his Tear of God, a gift from his mother on his seventh birthday.

It seemed to vanish against the iron horizon…

Then a flash, a black ringed circle of light, from which the saffron figure plummeted like a sodden flag.

Proyas fell to his knees on the brink, leaned out over the fall. His holy city gaped before him. And he wept, though he knew not why.

Despite the Tydonni knights’ charges, it’s not enough to rout the Kianene forces. Despite some victories, Fanayal’s forces are too much. The Inrithi forces are doomed to lose. Despite their loses, the Holy War holds their position.

The Fanim wept with fury, with outrage, as they cut down the Inrithi invaders. They cried out glory to Fane and the Solitary God, even as they wondered that the Men of the Tusk did not flee.

Achamian faces the demon and realizes it is a powerful demon. He struggles to think how to deal with it. He used an Odaini Concussion Cant to throw her clear before it landed on her. The demon advances on him speaking that it must take an eye for an eye. He is horrified by what Iyokus has unleashed and begs Esmenet to flee.

The thing leapt towards him.

Achamian began singing—the deepest of the Cirroi Looms. Glorious Abstractions knitted the air about and before him, a thresher of light. The demon laughed and screamed.

In the nonman ruins, Moënghus staggers back from his wound, his snakes coming out of recessed holes in the wall to curl about his neck. He realizes something in this moment about how Moënghus can see through the serpents, many becoming one. “What was soul became place.”

With three voices he sang, one utteral pitched to the world and two inutterals directed to the ground. What had been an ancient Cant of Calling became something far, far more… A Cant of Transposing.

Kellhus is wrapped up in the spell, illuminating the room in blue light. He sees his father looking so pale. Then he sees Serwë leaping at Moënghus out of the darkness. A moment later, Kellhus teleports away.

Achamian battles the demon while Esmenet is unable to look away. She’s transfixed by Achamian “surrounded by withered, burning grasses, he stood behind his sheets of light, at once glorious with power and dreadful with frailty.” The demon reaches his wards and breaks through them. Achamian’s sorcerer falters for one moment. The demon grabs him and carries him into the air.

She could not scream.

Conphas cries out that he’s alive, but no one cheers or looks relieved. They’ve mistaken him for a common soldier. He glances at a captain and orders him to find General Baxatas. The man hesitates but sees the “cold fire” in Conphas and obeys at a run. He is giving commands, telling a soldier to sound the advance. He hears shouting, thinking it’s his own soldiers only to see an army of horseman racing at him roaring, “There are no more nations!” They fly beneath the Red Lion and the Circumfix.

“Kill them!” Conphas howled. “Attack! Attack! Attack!”

For an instant it seemed nothing would happen, that nobody had heard. His army continued to mill in imbecile crowds; the interlopers continued to ride unmolested among them.

“There are no more nations!”

Then the white-clad knights abruptly changed direction, began riding towards him.

As they charge, he remembers his grandmother when she was younger and beautiful. She was teaching him that an emperor needed to stay grounded and to measure “the purses of those who serve you, my little godling.” An emperor needs to know how much loyalty they have to spend. Today, Conphas’s found out the limits. His men don’t rally. They surrender. They flee. They break under the stress.

“I defeated the Scylvendi,” he said to the remainder. “You were there…”

Hooves pounding the turf. The ground shivered through his sandals.

“No man could do such a thing,” he said.

“No man!” one of the kneelers cried. The soldier clutched his hand, kissed his Imperial Ring.

Such a deep sound, the charge of the Inrithi. Thunder about horses snorting, gear clanking. So this was what the heathen heard.

The Emperor of Nansur turned, not really believing…

He saw King Saubon leaning from his saddle, his face ruddy with murderous intent. More than sun glinted in the man’s blue eyes.

He saw the broadsword that took his head.

Eleäzaras closes in on Seökti, the Heresiarch of the Cishaurim. He plans on avenging his “beloved teacher” and his school. He screams his mentor’s name between Cants. Eleäzaras smote Seökti with magma and fire, with suns and fury. Eleäzaras is laughing as he sang because “vengeance had made hatred a thing of rapture and glory.” However, he’s attacked by blue plasma, the Holy Water of Indara-Kishauri. Eleäzaras’s wards crack. Eleäzaras strengthen his defenses and then realizes he’s alone in the skies.

