Chepheramunni has died, but he has no face. Eleazaras is overcome - he thinks the Cishaurim know everything.
Akka and Xinemus are on their way into Caraskand. Somehow they are not detected by the Fanim, and get inside, to the complete bewilderment of the defenders.
Kellhus is hanging upside down from the Umiaki tree, strapped to Serwe's corpse.
Cnaiur is watching, surrounded by the Inrithi
Dog-eyed drunks!
. He can hear Kellhus' voice, and answers it.
Is the voice real, or just his internal monologue? We've had passages like this before, where it is implied Kellhus is speaking to Cnaiur, without actually speaking. Is this just Cnaiur's madness, or something more?
Cnaiur gave up Kellhus, but they got the wrong wife.
"They were supposed to kill the whore!"
Akka is on his way to Esmi. He recognises the look in the eyes of the men he passes.
The look of Apocalypse
Xin is blind, but could see the Cishaurim 'seeing'
Achamian pursed his lips, troubled by the fear-to-hope tone of the Marshal's voice.
"You did see," he said carefully, "in a manner... There's many of seeing. And all of us possess eyes that never breach skin. Men are wrong to think nothing lies between blindness and sight."
"And the Cishaurim?" Xinemus pressed. "Is that... Is that how they-"
"The Cishaurim are masters of this interval. They blind themselves, they say to better see the World Between. According to some, it's the key to their metaphysics."
What is the 'World Between'? 'Tell me what you see' Cishaurim?
They are brought before Proyas. Who grabs Xinemus like a child, and weeps, and begs forgiveness. Xin says Akka will fix his eyes.
Proyas then asks Akka for forgiveness
Though Achamian heard the words clearly, they seemed to reach him as though from a great distance, their speaker too distant to truly matter. No, he realised, he couldn't forgive, not because his heart had hardened, but because it has receded. He saw they boy, Prosha, whom he'd loved, but he saw a stranger as well, a man who walked questionable and competing paths. A man of faith.
A murderous fanatic.
How could he think these men were his brothers?
Proyas tells them Kellhus is dead.
Cnaiur is in the great bazaar. He raises a knife to his throat. The suggestion could be that he is committing suicide, but the passage can also be read that he is cutting a swazond for Serwe.
Kellhus lives. He 'speaks' to a voice - his father? He dreams of two figures on a ridge - a man and a tree. The man is compared to an ape and a priest, to a monk and a beast... The man speaks the No-God words
WHAT DO YOU SEE?... TELL ME...
Akka comes to Esmenet.
\he would hold her while she sobbed. He would speak his every thought, tell her what she'd meant to him through his captivity. He would tell her that he, a Mandate Schoolman, would take her as his wife - his wife! And her eyes would weep wonder... He almost laughed with joy.
I thought they were already man and wife.
She tells him she carries Kellhus' child.
Akka heads for the Umiaki.
...His first thought was to set it alight, to transform it into a blazing beacon of his wrath - a funeral pyre for the betrayer, the seducer! But he could sense the absences that encircled the man, the three Chorae the Men of the Tusk had bound to his bronze ring. And he could see that he suffered...
The Shrial Knights guard the tree, but thousands surround them singing hymns and dirges.
He rages at Kellhus.
"You've made a whore of her, Kellhus... You've made a whore of my Esmi..."
"Achamian" Kellhus whispered.
The words winded him, struck him dumb with horror.
No... He's not allowed to speak...
"He said you would come" Spoken from a dead woman's cheek.
Who said Akka would come?
Kellhus tells him he can see the Consult. He has seen the No-God. Akka should ask the Nascenti what lies in the garden. How can Akka hear this, and no-one else?
Proyas awakens. Akka is there. He tells Proyas that Xinemus was blinded to coerce him. The Scarlet Spires are terrified of what they cannot see. Kellhus cannot die, only Proyas can understand this.
Proyas responds with something approaching mockery. Akka compares him to Shikol who condemned Inri Sejenus.
"Shikol was wrong... I am right!"
It all came down to truth
Proyas explains how he has come to doubt Kellhus. He says that Cnaiur
In some ways, he's as extraordinary as Kellhus...
He found Esmi in Kellhus' bed. As prince of 'nothing', Kellhus is transgressing caste - a very serious matter in the Three Seas.
Akka talks of the Apocalypse again. Proyas shakes his head.
The Schoolman silenced him with an outstretched hand. "You once asked me, Proyas, whether I had more than Dreams to warrant my fears. Do you remember?"
All too well. It was the same night Achamian has asked him to write to Maithanet.
"I remember, yes."
Without warning, Achamian stood and stepped out onto the balcony. He vanished into the morning glare only to reappear moments afterward, hoisting something dark in his hands.
By some coincidence, the sun vanished the moment Proyas reached out to shield his eyes.
He stared at the soil- and blood-stained bundle. A pungent odour slowly filled the room.
"Look at it!" Achamian commanded, brandishing it. "Look! Then send you quickest riders out to the Great Names!"
Proyas shows him Maithanet's letter.
"Call them," Achamian said. "Summon the others to Council."
Gone was the golden morning. Rain poured from black skies.
