Men never resemble one another so much as when asleep or dead.
- OPPARITHA, ON THE CARNAL

The arrogance of the Inrithi waxed bright in the days following Anwurat.  Though the sober-minded demanded they press the attack, the great majority clamoured for respite.  They thought the Fanim doomed just as they thought them doomed after Mengedda.  But while the Men of the Tusk tarried, the Padirajah plotted.  He would make the world his shield.
- DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR

It is the difference in knowledge that commands respect.  This is why the true test of every student lies in the humiliation of his master
- GOTAGGA, THE PRIMA ARCANATA

The children here play with bones instead of sticks, and whenever I see them, I cannot but wonder whether the humeri they brandish are faithful or heathen
Heathen, I should think, for the bones seem bent
- ANONYMOUS, LETTER FROM ANWURAT

... a baron of dubious reputation from Conriya's frontier with High Ainon...

"I don't understand", Esmenet said with than a little anger.
He's leaving me...

"...It's a library.  A library!"
"So?", she said hotly.  "The illiterate are not-"

"The question, Akka, is what do you think?"
Achamian looked to the ground between them.
"What do I think?" he repeated pensively.  He raised his eyes.
Esmenet said nothing, though she felt the hardness melt from her gaze.
Achamian shrugged and sighed.  "That the Three Seas couldn't be more unprepared for a Second Apocalypse... The Heron Spear is lost.  Sranc roam half the world, in numbers a hundred - a thousand! - times greater than in Seswatha's day.  And Men hold only a fraction of the Trinkets."  He stared at her, and it seemed his eyes had never been so bright. "Though the Gods have damned, damned us, I can't believe they would so abandon the world..."
"Kellhus," she whispered.
Achamian nodded.  "They've sent us more than a Harbinger... That's what I think, or hope - I don't know..."
"But sorcery, Akka..."
"Is blasphemy, I know.  But ask yourself, Esmi, why are sorcerors blasphemers?  And why is a prophet a prophet?"
Her eyes opened horror-wide.  "Because one sings the God's song," she replied, "and the other speaks the God's voice."
"Exactly," Achamian said.  "Is it blasphemy for a prophet to utter sorcery?"
Esmenet stood staring, dumbstruck.
For the God to sing His own song...

..."the past is never dead, Esmi.   It's not even past."

I'm not leaving you, Esmi," he said with a queer kind of finality.  "I could never leave you.  Not again."
"I see but one sleeping mat," she said.

..."Essentially Sejenus is saying, 'Give without expectation of reward, and you can expect a huge reward!'"...
..."So the Inrithi who expect to be exalted in the Outside..."
"Give nothing,"... "but we on the other hand... give everything, and we can expect only damnation as a result...

So there was room to doubt his damnation.  Perhaps, as Sancla had suggested, the damned were in fact the elect.  Or perhaps, as Achamian was more inclined to believe, the uncertain were the Chosen Ones.  He'd often thought the temptation to assume, to sham certainty, was the most narcotic and destructive of all temptations.  To do good without the certainty was to do good without expectation... Perhaps doubt itself was the key.
But then of course the question could never be answered.  If genuine doubt was in fact the condition of conditions, then only those ignorant of the answer could be redeemed.  To ponder the question of damnation, it had always seemed, was itself a kind of damnation.

Though you lose you soul, the Mandate catechism began, you shall win the world.
But it need not be!  Achamian knew that now!  Finally he could see how desolate, how bereft of hope, his prior life had been.  Esmenet had taught him how to love.  And Kellhus, Anasurimbor Kellhus, had taught him how to hope.
And he would seize them, love and hope.  He would seize them, and he would hold them fast.

