Finished the book, glad to be through, WP will be the longest of our Slog.
EDIT: Nearly forgot this part:
“Thousands of years ago, when the Dûnyain first found—”
“After the ancient wars?” Kellhus eagerly interrupted. “When we were still refugees?”
So, they do teach young Kellhus at least something of ancient history...
. . . even though the skin-spies were exposed relatively early in the course of the Holy War, most believed the Cishaurim rather than the Consult to be responsible. This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
I found the most interesting thing to be the above, the epigraph of chapter 19.
While I have reservations about the Serwë as a god-maker, yet this chapter begins with her and Kellhus is presenting her with the rhetoric of her "meaning."
But then there is the part with Akka:
After three hundred years, he, Drusas Achamian, had rediscovered the Consult. After two thousand years, he, Drusas Achamian, had witnessed the return of an Anasûrimbor. Anagkë, the Whore of Fate, had chosen him for these burdens! It wasn’t his place to ask why. Nor could such questions relieve him of his burden.
I am not really on board with Akka as Anagkë's agent. More like, Seswatha's really. I've always maintained that the parallel between Seswatha and Akka is somewhat strong. Gnostic sorcerer, once friend of an Anasûrimbor emperor then estranged, partly by the love of a favored wife.
“You are the first, Chigra,” Skeaös wheezed—an ambient, horrifying whisper. “And you will be the last . . .”
The first what? The first to resist the Consult?