Reread of The Aspect-Emperor Series

Book 1: The Judging Eye

by R. Scott Bakker

Chapter Ten

Condia

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

Look unto others and ponder the sin and folly you find there. For their sin is your sin, and their folly is your folly. Seek ye the true reflecting pool? Look to the stranger you despise, not the friend you love.

—TRIBES 6:42, THE CHRONICLE OF THE TUSK

My Thoughts

You are not better than you’re enemy or someone you dislike. You have all the same flaws and issues they have. You’re not as good as you think you are. If you want to understand yourself, the darkness you’re capable of, you have to look at others and realize that you are just as capable of the acts they commit as they are.

This quote fits this chapter because in a complete stranger, Sorweel finds his reflection. He and Zsoronga are both atheists when it comes to Kellhus. They don’t believe in him. They both share the same sin. We see Sorweel getting reprimanded and warned against this by Kayûtas in their meeting.

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

The Istyuli Plain sprawls across the center of Eärwa. Long ago, it once held the White Norsirai tribes, men who looked down on their western cousins who built the great Norsirai Nations. “The fewer the roads the harsher the codes,” was a proverb of the Kûniüric peoples. The Sakarpi people still remember those tribesmen and call this plain in honor of them: the Cond.

There is no hint of the Cond remaining. They didn’t build cities but destroyed them. In the Three Seas regions, people in antiquity rose and fell and were replaced by other men. Not here. The Cond was replaced by Sranc. The army finds vast heaps of bones and tracts of grown torn up in search of grabs, but their enemy is not to be found. The Great Ordeal starts believing these lands can be reclaimed King Hoga Hogrim (nephew to King Gothyelk from the last series) has a stone Circumfix planted in the Condian earth and builds it into a ring fortress the height of three men.

Afterwards, the Aspect-Emperor himself walked amount the exhausted men, remitting their sins and blessing their distant kith and kin. “Men make such marks,” he said, “as their will affords them. Behold! Let the World see why the Tydonni are called the ‘Sons of Iron.’”

The Great Ordeal has not broken apart like an army of their size should. They’re too large to march effectively together. They need to spread out to forage for food and to feed their study horses on the grasses of the plain, but there’s a sloth that holds them. They want to stay together and stretch out the supply train from Sakarpus as far as possible. A stream of wagons travels behind them, struggling to catch up each day with the host and deliver the food. Going slow, for now, is a benefit. Besides, the Imperial Trackers say the Cond couldn’t support them even if they did break up it on hundreds of smaller forces. They need to reach the richer lands of eastern Kûniüri to forage properly. So they creep forward, making at best fifteen miles a day. Rivers are the worst obstacle, but their fords were mapped and their flooding behavior studied for years. Still, those fords are bottlenecks. Some rivers take three or four days to cross “banks no more than a stone’s throw apart.” But these delays were planned.

In the councils, it is worried that the Consult might poison the rivers. This is a real threat along with the consult massacring all the game. Both King Saubon and King Proyas, the Exalt-Generals, know how terrible running out of food and water will be after the First Holy War. Things could go bad for the army in days. For the regular soldiers, they just wonder about the absence of Sranc. They aren’t worried that this is a trap, because who could trick Kellhus, but are eager to kill them. Gossip is traded about the outriders who have killed Sranc already. Though they complain the way all soldiers do about the conditions, they haven’t forgotten they march to save the world and protect their loved ones.

And the God himself marched with them, speaking through the mouth, glaring through the eyes of Anasûrimbor Kellhus I.

They were plain men—warriors. They understood that doubt was hesitation, and that hesitation was death, not only on the field of war, but on the field of souls as well. Only believers persevered.

Only believers conquered.

Doubts plague Sorweel every time he stares at the Great Ordeal. He feels his people are nothing compared to the purpose. That he’s “the son of another Beggar King.” He stares out at the host as it encompassed the entire plain they crossed. So many people it appears as if the ground moved.

The Great Ordeal. A thing so great that not even the horizon could contain it. And for a boy on the cusp of manhood, a think that humiliated for more than it humbled.

What honour could dwell in a soul so small?

Though the Company of Scions that Sorweel belongs to is officially the elites of the Kidruhil, but in reality, it’s a ceremonial unit. It is made up of sons of foreign kings sent as hostages or as observers. These are not Men of the Ordeal or even soldiers. Belong to them conflicts Sorweel. Part of him is eager to fight, but he feels like he’s betraying his people by riding beneath their conqueror’s banner. He feels pride at times in his uniform which leads to more guilt.

For as long as he could remember, Sorweel had always thought betrayal a king of thing. And as a thing, he assumed, it was what it was, like anything else. Either a man kept faith with his blood and nation, or he didn’t. But betrayal, he was learning, was far too complicated to be a mere thing. It was more like a disease… or a man.

It was too insidious not to have a soul.

He feels it’s like spilled wine seeping through the cracks of his soul. Even a small betrayal leads to more and more while it deceives with reason, urging him to pretend to be a Kidruhil. It seems wise to do, but it’s a trap that leaches resolution from him. Pretending turns into being. He tried to be strong and cling to his guilt, but it’s hard.

Though the Scions are the smallest of the Kidruhil’s companies, barely a hundred, they stand out like silver amid the others. Their lack of faith makes them anathema to the others. They receive contempt from the troopers

But if the Scions were an outcast within the Kidruhil, then Sorweel was even more an outcast within the Scions. Of course everyone knew who he was. How could any Son of Sakarpus not be the talk of the Company, let alone the son of its slain king? Whether it was pity or derision, Sorweel saw in their looks the true measure of his shame. And at night, when he lay desolate in his tent listening to the fireside banter of the others, he was certain he could understand the questions that kept returning to their strange tongues. Who was this boy who rode for those who murdered this father? This Shit-herder, what kind of craven fool was he?”

On the sixth day, a black-skinned man comes into Porsparian’s tent. He is Obotegwa, the Senior Obligate of Zsoronga, who is the Prince-Successor of High Holy Zeüm. The man prostates himself. Sorweel is shocked, both from seeing a dark-skinned Satyothi in person and by how the man acts. Sakarpus never trained him on how to handle foreigners and their customs. Even more bewildering, Obotegwa speaks Sakarpic. “So he [Sorweel] did what all you men did in such circumstances: he blurted.” Sorweel asks what the man wants. Obotegwa is delivering an invitation to visit Zsoronga.

Sorweel agrees. He doesn’t know much about black men other than they come from Zeüm. He had noticed Zsoronga, the man standing out in his retinue of other dark-skinned men. Zsoronga holds himself with the power of his position, but he didn’t need to shout it out. He has a natural nobility that others respond to.

Porsparian seems agitated by the invitation, but Sorweel is too nervous to ask why. He has another unfamiliar circumstance to navigate. He doesn’t know what to expect or even how he will react. He feels like a coward, wondering how his amazing father could have given birth to “a boy who would weep in the arms of his murderer!”