All about him the world had become a tidal surge of brilliant white and blue, tearing, pounding. Markless, as virginal as the Godspun world.

Tearing. Pounding.

The Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires grunted, cursed. Jets of incandescence exploded through his Wards, immolating his left arm even as he screamed deeper defenses. A fissure opened before him. Light blew across his scalp and brow. Like a doll, he was thrown backward.

His corpse toppled into burning tracts below.

Outside the city, Fanayal’s forces are encircling the Inrithi. Things are looking bleak for the Men of the Tusk. Gotian, in a desperate charge, is slain along with most of his Shrial Knights. Then they hear a horn sound. They spot the Imperial Army marching towards the battle. But mixed in among the banners of the Nansur Columns were the Circumfix and the Red lion.

This wasn’t the treachery of an Emperor—an Ikurei—come to seal a pact with their Padirajah. The hated standard of the Exalt-General, with its distinctive Kyranaean disc, was nowhere to be seen.

No. This wasn’t Ikurei Conphas. It was the Blond Beast…

King Saubon.

Cnaiür is struggling to breathe as he sees Moënghus slumped against the walls. The Scylvendi had moved for hours through the halls following Serwë and the other skin-spies. They tracked Kellhus’s scent. He knows he is farther from the Steppe than ever. Serwë attacks Moënghus first, but Moënghus uses a mix of hand-to-hand fighting and Psûkhe to kill her. The other skin-spies attack. One is seized by the throat and consumed from within by flue fire.

Cnaiür advances at a numb shamble. He feels that same dread on the day he approached Kellhus on his father’s barrow. Today is different. Kellhus had been where he departed. “This was his destination.” Moënghus, through his snakes, notices Cnaiür and calls him, “Nayu.” He sounds just like Kellhus. He says that Nayu has returned just as he knew. Moënghus beseeches Cnaiür and he feels a tug of joy and remorse.

Cnaiür stopped at the threshold, mere paces from the man who had butchered his heart. He glanced uneasily about the room, saw Serwë splayed motionless to his right, her long blonde hair swept across a bloodied floor, and captive skin-spies hanging abject within a curtain of pulley sand chains. The walls warred with inhuman images. He squinted at the light that hung impossibly beneath the graven vaults.

“Nayu… put down your sword. Please.”

Blinking, he saw the notched blade in the air before him, though he had no recollection of drawing it. The light rolled like liquid across it.

“I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha,” he said. “The most violent of men.”

Moënghus calls that a lie to hide his weakness. Cnaiür calls him the lie. Moënghus says he sees love in Cnaiür. He screams, “I hate!” Moënghus is full of pity and starts talking about how he showed Cnaiür he was different from the others. Cnaiür calls this deceit. Moënghus asks if they’re lies, why do they torment him. “It is truth that burns, Nayu—as you know… for you have burned in it for uncounted seasons.” Cnaiür feels the weight of the earth and knows he has strayed too far from his people. He drops the sword. He cries.

And Moënghus was holding him, enclosing him, healing his innumerable scars.

“Nayu…”

He loved him… this man who had shown him, who had led onto the trackless steppe.

“I am dying, Nayu.” Hot whispers in his ear. “I need your strength…”

Abandoned him. Forsook.

He had loved only him. In all the world…

Weeping faggot!

They kiss and Cnaiür feels shame. The snakes curl around his head as he finds this so different from kissing Serwë or Anissi. He can surrender here. He doesn’t have to be strong. He pulls his Chorae out of his breeches.

His eyes leaden with ardour, he murmured, “I wander trackless ground.”

Moënghus gasped, jerked, and spasmed as Cnaiür rolled the Chorae across his [Moënghus’s] cheek. White light flared from his gouged sockets. For an instant, Cnaiür thought, it seemed the God watched him through a man’s skull.

What do you see?

Moënghus spills dead on the ground as Cnaiür cries out in grief, asking how Moënghus could leave him again. He laughs, mad, realizing he has a final swazond to make. It was all too much. “He cackled with grief.” He loses track of time as he cries over Moënghus. Only the fading of the sorcerous light pulls him out. He looks over to Serwë, her face cracked for a moment before it’s smooth. “Seamless and perfect.”

