Now, after twenty years of war, conversion, and butchery, Anasûrimbor Kellhus prepares to realize the ultimate stage of his father’s Thousandfold Thought. His New Empire spans the entirety of the Three Seas, from the legendary fortress of Auvangshei on the frontiers of Zeum to the shrouded headwaters of the River Sayut, from the sweltering coasts of Kutnarmu to the wild rim of the Osthwai Mountains—all the lands that had once been Fanim or Inrithi. It was easily the equal of the old Ceneian Empire in terms of geographical extent, and far more populous. A hundred great cities, and almost as many languages. A dozen proud nations. Thousands of years of mangled history.
And the Nameless War is nameless no longer. Men call it the Great Ordeal.
THE ASPECT-EMPEROR
In the Year-of-the-Tusk, 4132, the Second Holy War crosses the Imperial frontier and besieges Sakarpus, the ancient vault of the Chorae Hoard. In twenty years, Anasûrimbor Kellhus has rebalanced the whole of the Three Seas upon the axis of his Great Ordeal, bent the labour of millions to forge this, the earthly spearhead of the Thousandfold Thought. History has never seen such a host, more than 300,000 souls drawn from the far-flung reaches of the New Empire. The finest warriors of every nation comprise it, led by their Kings and Princes and Heroes. All the Major Schools accompany it, the greatest mustering of sorcerous might ever witnessed.
Sakarpus falls and Sorweel, the grieving son of the slain King Harweel, becomes a hostage of the Holy Aspect-Emperor. But he is nowhere near so helpless as he believes. To play Prophet is to risk the wrath of the Gods: Yatwer herself, the Dread Mother of Birth, has taken umbrage with Anasûrimbor Kellhus, loosing the White-Luck upon him, the vengeance of the oppressed against the oppressor. And Sorweel discovers himself central to her design. A priest posing as a slave rubs Her spit into his cheeks, shielding him from the all-seeing Anasûrimbor, convincing Kellhus and his children, Serwa and Kayûtas, that Sorweel stands among the Empire’s most ardent Believer-Kings. She also provides a murder weapon: a pouch that conceals sorcery-killing Chorae from sorcerous eyes.
But the youth is conflicted, for evidence of the Aspect-Emperor’s cause encircles him, and he finds himself torn between the demands of Heaven and the testimony of his heart. The Goddess compels him. His father’s blood demands vengeance. Even his friend, Zsoronga, Prince of Zeum, counsels murder. And still he cannot but ask why … If the Unholy Consult were simply a fiction, why forge something so stupendous as the Great Ordeal?
Nonmen emissaries intercept the Host in transit, offering an alliance in return for three hostages. The Aspect-Emperor promptly sends Sorweel along with his daughter, Serwa, and his adoptive son, Moënghus—not realizing that Nil’giccas, the Nonman King, has fled the Mountain, and that Ishterebinth has fallen to the Consult.
The three youths are seized and interrogated upon their arrival, but when the Nonmen discover that Sorweel has been doomed to destroy the Aspect-Emperor, they release him to Oinaral Lastborn, who seeks to save his Mansion. At long last, the youth learns the wicked truth of Golgotterath, not simply from Oinaral, but from the Amiolas, a sorcerous artifact that allows Men to understand Nonman language via the trapped soul of Immiriccas. The youth need only remember the losses suffered by the long-dead Ishroi to understand the depravity of the Aspect-Emperor’s foe, and therefore the righteousness of his cause, the Great Ordeal.
At long last he embraces the faith of his Enemy. With Oinaral, he embarks on a quest to the very bowel of the Weeping Mountain to find the Lastborn’s hero father, Oirunas, intent on overthrowing Nin’ciljiras, the Consult pretender to Nil’giccas’s throne.
The Great Ordeal, meanwhile, continues crawling north toward the ever-withdrawing, ever-growing Sranc Horde. The desolation of the Istyuli gradually gives way to the knuckled landscape of ancient Sheneor, and the Ordealmen rejoice for finally reaching the outskirts of scripture. But if the Ordealmen find their conviction renewed, their Exalt-General, Proyas, finds his faith in his Aspect-Emperor challenged as it has never been challenged before—and by Kellhus himself, no less.