“I am no conqueror.”

Worry piled on recrimination. And then, miraculously, he found himself stepping through the canvas flaps into the bustle of the camp. He stood blinking at the streaming files of passers-by.

Obotegwa turned to him with a look of faint surprise. After leaning back to appraise the cut of his padded Sakarpic tunic, he beamed reassurance. “Sometimes it is not so easy,” he said in his remarkable accent, “to be a son.”

The pair moved through the bustling camp. It’s overwhelming. Prayer calls echo around them. Banners hang limp in the dead air. Obotegwa comments that it is “a thing of wonder.” Sorweel asks if it is real. Obotegwa laughs and says Zsoronga will like him. As they walk, Sorweel glances south to Sakarpus. They have ridden beyond the lands of his people into the Sranc Wilds. He tells Obotegwa his people never would come this far. Obotegwa tells him he has to speak in his Master’s voice. Sorweel points out he spoke as himself earlier.

A gentle smile. “Because I know what it means to be thrown over the edge of the world.”

Sorweel realizes Sakarpus is no longer an island in the wild but an outpost at the edge of the world. They are no longer special. His people have lost so much. These are weighty thoughts for the short walk and soon are at Zsoronga’s pavilion. It’s large and elaborate. He sees what he later learns are the Pillar of Sires, what Zeümi pray to.

Prince Zsoronga is relaxing and Obotegwa introduces Sorweel. He has to communicate through Obotegwa translating. Zsoronga welcomes Sorweel and tells him to appreciate the luxuries. These stand in defiance of Kellhus’s orders for spartan living in the field. Sorweel sits down stiffly and is told to relax. Despite the language barrier, he and Zsoronga start bonding and laughing.

They chat but soon run out of small pleasantries. Zsoronga tries to gossip about the other Scions, but Sorweel doesn’t know anyone. The only thing they share is the Aspect-Emperor. Through Obotegwa, Zsoronga describes the first time emissaries from Kellhus came to his father’s court. Zsoronga was a child and watched in awe. He had heard rumors of Kellhus, and Sorweel comments that was the same at his court. This gives them more to bond over.

Zsoronga says how he grew up on tales of the First Holy war and the Unification Wars. It always felt distant until Nilnameshi fell. That southern country is Zeüm’s gateway to the Three Seas. He talks about how a fortress called Auvangshei was rebuilt. It once guarded the Ceneian Empire against Zeüm a thousand years ago

All Sorweel knew about the Ceneian Empire was that it ruled all the Three Seas for a thousand years and that the Anasûrimbor’s New Empire had been raised about its skeleton. As little as that was, it seemed knowledge enough. Just as his earlier laughter had been his first in weeks, he now felt the true gleam of comprehension. The dimensions of what had upended his life had escaped him—he had foundered in ignorance. The Great Ordeal. The New Empire. The Second Apocalypse. These were little more than empty signs to him, sounds that had somehow wrought the death of his father and the fall of the city. But here at last, in the talk of other places and other times, was a glimmer—as though understanding were naught but the piling on of empty names.

Zeüm, as Zsoronga explains, only worries about Sranc. They have no other enemy since the Ceneian Empire fall. He then talks about how his people worship events and keep detailed ancestor lists, with each person having their own book revered by their descendants, that chronicle their mighty deeds in the afterlife. “Mighty events, such as battles, or even campaigns such as this, are what knot the strings of our descent together, what makes us one people.”

There was wonder here, Sorweel realized, and room for strength. Different lands. Different customs. Different skins. And yet it was all somehow the same.

He was not along. How could he be so foolish as to think he was alone?

Zsoronga then realizes the same thing since Sakarpus has stood unconquered for three thousand years like Zeüm. Like Sorweel, the name ‘Aspect-Emperor’ is carved on Zsoronga’s soul. It’s hard to believe one man can be so powerful. In this moment, Sorweel realizes it was ignorance, not his father’s pride, that had caused their defeat.

Zsoronga resumes his story about how the fortress Auvangshei being rebuilt had affected High Holy Zeüm. Some are eager for the coming war, wanting their own glories, while others are afraid of being conquered. Zsoronga’s father had been the former until the emissaries came. Sorweel asks what happened, feeling a kinship with Zsoronga. Three men came, two Ketyai and a Norsirai. Zsoronga’s father, the Satakhan, glares at them. In unison, they say, “The Aspect-Emperor bears you greetings, Great Satakhan, and asks that you send three emissaries to the Andiamine Heights to respond in kind.” The Satakhan asks what they mean.

The Prince held the moment with his breath, the way a bard might. In his soul’s eye, Sorweel could see it, the feathered pomp and glory of the Great Satakhan’s court, the sun sweating between great pillars, the galleries rapt with black faces.

“With that, the three men produced razors from their tongues and opened their own throats!” He made a tight, feline swiping motion with his left hand. “They killed themselves… right there before us. My father’s surgeons tried to save them, to staunch the blood, but there was nothing to be done. The men died right there”—he looked and gestured to a spot several feet away, as though watching their ghosts—“moaning some kind of crazed hymn, to their last breath, singing…”

Three suicides were the Aspect-Emperor’s message, daring the Satakhan to prove he has that same power. Sorweel asks if he did. Zsoronga says he had been hard on his father but understands his choice now. Even if his father could have found three fanatics willing to do that barbaric act, would they have stayed true or would they have balked at the final moments? Then his father would look weak. Even if he didn’t send the men, it would make him appear unfit to rule. Sorweel suggests Zsoronga’s father should have marched to war.

Zsoronga says he thinks it was a trap. That was why Auvangshei was rebuilt to put his father in this bind, pointing out that Kellhus broke Sorweel’s people, who survived the Second Apocalypse, in a morning. It’s not an accusation of weakness, just a statement. Sorweel realizes that Zsoronga, and all other unbelievers, ask the same question.

Who was the Aspect-Emperor?

After that, treaties were signed, his father was seen as weak, and Zsoronga became a hostage “pretending that I ride to war.” Sorweel asks if the prince would prefer his people’s fate. Zsoronga says no, but when he’s angry, he sometimes envies those who died fighting.

For some reason, the hooks of this reference to his overthrown world caught Sorweel where all the others had skipped past. The raw heart, the thick eyes, the leaden thought—all the staples of plundered existence—came rushing back and with such violence he could not speak.

Prince Zsoronga watched him [Sorweel] with an uncharacteristic absence of expression. “Ke nulam zo…”

“I suspect you feel the same.”

Sorweel does

He finds friendship with Zsoronga. Company to soothe his loneliness. He can acknowledge this, bunt not the fact he felt such relief just sharing with another. “A true Horselord, a hero such as Niehirren Halfhand or Orsuleese the Faster, viewed speech with the high-handed distaste they reserved for bodily functions, as something men did only out of necessity.” His people found strength in solitude, hence their nickname the Lonely City. Sorweel had emulated it, but it had only led him to depression since his father’s death. He had been so lonely keeping his thoughts to himself. It had almost driven him mad and then speaking with Zsoronga had saved himself. His only fear was that Zsoronga would see him as a crude Norsirai.