Yes. Serwë… The first wife of his heart.

His proof and prize.

Absolute darkness engulfed him.

Proyas witnesses the destruction of the Scarlet Spires, the five surviving Cishaurim standing over the scorched landscape. Proyas was lucky to have survived without his Chorae. He’s confused, stunned as he witnesses the ruins of Shimeh. He stars up at the sky, the smoke choking out all but a glimmer of the sun. Then he notices something sparkle. The point became a geodesic dome. A burst of air drives back the smoke from the spell.

And Proyas saw a figure standing where the light had been, so distant he could scarce make out his features, save that his hair was gold and his gown billowed white.

Kellhus!

The Warrior-Prophet

Proyas blinked. Shivers splashed across his skin.

Kellhus begins chanting as marches at the Cishaurim. The five turn and face the Warrior-Prophet walking towards them on solid air. Debris begins to circle him, pulled up in various orbits. He uses the orbiting debris to deflect Chorae missiles shot up at him. When they hit, they disrupted the spell, sending the debris flying. At the same time, light flashes from Kellhus, attacking the bowmen.

The five Cishaurim advance on Kellhus. They send their water-like spells to crash against his spherical Wards. “Somehow, perfect lines flicked from the maelstrom, coiled into knifing geometries about the nearest of the Cishaurim.” He’s ripped to pieces. But the attacks from the others are weakening his wards. He has to strengthen them. Proyas fears he can’t win if he has to stay on the defensive.

Suddenly, the Cishaurim stop their attack. Kellhus has vanished. He reappears behind one Cishaurim and rams his sword through the Cishaurim’s back. Kellhus teleports as the three remaining Cishaurim are stunned. “Had they eyes, Proyas was certain they would have blinked.” Kellhus teleports behind another and beheads him. Kellhus catches a Chorae crossbow bolt and throws it at the fourth Cishaurim, turning him into a pillar of salt.

Proyas whooped. Never had he felt so renewed, so young!

And Anasûrimbor Kellhus was singing the Abstractions once again. White robes boiled in the clearing sun. Planes and parabolas crackled about him. The Very ground, to the pith of its ruin, hummed. The surviving Cishaurim floated in a broad and wary circle. He knew he had to keep moving, Proyas realized, to avoid the fate of his brothers. But it was already far too late…

There was no escaping the Warrior-Prophet’s holy light.

On the shores of the Meneanor, a peasant is picking along the beach as the sun sets. He finds a “dead sorcerer” lying on the beach next to a giant figure of salt. The battle is over. He’s chipping away at the salt figure, fearful he’ll get caught. He fills the purse with salt. When he finishes, a voice asks if he’d like to know a secret. He gasps to find the syntheses staring at him. Terrified, the boy nods.

The voice tells him to come closer.

My Thoughts

Looks like Eleäzaras was wrong about those Chorae being beneath the rubble as belonging to dead men. He’s walked right into a trap.

Things have shifted now. You can feel the tension in the conversation between Moënghus and Kellhus. He thinks Kellhus is mad. Is he? We know he saw visions during the Circumfix. He probably saw visions even earlier in book two. He had a ‘revelation” in an early probability trance. The balance of power is shifting in ways Moënghus didn’t expect. It’s interesting that he’s honest. Why would Moënghus refuse?

I have to stall for time and come up with Plan B.

Dûnyain are interesting. They do not lie to each other. They follow logic. They want facts. Truth. Then they will debate and one side will convince the other. Now Kellhus has to convince his father he’s not insane.

Moënghus made a big mistake. Nice of Bakker to have a type of metaphysics that wasn’t tied to intellect. And, interestingly, that’s the one that can’t be seen. It’s the one that matches creation far more closely than Gnosis, even then produced by the Quya.

Mallahet was mentioned as being one of the most influential Cishaurim back in book one. It was said then that the only reason he wasn’t the High Heresiarch was his foreign blood.

There are lots of theories about the skull Kellhus trips over. However, it’s just showing Kellhus is blind so he couldn’t see it, that Dûnyain does have weaknesses, and to break up the conversation with something interesting. I wouldn’t read anything into it.

