R. Scott Bakker

“While waiting for the hidden machinery of messengers and secretaries to relay his request, Achamian wandered into an adjoining courtyard, struck by the other immensities that framed his present circumstance. Even if there were no Consult, no threat of the Second Apocalypse, he realized, nothing would be the same. Kellhus would change the world, not in the way of an Ajencis or a Triamis, but in the way of an Inri Sejenus.This, Achamian realized, was Year One. A new age of Men.”

“I am Cnaiur urs Skiötha, breaker-of-horses-and-men!","I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha, most violent of all men! I bear your fathers and brothers upon my arms!”

“History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.”

“Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.”

“All Kellhus could see of his father were two fingers and a thumb lying slack upon a bare thigh. The thumbnail gleamed.“As Dûnyain,” the disembodied voice continued, “you had no choice. To command yourself, you had to master circumstance. And to master circumstance, you had to bind the actions of the worldborn to your will. You had to make limbs of nations. So you made their beliefs the object of your relentless scrutiny. It was axiomatic.“You realized those truths that cut against the interests of the powerful were called lies, and that those lies that served those interests were called truths. And you understood that it had to be this way, since it is the function of belief, not the veracity, that preserved nations. Why call an emperor’s blood divine? Why tell slaves that suffering is grace? It is what beliefs do, the actions they license and prohibit, that is important. If men believed all blood was equal, the caste-nobility would be overthrown. If men believed all coin was oppression, the caste-merchants would be turned out.“Nations tolerate only those beliefs that conserve the great system of interlocking actions that makes them possible. For the worldborn, you realized, truth is largely irrelevant. Why else would they all dwell in delusion?“Your first decision was elementary. You claimed to be a member of the caste-nobility, a prince, knowing that, once you convinced some, you could demand that all act accordingly. And through this simple deception, you secured your independence. No other would command you, because they believed they had no right to command you.“But how might you convince them of your right? One lie had made you their equal; what further lie might make you their master?”

“Screens of tumbling water, breaking the world beyond them into glittering lines and smeared shadows. Kellhus had ceased trying to penetrate them.“Power,” Anasûrimbor Moënghus said, “is always power over. When an infant may be either, what is the difference between a Fanim and an Inrithi? Or between a Nansur and a Scylvendi? What could be so malleable in Men that anyone, split between circumstances, could be his own murderer?“You learned this lesson quickly. You looked across Wilderness and you saw thousands upon thousands of them, their backs bent to the field, their legs spread to the ceiling, their mouths reciting scripture, their arms hammering steel … Thousands upon thousands of them, each one a small circle of repeating actions, each one a wheel in the great machine of nations …“You understood that when men stop bowing, the emperor ceases to rule, that when the whips are thrown into the river, the slave ceases to serve. For an infant to be an emperor or a slave or a merchant or a whore or a general or whatever, those about him must act accordingly. And Men act as they believe.“You saw them, in their thousands, spread across the world in great hierarchies, the actions of each exquisitely attuned to the expectations of others. The identity of Men, you discovered, was determined by the beliefs, the assumptions, of others. This is what makes them emperors or slaves … Not their gods. Not their blood.“Nations live as Men act,” Moënghus said, his voice refracted through the ambient rush of waters. “Men act as they believe. And Men believe as they are conditioned. Since they are blind to their conditioning, they do not doubt their intuitions …”Kellhus nodded in wary assent. “They believe absolutely,” he said.”

“Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him lean back into absolute shadow.“You came to the world,” unseen lips said, “and you saw that Men were like children.”Lines of radiance danced across the intervening waters.“It is their nature to believe as their fathers believed,” the darkness continued. “To desire as they desired … Men are like wax poured into moulds: their souls are cast by their circumstances. Why are no Fanim children born to Inrithi parents? Why are no Inrithi children born to Fanim parents? Because these truths are made, cast by the particularities of circumstance. Rear an infant among Fanim and he will become Fanim. Rear him among Inrithi and he will become Inrithi …“Split him in two, and he would murder himself.”Without warning, the face re-emerged, water-garbled, white save the black sockets beneath his brow. The action seemed random, as though his father merely changed posture to relieve some vagrant ache, but it was not. Everything, Kellhus knew, had been premeditated. For all the changes wrought by thirty years in the Wilderness, his father remained Dûnyain …Which meant that Kellhus stood on conditioned ground.“But as obvious as this is,” the blurred face continued, “it escapes them. Because they cannot see what comes before them, they assume nothing comes before them. Nothing. They are numb to the hammers of circumstance, blind to their conditioning. What is branded into them, they think freely chosen.So they thoughtlessly cleave to their intuitions, and curse those who dare question. They make ignorance their foundation. They confuse their narrow conditioning for absolute truth.”He raised a cloth, pressed it into the pits of his eyes. When he withdrew it, two rose-coloured stains marked the pale fabric. The face slipped back into the impenetrable black.“And yet part of them fears. For even unbelievers share the depth of their conviction. Everywhere, all about them, they see examples of their own self-deception … ‘Me!’ everyone cries. ‘I am chosen!’ How could they not fear when they so resemble children stamping their feet in the dust? So they encircle themselves with yea-sayers, and look to the horizon for confirmation, for some higher sign that they are as central to the world as they are to themselves.”He waved his hand out, brought his palm to his bare breast. “And they pay with the coin of their devotion.”

“You’ve learned the lesson,' Kellhus had said on one of those rare mornings when he shared her breakfast.'What lesson might that be?''That the lessons never end.' He laughed, gingerly sipped his steaming tea. 'That ignorance is infinite.”

“Here we find further argument for Gotagga’s supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?”

“Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen—they could only truly know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others.At first Esmenet thought this foolish. Was not the inner half the whole, what was only imperfectly apprehended by others? But Kellhus bid her to think of everything she’d witnessed in others. How many unwitting mistakes? How many flaws of character? Conceits couched in passing remarks. Fears posed as judgements …The shortcomings of men—their limits—were written in the eyes of those who watched them. And this was why everyone seemed so desperate to secure the good opinion of others—why everyone played the mummer. They knew without knowing that what they saw of themselves was only half of who they were. And they were desperate to be whole.The measure of wisdom, Kellhus had said, was found in the distance between these two selves.Only afterward had she thought of Kellhus in these terms. With a kind of surpriseless shock, she realized that not once—not once!—had she glimpsed shortcomings in his words or actions. And this, she understood, was why he seemed limitless, like the ground, which extended from the small circle about her feet to the great circle about the sky. He had become her horizon.For Kellhus, there was no distance between seeing and being seen. He alone was whole. And what was more, he somehow stood from without and saw from within. He made whole …”

“. . . 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?”

“Let us be moved, you and I, by the things themselves. Let us discover each other.”

“Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.”

“A może, w co chętniej wierzył Achamian, wybrańcami byli ci, którzy się wahali. Często myślał o tym, że wabik fałszywej pewności jest najbardziej narkotyczną i destrukcyjną ze wszystkich pokus. Kto czynił dobro, tkwiąc w niepewności, czynił dobro bez obietnicy nagrody... Może więc samo zwątpienie było kluczem?To pytanie – co zrozumiałe – musiało pozostać nierozstrzygnięte. Jeżeli szczere zwątpienie rzeczywiście miało być warunkiem odkupienia, mogli go dostąpić tylko ludzie nieznający odpowiedzi.”

“He had despised the sorcerer, thinking him one of those mewling souls who forever groaned beneath burdens of their own manufacture.”

“Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.”

“We must speak plainly. Only honesty provides truth. Only truth delivers triumph.”

“It is strange the way trauma deadens curiosity. To suffer cruelty in excess is to be delivered from care. The human heart sets aside its questions when the future is too capricious. This is the irony of tribulation.To know the world will never be so bad.”

“We belittle what we cannot bear. We make figments out of fundamentals, all in the name of preserving our own peculiar fancies. The best way to secure one's own deception is to accuse others of deceit.”

“So he came to realize that learning a language was perhaps the most profound thing a man could do. Not only did it require wrapping different sounds around the very movement of your soul, it involved learning things somehow already known, as though much of what he was somehow existed apart from him. A kind of enlightenment accompanied these first lessons, a deeper understanding of self.”

“Though all men be equally frail before the world, the differences between them are terrifying.”

“They so wanted it to be simple, believers. "It is what is!" they cried, sneering at the possibility of other eyes, other truths, overlooking their own outrageous presumption. "It says what it says," spoken with a conviction that was itself insincerity. They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain. Then they dared call themselves "open.”