That he would be returned to the prison of his backward tongue.

But that didn’t happen. He rides with Zsoronga the next day. They trade banter and he joins the Brace, as Zsoronga’s bondsmen are called. It’s Sorweel’s first good day in weeks. Or would have been if not for their commander, Captain Harnilias (or Old Harni). He delivers a summons to Sorweel to see Kayûtas as the camp is erected. This is the first time Sorweel’s spoken with Kayûtas since their first meeting, though he’d glimpsed him often. He always found himself eager for Kayûtas’s attention instead of acting aloof or sneering. Kayûtas should be like any other man.

Only that he wasn’t. Anasûrimbor Kayûtas was more than powerful—more even than the son of the man who had killed King Harweel. It was as if Sorweel saw him against a greater frame, a background deeper than the endless emerald sweep of the Istyuli Plains.

As if Kayûtas were more an expression than an individual. A particle of fate.

Sorweel realizes Kayûtas can see through his “mask of pride.” How can he fight that if all his secrets are known? Panic swells through him know. He doesn’t want to be noticed now. He is quickly in the command tent. It’s austere, holding only what is necessary. Kayûtas sits at his table, his sister sitting beside him. Moënghus lurks behind them. Serwa studies him with a look of amusement. She says something to Moënghus behind her, a comment about Sorweel. Moënghus glares while Kayûtas snorts in laughter. Sorweel grows embarrassed. He feels like a boy and wonders if they make everyone feel this way.

Kayûtas asks how Porsparian is working out. Sorweel says it’s fine, feeling like they know he’s holding back. Porsparian’s praying over the mouths in dirt unnerves him. Kayûtas says that’s good and explains that a Mandate named Eskeles will be his tutor in Sheyic, teaching Sorweel as they ride. He agrees and asks if there’s anything else. Serwa and Moënghus are studying him, making him feel so self-conscious.

He was a king! A king! What would his father say, seeing him like this?

He laughs and says something in Sheyic. Then tells Sorweel that’s it. He also adds that there are those people who watch for those who take insolence into sacrilege. This jerks Sorweel’s faze up from his feet to stare at Kayûtas. Serwa studies him. Kayûtas admonishes him, saying that while Sorweel is a king, in the army, he’s a soldier and he’ll follow the rules. He says you’ll kneel before him and his siblings, though as a king, he can look them in the eye. But with his father, he has to bow his forehead to the ground. “All men are slaves before my brother.” Though the words are gentle, it’s a reprimand. Sorweel says he understands.

“Then show me.”

Before he can stop himself. He kneels while begging his father for forgiveness. Kayûtas is pleased, adding he knows it’s difficult. Then he lets Sorweel stand. He does but keeps looking down. Kayûtas then, off-handily, mentions he’s made a friend with Zsoronga.

The young King’s shock was such that he paid no heed to his expression. Spies! Of course they were watching him… Porsparian?

“I have no need of spies, Sorweel,” the Prince-Imperial said, snatching the thought from his face. He leaned back and with a gentle laugh added, “My father is a god.”

My Thoughts

Men have to leave their mark where they go. On the pioneer trails, like the Oregon Trail, that settlers used to travel to the Western United States over a hundred years ago, you’ll find places where they carved their names into rocks, graffiti to mark that they passed here. That they lived. Why wouldn’t the Great Ordeal do the same?

In the last series, Bakker talked about how war is about belief. So long as your soldiers believe they’re winning, they will suffer horrendous casualties. When that changes, they break and there is nothing you can do about it. So only believers conquer. And these men believe in Kellhus. They believe in their mission.

Life is never simple, Sorweel. We all do things that we feel terrible about but can’t help ourselves. We know we should be better, but it’s so easier to just go with the flow. It’s hard to be the rock thrusting out of the warrior.

So two chapters ago, Achamian meets his new companions. They are men that have friendship only on a skin level. Sorweel is about to meet two true friends in Obotegwa and Zsoronga. Especially Zsoronga.

Sons are always measuring up to their father. Most of the time, you feel like you can never measure up. It’s escaping the shadow of your father that is stepping into adulthood. But sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes fathers cast an exceptionally long shadow. Sorweel lost his before he had made that transition and under circumstances that are outside of his control.

Obotegwa comes off as genuine. I like the character. RIP.

Having your own idols at odds with the rest of the Great Ordeal is a big statement that Zsoronga is no believer. We’ve had comments that believers persevere. They conquer. Sorweel is not a believer. He’s cast adrift. Zsoronga isn’t a believer in the Great Ordeal’s task. It makes me wish I could remember Zsoronga’s fate in the Unholy Consult. Either way, it’s foreshadowing that Sorweel is not going to succeed.

Zsoronga’s people revere history itself, which is what binds a people together. This probably explains a lot why they have existed as one country, mostly. The Chinese have always revered philosophy more than religion. Sorweel recognizes this truth. His people have had their shared history of being survivors of the Second Apocalypse, outlasting everyone else.

That history has now been shattered. What does that mean for Sakarpus?

Sorweel’s realization that strangers are just like him is how in-group/out-group preference is shattered. Humans are humans. Our customs might differ, but at our core, we’re all the same. It’s a powerful moment to realize it. The foundation of two friends who can’t even speak the same language.

Who is the Aspect-Emperor? That’s the central question of Achamian’s storyline. And here we are with Sorweel asking the same questions.

Yes, Sorweel, the Dûnyain makes everyone feel his way.

We see ample evidence of Kayûtas ability to read Sorweel in this chapter. The admonishment about him crossing the line because he’s a king comes right after he gets mad at himself for acting so submissive. Then the ending with the spy. The whole point of this conversation is to put fear in him. The tutor is merely the excuse to dress him down.

He also meets Serwa. He’s noticed her, but he hasn’t started his infatuation with her yet. He sees her as an aunt, an older woman instead of someone his own age.

Click here for Chapter Eleven!

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Reread of The Aspect-Emperor Series

Book 1: The Judging Eye

by R. Scott Bakker

Chapter Nine

Momemn

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

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

—TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES

My Thoughts

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

Let’s read and find out!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her face seemed numb for tingling.

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

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

As though he had become wholly his father’s.

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

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

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

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

Someday she would be dead.

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

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

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

She was so tired. So weary.

“The dead hear everything, Kel.”

Iothiah…

A life lived, no forgotten.

And in its place…

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

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

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

The woman and her infant were gone.

A life forgotten…

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

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

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

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

Momemn…

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

“I c-can be Sammy…”

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

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

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

Believed.

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

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

Even still, something dark in her recoiled.

