But more and more the different eye seems to open, one that has perplexed her for many years—that frightens her like an unwanted yen for perversion.

"He says it himself, Every life is a cipher..." Another deep inhalation. "A riddle."

"And you think Seswatha's life is such."

"I know it is."

Mandate Schoolmen claim to relive Seswatha's life, but this is only partially true. In fact, we dream only portions, the long trauma of the First Apocalypse. All we dream is the spectacle. 'Seswatha,' the old Mandate joke goes, 'does not shit.' The banalities—the substance of his life—is missing... The truth of his life is missing."

His hatred of Kellhus she finds understandable, though she herself bears no grudge against her stepfather. She barely knows the Aspect-Emperor, and those rare times she found herself alone with him on the Andiamine Heights—twice—he seemed at once radiant and tragic, perhaps the most immediate and obvious soul she had ever encountered.

Bundling a blanket about her nakedness, she crawls to the dim bed of coals, where she sits, rocking herself between clutched arms and rough folds, trying to squeeze away the memory of skidding skin, the wheezing of old man exertions.

...

"We have made our first mistake together," he says, as though it were something significant. "We will not make it again."

"Scalper!" the lone traveller cried out. His voice possessed the gravel of an old officer's bawl.

The one the secret voice had told him to drive away.

If he fails, the secret voice said, he will die.

Anasûrimbor Kelmomas smiled what seemed his first true smile of the day.

“When did you realize you didn’t possess the strength,” Kellhus asked, “that more was needed to avert the No-God’s second coming?”
“From the very first I recognized that it was probable,” Moënghus said. “But I spent years assessing the possibilities, gathering knowledge. When the first of the Thought came to me, I was quite unprepared.”

“In this world,” Moënghus said, “there’s nothing more precious than our blood—as you have no doubt surmised. But the children we bear by worldborn women lack the breadth of our abilities. Maithanet is not Dûnyain. He could do no more than prepare the way.”

“You speak as though the Thought were a living thing.”
He could see nothing in the eyeless face.
“Because it is.” Moënghus stepped between the two hanging skin-spies. Though blind, he unerringly reached out to run a finger down one of the many hanging chains. “Have you heard of a game played in southern Nilnamesh, a game called viramsata, or ‘many-breaths’?”

Let him think I waver.

“Set aside your conviction,” Moënghus said, “for the feeling of certainty is no more a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom. Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived.”
Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands, wondered that they could be light and yet cast no light, throw no shadow … The light of delusion.

For the Dûnyain, it was axiomatic: what was compliant had to be isolated from what was unruly and intractable. Kellhus had seen it many times, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought: The Warrior-Prophet’s assassination. The rise of Anasûrimbor Moënghus to take his place. The apocalyptic conspiracies. The counterfeit war against Golgotterath. The accumulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Sranc. The Three Seas crashing into char and ruin.
The Gods baying like wolves at a silent gate.
Perhaps his father had yet to apprehend this. Perhaps he simply couldn’t see past the arrival of his son. Or perhaps all this—the accusations of madness, the concern over his unanticipated turn—was simply a ruse. Either way, it was irrelevant.

Serwë assailed him first, her limbs and blade a whirring blur. But he stopped her with blue-flashing hands, swatted aside her slender figure …
Just as her brother descended, slashing at impossible palms, spinning and kicking, lunging and probing—only to be seized about the throat, to gape and thrash as the blind man lifted him off his feet, to blister and burn as blue light consumed his head, made a candle of his body. The thing’s face cramped open and the blind man threw him slack to the ground.

“I am dying, Nayu.” Hot whispers in his ear. “I need your strength …”

Kellhus grinned. “They can’t see that gold is only relevant insofar as it plays a role within our expectations—insofar as we make it relevant …

He blinked, frowning … Was that the Mark he sensed?
A sorcerous bird?

The Warrior-Prophet turned to him, clutched his shoulder with a shining hand. “The Truth of Here is that it is Everywhere. And this, Akka, is what it means to be in love: to recognize the Here within the other, to see the world through another’s eyes. To be here together.”

Whenever Achamian asked him why he continued to march on Shimeh when the Fanim were no more than a distraction, he always said, “If I’m to succeed my brother, I must reclaim his house.”

Inrau had found his grotto in the shrine of Onkis, the Singer-in-the-Dark, the Aspect who stood at the heart of all men, moving them to forever grasp far more than they could hold.

Some were grotesque, like the severed head of Onkis upon a golden tree [...]

The idol was worked in white marble, eyes closed with the sunken look of the dead. At first glance she appeared to be the severed head of a woman, beautiful yet vaguely common, mounted on a pole. Anything more than a glance, however, revealed the pole to be a miniature tree, like those cultivated by the ancient Norsirai, only worked in bronze. Branches poked through her parted lips and swept across her face—nature reborn through human lips. Other branches reached behind to break through her frozen hair. Her image never failed to stir something within him, and this is why he always returned to her: she was this stirring, the dark place where the flurries of his thought arose. She came before him.

Her symbol is the Copper Tree (which also happens to be the device of the legendary Nonman Mansion of Siol, though no link has been established).

Specifically the mansion of Siöl. Onkis' version has the tree growing through a woman's head, though. Which inclines me to wonder if perhaps it's a reference to Cû’jara-Cinmoi's forgiveness of Nin'janjin, a mercy which led directly to the womb-plague which claimed as its first victim Cû’jara-Cinmoi's own wife. It'd be funny if the symbol of the goddess of compassion was actually a warning about the dangers of extending compassion to those who don't merit it...

Onkis is also described as "a prophetess, not of the future, but of the motivations of Men", which makes her sound a bit like a Dûnyain. Arguably, of course, that's what 'compassion' really means: understanding the movement of others' souls. It does not necessarily have to imply 'being nice'.

I think what links them are the concept of ambition (IIRC, Onkis is said to tempt men to always try to grasp more than they can hold - as Cu'jara Cinmoi did in conquering Viri) and the way in which our present choices are constrained by history (i.e. they seem to spread out freely like the branches of a tree, but are in fact held within strict bounds by where the tree first rooted - by what has come before us).

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.