Easier to attribute that to authorial inconsistency, to me.
Kellhus is laying the passage of events out for exposition to the reader rather than any necessity of info exchange or semantic maneuvering between the characters, imo.
Perhaps there is some deeper game and this subtle clue is the key. Not buying in though.
I think, Kellhus and Moenghus were playing the same game, and likely a much more skilled version of:
What occurs with Maithanet and Inrilatas.
I hate to derail the thread further but what fills the gap within the discrepancy between Aurang's perspective and Kellhus?
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I just wish there had been direct validation in the latter half of Kellhus' narrative, if our nerdanels aren't to be warranted :(.
Yes I believe Maithanet's letter about Achamian was just he and Moenghus, as a Dunyain would say "Moving to exploit a fortuitous correspondence of cause." They did not move Achamian there, nor did they assume the Mandate would be there. But they immediately recognized the opportunity for what it was nonetheless.
The idea that when Moenghus says "translating" he means translating location for location ala a Psukhari version of the Meta-Gnostic Cant of Transposition is interesting. Certainly, we've seen him bend the distances between spaces before, as Mallahet, when he allows the Emperor and Skauras to speak face-to-face despite Skauras still being in Shigek
I also completely agree that there is a strong possibility that the Cishaurim attack on the Scarlet Spires was at Moenghus' bidding. In fact there's kind of a weakness in his story here: Why would the Cishaurim believe the Scarlet Spires were behind the Skin Spies? The Cishaurim can see the mark of sorcery as well as any of the Few, and have no reason to believe the Scarlet Spires have suddenly learned how to hide their mark.
Further (and this actually lends weight to some of my upcoming points), despite the impressiveness of their ability to penetrate to the heart of the Scarlet Spires and the advantage of surprise...they still had to deal with the fact that they were in the heart of the Scarlet Spires, completely surrounded by the enemy, who would soon beset them from all sides as soon a the shock wore off. Those Cishaurim were sent there to die, and they probably knew it. The kind of devotion that would lead men to such a sacrifice simply to provoke a fight is something we normally see reserved only for Dunyain
@ Curethan - I'm really torn about the difference in sight between Kell/Moe. I think it might be somewhat plausible that using snakes to see makes you see even better. I wonder what the limit is on Moe's seeing-through-critters? Could he watch Kellhus through a Sranc's eyes in snowy north?
The scenario outlines by Kellhus is plausible in this regard. Snakes have fairly poor eyesight, and on top of that, lack the vast amount of brain space a human uses to analyze the differences between faces, which is an absolutely crucial Dunyain technique.
The problem is there are enough uncertainties that Kellhus' story being wrong is also plausible. For one thing, Cishaurim don't seem to have face-blindness (a real medical condition actually, that leaves sufferers unable to tell people apart by their faces). So either the lack of facial interpretation hardware in a snake brain is irrelevant in the metaphysics of their bonding to the psukhari-OR the Cishaurim upon losing their eyes gain new kinds of sight. A Dunyain that could see a soul could be just as powerful a manipulator of men as one that saw the movements of the facial muscles, if not more so.
Four things bother me about the idea that Moenghus lost his perceptive abilities with his original eyes. One may be utterly meaningless thought.
1. The Cishaurim that Kellhus met at the fall of Caraskand, who was apparently so indoctrinated towards Moenghus that he was willing to die simply to deliver a message for him. The message, tellingly, ending with "the Logos is without beginning or end." Moenghus ensnaring those around him by sharing partial revelations of Dunyain philosophy, trading bits of truth for leverage with which to control others, is classic Dunyain, and Kellhus has been doing it since he met the tracker in Kuniuri.
2. Cememketri says when Mallahet (who we now know to be Moenghus) comes as emissary for Skauras to the Emperor before the Holy War that the Cishaurim esteem Mallahet above all others, that the only reason he has not ascended to the rank of Heresiarch is that the law explicitly forbids a non-Kianene from holding the office. In the same sentence he also expressed dismay at Mallahet/Moenghus's purported tremendous power with the Water, but that's another issue, and could, admittedly, be the result entirely of propaganda.
3. Maithanet serves him unquestioningly. It seems to me that whenever we see two individuals that have more than a little Dunyain in them meet, a struggle for power is inevitable. They seem almost pathologically unable to avoid the attempt to master all circumstances around them, including their fellows. Maithanet was skilled in the Dunyain arts as best as Moenghus was able to do. Maithanet is as a result quite skilled at reading faces, and is only slightly inferior to Kellhus in that regard. If Moenghus had truly lost his ability to read men as a Dunyain does, then he handed a powerful weapon against himself to Maithanet. That Maithanet never decided that he could do better than his defective father and usurped him would seem to me to indicate that Moenghus retained the ability to make others his willing slaves. White-Luck Warrior Spoilers Maithanet certainly seems to be going against Kellhus' apparent will in opposing Esmenet's rule. And this is something that he becomes capable of only after believing he's sniffed weakness in Kellhus' judgement on two matters, those being firstly leaving Inrilatus alive instead of having him drowned as soon as it became apparent he was monstrous, and secondly, putting Esmenet in charge of the Empire in his absence.