“Masses of warring men animated the horizon, crashing into stubborn ranks, churning in melee. The air didn’t so much thunder as hiss with the sound of distant battle, like a sea heard through a conch shell, Martemus thought—an angry sea. Winded, he watched the first of Conphas’s assassins stride up behind Prince Kellhus, raise his short-sword …There was an impossible moment—a sharp intake of breath.The Prophet simply turned and caught the descending blade between his thumb and forefinger. “No,” he said, then swept around, knocking the man to the turf with an unbelievable kick. Somehow the assassin’s sword found its way into his left hand. Still crouched, the Prophet drove it down through the assassin’s throat, nailing him to the turf.A mere heartbeat had passed.”

“Our words always paint two portraits when we describe our families to others. Outsiders cannot but see the small peeves and follies that wrinkle our relationships with our loved ones. The claims we make in defensive certainty--that we were the one wronged, that we were the one who wanted the best--cannot but fall on skeptical ears since everyone makes the same claimsof virtue and innocence. We are always more than we want to be in the eyes of others simply because we are blind to the bulk of what we are. . . . Mimara had wanted him to see her as a victim, as a long-suffering penitent, more captive than daughter, and not as someone embittered and petulant, someone who often held others accountable for her inability to feel safe, to feel anything unpolluted by the perpetual pang of shame . . . And he loved her the more for it.”

“Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.”

“Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.”

“If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.”

“Truths were carved from the identical wood as were lies--words--and so sank or floated with identical ease. But since truths were carved by the World, they rarely appeased Men and their innumerable vanities. Men had no taste for facts that did not ornament or enrich, and so they willfully--if not knowingly--panelled their lives with shining and intricate falsehoods.”

“There’s faith that knows 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? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence.”

“Nigdy nie uważał, że „czyta” książki. Język był w tym wypadku równie zdradziecki, jak u hazardzisty, który przechwala się wygraną partią, tak jakby siłą lub determinacją wydarł losowi zwycięstwo, gdy tymczasem szczęśliwy rzut sztonami nie był niczym więcej, jak tylko udaną próbą wykorzystania chwili własnej bezradności. Otwarcie książki zaś wiązało się z ryzykiem zupełnie innej miary. Otwierając książkę, nie tylko stawał się bezradny, nie tylko oddawał ileś tam zazdrośnie strzeżonych uderzeń serca władającemu piórem obcemu człowiekowi, lecz pozwalał samego siebie napisać. Czymże jest bowiem lektura księgi, jeśli nie ciągłym poddawaniem się nieprzewidywalnym kaprysom duszy jej autora?”

“Gods are but greater demons," the Cishaurim said, "hungers across the surface of eternity, wanting only to taste the clarity of our souls. Can you not see this?”

“You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens . . . for one thousand Hells.”

“The Men of the Ordeal do not march to save the World, Proyas--at least not first and foremost. They march to save their wives and children. Their tribes and their nations. If they learn that the world, their world, slips into ruin behind them, that their wives and daughters may perish for want of their shields, their swords, the Host of Hosts would melt about the edges, then collapse.”

“And he now knew with certainty that the world was hollowed of its wonder by knowledge and travel, that when one stripped away the mysteries, its dimensions collapsed rather than bloomed. Of course, the world was a much more sophisticated place to him now than it had been when he was a child, but it was also far simpler. Everywhere men grasped and grasped, as though the titles “king,” “shriah,” and “grandmaster” were simply masks worn by the same hungry animal. Avarice, it seemed to him, was the world's only dimension.”

“Darkness shields as much as it threatens.”

“I rememeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visible.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.”

“To be a student required a peculiar kind of capitulation, a willingness not simply to do as one is told, but to surrendor the movements of one's soul to the unknown complexities of another's. A willingness, not simply to be moved, but to be remade.”

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

“To piss across water is to piss across your reflection”

“Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.”

“Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.”

“Old women are more reconciled to death than old men. By bringing life to the world, we come to see ourselves as debtors. What's given is taken.”

“Hoga Gothyelk no longer felt anger, not truly -- only varieties of sorrow.”

“Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.”

“There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated.”

“Something ... made him feel small, not in the way of orphans or beggars or children, but in a good way. In the way of souls.”

“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?”

“What if the choice isn’t between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it?”

“Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. “Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one?”

“Beliefs are the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.”