Never - never! in the history of their School had a sorceror of rank betrayed the Gnosis.  Only the Gnosis had allowed the Mandate to survive.  Only the Gnosis had allowed them to carry Seswatha's war through the millennia.  Lose it, and they became no more than a Minor School.  His brothers, Achamian knew, would fight themselves to extinction to prevent that from happening.  They would hunt both of them without relenting, and they would kill them if they could. They would not listen to reasons... And the name Drusas Achamian, would become a curse in the dark halls of Atyersus.
Butwhat was this other than greed or jealousy?  The Second Apocalypse was imminent. Hadn't the time come to arm all the Three Seas?  Hadn't Seswatha himself bid them share their arsenal before the shadow fell?
He had...
And wouldn't this make Achamian the most faithful of all Mandate Schoolmen?

Glimpses of Kellhus, striding as a god across fields of war, laying low hosts of Sranc, striking dragons from the sky, closing with the resurrected No-God, with dread Mog-Pharau...
He's our saviour!  I know it
But what if Esmenet were right?  What if Achamian were merely the test?  Like old, evil Shikol in The Tractate, offering Inri Sejenus his thighbone sceptre, his army, his harem, everything save his crown, to stop preaching...

Prophet and sorceror.  The Tusk called such men Shaman.

Achamian wiped his tears on his shoulder. Something unimaginable was about to happen, something historians, philosophers, and theologians would argue for thousands of years - if years or anything else survived.  And the acts of Drusas Achamian would loom so very large.
He would simply give.  Without expectation.
His School.  His calling. His life...
The Gnosis would be his sacrifice.

... it might as well have ceased to exist under the Kianene.

A book was never "read".  Here, as elsewhere, language betrayed the true nature of the activity.  To say that a book was read was to make the same mistake as the gambler who crowed about winning as though he'd taken it by force of hand or resolve.  To toss the number-sticks was to seize a moment of helplessness, nothing more.  But to open a book was by far the more profound gamble.  To open a book was not only to seize a moment of helplessness, not only to relinquish a jealous handful of heartbeats to the unpredictable mark of another man's quill, it was to allow oneself to be written.  For what was a book if not a long consecutive surrender to the movements of another man's soul.
Achamian could think of no abandonment of self more profound.

... a Mandate Schoolman, a Gnostic Sorceror-of-the-Rank, a War-Cant Master.  He was as a mask held before the sun...
...he was s Scion of Seswatha, a Disciple of Noshainrau the White. He was the slayer of Skafra, mightiest of the Wracu.  He had pitched his sing against the dread heights of Golgotterath.  He had stood proud and impenitent before Mog-Pharau himself...

Like angry smiths, they punished the anvil

...the ends of the earth shall be wracked by the howls of the wicked, and the idols shall be cast down and shattered, stone against stone.  And the demons of the idolaters shall hold open their mouths, like starving lepers, for no man living answer their outrageous hunger.
- 16:4:22, THE WITNESS OF FANE

Though you lose you soul, you shall win the world
- MANDATE CATECHISM

Kellhus tells Akka he can see the Mark.  Akka wants him to prove it.  Serwe remembers sleeping with Akka, but seems to thin it was Kellhus - the Gods move as men.

Akka gets his Wathi Doll out.  It has a soul trapped in it.  With the right words one of the few can awaken the doll.
Kellhus of course wakes the doll.

Quote

... something moved from within...
...Serwe understood it was a soul, a self-moving soul...

Interesting choice of words. 

How does one learn innocence?  How does one teach ignorance?  For to be them is to know them not.  And yet they are the immovable point from the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion, the rule of all wisdom and folly.  They are the Absolute
- ANONYMOUS, THE IMPROMPTA

Quote

...Backbiting, petty jealousies, resentments, arguments, and third-party arbitrations simply belonged to the market of men.
But with Kellhus, it was different.  Somehow he managed to browse the market without opening his purse.  Almost from the beginning they'd recognised him as the Judge - including Xinemus, who was the titular head of their fire.  No doubt there was an uncertainty about him, a capriciousness appropriate to his brilliance, but these were simply departures from a profound and immovable centre.  Intelligence, as penetrating as any in near or far antiquity.  Compassion, as broad as Inrau's and yet somehow far deeper - a benevolence born of understanding rather than forgiveness, as though he could see through the delinquent rush of thought and passion to the still point of innocence within each soul.  And words!  Analogies that seized reality and burned it from the inside out...
He possessed, Achamian sometimes thought, what the poet Protathis claimed all men should strive for: the hand of Triamis, the intellect of Ajencis, and the heart of Sejenus.
And others thought this as well.

