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Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Seventeen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 5
The Holy Warrior
Chapter 17
The Andiamine Heights

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

The event itself was unprecedented: not since the fall of Cenei to the Scylvendi hordes had so many potentates gathered in one place. But few knew Mankind itself lay upon the balance. And who could guess that a brief exchange of glances, not the Shriah’s edict, would tip that balance?

But is that not the very enigma of history? When one peers deep enough, one always finds that catastrophe and triumph, the proper objects of the historian’s scrutiny, inevitably turn upon the small, the trivial, the nightmarishly accidental. When I reflect overmuch on this fact, I do not fear that we are “drunk as the sacred dance,” as Protathis writes, but that there is no dance at all.

DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

My Thoughts

Wow, there is a lot to unpack in this epigraph. For one thing, Bakker is setting up how monumental the events in this chapter will be, and not only the maneuvering between the Emperor and Proyas on who will lead the Holy War, but the simple glances exchanged between Kellhus and Skeaös. Something so small changes everything. Bakker’s discussion of how history focuses on the big events, great wars, great loss of life, great upheavals, and how those are really called by such mundane things is epitomized by Kellhus studying Skeaös. Or in our world, how a plane can crash and kill 300 people because a maintenance worker didn’t tighten a bolt properly.

Or even the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand that was the final catalyst to World War 1. The original attempt failed. The Duke and his wife escaped to safety and one of the assassins escaped. He went to a cafe, ordered lunch, to gather himself, to think what to do next. Meanwhile, the Duke wanted to visit the hospital and see the people injured in the bombs that went off meant for him. On the way to the hospital, his driver made a wrong turn and passed in front of that cafe. The assassin, seeing his target delivered, attacks. An entire generation of men in Europe would die in the trenches because of that wrong turn.

Achamian final line about being drunk while the sacred dance, meaning that the gods are in control but we are to besotted in our own vices to notice and how he fears that no fate actually governs anything. He fears it is all so pointless.

Late Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn

Kellhus walks with Cnaiür, Xinemus, and the five Conryian Palatines behind Proyas through the Andiamine heights, Proyas bouncing between elation and anxious by turns. Currently, he is elated, sure his plan will work. Proyas plays down the grandiose palace to the Scylvendi, fearing Cnaiür will be overawed. Cnaiür responds by spitting, which Proyas warns would be a bad idea to do before the Emperor.

A week had passed since they had joined the Holy War and secured the hospitality of Nersei Proyas. In that time, Kellhus had spent long hours in the probability trance, assessing, extrapolating, and reassessing this extraordinary twist of circumstance. But the Holy War had proven incalculable. Nothing he’d thus far encountered could compare with the sheer number of variables it presented. Of course, the nameless thousands who constituted its bulk were largely irrelevant, significant only in their sum, but the handful of men who were relevant, who would ultimately determine the Holy War’s fate, had remained inaccessible to him.

That would change in a matter of moments.

Today, the matter of who would lead the Holy War and if the Emperor’s Indenture had to be signed would be settled. Before Xerius, all parties would plead their case and respect the judgment of the Shriah’s representative. “One way or another, the Holy War was about to march on distant Shimeh.” Kellhus does not care which side wins since everyone acknowledges Conphas as a brilliant tactician. Kellhus only cares that the Holy War gets him to Shimeh. Kellhus ponders if war is his father’s lesson.

Xinemus cracks a joke about how the Emperor will react to Cnaiür’s presence. Cnaiür has little patience for this. Kellhus and Cnaiür both understand this is his trial, but Kellhus will also be judged through him. Kellhus assesses how much humiliation in these “games” Cnaiür can endure for vengeance.

“The game is never over,” Proyas asserted. “The game is without beginning or end.”

Without beginning or end…

Kellhus was eleven when he first heard that phrase during his training from Kessriga Jeükal, a Pragma (senior Dûnyain). Kellhus is frighted. He arrives and gazes at the trees on the mountain slope and feels the sun. Jeükal asks if Kellhus drunk his fill of water, which he has.

The Logos is without beginning or end, young Kellhus. Do you understand this?”

The instruction had begun.

No, Pragma,” Kellhus replied. Though he still suffered fear and hope, he had long before overcome his compulsion to misrepresent the extent of his knowledge. A child had little choice when his teachers could see through faces.

Thousands of years ago, when the Dûnyain first found—”

After the ancient wars?” Kellhus eagerly interrupted. “When we were still refugees?”

The Pragma strikes Kellhus hard, drawing blood from his nose. It was a lesson. “Among the Dûnyain, everything was a lesson.” Pragma instructs that interruptions are a weakness of emotion, rising from the “darkness that comes before.” The Pragma continues his lecture, explaining that the Dûnyain only knew one principal of the Logos.

That which comes before determines that which comes after.”

Two thousand years, and the Dûnyain have never found a violate of cause and effect. This principal is without beginning or end because it is apart from time, it can never age like a man or mountain. They then began talking about what separates men from beasts, despite men being born and dying.

Because like beasts, Man stands withing the circuit of before and after, and yet he apprehends the Logos. He possess intellect.”

“Indeed. And why, Kellhus, do the Dûnyain breed for intellect? Why do we so assiduously train young children such as you in the ways of thought, limb, and face?”

“Because of the Quandary of Man.”

Man is not in control of his actions, compelled by appetites that rise “from the darkness of his soul” even though he understands Logos. To solve the Quandary of Man, he has to be freed of “bestial appetite.” To abandon emotions and command how cause creates effect. “To be the perfect instrument of the Logos and so attain the Absolute.” Kellhus explains how he is not a “perfect instrument” because he has emotions “afflicted by passions.” He does not know the source of his thoughts, which the Dûnyain call “legion.”

Kellhus is about to enter his most difficult part of his “Conditioning: the mastery of the legion within.” If he does, he can survive the Labyrinth.

“This will answer the question of the Thousand Thousand Halls?”

“No. But it will enable you to ask properly.”

In the present, Kellhus and his companions arrive at the Emperor’s Privy garden, and intimate location after the grandeur of the rest of the palace. Here the lords gather, drinking and eating as they politic Kellhus begins his study. Most of the gathered lords are impressed by Cnaiür’s “feral strength,” seeing him for the first time. Kellhus reflects on Proyas and his mix of doubt and certitude, realizing that though Proyas was a man of faith, he was trained to be suspicious by Achamian, forcing Kellhus to “move at tangents” when manipulating him. Kellhus comments that the other lords seem nervous.

“And why not?” Proyas replied. “I bring them a Prince who claims to dream of Shimeh and a Scylvendi heathen who could be their general.” He glanced pensively at his fellow Men of the Tusk. “These men will be your peers,” he said. “Heed them. Learn them. To a man they’re exceedingly proud, and proud men, I’ve found, aren’t inclined to make wise decisions…”

The implication was clear: soon their lives would depend upon the wise decisions of these men.

Proyas then points out the notable lords. Prince Coithus Saubon, leader of the Galeoth an able military leader but defeated by Conphas. Saubon and will aid Proyas if he can get something out of it; his nephew Athjeari, Earl of Faenri. Kellhus observes about Saubon: “He fears nothing more than the estimation of other men. Proyas points out Hoga Gothyelk, leader of the Ce Tydonn, a great warrior but also a pious man, implying Gothyelk is on Proyas’s side. The old man upbraids three of his many sons for being drunk. Kellhus reads deeper into Gothyelk’s behavior, realizing the old man is here to find redemption for some crime. “He’s come to die. Die cleansed.” Next is Chepheramunni, King-Regent of High Ainon wearing a mask, which Kellhus enquirers on.

“The Ainoni are a debauched people,” Proyas replied, casting a wary glance at their immediate vicinity. “A race of mummers. They’re overly concerned with the subtleties of human intercourse. They regard a concealed face a potent weapon in all matters concerning jnan.”

“Jnan,” Cnaiür muttered, “is a disease you all suffer.”

Kellhus asks about jnan. Proyas has a hard time defining it beyond quoting an author and shrugs “simply something we do.” Kellhus thinks on how little men know about themselves. Proyas changes subject, and points out Incheiri Gotian, Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights and the man who will be Maithanet’s proxy. Kellhus notes that Gotian “does not feel equal to his burden” and that he “yearns to be moved… Moved by someone more holy than he.” Kellhus plans on convincing Gotian he is that holy thing. Next Proyas points out Prince Skaiyelt of Thunyerus and a huge man named Yalgrota. The Thunyerus are the only lords girded for battle. Kellhus cracks a dick joke about the giant which annoys Cnaiür

Proyas laughed aloud, but Cnaiür’s ferocious eyes seized Kellhus. Play these fools if you must, Dûnyain, but do not play me!

You’re beginning,” Proyas said “to remind me of Xinemus, my Prince.”

Of the man he esteems above all other.

Kellhus notice that the Thunyerus carry shrunken sranc heads as fetishes. Proyas explains that the Thunyerus are recent converts to Inrithism only in the last fifty or so years. They are very zealous, but because they are the northernmost people, they war with sranc constantly Proyas dismisses them as uncouth barbarians who don’t know the rules and have no business here. Cnaiür points out he is the same, and Proyas is confident Cnaiür will change minds.

At that moment, a Scylvendi is brought out in chains, naked, emaciated, tortured, his eyes gouged out. Kellhus asks who is is while Cnaiür spits, watching the guards chain the prisoner to the emperor’s seat.

“Xunnurit,” he [Cnaiür] said after a moment. “Our King-of-Tribes at the Battle of Kiyuth.”

“A token of Scylvendi weakness, no doubt,” Proyas said tightly. “Of Cnaiür urs Skiötha‘s weakness… Evidence in what will be your trial.”

The narrative returns to Kellhus’s training as a boy before the Logos. He is instructed to repeat: “The Logos is without beginning or end” until told to stop. He sits down before the Pragma and begins. He is puzzled at first. It was easy. The words soon lost all meaning. Then he is instructed to say it within his thoughts.

This was far different and, as he quickly discovered, far more difficult. Speaking the proposition aloud had braced the repetition somehow, as though propping thought against his organs of speech. Now it stood alone, suspended in the nowhere of his soul, repeated and repeated and repeated, contrary to all the habits of inference and drifting association.

Kellhus notices his face grows slack “as though the exercise had somehow severed the links shackling expression to passion.” He grows tense in waves as something within him balks, fighting the repetition. As he repeats, the sun moves across the sky. He wars with “Inchoate urges reared from nothingness, demanding thought.” But he keeps repeating.

Long afterward, he would realize this exercise had demarcated his soul. The incessant repetition of the Pragma’s proposition had pitted him against himself, shown him the extent to which he was other to himself. For the first time he could truly see the darkness that had preceded him, and he knew that before this day, he had never truly been awake.

When the sun sets, Kellhus is told by the Pragma that every time the sun rises he shall “cease repeating the last word of the proposition.” Kellhus understands. He passes through the night, struggling with his passions. He feels at times drunk. His emotions “howled within him—like something dying.”

Then the sun broke the glacier, and he was dumbstruck by its beauty. Smouldering orange cresting cold planes of shining snow and ice. And for a heartbeat the proposition escaped him, and he thought only of the way the glacier reared, curved like the back of a beautiful woman…

The Pragma leapt forward and struck him, his face a rictus of counterfeit rage. “Repeat the proposition!” he screamed.

Back in the present.

For Kellhus, each of the Great Names represented a question, a juncture of innumerable permutations. In their faces, he saw fragments of other faces surfacing as though all men were but moments of one man. An instant of Leweth passing like a squall through Athjeari’s scowl as he argued with Saubon. A glimpse of Serwë in the way Gothyelk looked upon his youngest son. The same passions, but each cast in a drastically different balance. Any one of these people, he concluded, might be as easily possessed as Leweth had been—despite their fierce pride. But in their sum, they were incalculable.

They were a labyrinth, a thousand thousand halls, and he had to pass through them. He had to own them.

What if this Holy War exceeds my abilities? What Then, Father?

Cnaiür asks “Do you Feast, Dûnyain?” noticing Kellhus’s scrutiny. Kellhus reminds the Scylvendi they have the same mission. Kellhus is pleased things are working out better than he predicted, by claiming he is a prince it had secured him “almost effortlessly” among the lords. Proyas treated him like a prince, so did the others. His claim to dreams granted him a more perilous position, and though people interpreted him differently (disbelief, belief, or problematic) they all accorded him the same position.

For the people of the Three Seas, dreams, no matter how trivial, were a serious matter. Dreams were not, as the Dûnyain had thought before Moënghus’s summons, mere rehearsals, ways for the soul to train itself for different eventualities. Dreams were the portal, the place where the Outside infiltrated the World, where what transcended men—be it the future, the distant, the demonic, or the divine—found imperfect expression in the here and now.

But it was not enough to simply assert that one had dreamed. If dreams were powerful, they were also cheap. Everyone dreamed. After patiently listening to descriptions of his [Kellhus’s] dreams, Proyas had explained to Kellhus that literally thousands claimed to dream of the Holy War, some of its triumph, others of its destruction. One could not walk ten yards along the Phayus, he said, without seeing some hermit screech and gesticulate about his dreams.

“Why,” he asked with characteristic honesty, “should I regard your dreams any different?”

Dreams were a serious matter, and serious matters demanded hard questions.

Perhaps you shouldn’t,” Kellhus had replied. “I’m not sure I do.”

Kellhus’s reflectance to believe his own claim to prophethood secured him his position. He pretends to act like a compassionate, cross father when people bow to them. When they beg his touch, he lifts them up and chides them for bowing to another. By feigning he wasn’t a prophet, men like Proyas and Achamian, entertain the possibility he might be. Kellhus would never claim it, but would create the circumstance to make it true. Then those who watch in secret would also be swayed, unable to doubt him any longer.

Kellhus would step onto conditioned ground.

So many permutations… But I see the path, Father.

A young Galeoth perches on the emperor’s seat by chance and when he realizes everyone watches him, strikes poses in mockery of the Empire, bringing laughter. Not long after, the Emperor with Conphas and Skeaös, enters. He sits on his chair and adopts the pose the young man used to mock him, bringing more laughter. This angers Xerius. It takes Xerius several moments to regain himself. During that time, Kellhus studies Xerius’s retinue, noticing Conphas’s arrogance, the fear among the slaves, the disapproval of the Counsels, and one face that catches his attention.

A different face, among the Counsels… a troubling face.

It was the subtlest of incongruities, a vague wrongness, that drew his attention at first. An old man dressed in fine charcoal silk robes, a man obviously deferred to and respected by the others. One of his companions leaned to him and muttered something inaudible through the rumble of voices. But Kellhus could see his lips:

Skeaös…

Kellhus studies the man, allowing his thought to slow, shedding his persona he maintains to others, retreating until his thoughts were entirely focused on the old man’s face. “He became a place.” Kellhus detects no blush reflex, a disconnect between the man’s heartbeat and face. Five heartbeats have passed and Kellhus has to pull out of his deep thought because the Emperor was about to speak.

What could this mean? A single, indecipherable face among a welter of transparent expressions.

Skeaös… Are you my father’s work?

Back to Kellhus’s narrative. He is repeating the phrase missing only the final word. He keeps his concentration, soiling himself. The Pragma pours water across his lips and Kellhus “was merely a smooth rock embedded in moss and gravel beneath a waterfall.” The sun climbs high then sinks towards night. Over and over he witnesses the sun rise, shortening the phrase. As time passes faster for Kellhus, his thoughts work slower as he whispers only “The Logos.” He sees himself himself dwindling to a point, “to the place where his soul fell utterly still.” Then the sun rises and he repeats “The. The. The.”

And it seemed at once an absurd stutter and the most profound of thoughts, as though only in the absence of “Logos” could it settle into the Rhythm of his heart muscling through moment after moment. Thought thinned and daylight swept through, over, and behind the shrine, until night pierced the shroud of the sky, until heavens revolved like an infinite char riot wheel.

The. The…

A moving soul chained to the brink, to the exquisite moment before something, anything. The tree, the heart, the everything transformed into nothing by reception, but the endless accumulation of the same refusal to name.

A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier.

…and then nothing.

No thought.

In the present, Xerius greets the assembled men then notices Cnaiür and greets him by name. Xerius is proud to show off his captured Scylvendi but Cnaiür is dismissive. “He is nothing to me.” Xerius is still confident that he would make a fool of Cnaiür and asks if he nothing because he is broken.

“Broken whom?”

Ikurei Xerius paused. “This dog here. Xunnurit, King-of-tribes. Your king…”

Cnaiür shrugged, as though puzzled by a child’s petty caprice. “You have broken nothing.”

There was some laughter at this.

The Emperor soured. Kellhus could seen an appreciation of Cnaiür’s intellect stumble to the forefront of his thoughts. There was reassessment, a revision of strategies.

He’s accustomed, Kellhus thought, to recovering from blunders.

Xerius continues on, talking about breaking a man is meaningless, but a people is something else. Cnaiür doesn’t respond and Xerius brings up Conphas’s victory over the People of War. Cnaiür again doesn’t respond. Xerius asks if Cnaiür was broken at Kiyuth. “I was”—he [Cnaiür] searched for the proper Sheyic term—“schooled at Kiyuth.” The emperor asks what he learned.

Conphas. Cnaiür learned about Conphas and explains where the general had learned his various tactics. Cnaiür learned “that war is intellect.” That shocks Conphas and silences the Emperor. He needs to show Cnaiür as incompetent to prove that Conphas was worth the price of the indenture. Coithus Saubon wants the debate to end, the Great Names have decided. But it is up to Gotian to make the decision and Gothyelk asks the Shrial Knight what missives Maithanet has given him. Xerius protests it is too soon. Need to interrogate Cnaiür out more. But the others cheer for Gotian.

