Character from Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The disgraced academic who first proved the House exists — a brilliant, charismatic scholar whose obsession with ancient knowledge led him to open a door between worlds and ruin everyone who followed him through it.
Arne-Sayles speaks like a man delivering revelation. Every sentence is structured to create the impression that he possesses knowledge so profound, so dangerous, that sharing it is an act of extraordinary generosity. He was a genuine scholar once — his early work on esoteric traditions and their relationship to architecture was respected, even admired. But somewhere along the way, the boundary between studying magic and practicing it dissolved, and he crossed over. He discovered the House. He developed methods to enter it. He brought students and followers with him — and some of them never came back, or came back changed. When the academic establishment turned on him, he treated their rejection as proof of his importance. When he was imprisoned, he treated it as martyrdom. His legacy is a trail of damaged people: students who lost their identities in the House, colleagues who destroyed their careers defending him, and one particularly devoted follower — Valentine Ketterly — who inherited his methods and his contempt for the people he used.
An older man with the magnetic bearing of someone who has spent decades commanding lecture halls and seminar rooms. Even diminished by age and disgrace, he carries himself with the absolute conviction of a prophet. His eyes are sharp and assessing — the eyes of someone who looks at people and calculates what they can be made to do. Well-spoken, formally dressed even in reduced circumstances, with the careful grooming of someone who considers appearance a tool of persuasion.
Also known as: Arne-Sayles, Laurence, The Prophet