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

by R. Scott Bakker

Though Leweth was a sturdy man of middle years, for Kellhus he was little more than a child. The fine musculature of his face was utterly untrained, bound as though by strings to his passions. Whatever moved Leweth’s soul moved his expression as well, and after a short time Kellhus needed only to glance at his face to know his thoughts. The ability to anticipate his thoughts, to re-enact the movements of Leweth’s soul as though they were his own, would come later.

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?

World-born men were every bit as simple-minded and as deluded as the trapper had been. Kellhus needed only to utter a few rudimentary truths and they would be moved to wonder. He needed only to assemble these truths into coarse sermons, and they would surrender possessions, lovers, even children.

“All of you—your kinsmen, your wives, your children, even your foes beyond the mountains—cannot see the true sources of their thoughts and deeds. Either they assume they’re the origin or they think it lies somewhere beyond the world—in the Outside, as I’ve heard it called. What comes before you, what truly determines your thoughts and deeds, is either missed altogether or attributed to demons and gods.” The flat eyes and tight teeth of unwanted recollections. My father has already told him this . . . “What comes before determines what comes after,” Kellhus continued. “For the Dûnyain, there’s no higher principle.” “And just what comes before?” Cnaiür asked, trying to force a sneer. “For Men? History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.” Shallow breath. A face freighted by unwanted insights. “And when the strings are seen . . .” “They may be seized.” In isolation this admission was harmless: in some respect all men sought mastery over their fellows. Only when combined with knowledge of his abilities could it prove threatening. If he knew how deep I see . . . How it would terrify them, world-born men, to see themselves through Dûnyain eyes. The delusions and the follies. The deformities. Kellhus did not see faces, he saw forty-four muscles across bone and the thousands of expressive permutations that might leap from them—a second mouth as raucous as the first, and far ...

“If all men are ignorant of the origins of their thoughts . . .” Cnaiür said. Anxious to clear the brush, their horses galloped the last few lengths to open, endless ground. “Then all men are deceived.”

“So long as what comes before remains shrouded, so long as men are already deceived, what does it matter?” “Because it’s deceit. Womanish deception. An outrage against honour!” “And you’ve never deceived your foes on the field of battle? You’ve never enslaved another?” Cnaiür spat. “My enemies. My foes. Those who’d do the same to me if they could. That’s the bargain all warriors strike, and it is an honourable one. But what you do, Dûnyain, makes all men your foe.” Such penetration! “Does it? Or does it make them my children?

Such maddeningly subtlety!

In the hills, anything or anyone might be concealed. In the hills, one must find summits to see.

“That which comes before determines that which comes after.”

And it was this, his reluctance to believe his own prophetic claims, that had secured his perilous position. When anonymous Inrithi, having heard rumours of him, fell to their knees before him, he would be cross the way a compassionate father would be cross. When they begged to be touched, as though grace could be communicated across skin, he would touch them, but only to raise them up, to chide them for abasing themselves before another. By claiming to be less than what he seemed to be, he moved men, even learned men such as Proyas and Achamian, to hope or fear that he might be more. He would never utter it, never claim it, but he would manufacture the circumstances that would make it seem true. Then all those who counted themselves secret watchers, all those who breathlessly asked “Who is this man?” would be gratified like never before. He would be their insight. They would be unable to doubt him then. To doubt him would be to think their own insights empty. To disown him would be to disown themselves.

How timely this theme! Moving men is easy because their souls are small and their levers are large.

Fear has many forms, but it is never so dangerous as when it is combined with power and perpetual uncertainty.