Children. They wept so much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was all naked force otherwise.

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

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

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

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

“Do you understand what I say, Sharacinth?”

“Yessssh!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were no accidents with Anasûrimbor Kellhus.

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

Her voice pealed raw across the polished stone hollows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iothiah…

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

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

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

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

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

And at long last she had found her knife.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To save the skies, Ary must die!

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

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

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Reread of The Aspect-Emperor Series

Book 1: The Judging Eye

by R. Scott Bakker

Chapter Six

Marrow

Welcome to Chapter Six of my reread. Click here if you missed Chapter Five!

Ask the dead and they will tell you. All roads are not equal. Verily, even maps can sin.

—EKYANNUS 1, 44 EPISTLES

What the world merely kills, Men murder.

—SCYLVENDI PROVERB

My Thoughts

The first quote, while talking about how every life is different, also has that last part about maps sinning. Maps are something made by men. And for it to be a sin, then it was made to lead you astray. To take you down the wrong path. It is probably a warning against false teachers of scripture, since it is from one of the holy books, I believe.

Either way, it is telling you that you can’t just trust what others tell us.

Then we come to the Scylvendi proverb that reinforces this. The world is random. It’s chance. Yes, you might die because of a disease or because you got lost in the woods. Exposure can kill you. Even a hungry beast can kill you, but it’s not done out of intent. But men know what they’re doing and still kill. Murder is the act of taking a life when you don’t have the right.

Murder is all about the intent.

Both of these quotes are about how men are different from the world. From the natural chaos of things. They are warnings to be wary. Fitting since we are heading into meeting the Skin Eaters, rejoining them in story after their introduction in the prologue. These are dangerous men. Men who murder.

But it is Achamian who is their map. And it is Achamian who is knowingly leading these men on a trip that will get them all killed.

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

Achamian is hobbling through the forest to Marrow. It is a settlement that Geraus, his slave, goes to buy supplies. It is also the outpost that the Scalpoi use. Here they set out into the wilderness to collect their bounties of Sranc scalps and then return to sell them. He knows of the place from Geraus’s tales, the slave always reveling in talking about what he saw there for days after his return. The man spoke of the place as dangerous, where buying a bag of beans was a dangerous affair. Geraus would boast of his caution. Survival was a great virtue to him and one he passed on to his children. Not attracting attention was important for a slave.

No different than a spy, Achamian could not help reflecting.

Achamian is slipping back into the man who used to wander the three seas. It had been twenty years since he’d settled down at his tower, but he’s already thinking of his journey and reflecting on how nothing had really changed. Then he finds himself missing Geraus and his family. Though Achamian owned them, it’s not the convenience his slaves gave him he misses, but their presence he missed. He will never see them again.

It made him feel like a weepy grandfather.

Perhaps it was good, this suicidal turn his life had taken.

He stares down at Marrow as it creeps along the escarpment’s base, hacked out of the woods that surrounded it. It looks like a wound on the earth. It’s dark when Achamian reaches it. He reads graffiti by the light of the Nail of Heaven. The writings are crass like scribbles on a bathroom stall. He passes armed and armored men, drunk and many bloody. They are wild men. The Scalpoi who’ve come from across the world to earn money and redemption by killing Sranc. They stare at him, and he huddles, knowing that these brutal men risk everything, so in town, they have given themselves greater licenses to excessive behavior. As he passes them, he realizes despite their origins, from nobles to slaves, they are all the same here: consumed by their hungers. “What had made these men wild wasn’t the wilderness, or even the mad savagery of the Sranc, it was the inability to trust anything more bestial in one another.”

Fear, he told himself. Fear and lust and fury… Trust in these, old man. It seemed the only commandment a place such as Marrow could countenance.

He passes taverns and opium dens. A man beats another man to death. A prostitute begging for his custom. There is no order here. He clutches his knife handle. There’s an Imperial Custom House, a reminder that this is still, technically, civilization. Kellhus’s civilization. He even finds a temple to Yatwer holding a ceremony. Through it all, he tries not to think of Mimara.

He reaches the Cocked Leg, the inn Geraus mentioned. It’s a loud place and reminds Achamian of a more vicious version of the “great polyglot cities” he visited as a spy. But this place is too small to lose yourself in anonymity, but still holds that promise of licentious freedom.

A night in such a place could have a million endings, Achamian realized. That was its wonder and horror both.

He gets the worst room in the inn, mistaken for a pauper. That amuses him and he feels more and more a spy. He heads down to the common room, hoping to be lucky while ignoring the bloodstains decorating the wall.

Achamian is shocked to find another sorcerer in the common room. And an old one given the “black and blasted depth of his Mark.” There is also a Chorae. Achamian could see the Mark on his own hands or in reflections of his face, but he never really notices it. He’s used to it. The other sorcerer’s mark makes Achamian feel “young with fear.”

He swallows it and goes to the barkeeper, a Tydonni named Haubrezer. Achamian introduces himself and is called old and a pick, a racial slur for a Ketyai. That stings, which surprises Achamian. He then drops Geraus’s name, which Haubrezer recognizes. Coming to Marrow has always been the plan, only Mimara’s news accelerated it. Haubrezer points Achamian towards the group of Scalpoi with the sorcerer and the Chorae. Achamian isn’t happy about it. Asks if there’s another group.

“Ho. No mean Scalpoi, those. They the Veteran’s Men. The Skin Eaters.”

“The Skin Eaters?”

A sour grin, as though the man had been starved of the facial musculature needed to pull his lips from his teeth. “Geraus was right. You hermit, to be sure. Ask anyone here around”—he gestured wide with a scapular hand—“they will tell you, ya, step aside for the Skin Eaters. Famed. The whole River knows. They bring down more bales than rutta—anyone. Ho. Step aside for the Skin Eaters, or they strike you down. Hauza kup. Down but good.”

The three men appear more dangerous than the other. They sit alone from the others. Achamian examines them and asks if he needs an introduction. Haubrezer says not from him.

Achamian is hyperaware of his surroundings as he heads to the men. The mix of nations reminds him of the Holy War. He thinks of Kellhus and his determination increases. Achamian understands that he’s meeting with dangerous men. Mercenaries who killed for coin. Achamian knows how to pretend to be weaker because the thinks he knows how to deal with these men.

His first heartbeat in their presence told him otherwise.

The sorcerer and the older man study Achamian, but their leader keeps staring at his wine. He asks if the main is Kosoter “Ironsoul” and Captain of the Skin Eaters. There is a silence that isn’t from surprise. The Captain drinks then studies Achamian. He has the eyes of a man who’d survived the horrors of the First Holy War.

“I know you,” was all he [Kosoter] said in a voice with a hint of a papyrus rasp.

