Chapter 14:
The mighty hero, Gin'gûrima, with arms like a man's thighs. And the Inchoroi King, Sil, armoured in corpses, flanked by his inhuman kinsmen, winged monstrosities with wicked limbs, pendulous phalli, and skulls grafted into skulls.
The Glossaary tells us that: "Gin’gûrima, the greatest hero among them, pointed to Nin’janjin and declared, “Hate has blinded him."" So, it was him who first denounced Nin’janjin and later is killed by a Wracu.
"These are their memories," Achamian found himself saying aloud. "The Nonmen cut their past into the walls... as a way to make it as immortal as their bodies."
As is said later, the present holds little meaning to them, so the "sculpture" must seem to move to have meaning to them, perhaps?
"This... This! All the Last Born, sires and sons, gathered beneath the copper banners of Siol and her flint-hearted King. Silverteeth! Our Tyrant-Saviour..." He rolled his head back and laughed. Two lines of white marked the tears that scored his cheeks. "This is our..." The flash of fused teeth. "Our triumph."
I really wonder if he truely venerates Cu'jara Cinmoi, or if he weeps at the folly of him? More later.
Soma's claim to have seen a beggar without arms or legs was met with general derision.
Too deep perhaps, but this made be think of the amputees in the Horn that we see in the Nau-Cayuti dream in the TGO excerpt.
"The greatest of the Nonman Kings," Achamian replied, reaching out two fingers to touch the cold stone face. It was strange, the heedless way that statues stared and stared, their eyes bound to the panoply of dead ages. "Cu'jara Cinmoi... the Lord of Siöl, who led the Nine Mansions against the Inchoroi."
Two things here, first, why would they made a statue of Cu'jara Cinmoi? Why venerate him so much? He had essentially cursed them all, killed all their women, and extinguished the whole race out of hubris and desire to live forever. Unless of course, this room, or shrine, wasn't for his veneration, but rather so they could remember who had damned them such?
Second, I wonder what and where the other 5 Mansion were? We know of Ishterebinth, Cil-Aujas, Virri and Siol. I wonder is Kyudea was also one? And perhaps the one that is near Sobel that Kellhus stumbles upon?
The present, the now that Men understood, the one firmly fixed at the fore of what was remembered, no longer existed for the Nonmen. They could find its semblance only in the blood and screams of loved ones.
Kind of explaining why painting doesn't work for them, possibly.
Seswatha frowned in good-natured dismissal.
I wonder, why is Seswatha dismissing him here? Is it that he doesn't believe that Celmomas would plan ahead? Or that he doesn't want him to have?
Achamian roared with laughter. "A wolf, my King! The boy's a wolf! You better hope he's never your enemy!"
As has been point out before, possibly an allusion to Nau being part of what raises the No-God.
I asked him, 'Why do Men fear the dark?' I could tell he thought the question wise, though I felt no wisdom in asking it. '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.'"
This goes right to the quote at the beginning of the chapter,
"The world is only as deep as we can see.
This is why fools think themselves profound.
This is why terror is the passion of revelation."
The dark is
revealed ignorance. Ignorance made plain. Ignorance made essentially tangible.
Everyone leaned forward, breathless, struck by the sight of a scar or suture along one of the heart's fat-sheathed chambers. With his thumb Xonghis pressed open the upper lid...
A human eye stared at them.
I wonder what the significance of the symbol here is though? A heart that can see?
"And now you're saying," she began hesitantly, "that I'm a kind of... proof?" She blinked in the stammering manner of people finding their way through unsought revelations. "Proof of my stepfather's... falsity?"
Is this really Mimara's role? A refutation of Kellhus subjective "truth?"
Thinking also, she shows an "objective" truth and has spent her whole life bartered and treated like an object.