Supplies become ever more tentative, and the Sranc grow ever more desperate, ever more bold. Disaster strikes the westernmost contingent of the Host at Irsûlor, and the Great Ordeal loses a full quarter of their contingent, as well as the Vokalati, a Major School. At Swaranûl, the Holy Aspect-Emperor reveals the catastrophic truth: they have scarce travelled halfway and already they were out of food. Henceforth, he informs his astounded followers, the Men of the Circumfix will subsist upon their raving foe.
And so the Host of Hosts advances across the eastern shoulder of the Misty Sea, the Horde a roiling, retreating tide before them. The Ordealmen gorge upon their foe, feast about fires of Sranc carcasses. A darkness grows within them, consuming more and more of what comes before. Kellhus reveals the truth to Proyas in stages, first dismantling his certitude, then his faith, and finally, so it seems, his dignity and his heart.
At the derelict fortress of Dagliash, the Horde is cornered, and the might of the Great Ordeal is unleashed whole. But within the fortress itself, a Tekne artifact detonates and the very earth is Scalded. Thousands die, among them Saubon, who finds himself cast into the Hells.
Gazing upon the foul toadstool of smoke boiling above them, Kellhus tells Proyas that he must leave, that it is up to him to deliver the Great Ordeal to Golgotterath alone.
On the wild fringe of the Three Seas, meanwhile, Drusas Achamian has spent twenty years exploring his Dreams of the First Apocalypse. If he can find Ishuäl, he believes, he can answer the question that burns so bright in so many learned souls …
Who is the Aspect-Emperor?
Anasûrimbor Mimara, the step-daughter of his foe, arrives demanding he teach her sorcery. Her resemblance to her mother, Esmenet—who has become Empress of the Three Seas—returns the old Wizard to all the pains he sought to escape. Desperate to win his tutelage, Mimara seduces him.
This event casts a shadow over all that ensues, for not only does Mimara become quick with child, the Judging Eye—the ability to see the goodness and evil of things—fully awakens within her. Only in the shameful aftermath does she tell the old Wizard that Kellhus has already embarked on his quest to destroy the Consult and so save the world from a Second Apocalypse.
The old Wizard does not know where Ishuäl is, but thanks to his dreams, he knows the whereabouts of a map marking its location: in the famed Library of Sauglish, deep in the northern wilds. He contracts a company of Scalpers, hard men who make their living selling Sranc scalps to their Holy Aspect-Emperor, to accompany him on the quest: the Skin-eaters, renowned as much for their ruthless Captain, Lord Kosoter, as for his sorcerous companion, a Nonman Erratic known as Cleric. The outcast expedition sets out for the Library of Sauglish, fraught with grudge and rivalry from the beginning. The Judging Eye turns their trek into a march of the damned for Mimara, simply because not a soul among the company is saved—apart from her own. They pass through the ruined Nonman mansion of Cil-Aujas, and would have died there, were it not for Mimara and her cryptic use of her Chorae.
The journey across the Sranc-infested North harrows both the old Wizard and the Princess-Imperial alike, for they have come to increasingly depend on the Nonman, Cleric, and his dispensations of Qirri, the soul-quickening ashes of the legendary Cû’jara Cinmoi. After months of toiling, the expedition arrives at Sauglish maddened for both the drug and the deprivations it has enabled them to endure. Cleric is revealed as Nil’giccas, the Last Nonman King, bent on finding memory in betrayal and tragedy. The Skin-Eaters turn upon one another, and all are destroyed save Achamian and Mimara.
Together, they find the ancient map described in Achamian’s dreams, the map to Ishuäl—the hidden stronghold of the Dûnyain, the birthplace of the Holy Aspect-Emperor. They gather the ashes of Nil’giccas to replenish their supply of Qirri, then set out on the final leg of their journey. They persevere, gain the Demua Mountains, and surmount the glacier overlooking the vale of the Dûnyain. At long last, they see it, Ishuäl ?
?? ruined.