The older man, acting as a second, tells Achamian to address Kosoter as Veteran before making a joke how that’s the Law. Achamian ignores him and says he would know him from the First Holy War. He gets interrupted by the older man who says he’s Sarl. Achamian interrupts him to tell Kosoter he wishes to hire them. Sarl keeps asking for his attention. Finally, Achamian gives it to him. Sarl says Kosoter isn’t a man for haggling. Sarl will handle the negotiations. Achamian asks if Sarl makes the decisions. Sarl laughs and says he just sings what Kosoter tells him. He bows to Kosoter who is now studying Achamian with “something poised between curiosity and malice.”

Achamian snorted dismissively. This was one thing he didn’t miss about the civilized world: the addiction to all things indirect.

Achamian again says he needs to “contract” their company. Sarl says that’s strange since there are no more wars, save the war against the Consult and the Sranc, so mercenaries don’t exist. Achamian is off-balanced by Kosoter’s scrutiny and Sarl’s gibbering. It’s deliberate to put him off-balance.

Achamian says he needs scalpers not mercenary, for a journey. Sarl understands this means heading into the wastes. He finds this interesting and asks where Achamian needs to go in the North. Achamian has dreaded this question. He sighs and gets over answering it.

“Far…” He [Achamian] swallowed. “To the ruins of Sauglish.”

Another spittle-flecked spasm of laughter, this one carving every vein, every web of wrinkles in succinct shades of purple and red. He [Sarl] even yanked his wrists together as though bound, shook up and down, fingers flicking. He looked to the scowled mas as though seeking confirmation. “Sauglish!” He howled, rolling his face back. “Oh ho, my friend, my poor, poor lunatic friend!” He reclined back in his chair, sucking air. “May the Gods”—he shook his head in a kind of astonished dismissal—“keep your bowls warm and full and whatever.”

Something in his look and tone said, Leave while you still can…

Anger seizes Achamian. He wants to use sorcery to kill the man, but Kosoter’s Chorae and the sorcerer’s deep Mark stops Achamian. Sarl’s mirth faces and Kosoter finally speaks, asking what’s in Sauglish. This shocks Sarl and fear seizes him, clearly misreading what Kosoter wants. Achamian realizes Kosoter’s words always cause this reaction.

Achamian asks Kosoter what he knows of it and realizes that answering a question with another is a mistake. However, he doesn’t flinch away from the man’s hard gaze but matches it. He holds it, sounds echoing around them. It’s a contest not just of dominance, or respect, but of everything.

I am the end of you, the eyes in his [Kosoter’s] eyes whispered. And they seemed a thousand years old.

Achamian could feel himself wilt. Wild-limbed imaginings flickered through his soul, hot with screams and blood. He could feel tremors knock through his knees.

Sarl advises Achamian to just answer Kosoter’s questions. Achamian does, saying he is going for the Coffers. Sarl wants Achamian to explain what that means. Instead, Achamian is unnerved by Kosoter’s gaze which embodies “Scrutiny incarnate.” This doesn’t feel right to Achamian. Next, he realizes he has to make Kosoter think he has other options so he says he’ll find someone else. Feeling sick to his stomach, he goes to leave.

“You’re the Wizard,” Lord Kosoter called out in a growl.

The word hooked Achamian like a wire garrote.

Kosoter says he remembers him from the Holy War. That Achamian had taught Kellhus. Achamian asks why that matters. Kosoter blinks for the first time and says, in flawless Sheyic, that he’s a Mandate Schoolman so he can definitely find the Coffers.

“So much the worse for you,” Achamian said. But all he could think was how… How could a scalper, any scalper, know about the Sohonc Coffers. He found himself glancing at the leather-cowled man to the Captain’s left. The sorcerer. What was his School?

“I think not,” Lord Kosoter said, leaning back. “There’s scalpers aplenty in Marrow, sure. Any number of companies.” He hooked his wine bowl with two calloused fingers. “But none who know who you are…” His grin was curious, frightening. “Which means none will even entertain your request.”

The logic of his claim hung like an iron in the air, indifferent to the swell of background voices. Truth was ever the afterlife of words.

Achamian is shocked. Sarl starts making a joke that makes the hooded sorcerer laugh. Achamian recognizes what the sorcerer is as Sarl continues on with his Anus Leaf joke, which is mocking Achamian for being a charlatan trying to scam them.

The Captain watched him [Achamian] with imperturbable care.

They were right, he [Achamian] realized. Derision was all he could expect here in Marrow—or even worse. The Skin Eaters were his only hope.

And they had already struck him down.

Achamian drinks the wine given him, shaking, while Sarl cows about Achamian wanting to loot the Coffers. Achamian says it was the hooded sorcerer who told Kosoter about the Coffers. But he realizes that this is wrong and that the Captain doesn’t play games of words. Sarl calls the mysterious sorcerer Cleric.

The cowl remained motionless. The Captain resumed staring into his wine.

“You should hear him in the Wilds,” Sarl exclaimed. “Such sweet sermons! And to think I once thought myself eloquent.”

“And yet,” Achamian said carefully, “Nonmen have no priests.”

“Not as Men understand them,” the black pit replied.

Shock. Its voice had been pleasant, melodious, but marbled with intonations alien to the human vocal range. It was as though the tones of a deformed child had been woven into it.

Achamian asks if Cleric’s from Ishterebinth. The Nonman doesn’t remember, but he knows he’s been to Ishterebinth went it was called another name. Next Achamian asks who his Quya Master was. Cleric can’t remember.

Achamian licked his lips in hesitation, then asked the question that had to be asked of all Nonmen. “What can you remember?”

“Things. Friends. Strangers and lovers. All of them heart-breaking. All of them horrific.”

“And the Coffers? You remember them?

An almost imperceptible nod. “I was at the Library of Sauglish when it fell—I think. I remember that terror all too well… But why it should cause me such sorrow, I do not know.”

Achamian remembers Seswatha’s dreams of Sauglish’s fall. He’d fled the destruction weeping. While Mandate Schoolmen like Achamian lived two lives, theirs and Seswatha’s, Nonmen had lived thousands of years. Cleric had been alive when human civilization first arouse. And he’d witnessed all the years that separated Achamian from Seswatha. Achamian almost feels whole.

He asks Cleric’s name, prompting Sarl to curse. Incariol answers Cleric. He says it’s not his own name. Achamian didn’t recognize it and is unnerved. “How could any mortal fathom such a cavernous soul?” Achamian declares him an Erratic.

“Am I? Is that what I am?”

How did you answer such a question? The creature before him [Achamian] had lived so long his very identity had collapsed beneath him, dropping him into the pit of his own lifetime. His was a running-over soul, where every instance of love or hope or joy drained into the void of forgetfulness, displayed by the more viscous passions of terror, anguish, and hate.

He was an Erratic, addicted to atrocity for memory’s sake.

