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Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Eighteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 5
The Holy Warrior
Chapter 18
The Andiamine Heights

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

…and that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, “Who are you?” now I ask, “Who am I?”

ANKHARLUS, LETTER TO THE WHITE TEMPLE

The Emperor, the consensus seems to be, was an excessively suspicious man. Fear has many forms, but it is never so dangers as when it is combined with power and perpetual uncertainty.

DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

My Thoughts

While Bakker doesn’t give us a clue what the revelation Ankharlus received, his reaction is similar to what Achamian experiences in this chapter. Finally, after all these years, he has found the Consult in the wake of discovering the harbinger of the Celmomas Prophecy. Of course he’s reeling.

The second quite about Xerius we have seen borne true time and time again. He is a man always afraid, always suspicious, schooled by his mother in all the ways his ancestors died in the palace he lived, all the ways his rule can end. This chapter exists because of that paranoia

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

Xerius is shaken after the debacle in the garden and is drinking anpoi, joined by Conphas and Gaenkelti, the Captain of the Eothic Guard. Xerius asks if they have Skeaös and then demands to see him. Gaenkelti thinks that is a mistake. Xerius asks if sorcery is being used, and the Imperial Saik says no. But the man has been trained.

“What do you mean ‘trained’? Spare me your riddles, Gaenkelti! The Empire has been humiliated this day. I’ve been humiliated!”

“He was…hard to take. Three of my men are dead. Four more have broken limbs—”

“Surely you jest!” Conphas cried. “Was he armed?”

“No. I’ve never seen the like. If we hadn’t had extra guards assigned for the audience… As I said, he’s been trained.”

Xerius realized that Skeaös could have killed him at any time and is shaken. Conphas insists it has to be sorcery, which the Saik disagree with. Xerius gets paranoid and asks for another school to confirm, such as the Mysunsai. Gaenkelti has already done this, but agrees with the Saik. He used a Chorae on Skeaös and nothing. Xerius is stunned to learn his most trusted advisor was a spy. He was so sure that Skeaös knew the truth. “The others call me a God, but Skeaös, ah good Skeaös, he knows I’m divine.” in a fit of rage, he begins destroying things while demanding Skeaös is tortured and skinned.

There is silence as he calms down and then Gaenkelti breaches the subject of Kellhus. Xerius orders him to be be watched “Scrutinize him like no other.” Xerius finds satisfaction that even Conphas is disturbed by the events. Xerius dismisses Gaenkelti, after complimenting him, and orders the his chief sorcerer, spy, and augur to attend him. Gaenkelti leaves Xerius alone with Conphas.

Conphas is concerned, wondering just how much Skeaös knows. Xerius will have it tortured out of him and learn who he spies for. Conphas asks after the Holy War and the indenture. Xerius repeats what his mother would have said: “Our own house, Nephew. First, our own house…” Then he tells Conphas to personally summon the Mandate Schoolman in the Holy war.

“Why? Mandate Schoolmen are fools”

“Fools can be trusted precisely because they are fools. Their agendas rarely intersect with your own. These are great matters, Conphas. We must be certain.”

Alone, Xerius looks out from the summit of the Andiamine Heights. He could see far, but never far enough. He will listen to his sorcerer and spymaster squabble then go and see Skeaös himself. He would personally punish Skeaös

Achamian finds walking through Momemn at night, escorted by Conphas and Kidruhil soldiers, a nightmarish journey. At night, the already complex city is a maze. Achamian studies Conphas, self-conscious that he is a portly man when compared to Conphas’s physical perfection, and because the Prince-Imperial is too self-assured because he was “possessed either of a terrible strength or a frightening lack.”

Achamian is shocked Conphas is escorting him, wondering what could have caused the Imperial Nephew to fetch him personally. Conphas won’t say. “I have been sent to fetch not to banter.” The moment he received the summons, Achamian’s has experienced dread. Conphas attitude reminds Achamian just how little people think of his school as nothing more than desperate fools which the powerful avoid.

“Which was why this request was so unsettling. What could an Emperor want with a desperate fool like Drusas Achamian?

As far as he could tell, only one of two things could induce a Great Faction such as the Ikureis to call on him. Either they had encountered something beyond the abilities of their own school, the Imperial Saik, or the mercenary Mysunsai to resolve, or they wished to speak of the Consult. Since no one save the Mandate believed in the Consult any more, it had to be the former. And perhaps this wasn’t as implausible as it seemed. If the Great Factions commonly laughed at their mission, they still respected their skill.

The Gnosis had made them rich fools.

They arrive at the palace and Conphas leads him in. Achamian’s dread is not alleviated, especially when Conphas leads him into the “buried heart” of the mountain the palace is built on instead of the Heights. Achamian’s hesitates. Conphas tells Achamian this does lead to the dungeons. Achamian demands an explanation.

“Mandate sorcerers,” Conphas said ruefully. “Like all misers, you assume that everyone is after your hoard. What do you think, sorcerer? That I’m so stupid as to publicly barrel through Proyas’s camp just to abduct you?”

“You belong to House Ikurei. That’s cause for apprehension enough, don’t you think?”

Conphas realizes Achamian won’t go without answers and says they found a spy and need verification if sorcery is involved. The Emperor doesn’t trust the Imperial Saik and fear the Mysunsai’s “limited talents” won’t be enough. Achamian realizes something has scared them and that is why they sent for him. He agrees to enter.

As they walk, Conphas abruptly brings up Kellhus, shocking Achamian and he wonders if Kellhus is involved. Conphas attributes Kellhus’s cunning swaying the results of the meeting, which Achamian counters as Wisdom. Conphas grows angry and demands an answer to his “simple question.” But the question isn’t simple and Achamian reflects on what little he knows. “An Anasûrimbor had returned.” Achamian asks if this has to do with the spy and Conphas hesitates, thinking.

They truly are terrified.

The Exalt-General snorted, as though amazed he could worry about what a Mandate Schoolman might make of the Empire’s secrets. “Nothing whatsoever.” He smirked. “You should comb your beard, sorcerer,” he added as they continued down the passaged. “You’re about to meet the Emperor himself.”

Xerius, attended by his chief sorcerer Cememketri, Gaenkelti, his spymaster Tokush, the torture Kimish, and Skaleteas, the Mysunsai mercenary. The emperor examines Skeaös bound to the wall in the Truth Room. Skeaös has no fear and “blinked the way a child, awakened in the dead of night, might blink.”

Xerius asks his torturers opinion on Skeaös’s lack of fear, and Kimish answers that he has plied Skeaös already. Kimish has never seen a man like Skeaös Xerius grows impatient with Kimish’s need to play storyteller and demands answers.

Kimish shrugged. “Sometimes it’s better to show than to say,” he said, grasping a small set of pliers fro the rack of tools beside the Counsel. “Watch.”

He knelt and grasped one of the Counsel’s feet in his left hand. Slowly, with the boredom of a craftsman, he wrenched out a toenail.

There was nothing. O Shriek. Not even a shudder from the old frame.

Inhuman,” Xerius gasped, backing away.

The sorcerous all agree that no sorcery is at work. Xerius demands answers. Skeaös replies, but his voice is broken, “like many voices.” Xerius grows dizzy and grabs Cememketri for support. He calls the sorcerer a liar, insisting it must be at use. “This room reeks of it!” He accuse the Imperial Saik of plotting against him but is then caught short by Conphas and Achamian’s entrance. Conphas thinks Xerius’s accusation against the Saik is rash.

Xerius greets Achamian, feeling the need to be gracious when Achamian bowed, touching forehead to the ground. Achamian declares himself “your slave, God-of-Men” and asks what Xerius needs. Xerius brings Achamian forward before Skeaös, showing Achamian off.

The old face remained passionless, but the eyes glittered with a strange intensity.

“A Mandati,” it said.

Xerius looked to Achamian. The man’s expression was blank. And then Xerius felt it, felt the hatred emanating from Skeaös’s pale form, as though the old man recognized the Mandate sorcerer. The splayed body tensed. The chains tightened, link biting against link. The wooden table creaked.

Achamian backs up as Xerius demands to know if it is sorcery. Achamian demands to know who the man is, horror in his voice. Xerius answered and Achamian is in a panic, wanting to know what Skeaös confessed to. Xerius demands his answers. Achamian say there is no sorcery here unless it is invisible to the few. Skaleteas tries to brown-nose, which angers Xerius.

Meta ka peruptis sun rangashra, Chigra, Mandati—Chigraa,” the old Counsel spat, his voice now utterly inhuman. He writhed against his restraints, the old body rippling with thin, greasy muscles. A bolt snapped from the walls.

Achamian is struck dumb while the chains break. Xerius cries for help. Then Gaenkelti died, his neck broken. Conphas is hit with a chain and Tokush was “broken like a doll.” Sorcery is unleashed, Achamian using his Gnosis while Cememketri curses at him.

It is over. Achamian has saved Xerius’s life, leaving Skeaös is charred. Xerius realizes he is alive and safe. Achamian heads to the burned body of Skeaös and demands answers, wanting to know what Skeaös is.

“You are the first, Chigra,” Skeaös wheezed, an ambient, horrifying whisper. And you will be the last…”

What followed would haunt Xerius’s dreams for the rest of his numbered days. As though gasping for some deeper breath, Skeaös’s face unfolded like a spider’s legs clutched tight about a cold torso. Twelve limbs, crowned by small wicked claws, unclenched and opened, revealing lipless teeth and lidless eyes where a face should have been. Like a woman’s long fingers, they embraced the astounded Mandate sorcerer about the head and began to squeeze.

Achamian screams in pain. Xerius is shocked. But Conphas acts, decapitating the creature and saving Achamian’s life. The sorcerer stands, surveys the stunned faces, then goes to leave without a word. Cememketri blocks the way. Bluntly, Achamian says he is leaving. Xerius gives him permission while Conphas gives a look that asks if letting him leave is wise.

“He would have lectured us about myths, Conphas. About the Ancient North and the return of Mog. They always do.”

“After this,” Conphas replied, “perhaps we should listen.”

Xerius is dismissive: “Mad events seldom give credence to madmen.” Exhilaration surges through Xerius. He lives and he knows. He is no longer ignorant about the skin spies. He decides the skin spy must be Cishaurim in origin. Xerius surveys the room, the dead, and counts the cost of purchasing this knowledge. It did not beggar him.