Moënghus brings up an interesting point. Kellhus is painting the Consult as evil, a subjective description from the point of view of the Dûnyain. Kellhus doesn’t even engage this. Kellhus is preparing to go to war with the Consult.

The woman and the child… Shows you the Dûnyain priorities there. He needs to do something for the skin-spies. I imagine they require some level of violence innate in them. It’s also a preview to what we’ll find in Ishuäl in the next series.

Maithanet being half-Dûnyain explains a lot. We had the clues right from the beginning. He had blue eyes showing he was half-Ketyai and half-Norsirai. Further, he came out of nowhere from the south. The real question is, where did his mother go? Because Kellhus was having a hard time getting kids. He tried a lot of other women besides Esmenet. Smart women. Only she produced any viable offspring, and even most of hers had problems.

Achamian and Esmenet’s brief moment of happiness is ruined. Esmenet is his greatest motivation. It’s behind his actions in the next series. He wants to prove his theories right about Kellhus for her. To get her back. Now, he’s going to fight an army to protect her.

Conphas’s take is interesting about human nature. Bred to violence. It’s in us all. There is something in us that delights in destruction. In seeing something torn down. Not anything that we worked on. Destruction of objects acts as a proxy for darker emotions. Ones we know we can’t act on. Push us hard enough, some harder than others, and we all embrace violence.

Poor Conphas. He’s facing the Gnosis. One man ruins all the fun. And we get to see just why the Mandate are truly to be feared.

Bakker’s demons are truly alien and terrifying. Poor guardsman. Tension is mounting now.

Proyas is a real believer. Shimeh is his Jerusalem, and he’s helping to destroy it. His men are killing, raping, and stealing. He’s reeling, the poor guy. He’s feeling that wild exhilaration of risking his life conflicting with his faith. His illusions are being shattered. The horrors of war are filling him. They’re twisting him, turning him into something like the Inchoroi, losing his humanity, just caring about his own desires.

Remember what Proyas does in The Unholy Consult once his illusions of Kellhus are shattered even worse. We get a preview for the darkness of the human soul while seeing how it can be controlled now. He fights it here. This is what war and violence do to humans. It destroys us.

It will destroy Proyas eventually. Just not in Shimeh.

Kellhus just got confirmation that Esmenet can’t give him full Dûnyain children. This hurt Kellhus because he has that bit of love for her. As much as he can love.

As it has been apparent, Moënghus conditioned the path for Kellhus to walk on. It has been a massive program to see if Kellhus would solve the equation. It’s like a mathematician writing software to calculate something beyond his ability to solve and then letting it run. If he did it right, the solution would be derived.

The Dûnyain philosophy is a bleak one. There is a reason humans have a yearning for belief. Something about religion is important to our survival. Even those who think they’re not religious usually adopt a secular belief and put it in that same position. They can become just as zealous as any fanatic. The Dûnyain see these beliefs as the problem, but it’s really just humans twisting ideas for their own self-interest. That’s what has to be battled against. Not religion, but selfishness. The Dûnyain see the only way forward to unite everyone in the same selfish belief instead of freeing their minds. The Dûnyain want to be self-moving souls but care little for doing the same for others.

Interesting that Kellhus pulls back from his father’s gesture. It’s a clear rejection of Moënghus, almost revulsion. And yet, they’re Dûnyain. Moënghus couldn’t be reaching out like a father to find comfort in his son, and Kellhus shouldn’t be acting in revulsion, but we know Kellhus has emotions. Perhaps this was a test on Moënghus’s part, to see how he would act. To see how “mad” Kellhus is.

In the midst of her fear and seeing Achamian for who he truly is, Esmenet is finally honest with herself. Achamian loves her. Kellhus has some feelings for her. He loves her in the stunted way, but he can’t ever give her what Achamian can. What Kellhus can give her is other things and, being pregnant, she has to think of more than herself.

There is something ironic about Eleäzaras being saved by Men of the Tusk. He’s a sorcerer condemned by the Tusk to Hell, and yet he is being saved by them.

“So many wrongs suffered. So many deaths unavenged.” The cycle of violence. So hard to break.