Xerius adapts and demands Gotian to decide if he wants a heathen to lead the Holy War. “Would you be punished as the Vulgar Holy War was punished on the Plans of Mengedda?” Proyas counters that Cnaiür would advice the great names. Xerius is disgusted with the ridiculousness of that. He protests how Cnaiür is a blight on the Holy War. Blasphemy. Proyas schools Xerius on using such language and how ridiculous it is coming from the impious Emperor.

Finally, Conphas speaks, and people quiet. He talks of Scylvendi with a great deal of familiarity, saying how they are heathens without gods, different from the Fanim. He points at Xunnurit’s swazond.

“They call these scars swazond,” he [Conphas] said, as though a patient tutor, “a word that means ‘dyings.’ To us, they are little more than savage trophies, not unlike the shrunken Sranc heads that the Thunyeri stitch onto their shields. But they’re fare more to the Scylvendi. Those dyings are their only purpose. The very meaning of their lives is written into those scars. Our dyings… Do you understand this?”

Conphas stirs apprehension in the Great Names. He then says Xunnurit is “a token of their humiliation.” He says Cnaiür is here for vengeance, to plot the destruction of the Holy War. Conphas looks to Proyas. “Ask him what moves his soul.”

Kellhus studies Skeaös again, trying to read the man like he can every other person in the room. Skeaös baffles him. He sees only mimicry in Skeaös. Then he realizes that Skeaös has muscles anchored to different bones.

This man [Skeaös] had not been trained in the manner of the Dûnyain Rather, his face was not a face.

Moments passed, incongruities accumulated, were classified, cobbled into hypothetical alternatives…

Limbs. Slender limbs folded and pressed into the simulacrum of a face.

Kellhus is surprised and questions how it is possible, turning to Sorcery and remembering his fight with the Nonmen. Sorcery was grotesque “like the scribblings of a child across a work of art.” Kellhus can see sorcery and there is none in the skin spy He wants to know who Skeaös is. Skeaös notices the scrutiny and “the rutted brow clenched into a false frown.” Kellhus nods back, pretending embarrassment at being caught looking. Xerius sees the exchange, however, and is alarmed but doesn’t now Skeaös’s face is false. As this happens, everyone turns to Cnaiür for his answer. He spits at Conphas.

In the past, Kellhus sits without thought, the “boy extinguished. Only a place.” It was almost a place outside of cause and effect. The Pragma studies Kellhus then produces a knife and throws it at Kellhus. The place that was Kellhus grabs the knife out of the air. This triggers the place to collapse back into a boy. Into Kellhus.

I have been legion…

In his periphery, he could see the spike of the sun ease from the mountain. He felt drunk with exhaustion. In the recoil of his trance, it seemed all he could hear were the twigs arching and bobbing in the wind, pulled by leaves like a million sails no bigger than his hand. Cause everywhere, but amid countless minute happenings—diffuse, useless.

Now I understand.

In the present, Cnaiür responds and criticizes that Inrithi hearts can’t be used to measure Scylvendi. That you think Xunnurit is bound to Cnaiür by blood and therefore he wants vengeance. But he is Scylvendi, which is why he puzzles them. “Xunnurit is not a shame to the People. It is not even a name. He who does not ride among us ins not us. He is other.” So to the Sclyvendi, Xunnurit’s degradation is not theirs so it doesn’t need to be avenged. Then Cnaiür says that the Nansur should be sounded out. Conphas protests that their heart is known.

The argument turns back to Nansur motives, with Saubon pointing out the hypocrisy of Conphas accepting the Scarlet Spire, which are just as blasphemous, as Cnaiür Saubon turns Conphas’s arguments on him, forcing him to comprise and weaken his position. Proyas asks why the Empire provisioned the Vulgar Holy War if they knew he was doomed.

Kellhus realizes that the Empire were behind the Vulgar Holy War’s destruction. Before, Kellhus did not think it mattered who owned the Holy War, but know realizes that the Empire is a threat to it and therefore to his mission.

“The question,” Conphas ardently continued, “is whether you can trust a Scylvendi to lead you against the Kianene!”

“But that isn’t the question,” Proyas countered. “The question is whether we can trust a Sclyvendi over you.

Conphas pleads with them, calling it madness that they wouldn’t trust the Nansur over Cnaiür But it is the Nansur’s fault that they need Cnaiür because of the Indenture. Conphas tries to protest that the land belongs to the Nansur Empire, stolen from them by the heathens. Proyas calls it “God’s land” and asks if the Empire should be put against scripture.

“And who are you, Proyas, to ask this question?” Conphas returned, rallying his earlier claim. “Hmm? You who would put a heathen—a Scylvendi, no less!—before Sejenus.”

“We are all instruments of the Gods, Ikurei. Even a heathen—a Scylvendi, no less—can be an instrument, if such is the God’s will.”

Everyone turns to Gotian and asks what Maithanet says. Kellhus detects that Gotian is still undecided. He asks Cnaiür why he came. The Scylvendi says for the “promise of war.” Gotian dismisses that, there are no Sclyvendi mercenaries. Cnaiür is disgusted. He would never sell himself. If he needs, he seizes. He then explains his lie about the Utemot being destroyed. Cnaiür turns to Kellhus and says he learned outlanders could have honor because of him. And when he learned Kellhus had “God-sent dreams” he accept his wager.

Everyone looks on Kellhus and he debates acting or letting Cnaiür continue. Gotian asks on the wager. Cnaiür answers that this would be a war unlike any other. Cnaiür says he is still Scylvendi, that they are all boys playing at war.

“War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, not the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men and break them.”

Cnaiür has been offered war and he accepts. He will not mourn their loses or celebrate their victories. But he will fight and suffer and kill Fanim with them. The crowd is stunned and then the elderly Gothyelk speaks of his experience and that he’s “learned to trust the man who hates openly, and fear only those who hate in secret.” He trusts Cnaiür and glowers at the Empire. Saubon is also in agreement that Cnaiür speaks wisdom. But Gotian is still undecided, fear gripping him that he’ll make the wrong decision in Maithanet’s name and destroy the Holy War.

So Kellhus speaks of his dream. He doubts what they mean, but then goes on to outline the decision before him. You have Cnaiür leading the war or bind yourself to the interest of the Empire. “Which concession is greater?” Kellhus knows that from now on, the Great Names will look at him as someone who has every right to speak as their equal. He continues, bringing up the shady acts of the Empire in provisioning the Vulgar Holy War and letting it be destroyed versus trusting a murdering Scylvendi. “In my homeland, we call this a dilemma.” Everyone but Xerius and Conphas laugh or smile. Kellhus has side-stepped Conphas’s prestige by making the comparison between Cnaiür and Xerius, making them seem equally untrustworthy. Kellhus can vouch for Cnaiür, but no one can vouch to him.

“So let’s assume that both men, Emperor and Chieftain, are equally untrustworthy. Given this, the answer lies in something you already know: we undertake the God’s work, but it’s dark and bloody work nonetheless. There is no fierce labor than war.”

Everyone stands on the brink. Gotian makes the realization that with the Empire they concede the wages of their labor in addition to the other issues of trust both men share. Conphas realizes the weakness in Kellhus’s argument too late to make a difference because Gotian has already opened his canister and produced two messages. He pics one and opens it.

He has chosen to trust Cnaiür and the Emperor is ordered to provision the Holy War by the “authority of the Tusk and Tractate, and according to the ancient constitution of Temple and State.” Everyone cheers as Gotian speaks about faith, but the men of the tusk are too busy celebrating to listen, eager to march.

As the celebration rages, Kellhus notes Xerius ordering for Skeaös to be taken, fearing the man hides treason. Skeaös is led away by a pair of guards and Kellhus wonders what they would discover. “There had been two contests in the Emperor’s garden.” Xerius has fear and rage in his face, believing Kellhus is part of Skeaös’s treachery. Kellhus realizes the Emperor searches for a reason to seize him, too. He tells Cnaiür they have to leave right now because: “There has been too much truth here.”

My Thoughts

I do love how Proyas explains the Nansur’s need to have such colossal works, like their palace or Xerius’s obelisk, forever living in the shadow of the greater Ceneians and Kyranaens civilizations of near and far antiquities.

Kellhus ambivalence to who wins is not surprising. Either end fulfills his mission. He has no loyalty to Nersei Proyas whose soldiers rescued him from the Nansur.

Kellhus has used the probability trance to try and predict the Holy War. His father has had 30 years to learn about all these men, to perform his probability trance. It is no coincidence that Kellhus arrives just as the Holy War is ready to take the field. All these events dance to Moënghus’s tune. So what is his mission?

The Dûnyain, as horrific as they are in their stripping of humanity from their sons and turning them into living logic machines, are always fascinating. I relish any chance we get to see of them. Here we have a young Kellhus still feeling emotions but learning to control them while his teachers seek to stamp it out.

The Dûnyain’s ancestors “forgot” about the supernatural to pursue the Logos. They denied those that came after valuable knowledge. With the Celmomas’s Prophecy, we see an effect preceding the Cause of Kellhus arrival at the end of the world. “You cannot raise walls to that which is forgotten.”

The Absolute. The goal of the Dûnyain to be free of emotion. Not even Kellhus has attained it since he is still moved by the faintest of emotion: the outrage he feels for Serwë, the way he holds onto Cnaiür even when killing Cnaiür in the Mountains was the safer route.

The Dûnyain consider emotion an “affliction.” Sad. They are a monstrous people. As “cool” as Kellhus is, the more you study the books the more Bakker shows how horrific the Dûnyain are. On the others side of the coin are the Consult, a race of lovers, of beings who revel in their “bestial appetites.”

Proyas telling Kellhus to learn the other lords is ironic. That’s what Kellhus does.

Coithus Saubon will play a large roll to come in the story, note that he is the seventh son of the King of Galeoth. A man with little chance to become king. Note him being describe as a “mercenary.” One of those Achamian talked about in the previous chapter’s epigraph. Kellhus’s observation about Saubon comes from a simple flush and quickened heartbeat. And Saubon’s nephew, who grows an infamous reputation over the next two books as a raider.

Proyas is dismissive of the Ainoni. That is always a dangerous thing. When you are dismissive you see a person or group as less, easy to underestimate and thus be caught by surprise. As he said, Ainoni are a race of mummers, especially their King-Regent.

Kellhus plan with Gotian, providing the divine to move him, will bear fruit in book 2.

Classic Cnaiür when Proyas points out Yalgrota’s scrutiny. Cnaiür doesn’t brag when he states he will fight and beat Yalgrota. Cnaiür is not threatened by the huge man.

Kellhus is making progress on his seduction of Proyas. Poor guy. Kellhus has big plans for Proyas.

Xunnurit being blinded is something the Byzantine Empire did to valuable prisoners. Another connection between it and the Nansur Empire.

We go back to the training. By repeating the same phrase over and over, Kellhus has to war with urges of both his emotion and body, demands upon his soul that try to compel it to act without Kellhus even realizing it. Learning that, he can now understand and be free of his inner beast, on the path to being a self-moving soul—the Absolute.

The Pragma fakes rage when he hits Kellhus at the first sunrise. And Kellhus reads it in his face. When he started his training, Kellhus knows he can’t read faces, and yet he is already picking it up. Of course the Pragma had to fake it, he has gone through this process and has divorced himself, mostly, from his emotions.

Kellhus is certain that learning to master these men is something his father wants him to achieve. But Kellhus assesses himself and wonders if he can. In another, this would be called doubt, but for a Dûnyain, it is merely truth. He knows his abilities and the task before him is daunting for a Dûnyain to do.

Dreams as a way to train for different eventualities is an interesting outlook. So the Dûnyain believed they have purpose. Do they teach their adepts to lucid dream? To make use of it? Or to reject it as more cause trying to affect them out of the darkness?

Serious matters demand hard questions is very true. Take heed, readers, if you want to assert something that matters, make sure you can answer hard questions. Don’t run from them, don’t dismiss the questioner, but answer them and if you’re answers are lacking, then refine your argument. It will only make your position stronger.

Interesting that why Kellhus realizes that the young Galeoth predicting how the Emperor would sit had premeditated him which was “the most galling insults. In this way even an Emperor might made a slave.” Kellhus realizes this but doesn’t know why. Rare that Kellhus doesn’t understand something. Xerius is a slave because he is forced to change his posture, his plans, and bow to peer pressure, a slave to the darkness that comes before which has conditioned him to act in this manner. A free soul would not have cared that others laughed.

When Kellhus studies Skeaös he loses his personhood nothing more than “a blank field for a single figure.” This is the skill he is being taught in his training flashbacks. At the end of his training, Kellhus becomes “a place.”

When Kellhus is repeating only the, he mentions the tree. Trees are a common symbol of possibility in the books. They forever branch in many directions. The fight for control of their space, to condition the world in their favor. Kellhus often notices trees.

As you can see, Kellhus is coming close to being a self-moving soul. He is chained at the brink, almost at the Absolute. And then he has no thoughts. He has transitioned to become a Dûnyain As we see in the previous sequence when Kellhus retreats to nothing, not even a person, to consider the old man. This trial is the foundation of the Dûnyain probability trance, what Kellhus is attempting to do by predicting how all those myriad of people will react, to figure out the shortest path to harnessing the Holy War and kill his father.

Which is exactly what his father wants, as seen by Kellhus constantly speaking to his father in his thoughts. Not directly, but in abstract, staging the question is this what Moënghus expects of me. It this what he his teaching me. Conditioning me.

Love Cnaiür talking about Conphas’s tactics and then the moment he reveals to Conphas he listened to his conversation with his Martemus back at Kiyuth. Kellhus ignores that shock, needing to pay attention to the real game.

Love the irony of Xerius bringing up the Vulgar Holy War that he manipulated into marching to their deaths and then using religious language to shame them not to choose Cnaiür Politics are great. The lies people tell to get their true agenda.

Conphas does a great job with the truth to convince the Great Names. He explains just who the Scylvendi are. And he is right, Cnaiür is here for vengeance, just not against the Inrithi.

Kellhus in a few minutes has just penetrated the Consult’s greatest asset—their skin spies. Only a few other characters, like Conphas, has even noted something strange in skin spies. Esmenet saw something with Sarcellus and Conphas with Skeaös and the other skin spy in the imperial court. Both are intelligent characters.

Kellhus depiction of sorcery as child scribbles on a work of art is a great metaphor for what the Mark is. Why sorcery bruises the world. Because it is grotesque. It is sloppy. It doesn’t come close to creation. Except for the Cishaurim somehow do a better job with their scribbles. This is why there works aren’t seen by the Few. Kellhus is one of the Few, like his father. He can become a sorcerer. And sorcery is all about the Purity of Meaning according to Akka. A man with no emotions and an intellect beyond even the smartest human… What can Kellhus do with it?

Skeaös and Kellhus, both putting on fake expressions as they look on each other. Masks. Neither man honest in the least. What a great metaphor for politics.

When Kellhus is only a place, no thought, and catches the knife, he collapses like a probability waveform in quantum mechanics. He was all things and nothing until acted upon. Then he became something again. He was close to the absolute. Almost apart from cause and effect, almost separate from the Darkness that Comes before. And his lesson, that most cause create effects that are unimportant in the backdrop of the million other causes and effects. But the knife flinging at his neck was a cause not to be ignored.

Cnaiür no longer rides among the Scylvendi. He never really has. He has always walked trackless steppes. His kin sensed this which is why he had to be so strong, so violent, to control them. But he uses this to win over the Inrithi, speaking like a Scylvendi. Pretending.

The Nansur’s scheming and plotting really bites them in the ass when everyone else would rather trust the heathen barbarian over them. It is a satisfying moment in the book.

Cnaiür says he never would sell himself, and yet he did to Kellhus for vengeance. He did not seize, like he claims he would, but bargained.

When Kellhus gives his speech, he uses Cnaiür’s language about war in it, parroting it and changing it enough to sound original. The shortest path once again. It is also a rather clever move changing the debate entirely. Conphas is a known general, but if you can’t trust the Empire he fights for over Cnaiür, what does that matter.

Love how the “pious men of the tusk” are too busy celebrating to listen to all of Massenet’s message beyond the part that gave them the victory they wanted.

And we’ve heard about Xerius’s paranoia and here it rears up. Trusted Skeaös undone because Kellhus stares at him too much. And now Xerius’s paranoia is focused on Kellhus. More problems for our Dûnyain

What a chapter. From Kellhus’s training, the unmasking of a skin spy, and Cnaiür chosen to be the general of the Holy War.

Let’s talk about Skeaös. Through all the book he and Xerius’s mother have objected to the plan of destroying the Holy War. Skeaös is now a revealed to be a pawn of the Consult. So why do they want the Fanim destroyed. What do they fear? Well, if Moënghus is a Cishaurim as Kellhus deduces, then he should also spot skin spies. What a shock that must have been to the consult to have their perfect spies undone. Not even the Mandate have detected them (remember, someone is telling the Consult about the activities of their agents as discussed between Simas and Nautzera in chapter 2, though they don’t know who the spy is).

Want to read on, click here for Chapter 18!

Review: Darkblade Outcast (Hero of Darkness 2)

Darkblade Outcast (Hero of Darkness 2)

by Andy Peloquin

Reviewed by JMD Reid

The Hunter is reeling from the events of Darkblade Assassin. The revelation that he is a Bucerlari, a half-demon immortal, and that every time he kills with his magical weapon Soulhunger it feeds the rebirth of the Destroyer. Vowing to never kill, to never feed the or give into his demonic nature, he flees Voramis to find answers to his forgotten past. How is he really? And who is the mysterious Her that haunts the edges of remembering?