“Perhaps,” Conphas replied, scowling, “but we’re debtors still.”

So like Mother, Xerius thought.

Esmenet hurries through the camp of the Holy War as they celebrate the victory over the Emperor and the impending march. Esmenet waited for Sarcellus to fall asleep before living his camp and heading out into the night. In the heady celebration, men grab her, some just to spin her, others to kiss her or grope her, and one tries to have sex with her, but she punches him in the face, bringing confusion to the man’s face.

She lies, crying and shaken after the encounter, but she regains herself and continues on. She is finally heading to Xinemus’s camp to find Achamian. She hides her tattooed hand, proclaiming her a prostitute, as she moves through the camp.

She finally finds Xinemus’s camp and stares at his banner, imagining Achamian before the fire and how he would burst with joy when he sees her. She imagines hugging him, smelling him, hearing him speak her name, joke about how old-fashioned it is (she was named for the wife of a prophet).

She wiped her eyes. That he would rejoice at seeing her, she had no doubt. But he would not understand the time she’d spent with Sarcellus—especially once she told him of that night in Sumna and what it meant for Inrau. He would be cut, outraged even. He might strike her.

But he would not turn her out. He would wait, as he always did, for the Mandate to call him away.

And he would forgive. As he always did.

She feels pathetic and struggles to gather herself, realizing she was still a mess from her earlier crying. She moves along the canal, spying on the camp, feeling the need to be secretive or “like a misbegotten creature from some nursery tale, one who must hide from lethal light.” She finally spies the fire, but doesn’t see Achamian. She does see Xinemus looking strong and in command, whom she thinks looks like Achamian’s older brother.

So you’re his friend, she thought, both watching and silently thanking him.

She didn’t know anyone else, but spies Cnaiür, hearing about him, and then sees Kellhus and Serwë and realizes he must be the Prince of Atrithau who had the dream. She wonders if Proyas is also with them.

She watched wide-eyed, a sense of awe squeezing the breath from her lungs. She stood, she realized, at the very heart of the Holy War, fiery with passion, promise, and sacred purpose. These men were more than human, they were Kahiht, World Souls, locked in a great wheel of great events. The thought of striding into their midst beckoned hot tears to her eyes. How could she? Awkwardly concealing the back of her hand, instantly branded for what she was by their far-seeing eyes…

What’s this? A whore? Here? You must be joking…

What had she been thinking? Even if Achamian had been her, she would have only shamed him.

Someone, probably Proyas based of the description, gives a sermon about the trials the Holy War shall endure and what the war’s goal is—Shimeh. Then Xinemus intones the High Temple Prayer. Things are sombre when he finishes until the celebration starts up again. She again wants to join them, seeing them as bright and regal, but fears they would vanish. Then Kellhus speaks to Xinemus while looking towards her, then the pair walk at her. She shrinks back and hides behind a tent. The pair urinate into the canal, trading jokes which make even Esmenet smile as she watches. She realizes a friendship has just formed between the two men. As they head back, again Kellhus appears to look at her. But he makes no notice of her and they rejoin the camp.

They seemed good people, Esmenet thought, the kind of people Akka would prize as friends. There was… room between these people, she decided. Room to fail. Room to hurt.

Alone in the darkness, she suddenly felt safe, as she had with Sarcellus. These were Achamian’s friends, and though she did not exist for them, somehow they would keep her safe. A sense of drowsiness embalmed her. The voices lilted and rumbled, shining with honest good cheer. Just a snooze she thought. Then she heard someone mention Akka’s name.

They talk about Conphas summoning Achamian to the Emperor, worried about him. As they talk, she falls asleep and dreams that the stump she leans against is a dead tree holding her emplace. And then someone wakes her up.

Sarcellus. She is scared as he hushes her, not wanting her to make a scene. “This might be hard to explain.” The camp is quiet, almost everyone asleep. She accuse him of following her, but he merely awoke and figured this is where she would be.

She swallowed. Her hands felt light, as though they were preparing of their own volition to shield her face. “I’m not going back with you, Sarcellus.”

Something Esmenet could not decipher flashed in his eyes. Triumph? Then he shrugged. The ease of the gesture terrified her.

“That’s good,” he said absently. “I’ve had my fill of you, Esmi.”

She stared at him. Tears traced hot lines across her cheeks. Why was she crying? She didn’t love him… Did she?

But he had loved her. Of this she was certain… Wasn’t she?

He tells her to go to Achamian because he doesn’t care. She tries to understand his change of mood, wondering of Gotian had commanded Sarcellus to get rid of her. She was the source of much gossip. Her thoughts drift, to the stranger in the market place, to four years ago when the famine came and she grew so skinny and when she almost died. A part of her wants to beg his forgiveness. But she doesn’t. She only stares and he grows impatient and leaves.

Dawn brightens the sky as she heads into the camp and scavenges wine and a crust of bread to eat, feeling like a child awake before her parents or a scavenging animal. She wonders where Akka is. She hears footsteps, turns, and sees Achamian walking towards her, recognizing his portly frame.

As he neared, she glimpsed the five stripes of his beard, then the first contours of his face, cadaverous in the gloom. She stood before him, smiling, crying her wrists held out.

It’s me.

He looked through her, beyond her, and continued walking.

She stands in shock. She had imagined so many different ways their reunion would play out. But not for Achamian to pretend not to see her. Crying, she runs from the camp and trips into the dust. She sobs, demanding why when she came to save him, to tell him about Inrau. Her self-esteem plummets. Why would he want a whore. She pleads to herself that Achamian has to love her while her doubts say no one ever loved you.

“M-m-my d-daughter… Sh-she loved me!”

Would that she hated!… Hated and lived!

She cries on the ground, her thoughts drifting through her memories she sobs, tormented by anguish and guilt. Time passes until she remembers what an old harlot told her many years ago. “That’s why we’re more. More than concubines, more than priestess, more than wives, more than even some queens. We may be oppressed, Esmi, but remember, always remember, sweet girl, we’re never owned.” Esmenet finds comfort in the thought as she realizes Sarcellus and Achamian do not own her. She rises stiffly.

Oh, Esmi, you’re getting old.

Not good for a whore.

She began walking.

My Thoughts

Here we see what a skin spy can do. The Eothic guard are Norsirai (think German or Scandinavian) and are on average bigger than the Ketyai like Xerius, which Achamian, through Esmenet’s ruminations at the end of the chapter, attributes to the greater amount of red meat. The thing called Skeaös kills three of them and injured four more. Skin spies are deadly

Xerius takes it badly learning the truth. Skeaös has been his number one advisor. He knows the true scope of their plan for the Holy War. Xerius has new fears to focus on. He has to learn. He can’t trust anyone in the court.

But a Mandate Schoolman Xerius can trust. They are fools, so he thinks, obsessed with the Consult. But they do not play the game, as the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spire believed until they found the butchered Geshruuni, the Javreh Captain from Chapter 1. A safe bet to confirm even with sending for a Mysunsai Sorcerer. He is so rattled, he sends Conphas personally.

Achamian isn’t sure if Conphas is terribly strong or has a lack in his personality. Conphas is a narcissist. Everything revolves around him and it breeds his arrogance. The fact that he has physical perfection, a tactical mind, and the power as the heir of the Nansur Empire only fosters it. His no doubt sexual relationship with his Grandmother and her shaping of him at a young edge no doubt led to this.

Achamian is not smart enough not to go into the dungeons of Xerius without an answer. Again, the Ikureis’ reputation proceeds them.

Achamian comments that mercenaries are rarely gifted souls from the previous chapter apply to the Mysunsai’s reputation. Of course, Achamian says he himself joins the Holy War for mercenary reasons, but his isn’t for money so maybe that is the difference.

As they walk into the mountain the Andiamine Heights is built upon, Achamian feels its weight above him. That is a creepy feeling if you’ve ever been underground. Of course, we walk into skyscrapers, man-made mountains, and don’t have that same reaction. It is purely psychological and speaks to the deepest fears in all of us—being trapped.

It appears that Conphas wasn’t expecting Achamian to be so perceptive, but a fool easily manipulated. Bringing up Kellhus, out of nowhere, is extremely clumsy, alerting Achamian immediately to the connection. By thinking less of of the Mandate, Conphas underestimates Achamian and gives away too much information.

Skeaös’s strange, many-voiced tone isn’t shocking. He is a mimic. He would be capable of producing the entire range of human speech. He can shape his body so he probably has control over his vocal cords.

Xerius does enjoy it when people give him the respect he needs. He might not understand why he was moved to graciousness, but he wants answers and Achamian is here to deliver. He is showing to the other sorcerers “This is how you treat me, as a god. And then I am benevolent in return.”

The Consult definitely hates the Mandate. Looks like they passed that on to their skin spies. Remember the pleasure Sarcellus took in striking Achamian the day he met Inrau at the tavern. At the time, it’s played off as Sarcellus enjoying beating an arrogant low-caste, but it wasn’t. He enjoyed striking his enemy.

Skeaös had the strength to free himself from the chains. He just didn’t care to until Achamian was there and he saw his enemy. These skin spies are so dangers and powerful. Far stronger than any normal human.

We see the skin spies unveiled now. Like Kellhus speculated, fingers simulating a face. And it is horrifying. Note how Xerius will remember this till the day he dies. I’m sure he will.

Also, the Consult use a from of the Gnosis. They Synthese had the Mark deep on him when Inrau so him. And yet the skin spies are not created by sorcery. They are the first hint we get of the Consult’s other skills.

Xerius is very dismissive of the No God, calling him Mog instead of Mog-Pharau. There you are, dismissing and belittling. No wonder Xerius never discovers the second skin spy in his court until it’s too late.

Conphas is clearly shaken by the events.

Xerius deduction of the Cishaurim is fair. There has been no sign of the Consult for 300 years. Even Mandate sorcerers like Achamian had lost faith in their mandate.

Poor Xerius. He can never have that moment where he feels like a genius. Some one, usually his mother, is there to let the hot air out of his swollen head.

Interesting that the eyes of the dead bull’s head reminds Esmenet of Sarcellus. She knows something is off in the man, smart enough to detect the wrongness but doesn’t have Kellhus trained perception to identify it.

Esmenet has a preference for tall, muscular Norsirai men “muscle trees” as clients. We’ll see this again in the second series.