Sarl accuses Achamian of calling Cleric mad, but Cleric agrees. Sarl tries to wave that away, but Cleric says, “Memories make us sane.” Sarl exclaims, “Sermons!” He has a manic smile and gloated over proof of his assertion. He then goes on to talk about how Cleric once told them about the greatest treasure. This was how they learned about the Coffers hidden beneath the Library of Sauglish which were destroyed. The Coffers has become a pseudonym to hope, a way of saying that “unluckiest of words” without saying it.

“And now, here you are, as sure as Fate.”

There was something, Achamian decided, altogether too mobile about the man’s expressions.

Sarl then asks Achamian, as an educated man, what he thinks about coincidence. Does he think things happen for a reason? Achamian can only give a half-hearted smile and a perplexed look. Sarl laughs as if to say Achamian does believe in Fate.

Achamian did his best not to gape. He had forgotten what it was like, the succession of trivial surprises that was part and parcel of joining the company of strangers. In the company of strangers it was so easy to forget the small crablike histories that held others together and set you apart.

But this was no trivial surprise.

Achamian reflects that the journey from Marrow to Sauglish would be months of crossing the Sranc-controlled wilds of Kûniüri. Several times, the Mandate has lost expeditions to reach Sauglish or Golgotterath. Achamian is using the Great Ordeal to draw the Sranc to them but knows there will still be dangers. He’s unnerved how he planned on using the Coffers to induce the scalpers and that these ones already lusted for it. He wonders if this could be coincidence

Sarl says this must be the Whore of Fate’s doing, which means everyone is about to be fucked. He’s trying to deter Kosoter. It’s clear Sarl hasn’t. Achamian realizes then that he’s already struck an agreement Kosoter and how they seemed now to be partners. Achamian wonders if he’s a Skin Eater now.

Should he be grateful? Relieved? Horrified?

“I remember…” the blackness wrapped by the cowl said. “I remember the slaughter of…”

A peculiar sound, like a sob thumbed into the shape of a cackle.

“Of children.”

“A man,” the Captain grimly noted, “has got to remember.”

Achamian has a regular dream of Sauglish that night. The Wracu (dragons) leads the assault, burning. Seswatha and his fellow Sohonc brothers are in the sky singing Gnosis. They’re above their sacred Library. They unleash “psalms of destruction.”

Lines of brilliant white mapped the gaping spaces, striking geometries, confining geometries, light that made smoke of hide and fury. Rearing back to bare claws and spew fire, the dragons plummeted into the arcane glitter, shrieking, screaming. Then they were through, bleeding smoke, some writhing and convulsing, one or two toppling to their deaths. The singing became more frantic. Threads of incandescence boiled against iron scales. Unseen hammers beat against wings and limbs.

Then the Wracu were upon them.

In this moment, Seswatha becomes Achamian and he panics as the dragons rip apart the “antique Schoolmen.” He looks around, seeing the Sranc crossing the plains while the No-God whirls behind them, a monstrous whirlwind dominating the horizon. Around him, the greatest School, the Sohonc, died. It’s more like Achamian is remembering these events then witnessing them. He can see the civilians killing themselves as the Sranc have broken through the walls. Fathers and mothers kill their children to “save them from the fury of the Sranc.” Through it all, they cry out to the “heavens shut against them.” The No-God gets closer.

Their High-King was dead. The wombs of their wives and daughters had become graves. The greatest of their thanes and chieftain-knights, the flower of their armed might, had been struck down. Pillars of smoke scored the distance across the earth’s very curve.

The world was ending.

Like choking. Like drowning. Like a weight without substance, sinking cold through him, a knife driven from the snow, even as he fell slack into its bottomless regions. Friends, brothers, shaken apart in grinning jaws. Strangers flailing in fiery blooms. Towers leaning like drunks before crashing. Sranc encrusting distant walls, like ants on slices of apple, loping into the maze of streets. The cries, shrieks, screams—thousands of them—rising like steam from burning stones. Sauglish dying.

Hopelessness… Futility.

Never, it seemed, had he dreamed a passion with such vehemence.

The Sohonc are driven back to their Library. Ballistae manage to kill a few lesser dragons. Skafra, an ancient Wracu, swoops in to attack. Achamian thinks he’s coming for him, but Skafra attacks the Holy Library. He sets it on fire. Achamian watches in horror as it burns. He’s confused, wondering where Seswatha is. How he’s dreaming without him.

He bolts awake, panting in terror. He hears Mimara’s words echoing in his mind that he’s become a prophet of the past.

The next day, Sarl takes him to join Cleric, Kosoter, and another Skin Eater named Kiampas. He’s the sergeant, using his fists to keep everyone in line. He definitely looks like a soldier. Clean-cut and fit. He’s a planner, and he’s not at all pleased with the current goal. He asks for details, like when Achamian needs to reach them. He lies and says it has to be the end of summer, claiming the Wards are tied to the position of heavenly bodies. Kiampas is dismayed and says it’s impossible. Kosoter overrides him.

Kiampas paled, seemed to glance down in unconscious apology. Though he was cut of different cloth entirely, Achamian wasn’t surprised to see him sharing Sarl’s reaction to the chest-tightening rarity of their Captain’s voice.

Kiampas thinks and says they should follow the Holy War out of Galeoth, but Achamian says they have to go along the other side of the Osthwai Mountains. Kiampas thinks that’s insane since it means moving through Sranc territory. But Achamian is a fugitive. It’s too dangerous to cross Galeoth. He says Kosoter knows why. Kiampas, hearing no objecting from Kosoter, believes Achamian. He then points out that Sakarpus has fallen and, thus, they’ll be crossing the New Empire no matter what. Achamian employs jnanic courtesy to Kiampas to show he respect his opinion.

Something told him [Achamian] he would need allies in the weeks and months to come.

Achamian explains that the Great Ordeal is the only reason this will work. The host clears the way, but they won’t cross the army’s path. The Ordeal will be ahead of their party. Kiampas isn’t convinced. He points out hosts move slowly. Achamian adds that Sauglish is out of the way and he says their odds are good of not encountering anyone.

Kiampas nodded with slow skepticism, then leaned back, as if retreating from some disagreeable scent.

The smell of futility, perhaps.

The next morning, the sixty or so Skin Eaters muster. They have an eclectic collection of armor, weapons, nationalities, and background. Only their fear of Kosoter and a “deep spiritual fatigue” unite them. Sarl tells them what they’re going to be up to while Kosoter studied the horizon with Cleric at his side. The nearby sound of rapids reminds Achamian of the way the Holy War cheered on Kellhus. Sarl tells them this will be a longer slog and will take more than a year in the “pit.” But he talks about the Coffers, and that has some murmuring in hope, others seeming to say it like it’s about time, and others as if it’s a holy place, like Shimeh to the First Holy War, begging to be liberated. Only this one can be split into shares.

A lie carved at the joints.