Struggling against both his demonic nature and his blades need to constantly kill and feed on the souls of its victims, the Hunter falls in with a female knight and her apprentice. Sir Danna and Visibos are traveling to the city of Malandria, a place where the Beggar God’s temple dominates. For they are both knights of the Beggar God.

Knights charged to eradicate demonkind and their offspring—the Bucerlari.

The Hunter walks a tightrope with his new companions. He cannot arouse their suspicious or they will turn on him. His only choice is to hope they don’t and slip away? But will he? And what answers will he find in Malandria?

Darkblade Outcast is an excellent follow-up to Darkblade Assassin. The Hunter’s struggle with his demonic nature and the need of the blade are powerful. He doesn’t want to kill, but the world is not so kind to him. Bandits, a cabal of Mages, assassins, and more plague him as he struggles to understand his place in the world and defy his heritage and purpose. He might be destined to help bring back the Destroyer and end the world, but can he defy it?

Peloquin creates an interesting world with fascinating characters and dark setting. The journey of the Hunter is fascinating as he goes from assassin to hero. As he learns whether he is an evil man or if he can choose to be good as he struggles with his “addiction” to murder. The need burning inside him, always eating at his self-control, demanding he stop showing mercy. He stop showing compassion.

It would be so much easier if he just killed his enemies after all.

I am very interested in where Peloquin takes the series next. If you’re a fan of Grimdark Fantasy and compelling characters, than support this well-written, exciting, page-turning indie fantasy! You will be missing out otherwise!

I was given an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

You can buy Blade of the Destroyer from Amazon. Check out Andy Peloquin’s website, connect on Linked In, follow him on Google Plus, like him on Twitter @AndyPeloquin, and like him on Facebook.

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Sixteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 5
The Holy Warrior
Chapter 16
Momemn

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

 Those of us who survived will always be bewildered when we recall his arrival. And not just because he was so different then. In a strange sense he never changed. We changed. If he seems so different to us now, it is because he was the figure that transformed the ground.

DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

My Thoughts

I don’t think there’s any doubt who the “he” above is: Anasûrimbor Kellhus. We have already seen how Kellhus can manipulate normal humans through his vast intellect and his ability to read minute micro-expressions and involuntary reactions which reveal a person’s true emotions even when they seek to dissemble. Throughout the various quotes of the Compendium of the First Holy War we have heard of it being transformed or hijacked and we know Kellhus is here to do just that.

Sounds like he succeeds. But how does he do it? And how will people like Achamian change? It is a unique form of foreshadowing to give us foreknowledge of the story to come but painted only in the broadest of strokes. Now the narrative has to fill in those details.

Late Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn

The following evening after Kellhus’s arrival, Achamian finds himself studying the men at a campfire, Serwë at his side. Out of her rags, she is a very beautiful woman. Achamian is bemused, studying the man, trying to understand him. The pair share an exchange of greeting and Kellhus smiles.

The man [Kellhus] smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was unlike any smile Achamian had ever seen. It seemed to understand him much more than he wanted to be understood.

Then the revelation struck.

I know this man.

But how does one recognize a man never met? Unless through a son or other kin… Images of his recent dream, holding the dead face of Anasûrimbor Celmomas in his lap, flickered through his soul’s eye. The resemblance as unmistakable: the furrow between the brows, the long hollow of the cheeks, the deep-set eyes.

He is an Anasûrimbor! But that’s impossible…

And yet the times seemed rife with impossible things.

One of those impossible things is the Holy War, which Achamian had only seen its like in his dreams of the Old Wars. Achamian realizes that Kellhus arrival was history walking in the presence. The prophecy echoes through Achamian’s mind. He is shocked to find out the great blood line survived the First Apocalypse. Kellhus has been warned of Achamian and his dreams by Proyas, no doubt in ridicule, but Kellhus is not hasty in his judgment and then makes a joke. Achamian, laughing, finds himself liking the man, put at ease.

Achamian doesn’t have much of a plan in ferreting out information about Kellhus. As a spy, he would only have curiosities and would ask questions, allowing the conversation to flow while searching for what he needed to get his info. He realizes that is not a good method with Kellhus, a species of man Achamian has never met. He finds himself enthralled by Kellhus’s master of his voice. “It seemed to whisper: There’s more than I’m telling you… Only listen and see.

Kellhus can shift gears rapidly, being at once innocent then wise, amused then sorrowful, but Achamian detects no guile in his nature, as though Kellhus was honest with his emotions. Even Kellhus’s eyes, knowing but not judging, stir Awe in Achamian.

They turn to why Kellhus came to the Holy War, Achamian still hoping the man lied.

“You’re referring to the dreams,” Kellhus replied.

“I suppose I am.”

For a brief moment, the Prince of Atrithau regarded him paternally, almost sorrowfully, as though Achamian had yet to understand the rules of this encounter.

Kellhus talks about how the dream awoken him from a repetitive life. And now awakened, he could not ignore it. But had to act. The talk of sleep and love, with Kellhus glancing Serwë Then Kellhus asks Achamian why a sorcerer joined the war. Achamian answer is lame “Because I’ve been directed by my school, I supposed.” Kellhus probes and Achamian speaks about the consult with a slow resentment, fearing ridicule. Kellhus understands.

“Perhaps, Achamian, we’re not so different, you and I.”

How do you mean?”

But Kellhus did not answer. He did not need to. The man had sensed his earlier incredulity, Achamian realized, and had answered it by showing him the irony of one man anguished by dreams denying another man the rapture of his. Suddenly, Achamian found himself believing the man’s story. How could he believe in himself otherwise?

Achamian realizes that there is no ego in the conversation, no rivalries being fenced. There talk had “the character of a voyage.” To Achamian, they are merely discovering new ideas instead of convincing the other who is right. Achamian is no longer suspicious of Kellhus. Since Atrithau is so remote, only Galeoth caravans make the journey there and no Mandate had been in the city for several centuries, there was no way to verify Kellhus’s story. And yet, Kellhus had won Achamian over. He was “a man who moved the souls of those around him.” In their conversations, Achamian found answers to questions he feared to ask. Kellhus reminds him of Ajencis, an “exemplar of Truth.”

Serwë has fallen asleep, head on Kellhus’ lap. He asks Kellhus if he loves her. “Yes… I need her,” is his answer. Achamian can tell Serwë worships Kellhus, which saddens Kellhus. “For some reason, she makes more of me than I am… Others do this as well.” Achamian isn’t surprised, seeing that special something in Kellhus. The Dûnyain finds that ironic.

“And what’s that?”

“Here you possess privileged knowledge, and yet no one believes you, while I possess nothing, and everyone insists that I have privileged knowledge.

And Achamian could only think, But do you believe me?

Kellhus talks about a man who kissed his robe, sounding like he finds it absurd. Achamian understands. Then Kellhus says he believes in Achamian’s mission. This touches the sorcerer, and he tries to joke away his emotion, which leads to talk of Esmenet. Achamian is unnerved by how Kellhus is reading his thoughts. Achamian is curt in his response.

Achamian blamed the silence that followed on those sour words. He repented them but could not take them back. He looked to Kellhus, his eyes apologetic.

But the matter had already been forgiven and forgotten. The silences between men are always fraught with uncomfortable significance—accusations, hesitations, judgments of who is weak and who is strong—but the silences with this man undid rather than sealed these things. The silence of Anasûrimbor Kellhus said, Let us move on, you and I, and recall these things at a better time.

Kellhus then asks for Achamian to be his tutor. Despite a hundred questions, Achamian agrees and Kellhus calls him friend. Achamian feels shy now and is relieved when Kellhus rouses Serwë and they retire for the night. Achamian feels a euphoria as he navigates the alleys of tents to his own.. He feels transformed by his encounter with Kellhus. He doesn’t want to sleep, but finally does and dreams of Anasûrimbor Celmomas’s death and prophecy again. He finds the High King’s voice sounds like Kellhus’s.

One of my seed will return, Seswatha—an Anasûrimbor will return… …at the end of the world.

But what did this mean? Was Anasûrimbor Kellhus in fact a sign, as Proyas hoped. A sign not of the God’s divine sanction of the Holy war, as Proyas assumed, but of the No-God’s Imminent return?

…the end of the world.

Achamian began trembling, shaking with a horror he never before experienced while awake.

Achamian prays to Sejenus to let him die before. He finds it unthinkable, pleading and in denial. He is struck, then, by all those souls sleeping around him dreaming of glory and did not know Achamian’s fears. They were innocences “filled by the heedless momentum of their faith” believing what they did now lay at the center of the world’s events. But that center was Golgotterath.

Later, Achamian felt foolish for his fear and tries to convince himself it is only a coincidence that Kellhus has the same name. Still, Achamian pulls out his “map” of how the great names relate to each other. He ponders Maithanet, fearing he would never know how Inrau died. Then he looks at the consult, scratched to the side, isolated.. He writes Kellhus below “the hated name.”

Cnaiür walks through camp, unsure where to go, while reflecting on his meeting with Proyas and his five Conriyan Palatines to discuss how to outmaneuver the Emperor.

Proud men wagging proud tongues. Even the more bellicose Palatines, such as Gaidekki or Ingiaban, spoke more to score than to solve. Watching them, Cnaiür had realized they all played an infantile version of the same game the Dûnyain played. Words, Moënghus and Kellhus had taught him, could be used hand open or fist closed—as a way to embrace or to enslave. For some reason these Inrithi, how had nothing tangible to gain or to lose from one another, all spoke with their fist closed—fatuous claims, false concessions, mocking praise, flattering insults, and an endless train of satiric innuendos

Jnan, they called it. A mark of caste and cultivation.

Cnaiür endured, even when they turned their attention to him. Cnaiür realizes a hardship he had not anticipated—enduring their “peevish unmanly ways.” He has accepted dealing with Kellhus to get his revenge, but did not realize what else he faced. Cnaiür leaves in disgust when the council ends and stars at the scars, remembering his father teaching him the Scylvendi view of the sky and that the World is a lie, only the People were true. Cnaiür questions why he is here “among the cattle.”

Hearing Kellhus’s voice, and fighting his own demons and memories, he spies on Kellhus as he speaks to Achamian.

Cnaiür had intended to scrutinize what the Dûnyain said, hoping to confirm any one of his innumerable suspicions, but he quickly realized that Kellhus was playing with this sorcerer the way he played all the others, battering him with closed fists, beating his soul down paths of his manufacture. Certainly it did not sound like this. Compared with the banter of Proyas and his Palatines, what Kellhus said to the Schoolman possessed a heartbreaking gravity. But it was all a game, own where truths had become chits, where every open hand concealed a fist.

How could determine the true intent of such a man?

Cnaiür realizes Kellhus is even more inhuman than he thought, having no truth or meaning to them but adopting whatever they need, slithering from idea to idea. He ponders what the Shortest Way leads to.

Cnaiür finds himself watching sleeping Serwë and he fears for her caught in Kellhus’s machinations. He thinks of stealing her away in the night and fleeing away from Kellhus, but he knows they are merely fears leading him away from his purpose—revenge. He feels himself weak again for wanting to depart from the path. Cnaiür tries to convince himself Serwë is nothing while he beats his fist into the dirt. As Kellhus leads the sleepy Serwë to their tent, Cnaiür sees her as a little girl—innocent.

And pregnant.

Kellhus returns after she is asleep and asks Cnaiür how long he’ll lurk in the darkness. Cnaiür said until the sorcerer is gone, since Sclyvendi despise them. Cnaiür finds himself fearing the man physically since their flight and seeing what he can do. So Cnaiür hides his fear with questions, asking why Kellhus is talking to Achamian. Instruction. Cnaiür doesn’t believe and presses. Kellhus asks Cnaiür why his father is in Shimeh. Cnaiür thinks and realizes the possibility Moënghus is Cishaurim, which Kellhus confirms by talking about the dream. Cnaiür had mentioned the possibility when he first met Kellhus but not realized what it meant that Moënghus was Cishaurim.

Cnaiür scowled. “You said nothing to me! Why?”

“You did not want to know.”

Cnaiür ponders it while Kellhus studies him. Cnaiür recognizes something not quite human in Kellhus. Then Cnaiür realizes why he didn’t want to know about Moënghus because that meant he would have to ask Kellhus for information and show ignorance and need—weakness. And that was dangerous around a Dûnyain So Cnaiür instead informs Kellhus that the Mandate do not share their Gnosis with outsiders, ignoring Moënghus entirely. But Kellhus will need it. Cnaiür marches to the pavilion

“Thirty years,” Kellhus called from behind. “Moënghus has dwelt among these men for thirty years. He’ll have great power—more than either of us could hope to overcome. I need more than sorcery, Cnaiür I need a nation. A nation.”

Cnaiür paused, looking skyward once again. “So it is to be this Holy War then, is it?”

“With your help, Scylvendi. With your help.”

Cnaiür knows it is all lies. He enters the tent to rape Serwë again.

The emperor is not pleased to hear from Skeaös, his Prime Counsel, that Proyas has found a Scylvendi and offers him as replacement for Conphas. Xerius has a temper tantrum, railing against Proyas. Skeaös dismisses the possibility that a Scylvendi could lead the Holy War as a joke.

Suspicion enters Xerius and he demands Skeaös look him in the eye (an offense to do so to the Emperor). Xerius wonders what he’ll see. Fear. Xerius is pleased by that.

Achamian has been in a funk since meeting Kellhus. He can’t figure the man out. He keeps trying to use the Cants of Calling to inform the Mandate about Kellhus, and seven times he has stopped himself. He knew he had to, but also knew Nautzera would be convinced, a man who had strong certainties, and would act. Achamian is plagued with doubts, not sure if Kellhus was the harbinger or just a coincidence. Every generation of Mandate had those who were convinced the end was nigh.

Achamian fears the Mandate will seize Kellhus if they learn of him after so many years of inaction. His guilt over Inrau hold him back. Unsure what to do, Achamian asks Xinemus over the breakfast fire, what he makes of Kellhus. Xinemus is unsure, sensing something about the man, but he doesn’t know what to think. Achamian thinks Kellhus is better than most men.

“Most men? Or do you mean all men?”

Achamian regarded Xinemus narrowly. “He frightens you.”

“Sure. So does the Scylvendi, for that matter.”

“But in a different way… Tell me, Zin, just what do you think Anasûrimbor Kellhus is?”

Prophet or prophecy?

“More,” Xinemus said decisively. “More than a man.”

A silence falls, interrupted by the arrival of the Scarlet Spire whose movement through the camps is about to spark off a riot by flying their banner openly, but Achamian realizes the Spire are doing it to put him at ease, to show they are coming openly, risking a riot rather then startling a Mandate Schoolman. Achamian tells Xinemus to get his Chorae anyways. Xinemus is not happy, ordering his soldiers to get ready. He tells Achamian to tell the fool to skulk away. Achamian is hurt his friend blames him for what is happening.

Xinemus’s soldiers push back the rioters as the Scarlet Spire approaches. The Scarlet Spire grow closer, their Javreh slave-soldiers pushing their way through the mob until the reach Xinemus soldiers, then they are through the palanquin they carry approaches Achamian while the mob throws stones, bones, wine bowls, and more.

Eleäzaras, Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spire, steps out, shocking Achamian. The mob falls silent at the sight since he is the third most powerful man in the world, behind the Shriah and the Padirajah. The mob amuses Eleäzaras They exchange greetings, Eleäzaras joking and dismissive. They banter about Scarlet Spire’s jealousy of Mandate Gnosis. Eleäzaras begins insulting Achamian, asking why such a clever man was still I the field, wondering who he offended or if he buggered Proyas as a child. Achamian is shocked by Eleäzaras’s bluntness.

Angry, Achamian asks what the Grandmaster wants, Achamian hoping to learn more about how Maithanet knew the Scarlet Spire warred with the Cishaurim. Eleäzaras claims he just wants to meet Achamian.

“I needed to meet the man who has utterly overturned my impression of the Mandate… To think that I once thought yours the gentlest of Schools!”

Now Achamian was genuinely perplexed. “What are you talking about?”

Eleäzaras knows Achamian was in Carythusal, the Scarlet Spire’s home city. Achamian believes Geshruuni, the Javreh Captain Achamian recruited way back in Chapter 1, has been uncovered and wonders if he killed the man by recruiting him, like Inrau. Achamian shrugs and says the Scarlet Spire’s secret war is out. He fears this is a preamble to Eleäzaras trying to abduct Achamian to learn the Gnosis. Eleäzaras responds that the Mandate secret is also exposed.

That puzzles Achamian. Eleäzaras speaks like the Mandate has a shameful secret. Achamian is confused. Eleäzaras explains how they found Geshruuni dead by chance, dredged up in a fisherman’s net. The Scarlet Spire is disturbed by how Geshruuni was killed, him. Achamian is dismissive, pointing out why he would kill the Mandate’s best spy in the Scarlet Spire in years. Achamian claims Eleäzaras is being played for a fool.

Someone plays both of us… But who?

Eleäzaras glared, pursing his lips as though holding a bitter segment of lime against his teeth. “My Master of Spies warned me of this,” he said tightly. “I’d assumed you had some obscure reason for what you did, something belonging to your accursed Gnosis. But he insisted that you were simply mad. And he told me I’d know by the way you lied. Only madmen and historians, he said, believe their lies.”