Esmenet needs secrecy because she’s scared. As much as she wants to see Achamian, she spent that time with Sarcellus and she feels guilty. She knows he won’t understand, will be angry, and she’s delaying the confrontation.

Interesting how she thinks of the World Souls as locked into a great wheel of great events. They are chained to fate. Slaves to the Darkness that Comes Before.

Esmenet’s low self-esteem rears its head again as she gazes at the fire. We’ve all had those moments, outsiders looking at the warm fire, wishing we were included while too afraid to march up for fear of rejection. It is easier to skulk in the shadows and hide.

It is interesting how Kellhus puts her at ease simply by going off with Xinemus and urinating. I wonder what he made of the woman watching them. He felt it was important enough to ease her fright. Was he curious at her purpose in hiding and watching or did he recognize her from Achamian’s talk about Esmenet?

Easement may not love Sarcellus, but she liked that he loved her and to realize how little he cares for her stings her and shakes her up. As a whore, she prides herself on reading men. And she has read him badly. She clings to the idea he was ordered to discard her because of the rumors, it flatters her ego more than the truth that he doesn’t care. But he’s not human, so she wouldn’t be able to.

Esmenet has a lot of guilt over her daughter Mimara’s death. “Would that she hated!… Hated and lived.” We’ll learn more about Mimara’s fate, but it has to do with the famine and Esmenet nearly staving to death.

Poor Esmenet. She picked the wrong time to run into Achamian. He’s in shock from what happened with the Emperor. He does love you, Esmenet.

Esmenet’s realization that she is her own woman, unlike all those others the old whore named. Her profession has given her freedom. She doesn’t have to rely on one man to take care of her, slave to his whim. She can go out and make her fortune, using the men as they use her. She walks off into the camp back to the life she left in Sumna.

What a sad place to leave off Esmenet’s story until book 2, at her lowest point, rejected by both the men she thought loved her.

Click here to continue on to Chapter 19!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Seventeen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 5
The Holy Warrior
Chapter 17
The Andiamine Heights

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

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

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

DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

That would change in a matter of moments.

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

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

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

Without beginning or end…

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

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

The instruction had begun.

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

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

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

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

That which comes before determines that which comes after.”

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

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

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

“Because of the Quandary of Man.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of the man he esteems above all other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back in the present.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kellhus would step onto conditioned ground.

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

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

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

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

Skeaös…

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

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

Skeaös… Are you my father’s work?

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

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

The. The…

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

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

…and then nothing.

No thought.

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

“Broken whom?”

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

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

There was some laughter at this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been legion…

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

Now I understand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Want to read on, click here for Chapter 18!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Sixteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 5
The Holy Warrior
Chapter 16
Momemn

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

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

DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

Then the revelation struck.

I know this man.

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

He is an Anasûrimbor! But that’s impossible…

And yet the times seemed rife with impossible things.

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

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

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

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

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

“I suppose I am.”

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

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

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

How do you mean?”

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

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

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

“And what’s that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…the end of the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How could determine the true intent of such a man?

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

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

And pregnant.

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

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

“You did not want to know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Most men? Or do you mean all men?”

Achamian regarded Xinemus narrowly. “He frightens you.”

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

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

Prophet or prophecy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone plays both of us… But who?

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

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

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

And then stones pelt them from the mob.

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

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

“Faith? In someone we know nothing of?”

“That’s why it is faith.”

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

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

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

You too, Iyokus?

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iyokus and his eyes being scratched out… Foreshadowing.

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

 

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Fifteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 5
The Holy Warrior
Chapter 14
Momemn

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

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

DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

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

AJENCIS, THE FOURTH ANALYTIC OF MAN

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Our business? To discover the truth?”

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

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

Proyas grimaced. “He will.”

Suddenly Achamian understood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earnest pause.

But I feel nothing.”

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

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

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

He watches me! Me!

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

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

But he never left her alone. Why?

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

She went cold.

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

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

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

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

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

“Ah, Sejenus! How much?”

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

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

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

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

“Who what?”

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

Who?

She said nothing, turned to the bedchamber.

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

Hesitated

“Was it Achamian?” he asked.

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

Yes!” she hissed.

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

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

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

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

The sorcerer nodded. “And Holy Wars…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This cannot be!

“Someone? Who?”

The man could not answer.

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to continue onto Chapter 16!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Fourteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 4
The Warrior
Chapter 14
The Kyranae Plain

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

Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world.

Ekyannus VIII, 111 Aphorisms

My Thoughts

Isn’t that they way of life. Trying to get ahead on bills. Worrying when the next problem is going to happen: the car break down, injury, or losing your job. Just when you think everything is fine then, bam! Of course, it also speaks to Cnaiür, Serwë, and Kellhus fleeing the Kidruhil in this chapter in a very literal sense.

Spring, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Nansur Empire

Cnaiür and Kellhus have started to travel at night across the Nansur Empire. For the first time, Serwë wakes up in the afternoon sleeping next to Kellhus. He had resisted her joining his sleeping mat for a while, but this morning had relented. Serwë enjoys the feel of Kellhus sleeping form against hers and marvels at how much she loves him and how he loves her despite her past.

Cnaiür is up and washing in a stream and Serwë watches him and fells no fear for the fist time, just pity at his loneliness. She notices a boy on the other side of the river and in her mind pleads with the boy to run. Kellhus, awake, whispers to Cnaiür in Scylvendi. Cnaiür sees the boy, and tells him to come close. Serwë yells at the boy to run and begs with Kellhus to spare the boy as Cnaiür chases him. Kellhus followed Cnaiür and Serwë realizes he also means to kill the child. Serwë follows.

As Serwë follows, it occurs to her she is no fugitive in the Nansur. This is her home and and she would not have to suffer Cnaiür anymore. However, she thinks on how Kellhus loves her, the first, and returning to the Empire would just mean more Gaunum wives and more blue babies. Serwë is pregnant and has convinced herself it is Kellhus’s child.

Serwë has lost Cnaiür and Kellhus and can’t locate the camp. She hears horses and believes it’s Kellhus come looking for her but instead runs across two Kidruhil cavalry of the Imperial Army. She is fearful, thinking the Kidruhil have been warned by the boy and that Kellhus may be dead because of her.

The older of the two Kidruhil sees her fear and thinks Serwë must be “with them.” The pair of soldiers argue, the younger saying they don’t have time for this while they older says there’s always time for sport with a girl as pretty as Serwë. The man advances on her and she begs for him to spare her. The man drives his dagger into the ground as he begins to grope her.

There is a sound, and the younger man is decapitated by Cnaiür. Cnaiür asks Serwë if she was hurt, and the scarred Kidruhil begins to beg to Cnaiür, apologizing for touching Serwë.

The officer moved away from Serwë, as though to disassociate himself from his crime. “C-come now, friend. Hmm? T-take the horses. All y-yours—”

To Serwë it seemed that she’d floated to her feet, that she’d flown at the scarred man, and that the knife had simply appeared in the side of his neck. Only his frantic backhand knocked her back to earth.

She watched him fall to his knees, his bewildered hands fumbling at his neck. He threw an arm backward, as though to ease his descent, but he toppled, lifting his back and hips from the ground, kicking up leaves with one foot. He turned to her, retching blood, his eyes round and shining. Begging her. . .

Cnaiür grabs Serwë and places the knife she killed the Kidruhil at her temple. She begs for her life and Cnaiür warns her never to betray them again or he will kill her. Then Cnaiür cuts her forearm, giving her a swazond, the ritual scaring of the Sclyvendi for kill the Kidruhil and calls her by name for the first time.

I don’t understand,” Serwë whimpered, as bewildered as she was terrified. Why was he doing this? Was this his punishment? Why had he called her by name?

You must suffer him . . .

You are my prize, Serwë. My tribe.”

Cnaiür and Serwë find Kellhus at camp and she raced to him and hugs him fiercely and he comforts her as she cries like a father. Kellhus confronts Cnaiür and tells him that Serwë is no longer his prize. Cnaiür laughs, and says more Kidruhil come, we have killed only a dozen out of fifty. Serwë apologizes to Kellhus for warning the boy.

Cnaiür laughs, and says the boy warned know one. “What mere boy could escape a Dûnyain?” Serwë is horrified and looks at Kellhus. She sees grief welling in his eyes and she feels shame, forcing Kellhus to commit this crime. Cnaiür announced they will ride the Kidruhil horses to death first.

For two days, the trio had eluded the Kidruhil thanks to the forest and Cnaiür’s skill. Serwë find the next two days an ordeal. At the end of the second day, Cnaiür thinks they may have lost the Kidruhil and they make camp. Cnaiür explains that the Kidruhil would think they went west, like any raiding party would after making contact with the Kidruhil. If they found their trail heading east, the Kidruhil would think it a ruse.

They ate a meal of raw fish, and Cnaiür explains they are safest in the western provinces, long abandoned because of Scylvendi raids. Once they cross the Phayus River, it will be a different matter. Serwë wonders why these two would risk this journey. The next day as they traveled, Serwë finds herself hungry. At midday, Kellhus stops and asks her is she’s hungry.

How do you know these things?” she asked. It never ceased to thrill her each time Kellhus guessed her thoughts, and the part of her that held him in reverent awe would find further confirmation.

How long has it been, Serwë?”

How long has what been?” she asked, suddenly fearful.

Since you’ve been with child.”

But it’s your child, Kellhus! Yours!

But we’ve not yet coupled,” he said gently.

Serwë suddenly felt bewildered, unsure as to what he meant, and more unsure still whether she had spoken aloud. But of course they had coupled. She was with child, wasn’t she? Who else could be his father?

Serwë starts to cry and Kellhus apologizes and tells her they will eat soon. Kellhus rides up to talk with Cnaiür and Serwë studies Kellhus and realizes she didn’t speak and he sill knew her thoughts and she begins to think he is a God. She remembers in the time of the Tusk, the Gods communing with Men. Serwë begins to think that her beauty was given her because one day her betrothed, a God, would arrive.

Anasûrimbor Kellhus.

She smiled tears of rapturous joy. She could see him as he truly was now, radiant with otherworldly light, haloes like golden discs shining about his hands. She could see him!

Later, as they chewed strips of raw venison in a breezy stand of poplars, he turned to her and in her native tongue of Nymbricani said, “You understand.”

Serwë nods, and answers that she is to be Kellhus’s wife, and Kellhus promises her that it will be soon.