As an aside, even if Moenghus did lose his Dunyain insight with his eyes, he could have just as easily assume the role of shadow ruler over the Cishaurim through Maithanet, if he so chose. We clearly see he commanded Maithanet's devotion, and Maithanet could have easily been crafted as a puppet ruler over the Kianene and the Cishaurim through which Moenghus could work his will, just as Maithanet becomes his instument in the Thousand Temples.
4. At some point in his exchange with Kellhus he explains "I have not my eyes with me. I walk this place from memory."
Not very long afterwards at all, his "eyes" (the snakes) pop out of the shadows they'd been keeping to to avoid Kellhus' scrutiny the instant Moenghus needed them. Moenghus is a blatant liar. And it's possible that this has greater significance, that this is a littler literary hint, and that the snakes were not the only set of eyes he was lying about. His apparent admission that Kellhus was correct and that he lost the greater share of his power over the world born with his eye sight could have been just as much an outright lie as "I have not my eyes with me." was in the other context.
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@ Francis Buck - As for Moe getting his followers to die for him, that really clashes with Kellhus' assertion that Moe only had power when he had the ear of the great. This makes me think that Moe's water level is really really irrelevant so long as he's got others to do it.
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Back to Moe, why does he lack the gnosis? He would certainly know about it and would have all the means to capture/seduce a mandati, thus: 1) the psukhe prevents his acquisition of the gnosis or 2 he) doesn't want it. I'm thinking its #2, Kellhus gets to be damned for the sake of all the rest of the Dunyain/World.
Firstly, brilliant to take the tact that Moe's water level is irrelevant, that is a wonderful insight. Remember that the Scarlet Spires refer to Cishaurim attacks as "Concerts."
What does every Concert need? A Conductor.
Moe is a Cishaurim Conductor, and the level of his water is irrelevant if he can get his Cishaurim concerts to sing in perfect unison or use them to weave complex meta-water spells (such as translation/teleportation, opening the door into the Scarlet Spires' war council) together in a way that other Cishaurim Conductors cannot. Since the other schools are so individualistic and egotistic, they might never realize that the Cishaurim are more collective in their approach... The idea is delicious and it is hiding in plain sight.
A very interesting idea and a plausible alternate take on his facility with the water that would make the things he said to Kellhus about calling, scrying, and translating being the elements of the Psukhe he had "some facility" with merely half truths meant to mislead instead of outright lies. A very Dunyain tactic.
This might also go some way to explain the apparently drastic discrepancy between the power of the weakest practitioners of the Psukhe and the most powerful. Perhaps the lowest level of them suck at Concerts, where as the Primaries and the Incandati are prodigies at it, and get far more of a boost from it than the lower level psukhari.
Still, I'm not entirely convinced. It's internally consistent and has some fun implications, but there's not enough hard textual evidence there to make me a true believer yet. Could be though. I won't be shocked if it turns out to be true somehow.
If Kellhus made an error kicking a skull, Moenghus made a lightyears-worse mistake letting someone blind him for something he didn't understand.
I've always taken it that it's literally impossible to apprehend the Psukhe on a fundamental level without being blinded. So it's possible it was just a calculated risk he had to take.
Alternately, perhaps they are compatible and Moe has levels of control of the Psukhe that Kellhus can't even guess at, as theorized, because he has been misled by Moe.
And yet he's still undone by a madman with a Chorae. There's just no escaping that quandry with sorcery.
Is Maithanet not an example of hybrid vigor? Aspect Emperor Spoilers: He's far more stable and capable than Kellhus' children and seems to even retain Dunyain physical abilities, unlike Inrilatus, who has his mother's bones.
That said hybrid vigor is something that occurs after a relatively short period of inbreeding is mixed with outbreeding. That's not quite the same as two thousand years of genetic drift and selective breeding in a tiny base population.
Spoilers rest of series below.
Probably already been said but i imagine this little mystery might be revealed when Meppa retains some of his memory, maybe he was on the strike.
WAS Maithanet comprehensively inferior to Kellhus? If some of Maithanet and Inrilatas's speculation turns out to be true...Maithanet was more objective and logical than Kellhus, who has been compromised.
It's a possibility.