Sarl keeps talking and the mad discipline of the Skin Eaters keeps them silent. If he hadn’t met Kosoter, Achamian would have been surprised. Sarl then says that they have until tomorrow morning to decide. After that, it’ll be desertion, and Cleric will hunt them down. Sarl calls out the rule of the slog: “The knee that buckles pulls ten man down.”

Achamian realizes that though these Skin Eaters are similar to the battle-hardened men at the end of the First Holy War, but these men are vicious instead of ruthless. Numb instead of hard. And most of all hungry. Not driven. They’re ultimately mercenaries, if ones as fierce as the Sranc. Kosoter seems to have the same opinion of his men. He and Achamian are both Veterans of the First Holy War. It’s almost a kinship between them. That troubles Achamian.

That night, Sarl passes word from Kosoter that the renown of the Skin Eaters is from Kosoter. The men are just Scalpoi. Achamian asks Sarl if he believes that. Sarl says he’s been with Kosoter since the wars against the Orthodox and followed him out here. Kellhus himself named Kosoter Ironsoul. But Sarl says Kosoter’s still mortal, only something “watches through him.” Sarl adds, in a crazed way, Achamian should respect Kosoter.

Achamian looked down to his soaked hand. The wine had run from his fingers as thick as blood.

To think he had worried about the Nonman’s madness.

Not that Cleric doesn’t worry him. However, all these fears were canceling each other out. And he would be useful with his sorcery because “there were few powers in the world that could rank a Nonman Magi.” Kosoter used him for a reason.

Only thirty Skin Eaters show up for muster the following morning. Sarl is thrilled, though Achamian isn’t sure why, and Kosoter impossible to read. After this, they spend the next few days gathering supplies. Achamian surrenders his gold to finance things that impresses the average Skin Eaters. They were hungry to make an even greater fortune. Convincing someone to take the first step was always the hard part, now that they believed they can make it, their eager to set off.

How could they know Achamian had no expectation of return? In a sense, leaving the Three Seas was the real reason. He might no longer be a Mandate Schoolman, but his heart belonged to the Ancient North all the same. To the coiling insinuations of the Dreams…

To Seswatha.

Kiampas, one night, tells Achamian the Skin Eaters always are boisterous and celebratory beforehand. Achamian asks before a slog. No, before anything involving blood. Sorrow fills Kiampas, a regret that he knows this isn’t right. This makes Achamian feel the weight of all those lies he told to trick these men. He wonders how many he’ll get killed to learn the truth of Kellhus.

How many pulses had he [Achamian] sacrificed?

Are you doing this for the sake of vengeance? Is that it?

Achamian is drowning in guilt and is reminded by the innkeeper’s warming. “Stand aside for the Skin Eaters.” They don’t suffer fools.

One night, Achamian dreams as Seswatha. He’s talking with High King Anasûrimbor Celmomas who says he has built a refuge. At the same time, Achamian marvels over how he knows this is a dream and yet is Seswatha unaware of Achamian’s presence.

How could it be? How could he feel all the ferment of a free soul? How could he live a life for the first time over and over?

Celmomas has built it in case the war goes wrong. Seswatha is surprised, not worry which Celmomas is plagued with, but speaking it aloud. This is before Celmomas leads the Great Ordeal to attack Golgotterath. Apocalypse wasn’t happening. Seswatha realizes Celmomas worries on the No-God, saying the name as it no more than a distant fear, not a horror.

How did one relive such ancient ignorance?

Celmomas is worried the No-God is as dangerous as the Quya say and they waited too long. Seswatha is certain they haven’t. Celmomas says he can only trust Seswatha. Achamian remembers making love to the queen. Celmomas makes an unexpected move and changes the rules of Benjuka, clouding the game with uncertainty. This almost relieves Achamian. Celmomas then says he made a place for his family to survive. Ishuäl. Achamian bolts upright, desperate to know where it could be.

The truth of men lay in their origins. He knew this as only a Mandate Schoolman could. Anasûrimbor Kellhus had not come to the Three Seas by accident. He had not found his half-brother waiting as Shriah of the Thousand Temples by accident. He had not conquered the known world by accident!

Below his room, the Skin Eaters sing and cheer their upcoming bloodshed. He sits on the bed, peering down at the men through the gaps in the floorboard. Kosoter isn’t here, but Sarl is. Achamian sees Sarl as the problem, the man refusing to remember he’s an old man, unlike the other Skin Eaters. Young and brash with no thought of their mortality. Eager to “fuck or to kill under the guise of whim.” As he studies them, he knows he will kill hundreds or thousands in his quest.

However many fools it took to find Ishuäl.

They leave the last outpost of civilization the next morning. They are entering a chaotic world as treacherous as the Cleric’s soul. The climb up the escarpment out of Marrow hard for Achamian, but he thinks that’s proper.

All passages into dread should exact come chastising toll.

Mimara watches Marrow from the outskirts, knowing it would be deadly for her to enter. She’d soon be raped, beaten, and turned into a whore who’s dressed up like her mother. She’d service every Scalper for miles. Memories of her slavery are never far from her. She thinks about the other girls like her. She remembers how she was found by her mother’s men dressed as the Holy Empress “emptied save for a sip.” Esmenet had ordered the Worm, a slum in Carythusal, razed and every man in it killed.

But it was never clear just whom Mother was avenging.

Mimara has been waiting for Achamian on the far side of Marrow for him to emerge, abandoning her mule. She watches scalpers come and go as she spies on the town. From the hillside, it looks like a toy. “She watches the coming and going, the ebb and flow of miniature men and their miniature affairs.” She realizes men are the same the world over, but humans forget that. This gives them the illusion that they’re seeing something new. Only now does she realizes this truth she’s always known.

She dares no fire. She hugs herself warm. From lips of high-hanging stone, she watches and waits for him. She has no other place to go. She is, she decides, every bit as rootless as he. Every bit as mad.

Every bit as driven.

My Thoughts

We’re primed for Marrow before we arrive with Geraus’s stories.

Though Achamian had owned Geraus, his wife, and children as slaves, they were also the only companions he had. Their relationship really was more of one of master and servant, or employer and employee. And Achamian doesn’t come off as a bad employer. They had become his surrogate family, and now he leaves them behind. I always wonder what happened to Geraus, Tisthana, and their children, but they pass out of the story. No longer needed. Still, I wonder what became of their lives. Where they went. Will they survive what’s coming?

Do you ever wonder about minor characters like this?

A suicidal turn to Achamian’s thoughts. He doesn’t expect to survive this madness, but he’s obsessed with the truth and this his one chance.

The Nail of Heaven is bright enough to read by. And it’s not the moon. WTF is it!

“What had made these men wild wasn’t the wilderness, or even the mad savagery of the Sranc, it was the inability to trust anything more bestial in one another.” When society breaks down, this is what men become. Who we hang out with has a great deal of influence on who we are. If you hang out with successful people, you’ll find success. Hang out with people who just sit around smoking pot all day, well, don’t be surprised if you do the same. And if you find yourself in a world where you can’t trust anyone, you’ll only feed the problem.