Love is lust made meaningful.  Hope is hunger made human

How does one learn innocence?  How does one teach ignorance?  For to be them is to know them not.  And yet they are the immovable point from the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion, the rule of all wisdom and folly.  They are the Absolute

...Soon, Achamian realised from time to time, he would have nothing left to give Kellhus - save the Gnosis.

Which he could not give, of course.  But he found it hard to resist wondering what Kellhus with his godlike intellect would make of it.  Thankfully, the Gnosis was a language for which the Prince possessed no tongue.

"The man's a thick-skinned lout," Achamian said crossly.  "Mockery is a gift between friends. A gift.
The Prince whirled.  "Is it?" he cred.  "Or is it an excuse?"

...Backbiting, petty jealousies, resentments, arguments, and third-party arbitrations simply belonged to the market of men.
But with Kellhus, it was different.  Somehow he managed to browse the market without opening his purse.  Almost from the beginning they'd recognised him as the Judge - including Xinemus, who was the titular head of their fire.  No doubt there was an uncertainty about him, a capriciousness appropriate to his brilliance, but these were simply departures from a profound and immovable centre.  Intelligence, as penetrating as any in near or far antiquity.  Compassion, as broad as Inrau's and yet somehow far deeper - a benevolence born of understanding rather than forgiveness, as though he could see through the delinquent rush of thought and passion to the still point of innocence within each soul.  And words!  Analogies that seized reality and burned it from the inside out...
He possessed, Achamian sometimes thought, what the poet Protathis claimed all men should strive for: the hand of Triamis, the intellect of Ajencis, and the heart of Sejenus.
And others thought this as well.

...And somehow the Schoolman simply knew these people wouldn't go away.
I'm no different, he thought, feeling the perplexing twinge of insights into things already known.  I simply sit closer to the fire...
Their reasons were his reasons.  He knew this.
There grounds were inchoate and innumerable: grief, temptation, remorse, confusion.  They watched out of weariness, out of clandestine hope and fear, out of fascination and delight.  But more than anything, they watched out of necessity.
They watched because they knew something was about to happen.

"...And then we suffer, for we feel the ache for the blessed, the sting of the cursed.  We no longer see, we witness" ...
..."When we witness, we testify, and when we testify we make ourselves responsible for what we see.  And that - that - is what it means to belong"...
"...This world owns you.  You belong, whether you want to or not.  Why do we suffer?  Why do the wretched take their own lives?  Because the world, no matter how cursed, owns us.  Because we belong.

..."How long has it been since you've contacted Atyersus?  Weeks? Months?"
"What is it with -"
"You're waiting, Akka.  You're waiting to see what he becomes."
"Kellhus?"
"She turned her face away, lowered her ear to his heart.  "He's a prophet."

It was strange to be known - truly known.  To be awaited rather than anticipated.  To be accepted instead of believed.  To be half another's elaborate habits.  To see oneself continually foreshadowed in another's eyes.
And it was strange to know...
...Details.  Simple enough in isolation, but terrifying and mysterious in their sum.  A mystery that he knew...
Was that not love?  To know, to trust a mystery...

"...What could the outrage of a soft-skinned concubine mean to a man such as him?  Just one more thing to be broken.  She knew the futility, that the animal within would grovel, shriek, would place soothing lips around any man's cock for a moment of mercy - that it would do anything, sate any hunger, to survive.  She'd been enlightened.
Submission.  Truth lay in submission.

... something moved from within...
...Serwe understood it was a soul, a self-moving soul...

Mercy... At last mercy...

Love is lust made meaningful.  Hope is hunger made human
- AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN

How does one learn innocence?  How does one teach ignorance?  For to be them is to know them not.  And yet they are the immovable point from the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion, the rule of all wisdom and folly.  They are the Absolute
- ANONYMOUS, THE IMPROMPTA