That afternoon, after crossing a valley, they catch glimpse of pursuers. Cnaiür leads them on, telling the group that these pursuers will not stop till they hunt them down. Their only advantage is reaching the plains ahead and using their extra mounts by running them to death and reach the Holy War ahead of their pursuers.

They ride until it is too dark to see, then lead their horses on foot. Serwë finds the pace almost more than she can handle. At dawn, they are able to ride their horses again and gallop over pastures. Serwë finds it exhilarating. They enter cultivated lands, passing slaves working in fields and small villas were minor nobles lived. They rode down roads know, passing teamsters who cursed at them and forcing people to dive out of their way or be trampled.

At mid-afternoon, they stop and Serwë falls off her horse in exhaustion. Cnaiür curses and Serwë looks behind them to see a dust cloud trailing them. Cnaiür asks Kellhus what he sees, and Kellhus says the same sixty-eight men, except know they have different horses. Cnaiür didn’t expect them to get remounts and asks Kellhus if they could take them at night. Kellhus is unsure, but says they should press their lead and continue riding.

They continue riding into twilight when Serwë’s horse, “her prize for having killed the scarred man” dies and she falls hard to the ground. Cnaiür urges them to abandon Serwë. To their pursuers she’s just stolen property. Kellhus, however, will not leave her.

This is not like you, Dûnyain… Not like you at all.”

Perhaps,” she heard Kellhus say, his voice now very close and very gentle. Hands cupped her cheeks.

Kellhus . . . No blue babies.

No blue babies, Serwë. Our child will be pink and alive.

But she’ll be safer—”

Darkness, and dreams of a great, shadowy race across heathen lands.

Serwë regains conscience on Kellhus’s horse, her hands tied around his waist. The three are still being chased. She looks around and realizes they have no spare mounts and the Kidruhil were closer. Cnaiür cries out a warning, as another group of horseman force the three to ride up a hill.

Three horseman erupt from some trees to intercept them, one felled by Cnaiür’s bow. A second hurls a javelin at Kellhus who easily catches it out of the air and throws it back, killing the man. The third raised a sword and prepared to attack Kellhus, but was disemboweled by the faster Dûnyain.

At the top of the hill, they find a sharp drop and abandon the horses and they skid down the drop. At the bottom, Serwë hits hard and is surprised by Cnaiür concern when he gently helps her up and asks if she’s fine. Kellhus is the last down and reports that they won’t follow them down the slope. Cnaiür fears that others have already started to go around the hill and Serwë begins to panic because they have no horses, now.

Kellhus knelt before her, his heavenly face blotting out the sun. Once again she could see his halo, the shimmering gold that marked him apart from all other men. He’ll save us! Don’t worry, my sweet, I know He will!

But he said, “Serwë, when they come, I want you to close your eyes.”

But you’re the promise,” she said, sobbing.

Kellhus brushed her cheek, then wordlessly withdrew to take his place at the Scylvendi’s side. She glimpsed flashes of movement beyond them, heard the neigh and snort of fierce warhorses.

A group of horseman, not Kidruhil, burst out of brush and surround them. Each wore mail skirts and had white-and-blue surcoats. Silver war masks cover their faces and Serwë thinks these men are here to save them, “to shelter the promise.” The leader identifies himself as Krijates Iryssas, one of Xinemus’s knights. Iryssas asks, “Have you seen any fugitive criminals about?”

Stunned silence. At last Cnaiür said, “Why do you ask?”

The knight looked askance at his comrades then leaned forward in his saddle. His eyes twinkled. “Because I’m dying for the lack of honest conversation.”

The Scylvendi smiled.

My Thoughts

Serwë has a moment of peace with Kellhus. It seems like Serwë’s lot is improving slightly with Kellhus taking an interest. Sadly, Serwë is suffering some serious Stockholm Syndrome here. She’s even starting to feel pity for Cnaiür.

So, Serwë is pregnant and thinks Kellhus is the father even though this morning was they only time they’ve shared a bed and they didn’t even have sex. Serwë is delusional, but I don’t blame her for wanting the man she loves to be the father than her rapist.

I am wondering how long they’ve been traveling. It doesn’t seem more than a week or two since she was captured. She might just now be missing her period. Seems a little early for her to jump to pregnancy just yet. Unless they’ve been traveling longer.

Gah! Just when she’s thinking she’ll be fine if anyone from the Empire finds her, they do and try to rape her. Their is a great amount irony of Cnaiür, her rapist, asking if the other rapist hurt her. Cnaiür is a dick.

Go Serwë! Stab that asshole. Great description here. The shock hasn’t worn off and she just finds herself killing the guy. By killing the Kidruhil, Cnaiür seems to think of Serwë as Scylvendi now. Its like in his mind she’s one of his wives know. Didn’t know women in Scylvendi could get a swazond. But then, Cnaiür does think outside of the norm for a Scylvendi. I do want to draw attention to what Cnaiür says about the swazond:

The man you have killed is gone from the world, Serwë. He exists only here, a scar upon your arm. It is the mark of his absence, of all the ways his soul will not move, and all the acts he will not commit. A mark of the weight you now bear.”

In light of what we learn in The Great Ordeal about the gods, damnation, and souls, this is a very interesting statement. I won’t say more, but try to remember it when you get to the end of The Great Ordeal and what is seen in through the Judging Eye. It might answer why the person seen is damned more than other men.

Kellhus can even cry on demand. Poor Serwë, now she feels guilty for forcing Kellhus to kill the boy. Don’t, Serwë, don’t. You gave the boy a chance to live, don’t feel guilty about that. You were the only decent human at that camp. Don’t let the Dûnyain take that away from you.

Serwë is amazed that she could not only eat raw fish, but enjoy it. Hunger is the best seasoning, they say. She is a resilient character. She doesn’t complain when she’s hungry, she does her best to keep up. She thinks she is weak, but I see strength in her.

And Serwë now thinks Kellhus is a God. And why not, he seems to read her mind, he’s kind to her. She has contextualized her years of rape and suffering as preparing her for the arrival of Kellhus. Why else was she given the gift to be so beautiful that every man who comes across her, wants her. “She was also something too beautiful for the world.” So convinced is she, that halos appear about his hands. And Kellhus allows this delusion to continue because it most benefit him. Can’t blame Serwë, though. Who doesn’t want to think that their suffering mattered, that all that pain wasn’t in vain.

Kellhus doesn’t want to abandon Serwë, even though it would increase his and Cnaiür chance of success. It’s hard to say what’s going through Kellhus mind right now. He must see some greater advantage with Serwë, unless seeing her tormented night after night by Cnaiür has actually affected him. He was stirred to some emotion in the last chapter and was surprised by it. I’m siding with seeing a greater advantage. After all, she has proven very useful in dealing with Cnaiür. Kellhus is seeing how men view Serwë. And, as we’ll see, Kellhus will use that over and over again.

Don’t know if its Serwë’s concussion or delusion (probably both) that makes her think Kellhus is communicating in her mind with the “our baby will be born pink and alive.”

Kellhus comforts Serwë, an unnecessary thing to do. I think pity has moved Kellhus. Even a Dûnyain doesn’t see a way out of their predicament. There’s just too many hunters. And then they are saved by Xinemus’s men. Even by proxy, Xinemus continues to be awesome. This was quite an exciting chapter. Luckily for them, the Man of the Tusk really hate the Nansur Empire.

Want to read more, click here for Chapter Fifteen!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Thirteen

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 4
The Warrior
Chapter 13
The Hethanta Mountains

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

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

Conriyan Proverb

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

Drusas Achamian, Compendium of the Holy War

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’ll kill me while I sleep.

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

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

They look formidable,” Kellhus replied.

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

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

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

What did he see?

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

On lies if need be.

Because the fire burned true. The fire alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What manner of man. .?

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

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

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

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

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

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

He does not believe this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She dared ask the man himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have use for him still.

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

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

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

So much hatred.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are worth something Serwë!

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

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

Click here to continue onto Chapter Fourteen.

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Twelve

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 4
The Warrior
Chapter 12
The Jiünati Steppe

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

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

Drusas Achamian, Compendium of the Holy War

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

Inri Sejenus, Scholars, 36, 21, The Tractate

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet with horror Cnaiür thought, I know this man…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moënghus nodded. “You have killed the wolf.”

You have killed the wolf.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I fear nothing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence, save for a gentle southern wind.

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

Dare he use the son?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If he knew how deep I see . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wants me to think he’s weak.

My Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to continue on to Chapter Thirteen!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Nine

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 3
The Harlot
Chapter 9
Sumna

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

And the Nonman King cried words that sting:

Now to me you must confess,

For death above you hovers!”

And the Emissary answered ever wary:

We are the race of flesh,

We are the race of lovers.”

—“Ballad of the Inchoroi,” Ancient Kûniüri Folk Song

My Thoughts

Our first mention of the Inchoroi, the race behind the Sranc, the Second Apocalypse, and the other horrors. This poem describes the first meeting between the Nonmen and the Inchoroi. We learn the most important aspect of the Inchoroi: they are the race of flesh and lovers. Sex is everything to them. They use it as a weapon, they use it to interrogate, and they motivate their creations with it. Back in the prologue, Leweth tells Kellhus how Sranc hunt men for other hungers.

Inchoroi seems derived from inchoate, a word that means (from Merriam-Webster online dictionary) “being only partly in existence or operation; especially imperfectly formed or formulated.” This implies that the Inchoroi, or their creations, are flawed (probably both). Bakker is always adding to my vocabulary.

Early Winter, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, Sumna

Esmenet has just finished with a client, a priest named Psammatus, who tells her this will be his last visit. Esmenet tells him he’s found a younger whore and he apologizes. Esmenet responds, “No. Don’t be sorry. Whores know better than to pout like wives.” As he dresses, Esmenet thinks that she’s becoming old, and that is one of the reasons Akka left her.

Inrau’s death had broken Achamian and he left Sumna. She had begged him to take her with him or to stay with her. She doesn’t want her life to return back to the drudgery. She was enamored with greater events.

And this was the irony that held her breathless. For even in the midst of enjoying that new life through Achamian, she’d been unable to relinquish the old. “You say you love me,” Achamian had cried, “and yet you still take custom. Tell me why, Esmi! Why?”

Because I knew you would leave me. All of you leave me . . . all the ones I love.

