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

by R. Scott Bakker

“No soul moves alone through the world, Leweth. Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of words spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another soul to carry our own.”

If we’re nothing more than our thoughts and passions, and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls, then we are nothing more than those who move us.

“No one’s soul moves alone, Leweth. When one love dies, one must learn to love another.”

Everywhere men grasped and grasped, as though the titles “king,” “shriah,” and “grandmaster” were simply masks worn by the same hungry animal. Avarice, it seemed to him, was the world’s only dimension.

There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others.

Above all the mighty detest change.

“Those who believe thoughtlessly in dangerous times are the first to die.

But every act could be condemned. The same as all bloodlines could be traced to some long-dead king, all deeds could be chased to some potential catastrophe. One need only follow the forks far enough.

If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?

After all, what was the God but the mystery that burdened them all? What was hesitation but a dwelling-within this mystery?

“That’s the horrible fact of sinners. We’re indistinguishable from the righteous.”

How could one not feel isolated, detached, when existence itself answered to their tongue? Where was the hard ground on which one might stand when mere words could sweep everything away?

“The world has had the habit,” Achamian said, “of breaking the back of my promises.”

I submit to your Word, God. I commend my soul to the fierce task that you have laid before me. I shall make a temple of the field of war.

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?

For a moment he wondered what an emperor was to a sparrow. Just another man?

Age forever transformed hope into resentment. What was virile and ambitious in young eyes became impotent and covetous in old.

He did not risk the Empire, only the pretence of one. Empire was the prize, not the wager.

“Priests, augurs, and philosophers all teach us that what we see is smoke. The man I am is but smoke, Mother. The son you birthed is but my mask, one more guise I’ve taken for this wearisome revel of blood and semen you call life. I am what you told me I would be! Emperor. Divine. Not smoke but fire.”

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

Some events mark us so deeply that they find more force of presence in their aftermath than in their occurrence. They are moments that rankle at becoming past, and so remain contemporaries of our beating hearts. Some events are not remembered—they are relived.

But who would have thought that revelations, like meat, could be poisoned by the passage of days?

To flatter another was to humble oneself.

Old women are more reconciled to death than old men. By bringing life to the world, we come to see ourselves as debtors. What’s given is taken.”

The young can never see life for what it is: a knife’s edge, as thin as the breaths that measure it.

“If you were a man, you wouldn’t need to make teachers of everyone who used you.”

Like life, games were governed by rules. But unlike life, games were utterly defined by those rules. The rules were the game, and if one played by different rules, then one simply played a different game. Since a fixed framework of rules determined the meaning of every move as a move, games possessed a clarity that made life seem a drunken brawl by comparison. The proprieties were indubitable, the permutations secure; only the outcome was shrouded.

That life is the God’s lesson, and that even if we undertake to teach impious men, we must be ready to learn from them as well.’

The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?

Only knowing the sources of thought and action allows us to own our thoughts and our actions, to throw off the yoke of circumstance.

“A prince of nothing,” he said.

Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world.

“The man you have killed is gone from the world, Serwë. He exists only here, a scar upon your arm. It is the mark of his absence, of all the ways his soul will not move, and of all the acts he will not commit. A mark of the weight you now bear.”

Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.

“I would merely remind you, my Prince, that when we’re most certain, we’re most certain to be deceived.”

“There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence . . .”

Sleep is never had through wanting. It can’t be grasped like an apple to sate one’s hunger. Sleep is like ignorance or forgetfulness . . . The harder one strives for such things, the further they recede from one’s grasp.”

I am my thoughts, but the sources of my thoughts exceed me. I do not own myself, because the darkness comes before me.”

His heart must cry for vengeance. And you say this because your heart would so cry. But my heart is not your heart. This is why it is a riddle to you.

And I’ve learned to trust the man who hates openly, and to fear only those who hate in secret.

There is no fiercer labour than war.”

“The price of knowledge has been paid,” he said without passion, “and we have not been beggared.” “Perhaps,” Conphas replied, scowling, “but we’re debtors still.”