Because zero was everywhere, measure was everywhere-as was arithmetic. Submit to the rule of another and you will measure as he measures. Zero was not simply nothing; it was also identity, for nothing is nothing but the absence of difference, and the absence of difference is nothing but the same.
Thus the Survivor began calling this new principle Zero, for he distrusted the name the old Wizard had given it ...
God.
The great error of the Dûnyain, he could see now, was to conceive the Absolute as something passivem to think it a vacancy, dumb and insensate, awaiting their generational arrival. The great error of the worldborn, he could see, was to conceive it as something active, to think it just another soul, a flattering caricature of their own souls. Thus the utility of Zero, something that was not, something that pinched all existence, every origin and destination, into a singular point, into One. Something that commanded all measure, not through arbitrary dispensations of force, but by virtue of structure ... system ...
Logos.
The God that was Nature. The God that every soul could be, if only for the span of a single insight ...
The Zero-God. The absence that was the cubit of all creation.
In Inrithi tradition, the unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and immanent being responsible for existence, of which Gods (and in some strains Men) are but “aspects.” In the Kiünnat tradition, the God is more an abstract placeholder than anything else. In the Fanim tradition, the God is the unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and transcendent being responsible for existence (thus the “Solitary God”), against which the Gods war for the hearts of men.
In the Inrithi tradition, the Hundred Gods are thought to be aspects of the God (whom Inri Sejenus famously called “the Million Souled”), much the way various personality traits could be said to inhabit an individual. In the far more variegated Kiünnat tradition, the Hundred Gods are thought to be independent spiritual agencies, prone to indirectly intervene in the lives of their worshippers.
I know that often, people were of the mind that the Solitary God was the true God. I had doubts about that from the get go. Seeing how Yatwer has such power and wed this with Koringhus' revelation that the Zero-God and the Absolute are the same, lead me to the fact that the Kiünnat is the real truth.
This makes sense, since it is the ancient worship, that which is least touched by the tainted and changed Tusk.
The Absolute dwells within your Gaze. You ... a frail, worldborn slip, heavy with child, chased across the throw of kings and nations, you are the Nail of the World, the hook from which all things hang.
But even this metaphor, “nail,” is faulty, a result of what happens when we confuse our notation with what is noted. Like the numeral “zero” used by the Nilnameshi mathematicians to work such wonders, ignorance is the occluded frame of all discourse, the unseen circumference of our every contention. Men are forever looking for the one point, the singular fulcrum they can use to dislodge all competing claims. Ignorance does not give us this. What it provides, rather, is the possibility of comparison, the assurance that not all claims are equal. And this, Ajencis would argue, is all that we need. For so long as we admit our ignorance, we can hope to improve our claims, and so long as we can improve our claims, we can aspire to the Truth, even if only in rank approximation.
The Zero principle, that if you are Zero, everything else is One. This is how you achieve that absolute. Zero fits into One infinity. Therefor, as Zero, you are everywhere, even if you are nowhere. This is how the God, errr, the Absolute is infinite. This is how everything comes together, if you are Zero, all other things are One, that is, apart from Zero. Additionally, Zero is the cubit of creation, because, as
every point's origin, it is the fundamental building block of everything. All things start at Zero. In other words, Zero is the ultimate Darkness that Comes Before. There is no more fundamental nature to things. If you are at Zero, you are the fount of Everything. That is the Absolute. That which comes before everything (including itself).
For whatever reason, the Three Seas seemed particularly prone to prophets and their tricks. Where Zeüm had remained faithful to the old Kiünnat ways, albeit in their own elliptical fashion, the Ketyai—the Tribe entrusted with the Holy Tusk, no less!—seemed bent on tearing down their ancient truths and replacing them with abstraction and fancy.
"Fane?" the woman cried, her incredulity so thoughtless, so complete, that feminine timbre blotted out all other sound. "Fane is a fraud, what happens when philosophers fall to worshipping their fevers!"
Oh, yes, indeed. Fane is but the tail end of the Inchoroi manipulation of the Tusk (remember, Fane was Inrithi at first). Inri Sejanus a step on that trail as well. They are all perversions, twists of the Truth faith. Yatwer, Ajolki, and the rest of the Hundred
are Deamons. The Solitary God is nothing but an
idea.
The true faith is in Zeüm. It's no wonder why they have had no prophets there. They don't need them. They have basically been right the whole time. It's all the Ketyai that have been wrong. And they have been
made that way.
The question is, what happens with Mimara? I actually think that somehow, when she gives birth, something miraculous will happen with the child. If Mimara is the Zero point, if she is the cubit, the measure, then what she makes, what she births, must be the True Savior? Maybe, maybe not...