Esmi,” Psammatus was saying. “Esmi. Please don’t cry, my sweet. I’ll return next week. I promise.” She shook her head and wiped the tears from her eyes. Said nothing.

Weeping for a man! I’m stronger than this!

Esmenet wipes her tears and asks Psammatus if he knew Inrau. Psammatus answers that he’s the priest who killed himself in the Hagerna, causing a scandal. She asks if he’s sure, and he answers yes. Psammatus leaves, and Esmenet lies in her bed, depressed. She thinks of Inrau, Achamian, and her daughter. Esmenet notices someone at her door.

The man is handsome and richly dress. Esmenet tells him her price, twelve silver talents, and the man strikes her hard, telling her she’s not a “twelve-talent whore.” He tells her relationships should not begin with lies and reveals he’s after information on a Mandate Schoolman, Achamian.

Before Achamian left, he warned her that someone might come, that she would need to play the whore and not ask questions. So she agrees to sell both herself and the information. The pair negotiate the price and the man pulls out a single, gold coin. Esmenet agreed, staring at the coin with greed. The man begins to caress her and Esmenet instantly realizes something is wrong, something inhuman.

Pleasure floods Esmenet, more than she’s ever felt. She is willing to tell the man anything as he interrogates her in the midst of their coupling. She just wants the “nightmarish ecstasy” to continue. She realizes she would do anything to keep feeling this pleasure. She tells him everything about Achamian. Finally, as dawn approaches, the man finish, spilling his seed on her belly.

The golden coin fluttered in his hand, bewitching her with its glitter. He held it above her and let it slip between his fingers. It plopped onto the sticky pools across her belly. She glanced down and gasped in horror.

His seed was black.

Shush,” he said, gathering his finery. “Say a word of this to no one. Do you understand, whore?”

I understand,” she managed, tears now streaming. What have I done?

Esmenet is trying not to throw up as the man opens the shutters. She hears a flap of wings and the man is gone. The man leaves an inhuman stench behind and Esmenet vomits on the floor.

When she finally recovers, Esmenet washes and leaves her room, knowing she can never return. She wanders to the Ecosium Market. It is busy in the morning, and Esmenet is drinking in the sights. She loves Sumna but she had to leave.

She remembers that Achamian told her this might happen. That she would have to barter with whoever comes and be compliant. She would have to sell him out and tell them the truth and she’ll survive. She asks why they would spare her. Achamian answers, by hiding her strength and being useful, they will hope to use you again. She asks if that won’t put him in danger.

I’m a Schoolman, Esmi,” he had replied. “A Mandate Schoolman.”

At last, through a screen of passing people, she saw a little girl standing barefoot in dusty sunlight. She would do. With large brown eyes the girl watched Esmenet approach, too wary to return her smile. She clutched a stick to the breast of her threadbare shift.

I survived, Akka. And I did not survive.

Esmenet stooped before the child and astounded her with the gold talent. “Here,” she said, pressing it into small palms.

So like my daughter.

Achamian is ridding on a mule through the valley of Sudica on his way from Sumna to Momemn. Achamian is taking a longer route to avoid people. The valley, once inhabited in the days of Kyraneas, is no mostly abandoned thanks to Scylvendi raids. Achamian makes his way up to the ruined Fortress-Temple of Batathent and absently wanders through the ruin until nightfall, making his camp in the ruins.

In his sleep, he dreamed of that day when every child was stillborn, that day when the Consult, beaten back to the black ramparts of Golgotterath by the Nonmen and the ancient Norsirai, brought emptiness, absolute and terrible, into the world: Mog-Pharau, the No-God. In his sleep, Achamian watched glory after glory flicker out through Seswatha’s anguished eyes. And he awoke, as he always awoke, a witness to the end of the world.

Achamian is suffering from guilt and depression, fearing that if Inrau really committed suicide then Achamian murdered his student. Achamian tried to find the truth of Inrau’s death but got no where. He was relieved when Nautzera and the Quorum ordered him to Momemn to join the Holy War, to watch the Scarlet Spire.

After Inrau’s death, Achamian relationship with Esmenet deteriorated. He wanted her to distract him from his problems while she endlessly asked him questions, debated the meanings of what he learned. She also continued to see clients. When Achamian offered to pay for her exclusivity, she cried. Esmenet does not want to be Achamian’s whore. Achamian thinks about why he fell in love with her.

Often, in his soul’s eye, she was inexplicably thin and wild, buffeted by rain and winds, obscured by the swaying of forest branches. This woman who had once lifted her hand to the sun, holding it so that for him its light lay cupped in her palm, and telling him that truth was air, was sky, and could only be claimed, never touched by the limbs and fingers of a man. He couldn’t tell her how profoundly her musings affected him, that they thrashed like living things in the wells of his soul and gathered stones about them.

Regret fills Achamian, and he realizes he has become overwhelmed by circumstances and decides to try to make sense of things. He pulls at a sheet of parchment and writes Maithanet’s name in the center, whom Achamian suspects of murdering Inrau. He writes Holy War to the right, “Maithanet’s hammer.” Below, he writes Shimeh, the objective To the right of Shimeh he writes, Cishaurim. He writes Scarlet Spire and traces a line from Cishaurim through Scarlet Spire to the Holy War. Achamian again wonders how Maithanet knew their secret war. Adjacent to Holy War, he writes the Emperor, based on rumors of Xerius’s Investiture.

In the upper, right corner, he adds the Consult. Achamian ponders the Consult, wandering where they were and if they were involved. Finally, he writes Inrau below Maithanet. Achamian shakes away thoughts of guilt, he could not avenge Inrau if he wallowed in self-pity. The answers were on this map.

Achamian often made such maps—not because he worried he might forget something, but because he worried he might overlook something. Visualizing the connections, he found, always suggested further possible connections. Moreover, this simple exercise had often proved a valuable guide for his inquiries in the past. The crucial difference this time, however, was that instead of naming individuals and their connections to some petty agenda, this map named Great Factions and their connections to a Holy War. The scale of this mystery, the stakes, far exceeded anything he had encountered before . . . aside from his dreams.

His breath caught.

A prelude to the Second Apocalypse? Could it be?

Achamian is certain the Consult is involved They could never stay out of something this large. Achamian fixes on Maithanet and ponders how to learn his secrets. And then it comes to him—Proyas. Achamian writes Proyas’s name between Maithanet’s and the Holy War. Proyas, his former student, was a confident of Maithanet. If Achamian could mend his relationship with Proyas, he could learn more of Maithanet. “He needed answers, both to quiet his heart and, perhaps, to save the world.”

Achamian breaks camp and continues his lonely journey.

Esmenet walks through the Gates of Pelts and leaves Sumna. She pauses, looking out over the landscape, fearful. She told herself that everything would be fine. She would “sell peaches” as the soldiers say. “Men mights stand midway between women and the Gods, but they hungered like beasts.”

The road would be kind. Eventually, she would find the Holy War. And in the Holy War she would find Achamian. She would clutch his cheek and kiss him, at long last a fellow traveler.

Then she would tell him what had happened, of the danger.

Deep breath. She tasted dust and cold.

She began walking, her limbs so light they might have danced.

It would be dark soon.

My Thoughts

The Synthese returns, in the guise of a man, and know we have a name to call this abomination—an Inchoroi. As the folk song at the start of the passage says, they are a race of lovers. His interrogation is a hard part of the book to read. The Inchoroi violates her and makes her enjoy it more than anything she’s ever felt.

My heart breaks for Esmenet.

The Inchoroi has polluted her home and Sumna. Even the gold coin, a lot of money for Esmenet, was tainted. And as always with Esmenet, her thoughts turn to her daughter. She’s trying to have some good come out of that terrible encounter.

The Inchoroi embodies sex and yet his seed is black: death. This informs why they make creatures the Sranc, dragons, and the abominations like Sarcellus. They are a the race of flesh and they seem masters forming new things. His very touch stirs pleasure. We’ll learn later that this is a sorcerous glamor.

Achamian has been deeply depressed since Inrau died. And as often happens, it creates a rift between Achamian and Esmenet. He wants to forget his problems and she, I believe, is trying to help Achamian move past his hurt. Achamian, however, was not ready. He needed more to time to grieve.

Finally, sitting in these ruins, Achamian takes action. He realizes he has been wallowing in self-pity and to avenge Inrau, he needs to stop being overwhelmed. The map he draws is a great way to do this. Putting everything on paper, drawing lines, trying to see how everything connects. Achamian has a plan for the first time in the book.

We learn more about the horror of the No-God. The fact that once it was created, every child was stillborn. That is horrible. It goes back to the Inchoroi and what really makes them flawed. While they are creatures of sex and thus of creation, all they create is death. Achamian fears that the first steps of the Second Apocalypse have begun.

And we come back to Esmenet, who like Achamian is also making her own plans, seizing her own actions. She knows the Consult is involved and she is going to track Achamian down and tell him. I’m concerned that she doesn’t appear to have supplies. She is putting a lot of trust into her fellow travelers. Esmenet, you need to be careful. This world is terrible to women, watch your back.

I also hope that Esmenet thoughts on “men stand midway between women and Gods” as lies that men tell women as opposed to actual scripture. Though, in this world, it might be actually in there. And, of course, there is a clear that beliefs shape the metaphysics of this world which is why there is a theory that the Tusk, the old testament of this world, came from the Inchoroi. As Esmenet rightly points out, men are no more holy then women.

Below is a scan of Achamian’s map from the end of the book. I edited out the changes Achamian adds later on in the story. I really like the script that Bakker came up with. Similar to Arabic in its cursive style, but written top to bottom like many Southeast Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean).

Click here to go onto Chapter 10

achamian

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Eight

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 2
The Emperor
Chapter 8
Momemn

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

 Kings never lie. They demand the world be mistaken.

Conriyan Proverb

When we truly apprehend the Gods, the Nilnameshi sages say, we recognize them not as kings but as thieves. This is among the wisest of blasphemies, for we always see the king who cheats us, never the thief.

Olekaros, Avowals

My Thoughts

Not much to say on Kings never lie. Many rulers with to much power become egotistical and self-centered. We have seen as much with Xerius so far, and you could apply this saying to any politician.