“First I’m a a murderer, and now I’m a madman?”

“Indeed,” Eleäzaras spat in a tone of condemnation and disgust. “Who else collects human faces?”

And then stones pelt them from the mob.

The next day, Eleäzaras reflects on the disastrous meeting with Achamian, and the riot he almost caused. He is joined by Iyokus, his Master of Spies. Iyokus reports that there last spy in the Thousand Temples is surely dead. Eleäzaras is worried that he has “delivered the greatest School in the Three Seas to its greatest peril.” Without spies, they don’t know what Maithanet’s intentions are.

“It means we must have faith,” Iyokus said with an air of shoulder-shrugging fatalism. “Faith in this Maithanet.”

“Faith? In someone we know nothing of?”

“That’s why it is faith.”

The decision to join the Holy War was Eleäzaras’s most difficult. But the six trinkets offered by the Shriah were hard to ignore. They meant the Shriah was serious. He offered them vengeance. Eleäzaras orders more resources spent on spies in Sumna. They have to know what Maithanet is up to.

Eleäzaras is reminded of ten-years ago, Iyokus falling wounded against Eleäzaras, their Grandmaster dead along with the Cishaurim. The pair had survived the assassination attack. Despite the years, Eleäzaras remembers that day clearly, haunted by it. Eleäzaras would end their war. The Shriah gave them vengeance, but it was a treacherous gift, forcing Eleäzaras to surrender to the Holy War, to the whims of other men. It was a first for their order.

Their talk to turns to the Emperor and the rumors that Ikurei Conphas received a message from the Fanim after the Vulgar Holy War was destroyed, but its contents are unknown, whether a warning or peace overtures. The fact that Conphas will be the general worries Eleäzaras Iyokus then speaks frankly, saying the Scarlet Spire shouldn’t even be here. They are degraded by this. He pleads with Eleäzaras to abandon it.

You too, Iyokus?

Eleäzaras felt coils of rage flex about his heart. The Cishaurim had planted a serpent within him those ten years ago, and it had grown fat on fear. He could feel it writhe within him, animate his hands with womanish desires to scratch out Iyokus’s disconcerting eyes.

Eleäzaras counsels patience, but Iyokus counters with the riot almost sparked by their supposed allies. If it wasn’t for Achamian stopping Eleäzaras, the Grandmaster would have killed the mob in his anger. Achamian had threatened Eleäzaras indirectly with the Gnosis. It galled Eleäzaras because he knew the Gnosis was superior to his schools lesser magic. The Gnosis was the one thing the Scarlet Spire lacked.

How he despised the Mandate! All the Schools, even the Imperial Saik, recognized the ascendancy of the Scarlet Spire—save for the Mandate. And why should they when a mere field spy could cow their Grandmaster?

Eleäzaras says that while their position is fragile, they will destroy the Cishaurim. Then only the Mandate would stand up to them. “…an arcane empire—that would be the wages of his [Eleäzaras] desperate labor.”

Then Iyokus says they checked the records and found another faceless man was found half-rotted in the delta five years ago. Iyokus believes the Mandate have put aside their “tripe about the Consult and the No-God” and play the game for real. Iyokus believes this changes everything, making the Mandate the strongest school if they are going for political power.

“First we crush the Cishaurim, Iyokus. In the meantime, make certain that Drusas Achamian is watched.”

My Thoughts

Kellhus uses humor to humanize him in Achamian’s eyes. Laughing, Achamian is less troubled and relaxes, finding himself liking Kellhus. Having been warned by Proyas about Achamian, Kellhus must know the threat the Mandate can pose to him. Seducing Achamian is vital to that and Kellhus’s goal of learning the Gnosis. It is efficient to accomplish multiple things at once.

We see Kellhus, as he told Cnaiür on their journey, acting fatherly. To the Dûnyain, normal men are children, and he is here to treat them as such. To bend them to his will with the promise of reward and the threat of punishment.

Kellhus talk of sleep as something that can’t be wanted or forced, the harder you strive, the harder it is to get is so true. Who hasn’t been desperate for sleep. Here Kellhus uses his tactic of telling universal truths to promote his wisdom and remoteness to awe and win over a person.

The way Kellhus seduces Achamian with words, pointing out hypocrisy, sharing a common thing that others are skeptical of, binding them together.

Kellhus and Serwë are complicated. She worships him, believes he is a god, and he is using that, feigning that he is nothing special, and the humility combined with his insights only encourages Achamian to believe it. As Kellhus says, he needs her. She is a beacon, drawing men to Kellhus, showing them that he is special, and then they hear the proof from his own lips all while denying it. No one likes a braggart, a person inflated by his own ego. Does Kellhus love her? Can he even love? Or will he only use her? Bakker has said Serwë is one of the most important characters to the story. We need to pay attention to her and Kellhus’s relationship.

I love Achamian’s selfish “but do you believe me” thought. Bakker is always showing humans for what we truly are. Creatures who strive against our true, selfish nature because we think something better will come form it.

See how dangerous Kellhus is. All Achamian had to do was glance at Serwë while speaking on Esmenet and Kellhus understood Achamian finds Esmi beautiful.

Achamian’s nightmare, his desperate believe that it can’t be, then using logic to explain away fears into self-denial.

Cnaiür can’t even insult the Inrithi without them finding it funny, poor guy. He’s straining. He’s haunted by his past. How long before he breaks?

Cnaiür’s question, wondering how he could ever know Kellhus’s intentions is something you’ll run into later in the series. How can we, the reader, trust a man who uses the truth as a goad, who has no ego but only his mission. He will say or do anything for it. And how do we even know what his mission truly is?

Cnaiür’s obsession with Serwë is one of the reasons she is important to Kellhus.

Cnaiür’s intelligence is shown again, but his fears interfered with him connecting the doubts of his logic about Moënghus being a Cishaurim. But he also understands why Kellhus is seducing Achamian—for the Gnosis.

Well, we’ve had hints that Kellhus would take over the Holy War. Now we have it stated as why he has to. But will it be enough to overcome his father and the Cishaurim?

Even here, telling people he loves Serwë, Kellhus still lets Cnaiür rape her at night. It also proves that Cnaiür, despite what he claims, can’t get Serwë out of his mind.

When the Scarlet Spire comes, I love Xinemus’s comment “They forgot how much they’re hated,” as the riot swells. Achamian’s answer, “Who doesn’t,” is great. Who wants to believe your actually hated? How many people, especially those in power, convince themselves that they are not despised despite the screaming mobs. Look at Xerius and how he acts in his self-deluded word.

Eleäzaras thinks he’s a smart man, but he comes to Achamian so sure he knows the answers that even when he sees the shock in Achamian’s eyes, the man simply believes Achamian is such a skilled liar. An answer should never seek for the question to prove it.

So now we know what the skin spy did to Geshruuni. It cut off Geshruuni’s face so he couldn’t be easily identified then went to assume him. But, of course, Achamian was recalled so the skin spy abandoned that plan to keep following him (as we learned a few chapters back when Achamian spots the skin spy following him in the market). Good thing since the Scarlet Spire found Geshruuni far too early than I think the skin spy intended.

Chanv is a great mystery in the series. A drug that extends your life, sharpens the intellect, but also leads to sterility. It is also said to sap the will, making someone more biddable perhaps. It sounds a lot like spice and no one in the Three Seas knows where it comes from. I suspect the Consult. There goal is too limit human life on the planet. Eleäzaras, despite his other failings, is not dumb enough to use Chanv because he has no idea where it comes from.

We get our first glimpse of Sorcerers fighting in the Eleäzaras remembering the assassination attempt ten years ago. He is suffering from PTSD about it which is driving him to get revenge. He can’t forget. But now he is questioning if he made the right decision, or was vengeance too enticing to resist. His story parallels Cnaiür’s, both allying with something they find anathema to get revenge on a stronger foe.

Iyokus and his eyes being scratched out… Foreshadowing.

So, who in the Ainoni camp has been replaced by a skin spy? Not a lot of prominent candidates to choose from. I love the unintended consequence happening here. The Consult didn’t intend this, but now the Scarlet Spire are convinced our lovable Drusas Achamian is a threat. A dangerous man who cuts off people’s face. Watch out, Achamian.

 

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Fifteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 5
The Holy Warrior
Chapter 14
Momemn

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

Many have condemned those who joined the Holy War for mercenary reasons, and doubtless, should this humble history find its way into their idle libraries, they will blast me as well. Admittedly, my reasons for joining the Holy War were “mercenary,” if by that one means I joined it in order to procure ends outside of the destruction of the heathen and the reconquest of Shimeh. But there were a great many mercenaries such as myself, and like myself, they inadvertently furthered the Holy War by killing their fair share of heathen. The failure of the Holy War had nothing to do with us. Did I say failure? Perhaps “transformation” would be a better word.

DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.

AJENCIS, THE FOURTH ANALYTIC OF MAN

My Thoughts

Well, we know what that greater reason was for Achamian, the purpose of the Mandate. And in this very chapter, the harbinger that Achamian has been dreaming about his appeared. He further eludes to the fact that something goes wrong with the Holy War. Something causes it to transform? What? Perhaps Kellhus? Another great point is on mercenaries. Just because they’re fifing for reasons other than faith doesn’t mean they’re not helping. But people like Proyas clearly have an issue with it. It makes them uncomfortable and yet he will use them because he has to.

The second passage goes to the argument between Achamian and Proyas. Proyas even quotes it, though he leaves of the last part of the passage about faith is the truth of nothing since Proyas believes his faith has all the truth he won’t acknowledge the possibility it has not truth. It contrast with Achamian’s faith where he’s willing to doubt and question.

Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn

Finally, Xinemus leads Achamian to see Proyas. They enter Proyas’s pavilion, Xinemus cautioning Achamian to be formal. Proyas is seeing Achamian just to get Xinemus to shut up about it. “You wielded too much influence over him as a child, Akka, left too deep a mark. Zealous men often confuse purity with intolerance, particularly when they’re young.”

Achamian is surprised that Proyas’s pavilion is only half-unpacked, remembering his student as “fastidious to a fault.” Xinemus explains it as the stress of dealing with the Emperor and his indenture. Proyas has his men out on busy work, “counting chickens” as the Conriyans put it. Things are bad because Proyas is losing the game. Akka has second thoughts, not wanting to further burden Proyas, but they are swept in to see him by a slave. Proyas’s greeting isn’t as welcoming as Achamian hoped.

Undeterred, he presses on. The talk turns to the Holy War and Achamian asks if it is true that Proyas is raiding the valley. Proyas isn’t happy that Achamian is questioning his tactics. Xinemus also isn’t happy that Proyas is raiding, but the Emperor has left them little choice. They hardly have enough grain to eat that they are now raiding Inrithi. Xinemus angers Proyas by objecting to the raiding.

Proyas scowled and waved his hand. “Enough! You says this, while I say that, over and over again. For once I’d rather hear Achamian speak! Did you hear that, Zin. You’ve irritated me that much…”

From Xinemus’s grave look, Achamian gathered Proyas was not joking.

So changed… What’s happened to him? But even as he asked this, Achamian recognized the answer. Proyas suffered, as all men of high purpose must, the endless exchange of principles for advantages. No triumph without remorse. No respite without siege. Compromise after anxious compromise, until one’s entire life felt a defeat. It was a malady Mandate Schoolmen knew well.

Proyas is frustrated by dealing with all the stress of feeding his army, keeping them in line, and trying to outwit the Emperor to deal with “the niceties of jnan.” Achamian realizes this meeting was a mistake, but he presses on and asks his student if he remembers what Achamian taught him. Those recollections are the only reason Achamian is here, answers Proyas. Achamian guides the conversation to why the Mandate would be in the Holy War, why Achamian would be here.

This was the question. When one warred with the intangible, convolutions were certain to abound. Any mission without purpose or with a purpose that had evaporated into abstraction, inevitably confused its own means as its ends, took its own striving as they very thing striven for. The Mandate was here, Achamian had realized, to determine whether it should be here. And this was as significant as any mission. But he could not tell Proyas this. No, he had to do what every Mandate agent did: populate the unknown with ancient threats and seed the future with past catastrophes. In a world that was already terrifying, the Mandate had become a School of fear-mongers.

“Our business? To discover the truth?”

Proyas is not happy to be lectured about truth and have his faith challenged. Achamian merely wants to temper it, reminding Proyas when “we’re most certain, we’re most certain to be deceived.” They move into discussing “troubling possibilities,” Proyas full of sarcasm. Achamian realizes that the Mandate have been crippled by become stale. He doesn’t know how to regain credibility. He opens the possibility the Holy War is not what it seems. Proyas immediately launches into a rant about the Emperor’s lecherous desires to regain his Empire, others who lust for glory, and he has no idea why the Scarlet Spire is involved. Proyas has prayed that the Holy War was more than it seemed, because it seems so base.

But prayers are not enough. Despite that, Proyas clings to the possibility that the Holy War is divine and a good thing. He asks if that is so hard to believe. Achamian concedes it is not. Proyas anger retreats and he apologizes for his outburst and admits this isn’t the best time since “I fear the God tests me.” Achamian questions and learns that Galeoth troops under Coithus Saubon massacred a Nansur village. Achamian asks if Maithanet knows.

Proyas grimaced. “He will.”

Suddenly Achamian understood.

“You defy him,” he said. “Maithanet has forbidden these raids!” Achamian could scarce conceal his jubilation. If Proyas had defied his Shriah…

“I like not your manner,” Proyas snapped. “What care you—” He stopped, as though struck by a realization of his own. “Is this the possibility you wish me to consider?” he asked, wonder and fury in his tone. “That Maithanet…” A sudden gallows laugh. “That Maithanet conspires with the Consult?

“As I said,” Achamian replied evenly, “a possibility.”

While Proyas respects the Mandate mission, knowing about their dreams, he will not allow Achamian to drive a wedge between him and the Shriah. It is blasphemous. Proyas asks if Achamian has any proof. All Achamian has is poor, dead Inrau, which Proyas dismisses since spying would be punished by death. Achamian then says that Maithanet is one of the few, but Proyas already knew and doesn’t care.

What of it?” Proyas repeated. “What does it mean other than he, unlike you, chose the path of righteousness.”

Achamian turns to talking about the intensity of his dreams and how he feels something is happening. But Proyas points out that they are at in impasse. What Achamian believes of the Consult is what Proyas believes of his God. All Achamian has is faith, like Proyas. “Faith is the truth of passion, Achamian, and no passion is more true than another.” Achamian is hurt, realizing he can’t convince his student anymore. Proyas has grown too certain in his faith. He loves his God more than a blaspheming sorcerer. Proyas says they will not speak again.

As Achamian leaves, he asks Proyas to inquire to Maithanet about Paro Inrau and learn if he committed suicide or was executed for spying. Achamian has to know. Proyas asks why. “Because you loved me once.” Then Achamian leaves, grieving for his lost students. Once Achamian is gone, Proyas asks what Xinemus disapproves of this time, his tactics or proprieties in dealing with Achamian. Xinemus disagrees with both.

Ask yourself, Proyas—for once set scripture aside and truly ask yourself—whether the feeling within your breast—now, at this very moment—is wicked or righteous.”

Earnest pause.

But I feel nothing.”

That night, Achamian first dreams of Esmenet and then Inrau crying out “from the Great Black: ‘They’re here, old teacher! In ways you cannot see!’” But then the dream turns to the nightmares. He is on the Fields of Eleneöt and witnesses the Celmomas Prophecy once more, hearing that an Anasûrimbor will return at the end of the world.

Esmenet is shopping in the Kamposea Agora, the great market of Momemn, accompanied by Sarcellus’s two slave girls, Ertiga and Hansa. She had bumped into a handsome officer of the Eothic Guard, and finds herself subtly flirting with the man as he watches her sharp, bending over, revealing parts of her body. But she is irritated by the two body slaves with her.

Sarcellus’s Cepaloran body-slave, Ertiga and Hansa, had spotted the man as well. They giggled over cinnamon, pretending to fuss over the length of the sticks. For not the first time this day, Esmenet found herself despising them, the way she had often found herself despising her competing neighbors in Sumna—particular the young ones.

He watches me! Me!

The man is very handsome, and she can’t get him out of her thoughts as he loiters, watching her. She grows annoyed with the slave girls, and they get petulance when Esmenet asks them a question. The spice-monger grows angry with the girl while showing deference to Esmenet, taking her for the wife of a humble caste noble. Easement realizes that the two girls do not obey her out of jealousy of her relationship with Sarcellus. Instead, she suspect Sarcellus has ordered the two girls to watch her. They wouldn’t let her leave the compound alone. She tries to order the two to go home, but they refuse until the spice-monger beats Ertiga. Hansa pulls Ertiga to safety and they flee.

Esmenet realizes this is the first time she’s been alone since Sarcellus saved her. He was always around a great deal to her, often taking her on trips to see the sights of the city, including the Imperial Precincts.

But he never left her alone. Why?

Was he afraid she’d seek out Achamian? It struck her as a silly fear.

She went cold.

They were watching Akka. They! He had to be Told!

But then why did she hide from him? Why did she dread the thought of bumping into him each time she left the encampment? Whenever she glimpsed someone who resembled him, she would instantly look away, afraid that if she did not, she might make whoever it was into Achamian. That he would see her, punish her questioning frown. Stop her heart with an anguished look…

The spice-monger asks her what she’ll buy, but she has no money on her. Then she remembers the man and feels stirring inside of her. She glances at him and he nods to an alley. She follows, eager to be with the strong man. The moment she reaches him, he’s on her, pinning her, eager for her, but she stops him.