Kellhus seems to think his survival at the Circumfix was a miracle. And definitely something weird happened. He plucked Serwë’s heart out of his own chest. A topoi had formed there. The outside bled in while he was on the Circumfix. He spoke with the No-God, or, I should say, interfaced with its connection. It’s an indication that Anasûrimbor blood can activate it. I think because they have nonman blood in their veins. The only time, it seems, that a nonman bred a human woman was the ancestor of the Anasûrimbor dynasty.

Kellhus believes he’s special. I think this is what lead him into venturing into the Outside between books. He had to find proof. Assurances of what he thinks. Bakker has an interesting world. He’s a materialist and yet created a world with the spiritual being a real thing. Is Kellhus actually special? Or is it all a delusion on his part? What if it’s a mix of all of it? He’s a fulcrum for the outside. For Ajokli and for the No-God.

Kellhus is an interesting character. A man raised to logic who know has embraced some modicum of faith. He’s seen beyond this world and seen the Outside touch it. Maybe the prophecy to the Shrial Knights was just good luck, but he had a “revelation” of the Circumfix. Bakker chose that word with care. Not a guess, not a probable outcome, but a revelation. He’s realizing it now, and he has to decide if he’s crazy or to trust that he’s not. He has to go against being Dûnyain, which is what keeps him from falling into the logical decision of siding with the Consult like the Mutilated do.

Force of personality is all that has held his army together. With him dead, they are lost. It’s not a good thing for an army. They should be able to survive the loss of any officer. It gave him this loyal force, but now it’s biting him in the ass as they think he’s dead.

I recently read a series with a character that is similar to Conphas. Someone who thought himself better. Someone who believed he was a God because of his abilities. He had the arrogance to think he could reshape the world in his own image, so certain in his vision of what right and wrong meant that he could impose it on the world. I won’t name the character so as not to spoil it, but in the end, when he realizes he lost, he starts to panic. He breaks down in disbelief and becomes a bitch.

Eleäzaras knows they can’t win, but he orders his survivors to fight. He can’t let this go. Not after all he’s done to his school. They have to win. He’s desperate for it.

No one can know what they worship because God stands outside our world. If there is something beyond the physical world, we can never reach it. We can never escape our universe. We’re limited. The more we learn, the more we realize we’ll never reach outside our universe.

He recognized Cnaiür by his HEARTBEAT! Jesus, that’s precise.

Kellhus pronouncement on his father is correct. We see that at the end of the Unholy Consult. I wondered all through the second series if Kellhus would still be Dûnyain. If he was leading the Great Ordeal to their destruction as a bargaining chip to assume command of the Consult and continue their work. Bakker was smart to deny us POV’s of Kellhus in the second series until near the end.

Such a strange heroes journey Kellhus has been upon. Now that we’ve seen the whole of the series and know his true intentions, this is a powerful moment in his story when he says he’s more than Dûnyain. It’s when he rejected his path and accepted the Call. Death and rebirth is also part of the Hero’s Journey. Will that play a role in the final series?

I suspect Achamian is shamed by Esmenet witnessing him killing. Seeing the true him, as she noted: the Mandate Schoolman not her husband.

So the Ciphrang tries to kill Achamian and inadvertently saves him from the Imperial Army’s Chorae bowmen. Iyokus accidentally saves Achamian’s life. I’ve never noticed that.

I think Proyas weeps because he is losing all his innocence. This was supposed to be a special place, and they are destroying it. Not the Fanim, but the Inrithi. To save it, they are defiling it. To protect it, they are breaking it. They came here thinking they were doing good, but only committed evil upon evil.

Kellhus realized that souls are things mapped on the outside. That they can be plotted. They can be a place. So he needs coordinates. He has previously speculated on using a second inutteral, something Achamian claimed impossible. Now he used it and took a two-dimensional spell and made it into three dimensions, inspired by the Cishaurim peering through the souls of their snakes.

Nice touch with the “rumbling climbing into the sky” as the demon carries off Achamian in the background of Conphas’s scene.

So long Conphas. Your men followed you so long as you were winning. Conphas had never run. When he faced the Warrior-Prophet after the Circumfix, he stayed proud, in charge. He was defiant and so they were, too. But today, he ran from Achamian. He broke and spent the last of their loyalty and faith in him.