The second one is a very cynical and disillusioned. The final lines of the novel illuminate this quote, Conphas musing on his role in the destruction, finds it erotic how his actions led to so many dead. He feels like a thief because he did in the dark where no one saw his actions. It makes him feel like a god, hidden and safe from the scrutiny of mere mortals.

Autumn, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the Northern Jiünati Steppe

Yursalka, the Utemot who betrayed Cnaiür, is awoken in the night by the sound of something tapping at the hide of his yaksh. He hopes its his young son, Ogatha, who had been missing since yesterday. The taps continue and Yursalka hopes its Ogatha playing a prank, but times have been rough since Kiyuth, and he draws his sword and cautiously heads out into the darkness.

Yursalka spots what had been hitting his tent, not a rock but a piece of a child’s finger. Through lightning, Yursalka spots a figure and yells out, “Murderer!” The figure boasts of finding his son on the steppe and returns him, throwing Ogatha’s severed head at him. Yursalka attacks, but is thrown down by Cnaiür and disemboweled.

A brief flutter of white light, and Yursalka saw him crouching above, saw deranged eyes and a famished grin. Then everything went black.

Who am I?” the blackness asked. “

Nnn-Cnaiür,” he gasped. “M-man-killer . . . M-most v-violent of all men . . .”

A slap, open-handed as though he were a slave.

No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me, and it goes no further. I am your end, your utter obliteration!”

The fight awakens the Utemot, who are stunned to see Cnaiür alive after a year. Cnaiür proclaims himself chieftain and tells them to, “Challenge me or witness my justice!” Cnaiür proclaims Yursalka’s crimes, his betrayal of Cnaiür and the other Utemot who charged with him. Yursalka protests, saying it was to free the Utemot from Cnaiür. Yursalka is outraged, he betrayed his chieftain for honour, not the love of another man. Cnaiür demands to know who objects to his judgment.

While everyone looks on in awe and terror, a “half-Norsirai mongrel Cnaiür taken wife” flung herself at Cnaiür and hugs him. Cnaiür greets Anissi tenderly. Cnaiür then turns to Yursalka’s family, starting with his youngest daughter, and killing all his children and wives until only Omiri, the daughter of Xunnurit is left. He spares her to watch Yursalka suffering before paying for the sins of her father.

Surrounded by his dead and dying family, Yursalka watched Cnaiür loop his bowel like rope about scarred arms. He glimpsed the callous eyes of his tribesman, knew they would do nothing.

Not because they feared their lunatic chieftain, but because it was the way.

My Thoughts

Wow! That’s a little overkill, Cnaiür. Yursalka surely deserved to die like the spineless traitor he was, but to make him watch as you murder his entire family. And god only knows what he did to Omiri after he tortured Yursalka slowly to death. Yursalka believed he did the right thing and is horrified how there is no justice. “Where was the justice in this? He’d [Yursalka] betrayed his chieftain, yes, but for honor. Cnaiür had betrayed his chieftain, his father, for the love of another man! For an outlander who could speak killing words! Where was the justice in this?”

And “killing words” is a great way to describe the Dûnyain.

Cnaiür is half-mad in the section. He is suffering from starvation and has been surviving somehow on the steppes for a year. Not sure why it took him that long to get home. Perhaps there was a lot of dodging other tribes, going slow on foot, and just taking care of the necessities of survival, but it seems long. Then again, I’ve never trudged across the steppes before on foot.

Cnaiür ferocity is softened around Anissi. He clearly cares for her and shows the affection publicly, which Yursalka found to be shameful. Just another reason for the tradition-bound Scylvendi to hate Cnaiür.

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

In the year and a half since the Holy War was called, thousands have reached Momemn. Rumor has it, the Shriah was surprised by how many of the low caste joined the Holy War. Freeman were selling wives and children into slavery to pay for passage. Hundreds of atrocities are committed in the name of Holy War and Maithanet was said to weep for all of them.

All these incidents palled in comparison to the Vulgar Holy War led by Calmemunis, Tharschilka, and Kumrezzer. All three signed Xerius Indenture and marched with all the low born that had so far gathered. Maithanet tries to stop the march, but Calmemunis ignores him. Calmemunis and the other Great Names led the host in name only, but most of the host was sworn to no one. At first, they kept the host in line but by the time it reached the frontier, may of the fanatics turned bandits.

General Martemus, shadowing the host, had to fight several battles against them to protect Nansur citizens. Martemus is driven back into the fortress of Gielgath, unable to fight the vast host numbers with two columns. Calmemunis blames the emperor for stopping the supplies, but that was done by Shrial edict. The Shriah then issued Censor on the Vulgar Holy War, and this stopped them for a day. The bulk of the host almost turned back when, by “accident,” an imperial supply train fell into their hands.

The Vulgar Holy War pressed on, looting, massacring and raping as they went. They reached the last obstacle before the heathen lands, the fortress of Asgilioch where three Fanim invasions had been stopped. Prophilas, commander of the fortress, invited the Great Names into the fortress. Calmemunis demanded hostages, received them, and agreed to enter and was promptly captured with the other Great Names. Prophilas had a Shrial Warrant and told them they would be held here until they commanded the Vulgar Holy War to return to Momemn. He assures Calmemunis that they have no hope of defeating the Kianene.

Calmemunis, however, replied with laughter. He admitted that sinew for sinew, weapon for weapon, the Vulgar Holy War was likely no match for the Padirajah’s armies. But this, he claimed, was of no consequence, for surely the Latter Prophet had shown that frailty, when suffused with righteousness, was unconquerable. “We have left Sumna and the Shriah behind us,” he said. “With every step we draw nearer Holy Shimeh. With every step we draw closer to Paradise! Proceed with care, Prophilas, for as Inri Sejenus himself says, ‘Woe to he who obstructs the Way!’”

Prophilas released Calmemunis and the other Great Names before sunset.

The Vulgar Holy War passed into heathen lands and Maithanet retired to prayer until he learned of their fate.

In Momemn, Conphas is being led by Skeaös to Privy Chamber. The Ainoni have arrived early, an old trick by the Scarlet Spire. They had arrived the previous morning and it seemed as if all High Ainon had marched with them. Xerius was hopeful that they would sign his Indenture. At the least, he expected the Ainoni to be civil since they were fellow Ketyai not Norsirai like the Thunyeri and the Tydonni that had already arrived and refused to sign the Indenture. Ainoni were civilized.

Conphas asks if they intentionally showed up early to throw them off balance and Skeaös agrees. The pair hike up Andiamine Heights to the Privy Chamber and Conphas wonders if Skeaös, like many older courtiers, would die of the “clutch” making the climb. Curious, Conphas quickens his pace and Skeaös is able to keep up and shows no sign of strain. Skeaös even continues their conversation, and Conphas grows board with his game.

Skeaös begins briefing Conphas on Eleäzaras, Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spire. When Sasheoka died he was a Subdidact and somehow became the Grandmaster in two years. Skeaös reveals that Conphas was to be excluded from this meeting but that Eleäzaras had requested him. Conphas is reluctant to believe Skeaös, and wonders what game he is playing with him.

Conphas demands to know why, if he’s the linchpin of the plan, did his uncle want to exclude him from the meeting. Conphas realizes Skeaös lied, and forces the old man to admit it. Skeaös reveals that he is troubled by Xerius plan to destroy the Holy War. Skeaös fears for his soul. Conphas is shocked, and asks if Skeaös if Maithanet has “ensnared you as well?” Skeaös say no, saying Conphas is to young to understand. He is to old to make amends before he dies. Conphas realizes Skeaös has been conspiring with his grandmother, hoping to drive a wedge between Conphas and Xerius and have Conphas come running to his grandmother.

Conphas is surprised that Skeaös would do something so close to treachery and rebukes him. Conphas likes his uncle’s plan, as much as it galls him to admit, and tells Skeaös that his soul is a small price to pay to restore the Empire.

In the Privy Chamber, Conphas takes a seat next to his uncle. Skeaös and Cememketri stand by the Emperor and the galleries are filled with Eothic Guardsmen and Imperial Saik. Xerius asks Conphas his opinion on how to handle Eleäzaras. Conphas replies that since they do not know why Eleäzaras joined the Holy War, it will be hard to get him to support the Indenture. Instead, they should bargain in good faith. Xerius agrees.

While Chepheramunni, King-Regent of High Ainon, was announced first, he followed Eleäzaras into the room revealing who really ruled Ainon. Pleasantries are exchanged and Xerius asks why they Scarlet Spire joined the Holy War. Eleäzaras answers they were purchased. Eleäzaras refuses to divulge the details of the contract. Conphas thinks it is a lie, not even the Shriah could afford to purchase them.

Eleäzaras says that Chepheramunni will sign the Indenture gladly in exchange for some concessions. Xerius feigns outrage and begins to explain why those lands belong to Nansur but is interrupted by Eleäzaras. The sorcerer dismiss that as dross and asks if they know what truly is at stake. Conphas answers, “power.” Eleäzaras agrees and asks why Xerius provisioned Calmemunis. Xerius gives the official answer, to end their depredations. Eleäzaras disagrees, revealing he knows the truth.

Xerius protests, asking what he would gain by destroying them. Eleäzaras responds, you would gain the Holy War. Eleäzaras admires their plan, saying the Indenture is a splendid idea.

This small flattery was Xerius’s undoing. For a brief instant his eyes flashed with jubilant conceit. Stupid men, Conphas had found, tended to be excessively proud of their few brilliant moments.

Eleäzaras smiled.

He plays you, Uncle, and you cannot even see.

Eleäzaras then threatens Xerius should he betray the Holy War, and thus, by extension, betray the Scarlet Spire. Not even the Imperial Saik will save him from their wrath. Cememketri rebukes Eleäzaras, pointing out they are in Momemn not Carythusal. Eleäzaras ignores Cememketri and turns to Conphas and asks after the battle, complementing him.

Conphas smiled, deciding the Grandmaster would lick his ass as clean as a cat’s if given the opportunity. For all his penetration, Eleäzaras had misjudged him.

It was time to set him straight. “What Cememketri said just now is true, you know. No matter what your deal with Maithanet, you’ve delivered your School to its greatest peril since the Scholastic Wars. And not just because of the Cishaurim. You’ll be a small enclave of profanity within a great tribe of fanatics. You’ll need every friend you can get.”

For the first time something like real anger surfaced in Eleäzaras’s eyes, like a glimpse of coals through a smoky fire. “We can make the world burn with our song, young Conphas. We need no one.”