“What?” He leaned against her elbows, searching for her mouth.

She turned her face away. “Coin,” she breathed. False laugh. “No one eats for free.”

“Ah, Sejenus! How much?”

“Twelve talents,” she gasped. “Silver talents.”

“A whore,” he hissed. “You’re a whore!

The man hesitates then agrees until he notices her tattoo marking her as a prostitute from Sumna. He realizes that she’s a “bruised peach” and will only pay twelve copper talents. She agrees, eager for him. They have sex, hard and fast, and she revels in it. He spills in her and then feels guilty, stumbling away and not able to look at her. She takes a moment to find composure, or to fake it, and then she feels dirty. She remembers the syntheses and his black seed. She dropped the money. “Then she fled, truly alone.”

She returns to Sarcellus’s camp and finds him waiting for her. He’s missed her, asking where’s she been. She finds it curious that he smells her. Then he seized her, so fast she gasps. He rips up her gown. She tries to stop him from having sex with her. She wants to wash, aware of the other man’s seed staining her thighs. He then sees the evidence of her encounter in the market. He demands to know who she was with.

“Who what?”

He slapped her. Not hard, but it seemed to sting all the more for it.

Who?

She said nothing, turned to the bedchamber.

He grabbed her arm, yanked her violently around, raised his hand for another strike…

Hesitated

“Was it Achamian?” he asked.

Never, it seemed to Esmenet, had she hated a face more. She felt the spit gather between her teeth.

Yes!” she hissed.

Instead of hitting her, he looks broken and begins to weep, begging for her forgiveness. She is shocked. Then he embraces her, crying and she relents and relaxes. She doesn’t understand how such a confident man could weep after “striking someone like her.” She’s treacherous, adulterate. Sarcellus says he knows she loves Achamian, but she isn’t so sure anymore.

Proyas is joined by Achamian as he watches the sun rise on the edge of the Holy War. Proyas is excited. Everything changes. The debate “of dogs and crows, crows and dogs, would be over.” Achamian is surprised, a week after being told he would never see Proyas, to be summoned to his side. Proyas chastises his teacher while Achamian is grumpy and cut, which Proyas attributes to the the Dreams. Proyas hasn’t summoned Achamian, but a Mandate Schoolman to fulfill the treaty between them and House Nersei. Proyas needs advice, not to be needled. Not today. But Achamian brings up their last discussion, what he had learned form it, and lectures about faith.

“There’s faith that knows itself itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? The the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence…”

Proyas scowled. Why wouldn’t he relent? And it begets, I imagine, students who repudiate their old teachers, hmm, Achamian?”

The sorcerer nodded. “And Holy Wars…”

Proyas is unsettled, but he counters by quoting the Tractate about submitting to faith and having no doubts, which only annoys Achamian. Proyas feels he resorted to a shoddy trick, which shocks him since he used the Latter Prophet’s words. Proyas is angered that Achamian judges him.

Achamian asks why he was summoned. Proyas explains about the fugitives that Iryssas, Zin’s nephew, found a few days ago, which include a Scylvendi (yes, Cnaiür, Kellhus, and Serwë). They should arrive at any time. Achamian is shocked that a Sclyvendi would want to join the Holy War, since they see the others as sacrificial lambs to their dead god. The Scylvendi claims to know how the Fanim make war.

Achamian understands why he is here. Proyas hoped to use the Sclyvendi to defeat the Emperor. He presses Achamian if it is possible that he knows how to fight Fanim, and Achamian talks about the Battle of Zirkirta and concedes it is possible, but he still finds it doubtful that a Scylvendi would join.

The Crown Prince pursed his lips, looked out over the encampment, searching, Achamian supposed, for a sign of his dashed hopes. Never before had he seen Proyas like this—even as a child. He looked so…fragile.

Are things so desperate? What are you afraid you’ll lose?

“But of course,” Achamian added in a conciliatory manner, “after Conphas’s victory at Kiyuth, things might have changed on the Steppe. Drastically, perhaps.” Why did he always cater to him so.

Proyas gives Achamian a sardonic grin, realizing what Achamian is doing, but then he spots them and grows excited. Achamian fears Proyas will make a dangerous king because of his ability to go from despair to eagerness so fast. Achamian dread makes him realize with so many warriors round, a lot of people will die, including himself. He spots Xinemus in the approaching group and wonders if he will die. Then Achamian spots the Scylvendi and is shocked. He looks just how they did in his dreams and for a moment, Achamian is confused, thinking he is in ancient times, speaking about how the Scylvendi road for the No-God and sacked Sumna. He finds it so bizarre to see a Scylvendi here, especially after all the drams of Anasûrimbor Celmomas.

He urges Proyas not to tryst the Scylvendi, but all Proyas can see is the enemy of the Nansur, and thus his potential ally. They bicker because Proyas does not like the counsel he’s getting and his words sting Achamian when he realizes Proyas meant to injure. He wants obedience right now.

Proyas then greets Cnaiür congenial. Achamian is worried about Proyas’s ability to change emotions so swiftly, fearing it “demonstrated a worrisome capacity for deceit.” Things are rocky at first, with Achamian whispering advice to Proyas about how to treat with the Sclyvendi. When Achamian learns Cnaiür is Utemot, he is unnerved since an Utemot led them during the Apocalypse.

Proyas nodded. “So tell me, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, why would a Scylvendi wolf travel so far to confer with Inrithi dogs?”

The Scylvendi as much sneered as smiled. He possessed, Achamian realized, that arrogance peculiar to barbarians, the thoughtless certitude that the hard ways of his land made him harder by far than other, more civilized men. We are, Achamian thought, silly women to him.

Cnaiür first claims to be a mercenary, but Proyas doesn’t believe it. Then Cnaiür spins a tale about how his tribe was destroyed by others after Kiyuth. His tribe is no more. Proyas still doesn’t believe that he would join them, but is too eager to find out what the barbarian knows about fighting Fanim to press Cnaiür on his true motives.

Cnaiür, after a little verbal sparring, admits that he fought at Zirkirta and nows how to defeat them. Achamian fears that Cnaiür tells Proyas exactly what he wants to hear. Despite that, Achamian starts paying attention to Kellhus and realizes he is the answer to why Cnaiür Achamian hopes Proyas figures it out, but the young man is too eager to hear about Cnaiür’s fighting ability. Cnaiür is cautious, which Proyas prays, then explains why Cnaiür can trust him. Because Proyas needs the barbarian. Proyas explains about the politics keeping them in place and why he needs Cnaiür as an alternative to Ikurei Conphas leading the Holy War.

When Cnaiür laughs about being “the Exalt-General’s surrogate,” Proyas is puzzled. Achamian sees an opportunity and points out because of Kiyuth, the man must hate Conphas. Proyas asks if Achamian thinks Cnaiür wants revenge. Achamian tells Proyas to ask Cnaiür why he has come and who the others are. Proyas grows chagrined for letting his passion almost dupe him into trusting a Scylvendi without any hard questions. He asks the question and Kellhus steps forward. Everyone stares at him.

“And just who are you?” Proyas asked the man.

The clear blue eyes blinked. The serene face dipped only enough to acknowledge an equal. “I am Anasûrimbor Kellhus, son of Moënghus,” the man said in heavily accented Sheyic. “A prince of the north. Of Atrithau.”

Achamian is stunned, almost at a panic, the Celmomas Prophecy echoing in his head as Proyas questions why Kellhus would be here. How he could have even heard of the Holy War all the way in Atrithau which barley has in contact with the Three Seas.

Hesitation, as though he [Kellhus] were both frightened and unconvinced by what he was about to say. “Dreams. Someone sent me dreams.”

This cannot be!

“Someone? Who?”

The man could not answer.

My Thoughts

Xinemus always has sage words to tell. He has much practical wisdom and is a great foil to Achamian’s more book learning. He is also a very moral person, more so than Proyas for all the man’s piety and faith.

The chicken counting proves very important for Kellhus and Cnaiür. Without that busy work, they would be dead right now.

I feel bad for Proyas as Achamian realizes how compromise is destroying him. He wants to be that good man, but he has to play politics. Having strong principals doesn’t make it easy to compromise them to make necessary deals.

The mandate sound like the our modern media, needing to populate the world with half-truths, to make us afraid so we’ll keep watching. Without fears, whether they have any truth or are blown so out of proportion to make them interesting, the media wouldn’t have anything to report. It is such a toxic cycle.

I think we have our first mention of Coithus Saubon here, the blond beast. His troops causing a massacre is not surprising. Don’t forget about him. Come Book 2 and on, he’ll be playing a far larger role in the story.

Achamian’s jubilation that he might have an opening between Proyas and Maithanet is quickly squashed. Proyas’s faith is very strong, not easily shaken. He is too certain that what he believes is right, and that is a very dangerous thing as our own history has shown. And it doesn’t have to be a religious faith. Any belief, political, economic, social can lead to those ends.

Poor Achamian. He’s just trying to get Proyas to think instead of believe and is getting so much flack. Faith is fine, but it needs to be tempered by rational thought.

Xinemus is not happy about how Proyas treated Achamian, but Proyas is ambivalent. He has gone beyond his tutor, or so he thinks.

I think that Inrau might have actually cried out from the Great Black, from beyond, and spoke to Achamian right there. “In ways you cannot see” is too specific to skin-spies, something Achamian doesn’t know about yet. Given the info of the Great Ordeal and the speculation that something chooses which dream a Mandate Schoolman sees, it is interesting that Achamian has the Calmemunis Prophecy dream right after. Bakker is both reminding us of the dream and possibly setting up a reveal on how the dreams work and the significance of their timing.

Fear of rejection such a powerful motivator, especially when someone’s self-esteem is so low. Poor Esmenet left Sumna to find Achamian and now is too scared of the consequences if he doesn’t want her. Not when she has the comfort of Sarcellus’s camp, which still bewilders her. Of course, she doesn’t know she’s being watched by the consult.

Esmenet can’t help playing the whore. And it sickens her when she’s done. She’s been traumatized by the syntheses’s visit. She doesn’t see herself as having any value. When she returns to Sarcellus, she notices skin-spy Sarcellus’s inhuman properties, though dismisses then. He has to control himself, almost losing it before remembering he supposed to keep an eye on her, not beat her, then he breaks down crying. It works, it makes her keep questioning her love for Achamian. Her self-esteem is very low right now. Explains why she is displaying such self-destructive behavior like provoking Sarcellus.

The irony of Proyas not liking to be judged when he is famous for judging others made me chuckle.

Proyas is shocked that Achamian, a blasphemer, had been to Shimeh. But to Achamian, it was just another place, nothing special like Proyas had made it become. Proyas has obsessed about it so much, he transformed it into something it’s not. And then we’ll see how he acts when he gets to Shimeh.

Achamian is shrewd enough to know that a lot of people have understatement Cnaiür by noticing the number of swazonds adorning his arms.

Cnaiür figures out Proyas’s plan before Proyas can explain it to him, pointing out that, essentially, the Shriah is turning the holy war into a band of mercenaries by “selling” them to the Emperor.

Kellhus speaks in “heavily accented Sheyic” which has to be him faking it because he speaks flawless Sheyic to Serwë. He’s already begun his seduction of the Holy War. He’s planted the first seeds. He has been sent dreams. He’s special.

Achamian is reeling from the revelation. The prophecy that his order has been obsessed with for two thousand years was just fulfilled. The harbinger, which I can safely say is Kellhus, has arrived. The end of the world is upon them. But is Kellhus the end or just the signaled that it’s started?

Click here to continue onto Chapter 16!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Thirteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 4
The Warrior
Chapter 13
The Hethanta Mountains

Welcome to Chapter Thirteen of my reread. Click here if you missed Chapter Twelve!

Even the hard-hearted avoid the heat of desperate men. For the bonfires of the weak crack the most stone.

Conriyan Proverb

So who were the heroes and the cravens of the Holy War? There are already songs enough to answer that question. Needless to say, the Holy War provided further violent proof of Ajencis’s old proverb, “Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying.”

Drusas Achamian, Compendium of the Holy War

My Thoughts

Stay away from people who are desperate. They will do stupid stuff and drag you down with them. It’s a good Proverb. These Conriyan are full of good advise. Of course, it is a warning to Kellhus, too. Cnaiür is a desperate man. Will Cnaiür crack Kellhus’s hearthstone and ruin everything? By the end of the chapter, Kellhus has plenty of reasons to kill Cnaiür, but stays his hand.

Achamian quote is obviously about the politics behind the Holy War, the differences between Cnaiür and Kellhus are terrifying to Cnaiür (and me). Glad I don’t have to deal with a Dûnyain.

Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Central Jiünati Steppe

Cnaiür and Kellhus encounter fewer tribesman then they would have before the disaster of Kiyuth. Those they do encounter are typically made up of youths. As they travel, Kellhus presses Cnaiür for information on Shimeh. Cnaiür informs him it is a holy city to the Inrithi but the Fanim captured it. The Fanim believe it is their mission to the destroy the Tusk and thus have been at war with the Nansur Empire for many years. Cnaiür tells Kellhus of when he lead the Utemot in battle against the Fanim at Zirkirta to the south.

Kellhus asks about the Tusk and Cnaiür explains it is the first scripture of Men and the Scylvendi followed it before the birth of Lokung, the Scylvendi’s now dead god. Kellhus asks about Lokung, and Cnaiür reveals that Lokung is the Scylvendi name for the No-God. Kellhus then asks if the Fanim will tolerate their presence. Cnaiür thinks that he is unsure because of the Holy War. The Fanim were supposedly very tolerant of Inrithi pilgrims to Shimeh before the Holy War. Because of this, Cnaiür has chosen to head to the Nansur Empire to learn more about the situation instead of striking southeast across the Steppes to Kian. Cnaiür tells Kellhus that Fanim are tolerant of pilgrims.

As they travel, Cnaiür constantly thinks of murdering Kellhus in his sleep, but fears he would never find Moënghus without him. Occasionally, Kellhus would break the silence by asking about sorcery, and Cnaiür, thinking it was harmless to speak of, would indulge Kellhus. After a few days, Cnaiür realized that Kellhus used the subject of sorcery to carefully guide the conversation to more important topics.

That night, Cnaiür tries to murder Kellhus but a “paroxysms of self-doubt and fury” seized him and he went back to his blankets. Weeks pass like this when they encounter the camp of that Akkunihor tribe in the shadow of the Hethanta Mountains. Xunnurit, King-of-the-Tribes, was the Chief of the Akkunihor. The camp was abandoned, dead. Kellhus asks what happened, and Cnaiür states “Ikurei Conphas.”

Then, with unaccountable certainty, he realized that Kellhus would kill him.

The mountains were looming, and the Steppe swept out behind them. Behind them. The son of Moënghus no longer needed him.

He’ll kill me while I sleep.

No. Such a thing could not happen. Not after traveling so far, after enduring so much! He must use the son to find the father. It was the only way!

We must cross the Hethantas,” he declared, pretending to survey the desolate yaksh.

They look formidable,” Kellhus replied.

They are . . . But I know the shortest way.”

They camped in an abandoned yaksh and Cnaiür ignored Kellhus and pondered his circumstances and question his own motives. He realizes how foolish it is to use a Dûnyain and crawls out into the Steppes to cry and beat the earth in fury while howls of wolves seemed to mock him.

Afterward, he put his lips to the earth and breathed. He could feel him listening from somewhere out there. He could feel him knowing.

What did he see?

It did not matter. The fire burned and it had to be fed.

On lies if need be.

Because the fire burned true. The fire alone.

So cold against swollen eyes. The Steppe. The trackless Steppe.

The next morning, they enter the foothills and encounter a group of Scylvendi returning from pilgrimage. A group breaks off to ride towards them while others guard a group of captives. Unlike other groups, these are young men, not youths, of the Munuäti tribe. Cnaiür remembers the Munuäti being decimated by the Imperial Saik. Their leader appears arrogant and Kellhus warns he “sees us as an opportunity to prove himself.”

Cnaiür tells Kellhus to be quite. The man introduces himself as Panteruth urs Mutkius and is distrustful of Cnaiür. He tells him there are rumors of Scylvendi spies for the Empire, which explains how they were defeated. An argument ensues and the man mocks Cnaiür. Cnaiür strikes Panteruth and then a fight breaks out.

Some charge at them while others fire arrows which Kellhus easily swats out of the sky. Cnaiür draws his own bow and uses his horse as cover and fires back while Kellhus faces eight charging Munuäti. Cnaiür momentarily thinks Kellhus is dead but Kellhus kills all of them. In the end, Cnaiür and Kellhus killed or incapacitated all the Munuäti save one who prepares to charge Kellhus.

Leaning into his lance, the horseman howled, giving voice to the Steppe’s fury through the thud of galloping hoofs. He knows, Cnaiür thought. Knows he’s about to die.

As he watched, the Dûnyain caught the iron tip of the man’s lance with his sword, guiding it to turf. The lance snapped, jerking the Munuäti back against his high cantle, and the Dûnyain leapt, impossibly throwing a sandaled foot over the horse’s head and kicking the rider square in the face. The man plummeted to the grasses, where his leathery tumble was stilled by the Dûnyain’s sword.

What manner of man. .?

Anasûrimbor Kellhus paused over the corpse, as though committing it to memory. Then he turned to Cnaiür. Beneath wind-tossed hair, streaks of blood scored his face, so that for a moment he possessed the semblance of expression. Beyond him, the dark escarpments of the Hethantas piled into the sky.