Eleäzaras, obsessed with vengeance, is slain. His obsession with defeating his enemy has led his school to ruin. Arrogance let him think he was better than the Cishaurim. They’ve learned the hard way.

Oh, Saubon. That guilt got to you. Now you’re sweeping in to save the day. If Achamian hadn’t broken Conphas with his attack and delayed the Nansur advance, who knows how this battle would have resulted. Now the tied has turned.

I wondered why Kellhus didn’t just kill Moënghus but stab him. Cnaiür was here. Kellhus wounded Moënghus enough to give Cnaiür the ability to kill him. Kellhus upheld his bargain with Cnaiür in the end. He didn’t have to. Ensuring Moënghus died would be the more practical thing. The Dûnyain thing.

Kellhus is more than Dûnyain now.

“What do you see?” This whispers in Cnaiür’s mind as he thinks he sees God through Moënghus’s dying eyes. The God is asking the question. The same question that the No-God sees. We go back to Kellhus’s theory that every soul is merely a point of the Oversoul, the unity trying to understand itself. The No-God is an artificial soul. It absorbs the pieces of the Oversoul, sucking them up and thus preventing the cycle of rebirth. Diminishing the Oversoul, the God, until it can’t keep the outside manifesting. So it can’t keep claiming the souls of the survivors. The No-God is it’s opposite, it’s inverse, and it asks the same questions. It wants to know the same thing.

What do you see? What am I?

Cnaiür admitted at long last he loved Moënghus. That was why his hate was so great. He loved this man and was abandoned by him. He found him, kissed him, and he knew that Moënghus would just abandon him again. Cnaiür knew that as he felt Moënghus manipulating him. “I need your strength.” That was the only reason Moënghus was so warm. He knew he would be abandoned again.

So he killed him to protect himself. Then he retreats back to his people. He’s come far, but he has Serwë again. It’s the surviving skin-spy brother, hence her face momentarily cracked as it changed appearances. By embracing Serwë, he’s rejecting the freedom of the Dûnyain and the trackless step. He’s choosing to return to the “absolute darkness.”

He’s embraced by the darkness that comes before. The lie is easier than the truth.

When we next see Cnaiür, he’s Scylvendi again.

So, the Psûkhe is different from other sorceries. It’s all about passion. There very best, the five Kellhus just annihilated, are probably on par with an average Mandate with the Gnosis through sheer passion and strength of will. It’s hard to say since we’ve never seen Cishaurim fight the Gnosis save this one instant, and, well, Kellhus.

If you didn’t know it, salt was a valuable commodity in ancient times. It was either found in natural salt flats or gathered along seashores and traded inland. To the boy, finding a demon turned into salt is like finding a huge stack of gold.

So, what is going on with this scene? Somehow, Achamian defeated the demon after it grasped him. A demon’s body seems to turn into salt when it is defeated. Then Achamian landed on the beach. He survives, but the boy thinks him dead.

What is the Synthese’s secret? I have no idea. What does this boy matter? Don’t know. Did the Synthese kill him, tell him some profound secret. Who knows. All we can say is the Synthese was over Achamian while he slept, probably with skin wards around him protecting him. The Synthese doesn’t have the strength to do any physical sorcerers, only glamours. It’s Bakker being cryptic.

Maybe Bakker had plans for this boy in the sequel series and it never manifested. Maybe it’s hinting that something was done to Achamian by the Synthese. After all, something changes with his dreams of Seswatha in the next series. I’ve always attributed it to being hypnotized by Kellhus in this book, but there is no conclusive proof.

Hi, if you like my Analysis, you can connect with me on Facebook and Twitter, and you can pre-order my first fantasy novel, Above the Storm, from Amazon or purchase my short story collection! Also,  please leave any comments or criticisms below! They help keep me motivated!

To save the world, Ary must die!

Ary, a young man scarred by his past, is thrust into the dangers of the military. But he carries a deadly secret: the dark goddess’s touch stains his soul.

Her taint threatens to destroy all he loves.

He must hide the truth from the other marines and the woman he loves. Can Ary survive the dangers of service and the zealous assassin plotting his death?

Are you ready for the action, danger, romance, and betrayal exploding across the skies Above the Storm!

Click here for Chapter Seventeen, the final part of The Prince of Nothing trilogy!