The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing, #1)

by R. Scott Bakker

How could sunlight, broken across the back of rushing waters, be so beautiful?

What comes before determines what comes after. Dûnyain monks spent their lives immersed in the study of this principle, illuminating the intangible mesh of cause and effect that determined every happenstance and minimizing all that was wild and unpredictable.

His surroundings inhabited him, possessed him, until he was moved by all things at once—the creak of limbs, the endless permutations of water over stones. These things wracked him with the strength of tides.

I’m not, he realized, the man I once was.

A cascade of image and passion accompanied each, transforming mute ink into fragmentary worlds.

Answers are like opium: the more you imbibe, the more you need. Which is why the sober man finds solace in mystery.”