Cnaiür kills the wounded until only Panteruth is left. Cnaiür beats him and yells at him. “Spies! … A woman’s excuse!” Cnaiür beats and kicks the man, who weeps and cries out in pain before Cnaiür chokes the life out of the man. Kellhus watches and realizes that Cnaiür is mad. When Cnaiür finishes, Kellhus tells him the captives are all women. Cnaiür states that the women is “our prize.”

Serwë, one of the female captives, begs for Cnaiür’s help as he approaches. The other women huddled in fear behind her. Cnaiür just slaps her to the ground. Cnaiür and Kellhus make camp and Cnaiür claims Serwë as his prize because she reminds him of Anissi.

Kellhus feels a sense of outrage as he watches Cnaiür rape Serwë and wonders from what darkness the emotion came from. Kellhus believes something is happening to him. Kellhus observes that Serwë has suffered much and has learned to hide it. He watches as Cnaiür speaks to her in a foreign language that sounds like a threat. Then Cnaiür frees her.

You’ve freed her, then?” Kellhus asked, knowing this was not the case.

No. She bears different chains now.” After a moment he added, “Women are easy to break.”

He does not believe this.

Kellhus asks what language they spoke, and Cnaiür answers, Sheyic, the language of the Nansur Empire. Cnaiür says he questioned Serwë about the state of the Empire and learned that there is a Holy War against the Fanim to retake Shimeh. Kellhus instantly wonders if this is why his father summoned him. Kellhus asks what’s Serwë’s name. “I didn’t ask,” answers Cnaiür.

That night, as Cnaiür and Kellhus slumber, Serwë grabs a knife and goes to kill Cnaiür but is stopped by Kellhus who disarms her and pulls her away. He tells her his name and she replies with her own and starts to cry as he covers her gently with a blanket. She falls a sleep sobbing.

The next morning, Serwë’s continues to feel the dread she’s felt since she was capture by the Munuäti. She’s even more scared with Cnaiür. She felt utterly alone and thought her Gods had abandoned her. She watches Cnaiür walk to the other women, who, like Serwë, came from the Gaunum household. The women begin to plead with Cnaiür, including wives of several nobles who had hated Serwë. One had an ugly bruise on her face and asked Serwë to tell Cnaiür that she was beautiful. Serwë pretended not to hear, too scared.

Cnaiür draws his knife and the women think he means to kill them. He uses his knife to pry open their manacles and sets them free. He tells the women that others will find them and that he will shoot any who follow. Now the women begin to beg for him to stay. Others are envious that Serwë was staying with the Scylvendi and Serwë felt glad.

Barastas’s wife marched forward, shrieking at Serwë to stay, that she owns her, and Cnaiür causally fires an arrow and kills her. Serwë feels a surge of terror and thinks she might vomit.

During the day, Serwë passed the time talking to Kellhus, who seemed to exude trust to her. She that she was a Nymbricani and was sold as a concubine to a the Nansur House of Gaunum. The wives of the Gaunum nobles were jealous of her beauty and how they strangled her first child when it was born. She was told “Blue babies… That’s all you’ll ever bear, child.” After three days, Kellhus had mastered Sheyic, a tongue that took Serwë several years to learn. At night, Serwë belonged to the Scylvendi.

She could not fathom the relationship between these two men, though she pondered it often, understanding that her fate somehow lay between them. Initially, she’d assumed that Kellhus was the Scylvendi’s slave, but this was not the case. The Scylvendi, she eventually realized, hated the Norsirai, even feared him. He acted like someone trying to preserve himself from ritual pollution.

At first this insight thrilled her. You fear! she would silently howl at the Scylvendi’s back. You’re no different from me! No more than I am!

But then it began to trouble her—deeply. Feared by a Scylvendi? What kind of man is feared by a Scylvendi?

She dared ask the man himself.

Because I’ve come,” Kellhus had replied, “to do dreadful work.”

Serwë begins to wonder why Kellhus doesn’t take her from the Scylvendi, but she knew the reason. “She was Serwë. She was nothing.” A lesson she learned early on. She had a happy childhood. Her parents, particularly her mother, doted on her. When she was fourteen, her father sold her as a slave to the Gaunum family, and she had much of her delusions knocked out of her. Her life as a concubine was full of anxiety, she was trapped between the wives, who hated her beauty, and the husbands who lusted for her. She begin to take pride in seducing the husbands. It was all that was left to her.

Once, she was taken to Peristus’s bed with his wife. Peristus’s wife was an ugly woman and Peristus was using Serwë to get him ready to impregnate his wife. Serwë, out of spite, excited Peristus too much and stole his seed. She became pregnant, and Peristus’s wife spent the entire pregnancy tormenting her about her child’s impending death. She went to Peristus who just slapped her for bothering him. Serwë prayed to the gods for mercy but her child was “born blue.”

Serwë begin to pray for vengeance on the Gaunum, and a year later all the men rode off to join the Holy War. Then the Scylvendi raided the villa, and she learned a new level of suffering with the Munuäti. It filled her with outrage.

Despite all her vanities and all her peevish sins, she meant something. She was something. She was Serwë, daughter of Ingaera, and she deserved far more than what had been given. She would have dignity, or she would die hating.

But her courage had come at a horrible time. She had tried not to weep. She had tried to be strong. She had even spit in the face of Panteruth, the Scylvendi who claimed her as his prize. But Scylvendi were not quite human. They looked down on all outlanders as though from the summit of some godless mountain, more remote than the most brutal of the Patridomos’s sons. They were Scylvendi, the breakers-of-horses-and-men, and she was Serwë.

But she had clung to the word—somehow. And watching the Munuäti die at the hands of these two men, she had dared rejoice, had dared believe she would be delivered. At last, justice!

When Cnaiür raped her after killing the Munuäti, Serwë realized that there was no justice, just the whim of powerful men. Serwë thought she was nothing, that was why everyone hurt her. Even Kellhus abandoned her at night.

After crossing the Hethantas, Cnaiür confronts Kellhus, telling him he brought him to the Empire to kill him. Kellhus asks if Cnaiür actually wants to be killed by Kellhus. Kellhus had known for days that Cnaiür feared that Kellhus would kill him once they crossed the mountains. If Cnaiür could not kill the father, he would settle for the son. Crossing the Empire with a Scylvendi will just get them killed and Cnaiür knows there is nothing but the mission for a Dûnyain.

Such penetration. Hatred, but pleated by an almost preternatural cunning. Cnaiür urs Skiötha was dangerous. . . Why should he suffer his company?

Because Cnaiür still knew this world better than he. And more important, he knew war. He was bred to it.

I have use for him still.

Kellhus knows now he must join the Holy War to reach Shimeh. Kellhus doesn’t know enough about war to properly harness it and needs a tutor. Kellhus points out to Cnaiür his father has had thirty years to build his power base. Kellhus has need of a man who is as immune to Moënghus’s methods. Cnaiür thinks Kellhus is trying to lull him into lowering his guard.

Kellhus decides to demonstrate his skill and attacks Cnaiür with his sword. Serwë cheers for Kellhus to kill him as the pair trade blows. At the right moment, Kellhus grabbed Cnaiür sword arm but is not quick enough to stop Cnaiür landing a punch to Kellhus’s face, and he realized he misjudged Cnaiür reflexes. Kellhus drops his sword and catches Cnaiür blade between his hands and disarms him. Then Kellhus proceeds to beat him on the ground on the ledge of a cliff. Kellhus subdues Cnaiür and holds him out over the edge.

Do it!” Cnaiür gasped through snot and spittle. His feet swayed over nothingness.

So much hatred.

But I spoke true, Cnaiür. I do need you.”

The Scylvendi’s eyes rounded in horror. Let go, his expression said. For that way lies peace. And Kellhus realized he’d misjudged the Scylvendi yet again.

He’d thought him immune to the trauma of physical violence when he was not. Kellhus had beaten him the way a husband beats his wife or a father his child. This moment would dwell within him forever, in the way of both memories and involuntary cringes. Yet more degradation for him to heap on the fire.

Kellhus hoisted him to safety and let him drop. Another trespass.

Serwë is weeping because Kellhus spared Cnaiür. Kellhus asks Cnaiür if he believes him now. Cnaiür finally answer that Kellhus thinks he needs him. Kellhus is perplexed and thinks Cnaiür becomes more erratic. Cnaiür points out that he is a heathen, no better than a Fanim. Kellhus tells him to pretend to convert. “…the Inrithi think they are the chosen ones… Lies that flatter are rarely disbelieved.” Cnaiür points out the Nansur won’t care.

Kellhus doesn’t understand Cnaiür reluctance to find Moënghus, and then Kellhus realizes that Cnaiür despaired and had abandoned hope. Kellhus had missed this. He momentarily contemplates disposing of Cnaiür but knows he must posses the Holy War to succeed, but he would need instruction on how to properly wield it and thinks the odds of finding someone else with Cnaiür experience are slim. For now, he will stay this course unless crossing the Empire with a Scylvendi proves to difficult. Kellhus tells him their story, that Cnaiür is the last of his tribe who found Kellhus, a prince traveling from Atrithau to join the Holy War.

Though Cnaiür now understood, even appreciated, the path laid for him, Kellhus knew that the debate raged within him still. How much would the man bear to see his father’s death avenged?

The Utemot chieftain wiped a bare forearm across his mouth and nose. He spat blood. “A prince of nothing,” he said.

The next morning, the trio finds the spiked Scylvendi’s heads that Conphas had lined the road to Momemn with. Serwë urges Kellhus to kill Cnaiür before the Nansur find them and Kellhus tells her that she mustn’t betray them. Serwë would never betray Kellhus, who she has fallen in love with. Kellhus tells her she must suffer and she weeps bitterly. Cnaiür tells her “Hold tight this moment, women… it will be your only measure of this man.”

Cnaiür gestures to the road line with spiked heads and says, “This is the way to Momemn.”

My Thoughts

Fanim are tolerant of Inrithi pilgrims. I bet the economy of Shimeh is dependent on these wealthy Inrithi coming to Shimeh, buying supposedly holy trinkets. Even in horribly dysfunctional fantasy worlds its funny to think the tourist trap exists, and that it bridges religious differences. Historically, Muslims have been tolerant of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Lands at times.

Kellhus relates his encounter with the Nonman from the prologue, trying to learn everything he can about sorcery. However, Cnaiür is so distrustful of Kellhus that even when Kellhus tells a true story, Cnaiür doesn’t believe him. Kellhus, this is the same problem people have with politicians. I just assume there lying whenever they speak, which is the same policy one should take with a Dûnyain.

What do you see?” is a question Cnaiür asks himself as he studies Kellhus. This is a significant question. In one of Achamian’s dreams, he relives the Battle of Mengedda (taking place on the same plain where the Vulgar Holy War was destroyed). Here, the No-God was struck down and defeated 2000 years ago. The No-God, through the mouths of thousands of Srancs, asks “What do you see?” It’s a mystery that Bakker hasn’t yet revealed (though I’m hoping the Great Ordeal coming out Tuesday, July 12th will hold answers). When Cnaiür asks this question several times and it pops out of me.

When they approach the mountains, Cnaiür suddenly realizes his danger. Cnaiür is right, once his usefulness is over, Kellhus will discard him. However, Cnaiür, just because Kellhus doesn’t need you doesn’t mean he’ll kill you. However, given how much Dûnyain philosophy that Cnaiür knows, it might be a safe bet. It is great how he use Dûnyain Logos to continue his usefulness by pointing out Kellhus still doesn’t know the paths through the mountains. “I know the shortest way.”

But Cnaiür is beginning to crack beneath the pressure. His outburst in the raided village will not be the first time he screams and gibbers. It’s no wonder Kellhus has trouble understanding Cnaiür. He is irrational, which is what makes him such a great foil to the Dûnyain.

The name Ikurei Conphas stirs nothing in Cnaiür know. He has abandoned his people for vengeance. He is focused on killing Moënghus even as he lost all hope that he’ll succeed.

When they enter the foothills, Cnaiür thinks of it as Dûnyain country because anything could be concealed around the corner but one might also climb a summit and see. It’s a nice analogy that is proven right as they wonder right into the hostile Munuäti.

Cnaiür’s battle madness and Kellhus’s inhuman Dûnyain training allow the pair to destroy the Munuäti. Another thing to note, it is a staple among fantasy that the nomad/barbarian archetype has a great bond with their mount. Cnaiür never names his horses and here uses his horse as cover. It is wounded by an arrow and no doubt put down or left to roam wounded on the plain. In the next chapter, we’ll see the practicality again. Horses, while important to the Scylvendi, are still just tools to be used and discarded when they break. Cnaiür has no fear in the battle. As we see later on in the chapter, Cnaiür has a death wish. When Cnaiür beats Panteruth, he starts to beat him more harshly for crying. Cnaiür is beating Panteruth for displaying Cnaiür’s own perceived weakness, that he cries.

Poor Serwë. Your life sucks. I’m so sorry.

Kellhus, its called compassion. That’s what you feel when you watch Serwë’s rape. Maybe embrace this feeling of caring for others instead of being a damned robot. We are starting to see these little bits of humanity in Kellhus, particularly with Serwë. Also note how Cnaiür says Kellhus thinks he needs him.

Kellhus instantly recognizes that the Holy War and his summons are not a coincidence.

As Serwë works up the nerve to kill Cnaiür she remembers his warning, “If you leave, I will hunt you, girl. As sure as the earth, I will find you… Hurt you as you have never been hurt.” It gives her the courage to attempt to kill him. Shame Kellhus stopped her. Kellhus begins his work on Serwë that very night. Don’t be fooled, Serwë, the man will use you and discard you. Yes, he might have some vestigial outrage at your rape, but notice he does nothing to intervene.

The other captives are faced with a terrible choice. To be abandoned in the wilderness or staying with your rapist. Living is better than dieing, even if that life isn’t very great. Interesting that the only one Serwë names is a fellow concubine, the other’s she just thinks of as So-and-so’s wife.

Wow, starting not to feel so bad for Barastas’s wife now after Cnaiür followed through on his threat and killed her. Not cool killing babies. All Serwë known her entire life is rape. Sold by her father to be a concubine, which is nothing more than sex slave. No wonder Serwë is a little glad that they got left behind, up until Cnaiür put an arrow through Barastas’s wife’s throat.

You are worth something Serwë!

The Cnaiür-Kellhus throw down is a great fight. Cnaiür holds his own for a while and even lands a blow, much to Kellhus surprise. In the end, Kellhus pulls off the ninja blade catch, which Mythbusters had a great episode on. It also is a reference to the D&D class, Monk, which Kellhus is so clearly represents from the way he can catch arrows (another ability) to his superb martial arts.

Serwë has fallen in love with Kellhus so the Dûnyain seduction is well underway. Now, Kellhus is starting to get her to understand that being raped nightly by Cnaiür is important and that there is a promise at the end of it. She is still bitter that he won’t rescue her from the Sclyvendi. Cnaiür even tries to warn her about Kellhus, letting her know that tears is all she’ll really get from the man. Poor Serwë. She’s trapped between two despicable men.

Click here to continue onto Chapter Fourteen.

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Twelve

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 4
The Warrior
Chapter 12
The Jiünati Steppe

Welcome to Chapter Twelve of my reread. Click here if you missed Chapter Eleven!

I have explained how Maithanet yoked the vast resources of the Thousand Temples to ensure the viability of the Holy War. I have described, in outline, the first steps taken by the Emperor to bind the Holy War to his imperial ambitions. I have attempted to reconstruct the initial reaction of the Cishaurim in Shimeh from their correspondence with the Padirajah in Nenciphon. And I have even mentioned the hated Consult, of whom I can at long last speak without fear of ridicule. I have spoken, in other words, almost exclusively of powerful factions and their impersonal ends. What of vengeance? What of hope? Against the frame of competing nations and warring faiths, how did these small passions come to rule the Holy War?

Drusas Achamian, Compendium of the Holy War

…though he consorts with man, woman, and child, though he lays with beasts and makes a mockery of his seed, never shall he be as licentious as the philosopher, who lays with all things imaginable.

Inri Sejenus, Scholars, 36, 21, The Tractate

My Thoughts

So, eventually the knowledge that the Consult is back must common knowledge, else Achamian wouldn’t be fearful of speaking of them without ridicule. While this passage is foreshadowing for the events to come we should ask why Bakker put it here. At no point is the Consult discussed. So why does Bakker reveal the consult is unmasked. Who does it. Well, this chapter reintroduces Kellhus. Our young man who is descended from kings and setting out on a traditional Campbellian hero’s journey. Only he’s not an innocent youth but a cold, calculating, unemotional man. A man who sees far more keenly than “world-born men.”

The Tractate is like the New Testament to the Tusk’s Old Testament. Apparently, Inri does not like philosophers. There is something to what he says about philosophers, but they are trying to tackle the great mysteries and truths of life, logic, morality, religion, society, etc. Inri makes it sound distasteful, and Bakker seems to be saying that religion and philosophy are mutually exclusive, or, I should say, between rigid, fundamental thoughts and asking questions and seeking answers wherever those thoughts lead. Which provides a parallel in the chapter on how the Dûnyain work and how Cnaiür is seduced into betraying his father.

Early Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Northern Jiünati Steppe

Cnaiür is riding across the steppes north of the Utemot camp. Since the disaster at Kiyuth, the Utemot have become a “thin people.” They lost more men then their neighboring tribes and while Cnaiür had accomplished much, the Utemot are still close to extinction.

On the horizon, Cnaiür spots a vulture circling in the air and goes to investigate what has died. He finds a dead man, felled by arrows, and signs that Sranc had killed the man. But they did not have a chance to mutilate his corpse. Cnaiür examines the body and sees it is a blond Norsirai but learns nothing else.

