Chapter 10:
"I saw you, Horse-King. I know you called to me... And yet I rode on." He glared like someone speaking against a mob of baser instincts. "I will be forever finding my way out from your shadow."
Perhaps foreshadowing here too, that Sorweel and Zsoronga will form an alliance after the Great Ordeal?
And that, Sorweel suddenly realized, was the Aspect-Emperor's goal: to have a believer become Satakhan.
We know Zeüm is important (it has to be) and apparently it is to Kellhus too. If this is true, the Great Ordeal can't simply be
completely sacrificed, there must be a plan for some to survive...
"A mighty lord died here..." he heard the man mutter.
But which is a mystery I have yet to solve.
She draws a pouch from the pit below her stomach, raises it pinched in fingers of filth and bone. She smiles. Tears of blood stream from her earthen eyes. The watching men gasp for the sorrow of a mother's endless Giving...
Wow, either this is just some symbols of Yatwer reused, or telling us something very deep about chorae. The allusion to the uterus, the tears as blood, all Yatwerian symbols we have seen with Psatma, but here, it brings up interesting points about chorae that have been speculated on before. The connection between chorae and uteri. The connection between a chorae and a tear of god.
He pulled the pouch from his belt. The muck had dried to ash about its edges. He brushed it away with trembling fingers, noticing for the first time the dizzying patterns burned into the age-old leather. Crescents. Crescents within crescents.
Broken circles, he decided, glimpsing the gold-thread circumfixes embroidered along the hem of his own tunic.
Broken circumfixes.
He tugged free the clip of chapped bronze that held its mouth closed. He already knew what it contained, for as King of Sakarpus, he was also High Keeper of the Hoard. Nevertheless, he tipped the pouch so that he might hold it in his callused palm: a sphere of ancient iron...
A Chorae. A holy Tear of God.
What once protected an Anasûrimbor will now protect their enemy? No, not protect, be a weapon?
"That motif... the triple crescent..."
"What about it?" he asked, far too aware of the proximity of her gaze to his groin.
At last her eyes climbed to meet his own. Her look was cool, remote in the way of old and prideful widows.
"That is the Far Antique mark of my family... the Anasûrimbor of Trysë."
Certainly not a coincidence, that they stopped there, that the battle was faught there, that he would find it either. But what does it really mean? That the Anasûrimbor will be undone by their own past?
And he continually doubted...
Kellhus the heir of
certainty, Sorweel the heir of
doubt?
A Narindar proper—a servant of Ajokli, the evil Four-Horned Brother.
Perhaps this is what Kel is as well?
The learned told tales of Sheneor, the least of the three nations divided between the sons of the first ancient Anasûrimbor King, Nanor-Ukkerja I.
I wonder if we are told this because the satchel with the chorae was his?
The Aspect-Emperor leaned back into the glow of his unearthly halo. As always the hearth's twirling light sketched smoky glimpses of doom across the canvas walls behind him. For a heartbeat, the Exalt-General could swear he saw children running...
"Choice," his Lord-and-God said smiling. "Willing...
"Your shackles are cast from this very iron."
I do wonder, what is Proyas' role to be later? There certainly seems to be something to his "ensalvement." Is it that he will eventually have to choose between Akka and Kellhus?
"A brother!" the Successor-Prince whispered with startling violence. "Sakarpus has a brother in Zeüm!"
More foreshadowing a later alliance?
"You are troubled, I know," Kellhus said, grinning at his Exalt-General. "For all your yearning, for all your faith, yours remains a pragmatic soul, Proyas." The slaves continued their silent labour, binding straps and laces. The Aspect-Emperor glanced down at his garb, rolled his eyes as if offering himself up as a poor example. "You have little patience for tools you cannot immediately use."
Is this why Kellhus tells him that Akka's book is all true? To better enslave him with the truth?
"I am Nin'sariccas," the Nonman announced in High Kûniüric, a language Proyas had spent years mastering so he could read The Sagas in their original tongue. "Dispossessed Son of Siol, Emissary of his Most Subtle Glory, Nil'giccas, King of Injor-Niyas..." His bow fell far short of what jnan demanded. "We have ridden long and hard to find you."
I do wonder if they know where Nil'giccas is? Does Kellhus?
A serpentine blink. The preternatural eyes clicked to the Aspect-Emperor's right—to the sorcerous arras, Proyas realized.
Is it just me, or does the Intact Nonman's nature seem much like a Dûnyain, with the pauses and scrutiny?
Proyas was one of few who knew something about their acquisition, how Kellhus, during one of the longer truces that punctuated the Unification Wars, spent several weeks studying with Heramari Iyokus, the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, learning the darkest ways of Anagogic sorcery, the Daimos.
So, I wonder what else Kellhus learned? He has the Gnosis and the Daimos. I always did wonder, is Kellhus capable of figuring out the secrets of the Aporos? I doubt it though.
"Such thefts..." Nin'sariccas said with passionless tact. "Such substitutions. They have happened before."
"Why should you care," Kellhus said, "if your hatred is satisfied, your ancient foe at last destroyed? Ever have Men been ruled by tyrants. Why should you care what soul lies behind our cruelty?"
A single inhuman blink. "May I touch you?"
"Yes."
Again, the pauses, the non-sequiturs. Dûnyain-like perhaps?