The negotiations continue successfully. Chepheramunni signs then Indenture in exchange for all the intelligence the Empire had on the Cishaurim. Conphas notes the hatred in Eleäzaras voice when he said Cishaurim. Conphas realizes the Scarlet Spire already warred with the Cishaurim. Xerius dismissed Conphas theory until Skeaös and Cememketri agreed, and then the Emperor reveals he already had the same suspicions. Conphas wonders if Maithanet knew about this secret war. “Maithanet. What game did he play? For that matter, who was he?”

Days later, news of the Vulgar Holy War’s annihilation reached them. Survivors reported they were destroyed on the Plains of Mengedda. Two courtiers arrived from Kian bearing Calmemunis and the other leader’s severed heads and a secret message for Conphas from Skauras.

We cannot count the carcasses of your idolatrous kin, so many have been felled by the fury of our righteous hand. Praise be the Solitary God. Know that House Ikurei has been heard.

Conphas is stunned, realizing for the first time they had sacrificed an army. “Only the Gods dared such acts.” Many would suspect House Ikurei, but it would not be recorded in the annals. Conphas felt great pride in his secret manipulation of events.

For an instant, Conphas felt like a thief, the hidden author of a great loss. And the exhilaration he felt almost possessed a sexual intensity. He saw clearly now why he so loved this species of war. On the field of battle, his every act was open to the scrutiny of others. Here, however, he stood outside scrutiny, enacted destiny from a place that transcended judgment or recrimination. He lay hidden in the womb of events.

Like a God.

My Thoughts

It is terrible to sell you family into slavery so you can go crusading, but fitting with Bakker’s theme of exposing humanity in all its terrible flaws. It sad how so many of these “Men of the Tusk” end of killing their fellow Inrithi. From the band of Galeoth freebooters to King Nrezza Barisullas of Cironj, high and low take advantage of the Holy War.

Even the Vulgar Holy War, the most faithful and fanatic, turn to rape and plunder on their fellow Inrithi on the march south. I can understand the need to forage for supplies, but to massacre the men and rape their women is over the pale. And Calmemunis and the other, so greedy for land and power, they don’t care. Nothing deters their monumental stupidity. Prophilas is so stunned by his stupidity he just releases them. Not sad to see their severed heads show up after leading so many men to their needless deaths, even if these same men were raping and pillaging and deserved to hang for their crimes.

The Vulgar Holy War is a parallel to the People’s Crusade. When the First Crusade was called, a German priest rallied peasants and mercenaries then marched east to the holy lands. Along the way, the pillaged Christian lands, including sacking the city of Belgrade. Eventually, the People’s Crusade crossed the Byzantine Lands and were destroyed by the Turks.

Conphas self-centered narcissism leads him to attempt murder Skeaös via heart attack just to satisfy his morbid curiosity. Boy do I hate Conphas. This entire chapter shows just what a tool this guy is. At the end of the chapter, he thinks he just like a god, manipulating events from outside the lives of men, and he gets off on it. He is stunned, not by how many deaths can be laid at the feat of House Ikurei, but by the fact that only gods would dare to it.

Skeaös conspiring with Istiya is interesting. Conphas is surprised that the old man has problems with the plan. Religion does strange things to people, and Skeaös is seeing the end of his life approaching. I can see how that leads you to re-prioritize. And the prospect of damnation is not a pleasant one. He’s also in great shape. He climb up all those stairs, kept up with young, in shape Conphas, while talking. Wish I was in that great of shape.

Eleäzaras is so focused on revenge against the Cishaurim, he doesn’t care at all about the Indenture. Conphas is not shaken by Eleäzaras‘s threat, believing the men of the tusk won’t protect the Scarlet Spire well and they will be destroyed in the war and thus will be unable to retaliate against House Ikurei once they betray the war.

More speculation on Maithanet and his mysterious origins and strange ability to know hidden secrets. Conphas is right to have misgivings about the Shriah and whether House Ikurei is actually going to be able to seize the Holy War from the man or not.

The pieces are moving into place, setting the stage for the stage for the novel’s climax as we finish Part 2.

Click here for Chapter Nine!

Reread of the Darkness that Comes Before: Chapter Seven

Reread of Prince of Nothing Trilogy

Book 1: The Darkness that Comes Before

by R. Scott Bakker

Part 2
The Emperor
Chapter 7
Momemn

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

The world is a circle that possesses as many centres as it does men.

Ajencis, the Third Analytic of Men

My Thoughts

Humans are very self-centered creatures. It’s right there in the word “self-centered.” I always do love Bakker’s philosophy he adds to the stories. Always making you think.

Early Autumn, 4110 Year-of-the-Tusk, Momemn

Conphas, accompanied by Martemus, is making his triumphal return to Momemn. He pauses at the Xatantius Arch, showing one of the previous empire’s great victories. Conphas thinks that by defeating the Scylvendi, he has outshined Xatantius. Beyond the Arch is the Scuäri Campus, a parade ground filled with Imperial Soldiers, representing every column of the Imperial Army. They are dressed in ceremonial armor and arrayed in neat phalanxes. Past the Campus was the Allosian Forum, the base of the Andiamine Heights.

Conphas saw his uncle awaiting them, a distant figure framed by the Forum’s might columns. Despite the imperial pageantry, he looked small, like a hermit squinting from the entrance of his cave.

Is this your first Imperial Audience-of-State?” Conphas asked Martemus.

The General nodded, turned to him with a faintly doddering air. “My first time in the Imperial Precincts.”

Conphas grinned. “Welcome to the brothel.”

Gilgaöl Priest, as customary, brought out basins of water. They smeared lion’s blood on his arms, while praying, cleansed his symbolic wounds. Conphas is surprised when Shrial Priest come out, anoints him with oil, and draw the tusk on his forehead in palm wine. They give him the title, Shield-of-the-Tusk. Conphas understands why his uncle did this. The Scylvendi were heathens like the Kian and thus his victory was part of the Holy War. Conphas thinks Skeaös must be behind such a smart idea.

The elation Conphas felt after winning the Battle of Kiyuth was quickly lost by the journey back to Momemn. Conphas intended to line the road back to Momemn with Sclyvendi heads, but his cartographers argued about the exact distance back to capital and thus the proper spacing of heads. The Imperial Saik got involved, thinking that they knew better than the cartographers. This argument culminated in the murder of Erathius, an outspoken cartographer. The culprit could not be found, so Conphas exploited a loophole in the Martial Code to flay the most vocal individual of both factions.

Worst, when Conphas finally reached Momemn the day before, he found the capital surrounded by the Holy War. Instead of being greeted by adoring masses, a mob of Inrithi rioted and a pitch battle erupted. Conphas learns from an Imperial Officer about how his uncle is only supplying enough grain to keep them from starving until the Indenture is signed. The negotiations over the Indenture had turned bitter.

The Emperor,” the officer concluded, “is most heartened by your arrival, Lord Exalt-General.”

Conphas had nearly cackled aloud at that. The return of a rival heartened no emperor, but every emperor was heartened by the return of his army, particularly when he was besieged. Which was essentially the case. Conphas had been forced to enter Momemn by boat.

And now, the great triumph he’d so anticipated, the all-important recognition of what he’d wrought, had been overshadowed by greater events. The Holy war had dimmed his glory, had dwarfed even the destruction of the Sclyvendi. Men would celebrate him, yes, but the way their celebrated religious festivals in times of famine: listlessly, too preoccupied by the press of events to truly understand what or whom they celebrated.

How could he not hate the Holy War.

Finally, Conphas and Martemus cross the Campus, the soldiers kneeling as they pass. Behind him, Conphas’s bodyguard were bringing his captive while others lined his progress with Sclyvendi heads. Conphas looked for Istiya, his grandmother, but couldn’t see her. He knew she was there. Istiya had shaped Conphas to the man he was today, prepared him for greatness. Conphas suspected she was behind the trumped up charges against his father to make sure there would be no interference in Conphas taking the throne should Xerius die. Because of her efforts, everyone has seen him as the Imperial Heir, and even if Xerius had a son that “didn’t drool or require diapers into adulthood” nothing could overturn that perception.

She [Istiya] had done so much that he could almost love her.

As Conphas approaches his uncle, he sees the crown of Shigek on his brow. No emperor has worn the crown since Shigek was lost to the heathens three centuries ago. Conphas thinks his uncle is presumptuous. Conphas thinks his uncle fears him and means to kill him. Conphas has become to powerful and is a threat. Conphas knows his uncle desires to control the Holy War, to reclaim the provinces lost, and to be remembered as a great Statesman-Emperor like Caphrianas the Younger. As long as Conphas convinces Xerius he is still useful to that goal, Xerius won’t touch him.

He had always hated his uncle—even as a child. But for all the contempt he bore him, he’d learned long ago not to underestimate him. His uncle was like those uncommon drunks who slurred and staggered day after day yet became lethally alert when confronted by danger.

Conphas wonders what Xerius is thinking, and asks Martemus his opinion. Martemus points out that Conphas knows him better. Conphas asks if he should be afraid. Martemus answers yes. Conphas knows that Martemus speaks truthfully, so wants to know why he thinks Conphas should be afraid. Martemus answers if he was emperor he would fear Conphas. What emperors fear, emperors kill is provincial wisdom. Conphas disagrees. Xerius has feared Conphas for years, but only new fears provoke Xerius to murder because he fears everybody.

Martemus points out that Conphas now has the armies loyalty. Every soldier on the parade ground would fight for him. That is something new for Xerius to fear. Conphas is stunned to realize that he could rebel right here and now and begins to consider it. Conphas disagrees because of the Holy War. Martemus asks if the emperors greed will outweigh his fear. Conphas thinks it will. Martemus thinks its a gamble and will throw his lot in with Conphas.

As they climb the stairs to where Xerius waits, Conphas begins to consider rebellion. Conphas is a planner, but he knows that sometimes opportunities must be seized. As Conphas reaches his uncle, he realizes his ceremonial dagger could kill Xerius. He greeted by his uncle and he fails to kneel and kiss Xerius’s knee. Conphas has made the decision to kill him and have his men secure the capital.

Conphas presents his captive, Xunnurit, the former King-of-Tribes. Xerius is pleased, promising to blind Xunnurit and chain him to his throne like the High Kings of Kyraneas did in the past. Conphas spots his grandmother and notices something is different about her.