He follows the tracks and finds another dead man, murdered in Sranc fashion, strangled by his own bowels. Cnaiür continues on and finds a dead Sranc at the base of the large barrow where Utemot chieftans are buried. When Sranc die they become “rigid as stone.” This one was felled by a Sranc weapon. Cnaiür grows more confused. The summit of the barrow is covered in vultures, and Cnaiür begins to climb. At the summit, Cnaiür finds the summit covered by corpses of Sranc.

The last stand of a single man. An impossible stand.

The survivor sat cross-legged on the barrow summit, his forearms resting against his knees, his head bowed beneath the shining disc of the sun. The Steppe’s pale lines framed him.

No animal possesses senses as keen as those of vultures; within moments they began croaking in alarm, scooping the wind in great ragged wings. The survivor lifted his head, watching them take flight. Then, as though his senses were every bit as keen as a vulture’s, he turned to Cnaiür.

Cnaiür could discern very little of his face. Long, heavy-featured but aquiline. Blue eyes, perhaps, but that simply followed from his blond hair.

Yet with horror Cnaiür thought, I know this man…

Cnaiür is stunned with disbelief. He recognizes the man and raises his sword. “Bloodied, pale, but it was him. A nightmare made flesh.” The man calmly studies Cnaiür. Cnaiür advances, sticks the point of his sword into the man’s throat. “You are Dûnyain,” Cnaiür states. The man continues his study of Cnaiür, then passes out from blood loss. Cnaiür, bewildered, realizes where he stands, the hill was his father’s barrow.

Later, Cnaiür lies in bed with Anissi, “the first wife of his heart.” Anissi is reporting to Cnaiür what the man, now revealed to be Kellhus the son of Moënghus, said to her. Kellhus had set out from Atrithau with followers.

A pang of apprehension clutched his heart. Followers. He is the same . . . He possesses men the way his father once possessed—

What does it matter,” Anissi asked, “the identity of dead men?”

It matters.” Everything mattered when it came to the Dûnyain.

Kellhus revealed he is looking for his father and Cnaiür hopes to use Kellhus to find Moënghus to get revenge, to see him die at his feet the way his father, Skiötha, died at Moënghus. Cnaiür is fearful of Kellhus possessing him like Moënghus did once.

Cnaiür remembers when he was sixteen and Anasûrimbor Moënghus was found on the steppes, captured by a band of Sranc. He was “rescued” by the Utemot and made a slave, given to Skiötha as tribute. For several weeks, Moënghus played the role as slave perfectly and only revealed himself on when Cnaiür returned from the Rite-of-the-Spring-Wolf, an Utemot coming of age ritual. Cnaiür was light-headed from blood loss and collapsed and Moënghus stanched his bleeding.

You’ve killed the wolf,” the slave said, drawing him up from the dust. The shadowy encampment swam about Moënghus’s face, and yet his glistening eyes seemed as fixed and immovable as the Nail of Heaven. In his anguish, Cnaiür found a shameful reprieve in those outland eyes—sanctuary.

Thrusting aside the man’s hands, he croaked, “But it didn’t happen as it should.”

Moënghus nodded. “You have killed the wolf.”

You have killed the wolf.

Those words captured Cnaiür. The next day, as Cnaiür recoveres from his wounds, Moënghus returns and abandons all pretense of being a slave. Cnaiür is outraged that a slave would look him in the eye and beat him. All the while, forgiveness shows in Moënghus’s eyes. The second time Moënghus look Cnaiür in the eye, Cnaiür beat Moënghus badly and was shamed by how he reacted.

Only years afterward would he understand how those beatings had bound him to the outlander. Violence between men fostered an unaccountable intimacy—Cnaiür had survived enough battlefields to understand that. By punishing Moënghus out of desperation, Cnaiür had demonstrated need. You must be my slave. You must belong to me! And by demonstrating need, he’d opened his heart, had allowed the serpent to enter.

The third time Moënghus matched his gaze, Cnaiür did not reach for his stick. Instead he asked: “Why? Why do you provoke me?”

Because you, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, are more than your kinsmen. Because you alone can understand what I’ve to say.”

Cnaiür was captured fully and Moënghus begin to teach him about the Logos. Moënghus carefully leads Cnaiür to the realization that the traditions of his people limit them, they there are more than one way to accomplish something.

The ways of the People, he’d been told, were as immutable and as sacred as the ways of the outlanders were fickle and degenerate. But why? Weren’t these ways simply different trails used to reach similar destinations? What made the Scylvendi way the only way, the only track an upright man might follow? And how could this be when the trackless Steppe dwelt, as the memorialists said, in all things Scylvendi?

For the first time Cnaiür saw his people through the eyes of an outsider. How strange it all seemed! The hilarity of skin dyes made from menstrual blood. The uselessness of the prohibitions against bedding virgins unwitnessed, against the right-handed butchering of cattle, against defecating in the presence of horses. Even the ritual scars on their arms, their swazond, seemed flimsy and peculiar, more a mad vanity than a hallowed sign.

Cnaiür learned to ask “why.” Moënghus teaches him on the trackless steppes there are “no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.” Moënghus asks what Cnaiür wants more than anything and Cnaiür wants to become a great chieftain. Moënghus promises this to Cnaiür, “I shall show you a track like no other,” and seduces the youth. Months later, Skiötha was dead, Cnaiür was chief, and Moënghus was free to continue his journey.

Two seasons later, his mother gave birth to a blonde girl and was murdered by the other women for adultery Cnaiür realizes that Moënghus seduced his mother to get access to himself and that he was used as a knife to win Moënghus his freedom. Cnaiür is stunned by Moënghus’s betrayal and that Moënghus never loved Cnaiür.

In bed, Anissi breaks Cnaiür from his reminiscing, asking him why he refuses to see Kellhus. Cnaiür replies that the man has great power. Anissi tells Cnaiür she has senses his power and is both frightened by Kellhus and by Cnaiür. Cnaiür demands to know why he frightens her.

I fear him because already he speaks our tongue as well as any slave of ten years. I fear him because his eyes . . . do not seem to blink. He has already made me laugh, made me cry.”

Silence. Scenes flashed through his thoughts, a string of broken and breaking images. He stiffened against the mat, tensed his limbs against her softness.

I fear you,” she continued, “because you’ve told me this would happen. Each of these things you knew would happen. You know this man, and yet you’ve never spoken to him.”

She reports that Kellhus asks why Cnaiür waits. Cnaiür asks if she has said anything about him to Kellhus, and she says she hasn’t. Cnaiür realizes that Kellhus sees him through Anissi’s actions. Anissi thinks Kellhus is a sorcerer. Cnaiür disagrees: “No. He is less. And he’s more.”

The next day, Cnaiür finally meets with Kellhus, who has already mastered the Sclyvendi language. Cnaiür tells Kellhus his wives think he’s a witch and tosses a Chorae at Kellhus who catches it and asks what it is. Cnaiür replies it kills witches, a git from “our God.” Kellhus asks if Cnaiür fears him.

I fear nothing.”

No response. A pause to reconsider ill-chosen words.

No,” the Dûnyain finally said. “You fear many things.”

Cnaiür clamped his teeth. Again. It was happening again! Words like levers, shoving him backward over a trail of precipices. Rage fell through him like fire through choked halls. A scourge.

Cnaiür tells Kellhus that he knows that Kellhus had learned much about him from his wives. Cnaiür tells him he knows exactly who he is and Cnaiür will be purposefully random. Cnaiür tells Kellhus to explain his purpose and what he’s learned since arriving or Cnaiür will have him executed.

Kellhus has deduced his father passed through here and committed a crime and Cnaiür seeks revenge. Kellhus knows that Cnaiür wishes to use him to this end. Cnaiür is trouble by this then becomes suspicious. Kellhus continues, saying Cnaiür fears that Kellhus is catering to his exceptions, like Moënghus did. Cnaiür becomes angry and decides to act like a Sranc and has Kellhus tortured till he appears to break. Cnaiür believes it to be an act.

After the torture, Cnaiür interrogates Kellhus again, starting out by telling Kellhus he doesn’t believe he has been broken, that Dûnyain can’t be broken. Kellhus agrees and says his mission is all that matters. He has been sent to kill Moënghus.

Silence, save for a gentle southern wind.

The outlander continued: “Now the dilemma is wholly yours, Scylvendi. Our missions would seem to be the same. I know where and, more important, how to find Anasûrimbor Moënghus. I offer you the very cup you desire. Is it poison or no?”

Dare he use the son?

It’s always poison,” Cnaiür grated, “when you thirst.”

Cnaiür’s wives minister to Kellhus’s wounds and until he recovers. When he and Cnaiür depart, the wives cried but they do not know who they cried for “the man who had mastered them or the man who had known them.” Only Anissi knew.

Cnaiür and Kellhus rode towards the Nansur empire, passing into the Kuöti pastures. The Dûnyain persists in making conversation with Cnaiür, and after several days Cnaiür reluctantly asks what he wants to know, disturbed by Kellhus’s flawless Scylvendi. Out here on the steppes, Cnaiür no longer had his wives to act as intermediaries. “Now he was alone with a Dûnyain, and he could imagine no greater danger.”

Earlier that day they met with a band of Kuöti Scylvendi, and Kellhus is curious why they were allowed to pass unmolested. Cnaiür explains that it is custom to raid the empire for “slaves. For plunder. But for worship, most of all.” The Scylvendi’s God was murdered and the Scylvendi worship by killing men of the Three Seas who slew their God. Cnaiür regrets talking, knowing silence is his greatest ally. Kellhus persists, and Cnaiür asks why Kellhus has been sent to kill his father.

Kellhus declines to answer and instead asks how his father crossed the Steppe alone after leaving Utemot. Cnaiür explains that Moënghus scarred his arms in secret, dyed his hair, and shaved his beard. After that, it was easy for him to pretend he was on pilgrimage This is why Cnaiür has denied Kellhus access to clothing. Kellhus asks who gave Moënghus the dye and Cnaiür answers he did.

I was possessed!” he snarled. “Possessed by a demon!”

Indeed,” Kellhus replied, turning back to him. There was compassion in his eyes, but his voice was stern, like that of a Scylvendi. “My father inhabited you.”

And Cnaiür found himself wanting to hear what the man would say. You can help me. You are wise . . .

Again! The witch was doing it again! Redirecting his discourse. Conquering the movements of his soul. He was like a snake probing for opening after opening. Weakness after weakness. Begone from my heart!

Cnaiür asks again why Kellhus was sent to kill his father. Cryptically, Kellhus says because Moënghus summoned him. He explains how the Dûnyain have hid for two thousand years. When Kellhus was a child, a Sranc warband found them. After they were destroyed, Moënghus was sent into the wilderness to find out if others knew about them. When he returned, he was deemed contaminated and banished. Then he sent dreams, used sorcery. The “purity of our isolation had been polluted,” so Kellhus was sent to kill him. Cnaiür doesn’t believe him.

The Dûnyain,” Kellhus said after a time, “have surrendered themselves to the Logos, to what you would call reason and intellect. We seek absolute awareness, the self-moving thought. The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before? Only the Logos allows one to mitigate that slavery. Only knowing the sources of thought and action allows us to own our thoughts and our actions, to throw off the yoke of circumstance. And only the Dûnyain possess this knowledge, plainsman. The world slumbers, enslaved by its ignorance. Only the Dûnyain are awake. Moënghus, my father, threatens this.”

Cnaiür still doesn’t believe a son would be sent to kill the father. Kellhus explains that a son’s love for his father “simply deliver us to the darkness, makes us slaves of custom and appetite…” Kellhus does not love his father, and will kill him for his brethren’s mission.

As they talk, Kellhus focuses all his senses on Cnaiür, ignoring the Steppes. Since he had left Ishuäl, the men he encountered were easy to master. 47 left with him from Atrithau and they all died out of love for him. Cnaiür was different. Normally, suspicious men “yielded more than most when they finally gave their trust.” His most devout followers had been doubters at first. But after thirty years of obsession, Cnaiür had figured out several truths of the Dûnyain and was able to avoid Kellhus snare thus far. “He knew too much.” Kellhus tries to figure out Moënghus mistake, and see if he can undo it.

Kellhus realized, he need to make Cnaiür suspicion work for him instead of trying to work around them. “Kellhus saw the Shortest Way. The Logos.” Hesitantly, he apologizes. Defiantly, Cnaiür asks how do you control thoughts like horses. Kellhus is pleased that Cnaiür saw the lie.

What do you mean?” Kellhus asked sharply, as though he were deciding whether to be offended. The tonal cues of the Scylvendi tongue were numerous, subtle, and differed drastically between men and women. Though the plainsman did not realize it, he’d denied Kellhus important tools by restricting him to his wives.

Even now,” Cnaiür barked, “you seek to steer the movements of my soul!”

The faint thrum of his heartbeat. The density of blood in his weathered skin. He’s still uncertain.

Kellhus has realized truth is the best way to deceive “Every man I’ve met, I understand better than he understands himself.” Cnaiür asks how. The Dûnyain have been bred and trained. Kellhus explains that men cannot see where their thoughts and deeds come from. “What comes before determines what comes after.” The puppet strings of men are language, custom, passion, and history and they may be seized.

If he knew how deep I see . . .

How it would terrify them, world-born men, to see themselves through Dûnyain eyes. The delusions and the follies. The deformities.

Kellhus did not see faces, he saw forty-four muscles across bone and the thousands of expressive permutations that might leap from them—a second mouth as raucous as the first, and far more truthful. He did not hear men speaking, he heard the howl of the animal within, the whimper of the beaten child, the chorus of preceding generations. He did not see men, he saw example and effect, the deluded issue of fathers, tribes, and civilizations.

He did not see what came after. He saw what came before.

Cnaiür is stunned by the abilities of the Dûnyain. Cnaiür realizes the logical conclusion that men are slaves to what comes before. Cnaiür is outraged that the Dûnyain use such womanish deception. Kellhus asks if Cnaiür never deceived his foes in battle. Cnaiür objects, those are his enemies, does that make all men the Dûnyain’s enemies. Kellhus is impressed by Cnaiür insight. Kellhus asks, what if all men the Dûnyain’s children and “what father does not rule his yaksh?”

Cnaiür asks if that what they are to him, children and Kellhus answers yes, “How else could my father have used you so effortlessly?” Cnaiür is angry, and Kellhus tells him he wept easily as a child. Kellhus learned this from Anissi, because Cnaiür loves her because “she weathers your torment and still loves.” Cnaiür roars in outrage.

If Cnaiür urs Skiötha suspected Kellhus, then Kellhus would pay the wages of his suspicion. Truth. Unspeakable truth. Either the Scylvendi preserved his self-deception by abandoning his suspicion, thinking Kellhus a mere charlatan whom he need not fear, or he embraced the truth and shared the unspeakable with Moënghus’s son. Either way Kellhus’s mission would be served. Either way Cnaiür’s trust would eventually be secured, be it the trust of contempt or the trust of love.

Kellhus asks if all warrior’s flinch from truth. Cnaiür suddenly calms down and sneers at a Dûnyain telling truth. This was not the response Kellhus wanted, Cnaiür knowledge once again hindered him. Kellhus switches tactics and begins using an analogy of men’s thoughts and the trackless steps.

Cnaiür instantly grows angry, and Kellhus realized his error. Moënghus had used this metaphor. It was a simple strategy but allowed Cnaiür too much insight. Cnaiür is incensed with anger and Kellhus sees murder in his eyes.

By the end of the Steppe. I need him to cross Scylvendi lands, nothing more. If he hasn’t succumbed by the time we reach the mountains, I will kill him.

That night, sitting around the fire, Cnaiür asks why Moënghus summoned him. Kellhus doesn’t know and explains the dreams were images of Shimeh. “A violent contest between peoples.” Cnaiür persists, and Kellhus answers his father is at war, and what “father fails to call on his son in a time of war?” Cnaiür answers, if that son is his enemy, and then asks who Moënghus wars against.

I don’t know,” Kellhus replied, and for instant he almost looked forlorn, like a man who’d wagered all in the shadow of disaster.

Pity? He seeks to elicit pity from a Scylvendi? For a moment Cnaiür almost laughed. Perhaps I have overestimated—But again his instincts saved him.

With his shining knife, Cnaiür sawed off another chunk of amicut, the strips of dried beef, wild herbs, and berries that were the mainstay of their provisions. He stared impassively at the Dûnyain as he chewed.

He wants me to think he’s weak.

My Thoughts

Well its been a bad times for the Utemot. Probably was a bad idea for the Utemot to sacrifice so many of their tribe to try to kill Cnaiür. Just saying, doesn’t seem like it would have been worth it in the long run even if they won at Kiyuth. Oh well, idiots never plan far ahead.

Page 336 of my Kindle edition, Anasûrimbor Kellhus finally renters the story. We’ve been through three whole parts of the book without the series titular character. And we are immediately reminded to the level of skill Kellhus has with the sword by the carpet of dead at the hilltop.

Cnaiür relationship with Anissi is interesting. She is the only one of his wives that Cnaiür cares for. She’s the only one that has the courage to hold him when he weeps in the night. She isn’t afraid of him. While Cnaiür thinks he loves her for her great beauty, as Kellhus rightly points out, she’s the only one that loves the whole of Cnaiür, even the weak one that cries at night.