“A moment of silence, far too thick to connotate shock or surprise.” This is what comes after Achamian asks Kosoter if he’s the Captain of the Skin Eaters. It’s Bakker’s subtle clue that there is something else at play here. These men are here for a reason. They met with an Imperial Messenger in the prologue. Now they have not just any nonman with them, but King Nil’giccas. Kellhus has made a deal with Nil’giccas, and Achamian is that payment.

I have speculated before that Kellhus might want Achamian to uncover the truth of his origins, to demystify the Dûnyain after Kellhus accomplishes his goal of defeating the No-God and closing the Outside his way. An end to superstition that he used to accomplish his goal. He puts the pieces in place for Achamian to succeed while also making a deal with Nil’giccas who has gone erratic. This allows Kellhus to put his plan into motion to neutralize Ishterebinth on his flank with his daughter.

Kosoter is letting Sarl speak, probably to see how Achamian handles it. Judging the man, both curious about him and brimming with hatred. Probably because Kosoter is a true believer. That was why he was chosen for this task. It is possible he was sent here years ago by Kellhus, an agent in place for when the time came to activate him.

Achamian tried to be intimidating. Tried to hold Kosoter’s terrible gaze. And while our sorcerer has been through a lot, he’s not someone who is so mired in darkness to be able to hold Kosoter’s gaze. Ironsoul is the Abyss. As we’ll later see, he’s so damned he appears like a living demon. This is a man who’s committed atrocities and sees little hope for salvation, even with Kellhus’s promise to him. In fact, to find that salvation, he’ll have to walk deep into hell to get it.

It’s also here that Sarl has no idea about Kosoter’s mission from Kellhus. Only the Captain, and probably Nil’giccas, know what’s going on here. That’s why Sarl is shocked the captain is entertaining Achamian.

Sometimes in a negotiation, you have to show you’re willing to go elsewhere. Kosoter can’t have that.

Achamian doesn’t want to go with the Skin Eaters, but he’s convinced by their argument. Sarl’s mockery is a counterbalance to Kosoter’s indifference. From them, he is seeing what he’ll get from others. Well, who knows if he would. He didn’t actually try to interview another company, so the sales technique worked. They got the better of Achamian and he knows it.

Kosoter has won their first battle.

Achamian is testing to see if Cleric is an Erratic. He’s already losing memories, a bad sign, and if he can only remember pain, then he can’t be trusted. He’ll lose himself and inflict damage so that he relive that pain. Of course, he has Achamian before him. A stand-in for Seswatha. Someone that will let Nil’giccas remember.

In Cleric, Achamian has found someone who understands, someone that helps him feel intact.

“Memories make us sane.” They are what tether us to the real world. To the continuation of our life and help us make sense of our present circumstances. They give us the context to understand the world around us. If that is severed, we would be confused. Befuddled. We might lash out. We wouldn’t even know it was wrong to lash out. We’d act in ways that would seem insane to those who had their memories.

Achamian is wondering if this is Fate, not realizing that his meeting with Kosoter is part of Kellhus’s plan. It makes sense then why it feels so serendipitous that the barkeeper sent them to Kosoter who just happens to be here when Achamian arrives.

Kosoter’s comment after Cleric talks about the slaughter of children makes me think he massacred Fanim children in the Holy War. He’s after redemption, after all. He knows he went way, way too far in the war. He committed atrocities. It’s turned him into a monster, and yet he still wants redemption.

Not surprising Achamian has a normal dream of Sauglish after all that talk of it. He might even be controlling this to some extent, hoping to spot Cleric in it.

It’s so sad to see parents killing children to spare them pain. We know what’s coming from the Sranc, so I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same. Death is coming. There’s no escaping it. Hope has died in Sauglish. All that’s left is pain and despair.

The connection between Achamian and Seswatha is breaking down. This might explain why he starts dreaming of Nau-Cayûti soon. That, perhaps, Kellhus’s hypnotism to unshackle the restrictions on Achamian to teach him Gnosis have unfettered Seswatha further from Achamian.

Yes, Achamian, you are going to need friends and allies. Things are going to get bad with the Skin Eaters.

The cataracts, rapids on a river, sound like cheering soldiers. Not the Skin Eaters. They’re not cheering, are they?

“In the pit” reminds me of modern soldiers who will describe being deployed in a warzone as being in the suck or the shit.

“A lie carved at the joints.” A lie that bends men to a new path? Or a lie that weakens men, because cutting at the joints would do that.

Kellhus had met Kosoter years ago. Called him Ironsoul. Chose him for this mission years and years ago. That name, Ironsoul, tells us what Kellhus has convinced Kosoter he is. A man who won’t break from his mission.

Thirty Skin Eaters… It’s easy to forget there were that many of them in the beginning.

I think Achamian is doing this to prove to Esmenet that he’s right and she was wrong to say with Kellhus. This is some twisted way to win her back. He just needs to show her what he is, but she already knew and chose to stay with him anyway.

As Achamian dreams, he’s faced with the illusion of free will. While he knows he’s dreaming, Seswatha doesn’t. Seswatha will do the same things over and over again as if he’d never done them. He has no choice in a deterministic world. All his actions are down to biology, culture, how he was raised, how his environment has shaped his thoughts. His reactions will be the same in the exact same set of circumstances every time.

By living Seswatha’s life over and over again, Achamian is experiencing the reality of determinism, of the Darkness that Comes Before.

How interesting for Achamian, a cuckold, to dream of being the seducer. He definitely feels guilt at dreaming of Seswatha and the queen’s affair.

Why would the rules become so convoluted that the outcome could no longer be anticipated almost relieve Achamian? In real life, he’s playing against Kellhus. He hopes he’s made an unexpected move that can’t be predicted.

Only he hasn’t.

“All passages into dread should exact come chastising toll.” Remember this, Achamian, at the end of the trip through Cil-Aujas.

I think it’s clear why Esmenet burned the Worm. It’s both for her daughter’s rapes and her own guilt in selling Mimara. That’s rage she unleashed. True pain she’s trying to expedite from her soul through the inflicting of suffering on others.

We get an interesting contrast with Kelmomas and Mimara as she watches the men like termites moving in and out of their mound. She realizes that men are the same everywhere. Kelmomas, however, realizes that he’s a God and better than them. On is rightfully scared by them, the other thinks he can control them.

And where did Mimara get the food? She was starving before Achamian came down from his tower. Now she’s snuck off after him. Did he give her food to see her home thinking she would go? I can’t believe Achamian didn’t see this move on her part coming.

She sat outside your tower for DAYS, Achamian.

She is the source of conflict coming up. Her presence is temptation to these violent men. It’s not just Achamian, either, that will pay for her actions. Kosoter will, too.

Want to read more, click here for Chapter Seven!

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To save the skies, Ary must die!

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