Conphas catches Martemus gaze and nods. Conphas is patiently waiting the moment when Xerius will embrace him so he can strike and kill his uncle. Conphas brings up the fact the Holy War attacked his men. Xerius is dismissive, saying the matter has been concluded. Xerius says tomorrow they will go upriver to see his new monument and tells Conphas to be patient, that this isn’t the Kiyuth and things are not as they seem. Conphas is baffled by that statement.

As though the matter were utterly closed, Xerius continued: “Is this the general you speak so highly of? Martemus, is it? I’m so very pleased he’s here. I couldn’t ferry enough of your men into the city to fill the Campus, so I was forced to use my Eothic Guard and several hundred of the City Watch.”

Though stunned, Conphas replied without hesitation, “And dress them as my … as army regulars?”

Of course. The ceremony is as much for them as for you, no?”

His heart thundering, Conphas knelt and kissed his uncle’s knee.

The next day, Xerius, Istiya, and Conphas are on the Imperial barge heading up the River Phayus to see Xerius’s new monument. Istiya is impatient and Xerius is pleased by her annoyance. The monument is going to be transported to the capital down the river today from the basalt quarries of Osbeus.

The entire trip, Istiya has been fawning over Conphas, telling him all the sacrifices she had made for him, including an albino lion who’s hide she has made into a cloak for him. “A suitable gift for the Lion of Kiyuth.” Conphas plays along with his grandmother’s flattery, thanking her and crediting her with their success. Xerius finds the entire exchange grating and knows Istiya does it to annoy him. Istiya proclaims Conphas to be greater than any Exalt-General in the empire’s history.

What is she trying to do? Istiya had always goaded him, but never had she pressed her banter so close to sedition. She knew Conphas’s victory over the Scylvendi had transformed him from a tool into a threat. Especially after the farce at the Forum the previous day. Xerius needed only to glimpse at his nephew’s face to know that Skeaös had been right. There had been murder in Conphas’s eyes. If not for the Holy War, Xerius would have ordered him cut down on the spot.

Istiya had been there. She knew all this, and yet she pushed further and further. Was she …

Was she trying to get Conphas killed?

Conphas is uneasy at his grandmother’s statement and Xerius wanders if he really is uneasy, or if Conphas and Istiya plotted together. The barge suddenly strikes a bar in the river, getting stuck. Xerius berates the captain who looks scarred to death. Conphas is enjoying the embarrassment this causes Xerius. Xerius orders the Captain to man the oars as punishment. The barge remains stuck and Xerius decides they’ll await his monument’s arrival here.

Skeaös suggest they await the arrival of the monument from the aft galley of the barge. While Skeaös points out that this will allow a breathtaking view of the passing monument, Xerius knows Skeaös is saving the Emperor from being witnessed by his subjects on a stuck boat.

As they wait, Conphas makes small talk, asking how Xerius’s new wife, Conphas’s half-sister, is doing. Xerius answers she is satisfactory. Istiya points out she hasn’t had a child yet. Xerius shrugs, saying he already has his heir. Angrily, Istiya says their won’t be an inheritance left. Xerius is surprised by his mother’s directness, attributing it to age, and warns her. Conphas intercedes, saying she means the Men of the Tusk, who the empire is on the brink of open war with.

Istiya wants to know what Xerius plans are, pointing out the other Houses of the Congregate are worried. Xerius deflects her question. Xerius says Calmemunis has agreed to sign the Indenture tomorrow. Istiya asks what of Tharschilka and Kumrezzer, and Conphas is sure they will sign if Calmemunis does. Conphas knows the Men of the Tusk thing God is on their side and have no fear of the Fanim. Conphas’s realizes the first to arrive are the greediest and want to get their share of Fanim lands before anyone else arrives.

Istiya is horrified as Conphas explains these three lords will march right away, that until their liege lords arrive, they command the Holy War. Istiya demands Xerius not provision them. Xerius disagrees, he wants them to march. Conphas suggest the slaves be dismissed. Once they are private, Conphas asks if a deal has been made with the Padirajah.

Struck mute by astonishment, Xerius gaped at his nephew. How could he have known? Too much penetration, and certainly too much ease of manner. At some level, Xerius had always been terrified of Conphas. It was more than just the man’s wit. There was something dead inside his nephew. No, more than dead—something smooth. With others, even with his mother—although she to seemed so remote lately—there was always the exchange of unspoken expectations of the small, human needs that crotched and braced all conversation, even silences. But with Conphas there was only sheer surfaces. His nephew was never moved by another. Conphas was moved by Conphas, even if at times in mimicry of being moved by others. He was a man for whom everything was whim. A perfect man.

But to master such a man! And master him he must.

Flatter him,” Skeaös had once told Xerius, “and be transformed into part of the glorious story that he sees as his life.” But he could not. To flatter another was to humble oneself.

Xerius demands to know how Conphas has learned of the agreement, threatening to send him to the Tower of Ziek. Conphas answers, it’s what he would do. The Kian need to know the the empire is not fanatics. Xerius doesn’t but it and demands again to know who told him. Conphas reveals Skauras told him. Conphas has maintained communication with his court since Conphas had spent time there as a boy as a hostage.

Istiya warns Conphas that Skauras is canny and would sow dissension amongst them. Istiya states the Dynasty is the most important thing, and Xerius is reminded of her when he was a boy, repeating that same phrase. Conphas states he is not a fool, to be tricked by Skauras. Istiya tries to reason with Conphas at the folly of allowing the first of the Holy War to be massacred by the Kian. Xerius states the empire will sacrifice the Holy War to get back the lost provinces.

Conphas finally understands. The first to arrive, other than those three greedy lords, are the vulgar masses. To lose a rabble of untrained fighters would just save the Holy War bellies to feed. It would also teach the other lords and the Shriah to fear the Fanim and thus their dependence of the empire would grow.

Istiya thinks its madness, they have the chance to destroy the Kian and instead Xerius plots with them. Conphas points out that Maithanet controls the Holy War now. He has done all he can to geld the empire by inviting the scarlet spire. Istiya demands to know what Xerius plans after the “herd is culled.”

What then? Our Shriah learns fear. Respect. All his mummery—all his sacrifices, hymns, and wheedling—will have been naught. As you said earlier, Mother, the Gods cannot be bribed.”

But you can.”

Xerius laughed. “Of course I can. If Maithanet commands the Great Names to sign my Indenture, to swear the return of all the old provinces to the Empire, then I will give them”—he turned to his nephew and lowered his head—“the Lion of Kiyuth.”

Splendid!” Conphas cried. “Why didn’t I see it? Thrash them with one hand in order to soothe them with the other. Brilliant, Uncle! The Holy War will be ours. The Empire will be restored!”

Desperately, Istiya asks for Skeaös opinion. Skeaös evades, saying its not his place to speak. Istiya flatters him, saying while she doesn’t like him, he gives sound counsel. Skeaös remains silent, and Istiya understands, saying Skeaös fears for his life, but she is an old woman and no longer cares. What Xerius has said so far doesn’t sound like enough payment to the Kian. Istiya wants to know where the useful part of the Holy War fails.

Xerius just says things go wrong in war. Istiya understands, the Holy War will fail before it reaches Shimeh. Xerius just shrugs and turns to the river as his monument floats by, a massive obelisk for the temple-complex of Cmiral.

His thoughts leaped. I will be immortal …

He returned to his settee and reclined, consciously savoring the flares of hope and pride. Oh, sweet godlike vanity!

Like an immense sarcophagus,” his mother said. Always, the asp of truth.

My Thoughts

Conphas is a narcissistic sociopath. He keeps Martemus around because the man wasn’t a sycophant. “Flattery was beneath his [Martemus] contempt. If the man said something, Conphas knew, it was true.” How could a man as great as Conphas imagines himself to be not find Martemus’s praise intoxicating. Conphas has to earn that praise. His reaction to the Holy War is to pout about how it spoiled his glorious arrival.

Martemus is the epitome of the practical soldier. While he doesn’t think in plots and intrigues, it is he who sees the potential of the assembled army. His simple statement almost caused Conphas to seize the throne for himself at that moment. This has always been a problem for empires, when your generals command your soldiers loyalty and then realize that they could make themselves into emperors.

Luckily for Xerius, Skeaös is not an idiot. The replacement of Martemus’s troops with Eothic Guards was brilliant. One of my favorite moments in the book. Conphas is reminded that Xerius is not out of moves yet and if Conphas wants to be emperor, he needs to stay in his uncle’s graces until then.

Xerius is also a bit of a narcissist. Maybe that comes with being an emperor and everyone telling you how important you are every walking moment. He’s very juvenile the way he wants to show off his new toy and annoyed about Istiya and Conphas not being nearly as excited as he was. Xerius, however, finds something wrong with Conphas personality, acknowledging that at least Xerius has some empathy, as opposed to Conphas who just cares about himself.

More hints that something has changed with Istiya. She seems very keen on the Holy War succeeding versus the Empire prospering by taking advantage of the Holy War. We also see why Xerius constantly refers to his mother as the “old whore.” The revelation that she would molest him as a youth would definitely skew that relationship. One wonders if she did the same to Conphas. This might explain his narcissism. During their banter, there may be hints of a more intimate relationship. Conphas compares her tutelage to having sex with women during his teenage years.

It is odd how Istiya, who is always talking about the dynasty, balks at the plan. This will strengthen the Empire while weakening their enemies. Instead, she’s afraid for her soul and death. This is the woman that convinced her son to murder her husband because he would make a better Emperor and who was behind the plot that saw Conphas’s father (her other son) to be executed just to make the succession clear for her skilled nephew. And yet she has serious issue with the plan. A plan Conphas, who is a brilliant tactician, finds great merit in.

Xerius paranoia shines in this section. The moment he fears there is a leak in his plan, he threatens Conphas with torture.

Xerius and Skauras agreement is interesting. Both get something, the Fanim get to survive and the Empire gets to recover some lost land. But not all of it. Shimeh was part of the Empire in the past. The Kian also get to satisfaction of stopping the Holy War from reaching their goal. A lot still needs to happen, and this new Shriah is very shrewd. This truly is a gamble for the Empire. If Xerius fail, the Holy War could very well be used to destroy him.

Istiya, of course, has to get the last word.

Click here to continue on to Chapter Eight.