For a Dûnyain, even degradation was a potent tool—perhaps the most potent.” Cnaiür reflects on how Moënghus used degradation to illicit emotions in his captor. We pity the degraded and find sympathy for them. But we never fear them. We’re not cautious around them but underestimate the. Exactly the way a Dûnyain would want you to feel. A Dûnyain never wants you to see the trap he is fashioning and that most will willingly walk into.

You alone understand.” What a powerful thing for Moënghus, or anyone, to say to teenager. Especially one who’s trying to so hard to fit in with his people. Even as a child, I get the feeling, Cnaiür wasn’t the average Sclyvendi. He cries easily and flinches whenever his dad tries to beat him. Even his coming of age right doesn’t work out for him, though we aren’t told exactly why. Maybe the Cnaiür was disappointed by the hype of the ritual and didn’t find it this transformative experience he was led to believe it to be. Or maybe, he wasn’t supposed to get wounded.

The way Moënghus uses violence to bind Cnaiür to him is interesting. First, it shows Dûnyain commitment to their goals. This is followed up by Moënghus giving Cnaiür a crash course on Nietzsche’s philosophy, leading him slowly off the path of Scylvendi custom into the decadent world of sin and going back to our quote from the Tractate.

And now, a Dûnyain has returned in to Cnaiür’s life. Worst, it is the son of the Moënghus. Cnaiür is uniquely prepared to deal with Kellhus. His obsession has made him a fitting foil to Kellhus and makes their back and forths some of the best philosophical musing you can find in literature. It is verbal fencing at its finest. Or more like Kellhus fencing and dodging Cnaiür claymore. It also shows that, despite Kellhus’s intellect, he can make mistakes. He is not infallible, but there are times he comes close.

Even when a Dûnyain tell you the truth, it’s troubling. He knows the cup is poisoned, but he thirsts for vengeance. He is desperate. Cnaiür can’t decide if Kellhus is speaking the truth. But Cnaiür, in the end, cannot resist the carrot of revenge on Moënghus. Even when you understand how Dûnyain work, they making it so hard not to play into their hands.

When they leave only Anissi know who she cried for, but for which one? While you might hope it is for Cnaiür, she probably weeps for Kellhus. Because he was the man who knew her. Also, Cnaiür is abandoning his people when they are weak and only his reputation is keeping their enemies from destroying them. He is leaving Anissi to rape or murder or both. His need for revenge is greater than even the love for “the first wife of his heart,” let only the responsibility for his people. His drive for revenge consumes him and we shall see where it leads him. Going forward, he hardly spares her a thought, especially after finding a surrogate. He discards everything for his vengeance.

We learn a lot about how the Dûnyain think as Cnaiür and Kellhus spar on the Steppes. Kellhus has his first failure in trying to seduce Cnaiür. The man is to smart and knows to much about how the Dûnyain operate. Moënghus had made a mistake with Cnaiür. Maybe Moënghus figured it wouldn’t matter if some random tribesman knows about the Dûnyain’s methodology. Moënghus is not infallible.

Cnaiür points out something interesting. Moënghus had to know how the Dûnyain would respond to his summons. They would send Kellhus to kill him for two reason, to get rid of Moënghus and by sending Kellhus, there would be no reason for Moënghus to continue bothering them if Kellhus fails to kill him. Moënghus most have a way to convince Kellhus to betray the Dûnyain and aide him in his plan.

We also know Moënghus is in Shimeh and is preparing for a war. He must be a Cishaurim since he knows sorcery and Shimeh is the home of the Cishaurim. The Cishaurim, Mallahet, was a foreigner and despite that had risen to the second highest position in the Cishaurim. He knew of the Holy War before Maithanet ever took power. Coincidentally, Maithanet came from the south, and while he’s too young to be Moënghus, we can’t discount the possibility he was been molded into a weapon by him. It would explain how the Shriah knew of the secret Cishaurim-Scarlet Spire war.

Moënghus should know about how long it would take for Kellhus to reach the Nansur Empire (the most logical route to take to cross the Steppes from Atrithau). Not a coincident that Kellhus is nearing it just as the host of the Holy War gathers at Momemn.

Click here to continue on to Chapter Thirteen!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter One

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 1
The Sorcerer
Chapter 1
Carythusal

Welcome to Chapter One of my reread. Click here if you missed the Prologue!

There are three, and only three, kinds of men in the world: cynics, fanatics and Mandate Schoolmen.

—Ontillas, On the Folly of Men

The author has often observed that in the genesis of great events, men generally posses no inkling of what their actions portend. This problem is not, as one might suppose, a result of men’s blindness to the consequences of their actions. Rather it is a result of the mad way the dreadful turns on the trivial when the ends of one man cross the ends of another. The Schoolmen of the Scarlet Spires have an old saying: “When one man chases a hare, he finds a hare. But when many men chase a hare, they find a dragon.” In the prosecution of competing human interests, the result is always unknown, and all too often terrifying.

—Drusas Achamian, Compendium of the First Holy War

Thoughts

Cynicism and fanaticism are opposite sides of the coin of belief. Mandate Schoolmen straddle both sides. Fanatical in their belief of the consult. Because the greater Three Seas ridicule them and their mission, cynicism has set in. Like the old saying that every cynic is a disillusion romantic.

History is full of examples of the consequences of actions. The assassination of Duke Ferdinand set off WWI. The Serbian separatist that assassinated him just wanted independence from Austria. WWI ended the German Empire (the Second Reich), caused the downfall of the Romanovs, and the rise of the Soviet Union. I absolutely love the quote from the Scarlet Spire (who were about to meet in the story). Humans by themselves can be rational and intelligent, but in groups we feed upon each other, echoing each others thoughts. Groupthink can be a dangerous beast.

Midwinter, 4110 Year-of-the-Tusk, Carythusal

We are introduced to Drusas Achamian: Mandate Schoolman (sorcerer) and spy. He is in the city of Carythusal, capital of High Ainon, and home of the rival sorcerer school, the Scarlet Spires. In a tavern in Carythusal, he is slowly recruiting Geshruuni, Captain of the Javreh. The Javreh are the warrior-slaves of the Scarlet Spire. Out of the blue, Geshruuni states he knows Achamian is a spy.

Achamian tries to bluff Geshruuni but his momentary hesitation when he is called a Schoolman betrays him. Geshruuni speculates on what School had sent Achamian. The Imperial Saik, the Mysunai, or the Mandate. Geshruuni wagers of Achamian of being a Mandate. Achamian, now terrified of being caught by the Scarlet Spire, prepares to unleash his sorcery, not caring of the consequences. Geshruuni reaches into his tunic and Achamian realizes it is too late to use sorcery. Geshruuni produces his Chorae. All sorcerer’s could feel a Chorae’s unnatural presence, and Achamian had used Geshruuni’s to identify him as the Javreh Captain.

Chorae. Schoolmen called them Trinkets. Small names are often given to horrifying things. But for other men, those who followed the Thousand Temples in condemning sorcery as blasphemy, they were called Tears of God. But the God had no hand in their manufacture. Chorae were relics of the Ancient North, so valuable that only the marriage of heirs, murder, or the tribute of entire nations could purchase them. They were worth the price: Chorae rendered their bearers immune to sorcery and killed any sorcerer unfortunate enough to touch them.

Geshruuni grabs Achamian’s hand and holds the Chorae over it. Geshruuni calls the Scarlet Spires as ruthless and cruel to their enemies and servants alike. Achamian asks what Geshruuni wants and he answers “What all men want, Akka. Truth.”

Death poised between the callused fingers of a slave. But Achamian was a Schoolman, and for Schoolmen nothing, not even life itself, was as precious as the Truth. They were its miserly keepers, and they warred for its possession across all the shadowy grottoes of the three Seas. Better to die than to yield Mandate truth to the Scarlet Spires.

Achamian sees no Schoolmen in the crowd. Sorcerers can see other sorcerer’s by the bruise of their crimes against reality. Realizing Geshruuni is playing his own game, Achamian confesses to being a spy for the Mandate School. Geshruuni releases Achamian and agrees to spy for the Mandate against his masters.

Achamian muses on being a spy. As the son of a poor Nroni fisherman he never even knew the word spy. As a youth he was identified as one of the Few (a sorcerer) and taken to Atyersus by the Mandate School for training. Chosen as one of their spies, Achamian has crisscrossed the Three Seas and seen many things. Far away places were no longer exotic to Achamian. Nobles, Emperor and Kings seemed as base as lesser men. He had educated princes, insulted grandmasters, and infuriated Shrial priests. Now in his middle years, Achamian has grown weary of being a spy and sorcerer.

Achamian is perplex and dismayed by his meeting with Geshruuni instead of feeling elated at recruiting such a well-placed spy. Geshruuni, motivated by vengeance, told him potent secrets of the Scarlet Spires. Geshruuni penetrated Achamian’s disguise because he was to free with his money, unlike the merchant Achamian pretended to be.

Achamian is alarmed to find out the Scarlet Spire has been at war. The schools skirmished with spies, assassinations, and diplomacy all the time. However, this war was different. Ten years ago, Grandmaster Sasheoka was assassinated in the inner sanctums of the Scarlet Spire. Despite possessing the Abstraction of the Gnosis, the most powerful school of sorcery, the Mandate School could not have succeed at the task. Geshruuni reveals the Cishaurim, the heathen school of the Fanim, were responsible.

There was a saying common to the Three Seas: “Only the Few can see the Few.” Sorcery was violent. To speak it was tot cut the world as surely as if with a knife. But only the Few—sorcerers–could see this mutilation, and only they could see, moreover, the blood on the hands of the mutilator-the “mark,” as it was called.

Not so with the Cishaurim. No one knew why or how, but they worked events as grand and as devastating as any sorcery without marking the world or bearing the mark of their crimes.

Unable to see the Cishaurim as one of the few, they would easily be able to enter the Scarlet Spire. Now hounds trained to smell the dye of Cishaurim robes patrol the halls. Achamian is confused what would possess the Cishaurim to declare war on the largest, most powerful School. Geshruuni can only shrug. No one knows.

Geshruuni questions his decision to betray the Scarlet Spire as we walks home. He finds gossiping like a woman did not satisfy his desire for revenge. He laments his status as a slave and wishes he could be a conqueror. Despite being drunk, Geshruuni realizes he is being followed and beings plotting “scenario after bloody scenario” for the presumed thief.

Geshruuni ambushes his stalker, and is surprised to see a fat man from the tavern and not a footpad. Thinking it is a Scarlet Spire Schoolman, Geshruuni throws his Chorae to kill the man. The man catches the Chorae and doesn’t die. The fat man reveals he was following Achamian and berates Geshruuni, repeatedly calling him slave and ordering him to heel like a dog. Geshruuni grabs the man and pulls a knife, threatening to kill him. The next thing Geshruuni knows is pain in his arm and he drops the knife. Geshruuni goes for his sword and the fat man slaps him hard. The fat man continues slapping and berating Geshruuni, his voice sounding more and more inhuman. Finally, Geshruuni is struck so hard he falls to his knees.

“What are you?” Geshruuni cried through bloodied lips.

As the shadow of the of the fat man encompassed him, Geshruuni watched his round face loosen, then flex as tight as a beggar’s hand about copper. Sorcery. But how could it be? He holds a Chorae—

“Something impossibly ancient,” the abomination said softly. “Inconceivably beautiful.”

After meeting with Geshruuni, Achamian returned to the hovel he stayed at, went to bed and dreamed. Every night, Mandate Schoolmen dream scenes from the life of Seswatha. Seswatha fought the No-God during the Apocalypse and founded that last Gnostic School, the Mandate. In the dream, part of Achamian knows he witnesses events 2000 yeas old, but part of him was Seswatha. The Mandate call this particular dream the Death and Prophecy of Anasûrimbor Celmomas.

Anasûrimbor Celmomas, the last High King of Kûniüri, has fallen before a Sranc chieftain. Seswatha kills the Sranc with sorcery and goes to the dying king’s side. In the distant, a dragon flies over the field of battle. Seswatha knows Kûniüri has fallen. With the help of a Trysë knight, they drag the dying king from the battlefield.

Seswatha pleads with Celmomas not to die. Seswatha believes without the High King, the world will end and the No-God will win. As Celmomas dies he has a vision. The gods have not abandoned men to the No-God, his darkness is not all encompassing. The burden to defeat him falls to Seswatha.

Celmomas asks Seswatha to forgiven him for being a stubborn fool. For being unjust to Seswatha. Seswatha forgives him. Celmomas asks if he’ll see his dead son in the afterlife. “As his father, and as his king.” Seswatha answers. With pride, Celmomas talks about the time his son stole into the deepest pits of Golgotterath. Celmomas’s vision continues, and he sees his son riding through the sky. Celmomas’s son speaks to him.

“He says … says such sweet things to give me comfort. He says that one of my seed will return, Seswatha—an Anasûrimbor will return …” A shudder wracked the old man, forcing breath and spittle through his teeth.

“At the end of the world.”

The bright eyes of Anasûrimbor Celmomas II, White Lord of Trysë, High King of Kûniüri, went blank. And with them, the evening sun faltered, plunging the bronze-armored glory of the Norsirai into twilight.

Achamian awakens and weeps for a long dead king. In the distant he can hear a dog or a man howling.

Geshruuni has been tortured by the abomination. He told the abomination everything and now the thing drags him towards the river. He panics. Geshruuni asks why, he told the abomination everything. The abomination answers: “the Mandate have many eyes and we have much plucking to do.” The abomination throws Geshruuni into the river where he drowns.

The next morning, when Achamian awakes, he writes in his dream journal about the latest Seswatha dream. He dreamed of the Ford of Tywanrae (the same), the Burning of the Library of Sauglish (different, he saw his face not Seswatha’s in a mirror), and the Prophecy of Celmomas. At first he rights same, but scratches it out and writes, “Different. More powerful.”

Achamian questions his own fixation on recording the dreams. Men have been driving mad trying to decode the permutations of Seswatha’s dreams. For a moment, Achamian has a panic attack of still being on the battlefield. Despite the defeat of the No-God, Seswatha knew the conflict wasn’t over. The Sclyvendi and the Sranc still existed. Golgotterath remained and the Consult, servants of the No-God, still ruled there. So that the memory of the Apocalypse would never fade, Seswatha’s followers would get to relive it.

Achamian next uses the Cants of Calling to communicate with Atyersus, the citadel of the Mandate. His handlers are disinterested in the secret war and instead summon Achamian home. Achamian is surprised and ask why. They answer it involves the Thousand Temples. Cynically, Achamian thinks of one more meaningless mission as he packs up his belongings.

Unlike the other Great Factions of the Three Seas, who vied for tangible ends, the Mandate warred against the Consult. But for 300 years, no sign of the Consult had been found ,and the Mandate waged a war without a foe. This has made the Mandate the laughingstock of the Three Seas. Now the Mandate was adrift without purpose, filling the time with pointless actions like spying of the Scarlet Spire. Achamian is hopeful that this sudden mission to the Thousand Temples will have real purpose.

My Thoughts

Achamian is an unusual protagonist in the genre of fantasy. Middle-aged and burned out at his job. He is world weary instead of the fresh-eyed youth (which Kellhus in the prologue almost is until you realize he is a man without emotions). We meet Achamian just as he underestimates the intelligence of Geshruuni. This is not the first dangerous situation Achamian has been in and it shows. While he panics internally, externally he continues his ruse as a merchant out drinking. We even see Achamian resolve when he thinks faces death or betrayal of his order and he chooses death.

When Geshruuni instead spares Achamian, Bakker compares being a spy to being a whore. Bakker uses this analogy a lot with Achamian. To be successful both must play a role. They have to adapt quickly, putting on the right performance to manipulate. Both must be good judges of character. Grave misjudgment can end badly for both the spy and the prostitute, particularly when no legal or social conventions protect them.

Achamian is unnerved by his underestimation of Geshruuni. By no skill of his own, Achamian uncovered powerful knowledge. But had Geshruuni been loyal to his masters, Achamian would be facing torture and death. Achamian has questions and worries about both his ability and his mission that will continue to haunt him going forward.

And poor Geshruuni. The abomination strips Geshruuni of his bravado with a few slaps. And for nothing. The Mandate aren’t really interested in his grand secret. They care so little, they have summoned Achamian away for a more important mission.

I’ll have more to say on the abominations when we learn more about them. Clearly, they are enemies of the Mandate. But if the Consult hasn’t been active for 300 years, maybe its because they were working on new, devious plans to continue their ancient war.

The Seswatha dreams are some of my favorite parts of the series. I love the glimpse Bakker gives us of the Apocalypse, showing us the consequences if the Mandate’s war against the Consult is lost. It wouldn’t be epic fantasy without apocalyptic prophecies. After Achamian awakens, he fanatically writes in his dream diary while cynically questioning the purpose in deciphering those dreams. He walks that line of fanaticism to follow and understand Seswatha’s life and the cynicism brought along by years of pointless, frivolous busy work.

Bakker drops such interesting tidbits about his world, seeding both the backstory and the past. At once he sets up the political maneuvering that will dominate the rest of the book and explains how his sorcery works, the differences between the schools, and why the Fanim Cishaurim are so feared by other sorcerers. He is building the foundation that the entire Prince of Nothing Series rests upon. Why did the Cishaurim assassinate Sasheoka? What are the Consult up to? Who are the abominations? And what is so important about the Thousand Temple?

The prophecy is very interesting. An Anasûrimbor shall return. But which one? We know Moënghus went ahead of Kellhus. He lurks somewhere in the three seas. Is he the one prophecy speaks of, or is Kellhus who is even know making his way across the sranc-infested wilderness.

Click here to continue on to Chapter Two!