I've been set on the voice being Samarmus since rereading the Judging Eye:
The young Prince-Imperial was careful to wipe the olive oil from the rail. Then he howled the way a little boy should.
Why? the voice asked. The secret voice.
Why didn’t you kill me sooner?
“Holy Empress, please!” Pansulla exclaimed. “This … this talk … it does not answer our fears! At the very least you must give us something to tell the people!”
I felt like this scene was a little contrived. This dude really came before the Empress and even taunts her because he wants to know what to say?
“Most Holy Empress,” Lord Sankas said into the ensuing silence. “I fear the situation with your brother-in-law grows untenable …”
And this seemed a little premature. What was happening at this point between Maithanet and Esmenet?
Kelmomas never understood why she disdained using people—Father certainly never hesitated— but he adored the way it gave them more time alone. Again and again, he got to hug her and to kiss her and to cuddle-cuddle …
Ever since he had murdered Samarmas.
I love the passages that get capped off by a sentence that changes direction completely like a punch in the gut. This has always been one of my favorites.
If Father is gone … the secret voice dared whisper. “It would appear so,” she said, speaking about a crack in her voice. “I fear it has something to do with your uncle.”
Maybe Kellhus feels safe enough to contact them again now that Maithanet is dead? I kinda wanna revisit my Maithanet/Consult theory.
“All of us have inherited our Father’s faculties in some mangled measure. Me … I possess his sensitivities, but I utterly lack his unity … his control . My natures blow through me—hungers, glorious hungers!— unfettered by the little armies of shame that hold the souls of others in absolute captivity. Father’s reason mystifies me. Mother’s compassion makes me howl with laughter. I am the World’s only unbound soul …”
This is a great section for so many reasons. The dialogue always shines in this series when the hedonism/self-restraint dichotomy is brought up. But it also seems to reveal Inrilatas is skipping the Dunyain "war for circimstance" and just straight up jumping to the Absolute.
He considers himself free because he does not follow the social norms of his environment. We have many extreme examples of that in history, such as Libertines and Levayan Satanists. The religious response would be we are only truly free when we unhinge ourselves from our base impulses. And Bakker's series indeed argues that Inrilatas' choices are actually tied to our nature. The Dunyain recognize this and seek to free themselves from animal appetite. So I think he only grasps half of the Dunyain program and truly is mad, he's just able to rationalize his madness in a warped form of logic because of his intellect. Then again, we know the Outside seeps into the Ground through the cracks of madness - perhaps underneath it all, Inrilatas understands this and cleaves at his own sanity as a backdoor to the Absolute.
On the other hand,
what if Inrilatas is right?. If heaping damnation upon oneself is the is the path to a self-moving soul, what better way to grasp the Absolute than unleashing the Second Apocalypse?
“The God punishes us according to the degree we resemble him.”
Inrilatas towered before him.
“And you resemble him, little brother. You resemble …”
What was this trap he had set for him? How could understanding, insight, capture?
“No!”the boy cried. “I am not mad! I am not like you!”
Laughter, warm and gentle. So like Mother when she is lazy and wishes only to tease and cuddle her beautiful little son. "Look,” Anasûrimbor Inrilatas commanded. “Look at this heap of screams you call the world, and tell me you would not add to them—pile them to the sky!”
He has the Strength, the secret voice whispered.
“I would …”Anasûrimbor Kelmomas admitted. “I would.” His limbs trembled. His heart hung as if plummeting through a void. What was this crashing within him? What was this release?
The Truth!
Like Kellhus' children, Maithanet is only half Dunyain. Who's to say he doesn't suffer from the same deformities as the rest of his nephews and nieces? Maybe that's why Kellhus doesn't trust him, at least not with the Empire, and Bakker has been beating us over the head with it the whole time.
The Men of the Three Seas, he had come to realize, warred without mercy or honour . Where the dynastic skirmishes his Zeümi kinsmen called war were bound by ancient code and custom, Fanayal and his men recognized no constraints that he could see, save that of military expediency and exhaustion.
They fought the way Sranc fought.
Final crackpot for the day: the Inchoroi created Men (maybe just the Ketyai) as their final weapon race to destroy the Cunoroi. The Nonman Tutelage was an effort to turn Men away from their masters and neutralize their genocidal purpose.