Beneath the toppled walls, they wander through the blasted galleries of the Thousand-Thousand Halls, across floors gravelled with the bones of Sranc. In the room of the Whale-mothers, the Judging-Eye opens and Mimara sees the dizzying evil of the Dûnyain. But does this mean Kellhus is evil? They realize their quest is not over until Mimara apprehends Kellhus with the Judging Eye.
They also find two survivors, the son and grandson of Kellhus himself, the former scarred beyond recognition. Mere days into their journey, he kills himself upon imbibing the Qirri, seeking the Absolute in annihilation. They glimpse the Scalding of Dagliash over the horizon, wonder at the pillar of ash. As they cross out of the mountains hying north, they are seized by Scylvendi outriders, and find themselves dragged before the insane regard of Cnaiür urs Skiötha, the King-of-Tribes …
The People of War shadow the Great Ordeal.
Far to the south in Momemn, the capital of the New Empire, Esmenet struggles to rule in her husband’s absence. With Kellhus and the bulk of his armed might faraway, the embers of insurrection have begun to ignite across the Three Seas. The Imperial Court regards her with condescension. Fanayal ab Kascamandri, the Padirajah of what had been the heathen Kianene Empire before the First Holy War, grows ever more bold on the fringes of the Great Carathay Desert. Psatma Nannaferi, the outlawed Mother-Supreme of the Cult of Yatwer, prophecies the coming of the White-Luck Warrior, the godsent assassin who will murder the Aspect-Emperor and his progeny. Even the Gods, it seems, plot against the Anasûrimbor Dynasty. Esmenet turns to her brother-in-law, Maithanet, the Shriah of the Thousand Temples, for his strength and clarity of vision, yet she wonders why her husband would leave the Mantle in her incapable hands, when his brother is Dûnyain like himself.
Even as the first rumours of this sedition reach his mother in Momemn, young Kelmomas continues his own devious insurrection. Where before he had driven Mimara away, now he engineers the death of his idiot twin, Samarmas, knowing that grief will make his mother even more desperate for his love. He secretly murders Sharacinth, High Priestess of the Yatwerians, an act that incites riots across the Three Seas. When he fears that his uncle, Maithanet, is beginning to suspect his double-game, he plots with his mad older brother, Inrilatas, to murder him as well, but the attempt goes awry, and Maithanet ends up killing Inrilatas instead.
War breaks out between Empress and Shriah. Grief-stricken and paranoid, Esmenet contracts a Narindar, a priest of the Four-Horned Brother, to murder her brother-in-law, not knowing that she parlays with the White-Luck Warrior. But Maithanet strikes first, storming and seizing the Andiamine Heights during her absence, and so Esmenet finds herself a fugitive in the very Empire she ruled, trapped with Naree, a prostitute living much as she had before marrying Kellhus and mothering his inhuman progeny. When she is finally captured and dragged in chains before Maithanet, he looks into her soul and sees the truth of the conflict between them. But before he can name Kelmomas, the White-Luck Warrior strikes him from the one place overlooked. As the sole remaining connection to her husband, she finds herself acclaimed as Holy Empress once again, even as Fanayal and his bandit army besiege the walls about Momemn.
She hastens to organize the city, showing the will her ailing subjects so desperately need to see. She invites the White-Luck Warrior, whom she still thinks is a mere Cultic assassin, to live with her and her surviving family in the Andiamine Heights. As much as his mother’s newfound strength dismays him, Kelmomas is more fascinated by the White-Luck Warrior, whom he sees as proof that Ajokli, the evil Four-Horned Brother, has chosen to be his protector. This conviction is confirmed when he watches the man bring about the death of his sister Theliopa—for she, after Maithanet, had been his greatest threat. But this triumph is instantly transformed into disaster when his mother, wild with grief, spies him celebrating his sister’s death.
A powerful earthquake strikes Momemn, laying low her walls and exposing her inhabitants to the desert fury of Fanayal and his Kianene. Psatma Nannaferi mocks the Padirajah as he readies himself for the assault, watched by an apprehensive Malowebi, the Emissary of the Zeumi Satakhan. Though the Mother-Supreme is Fanayal’s captive, the Goddess Yatwer has assured her mastery of the man. Without warning, Kellhus steps into their midst, killing both Fanayal and the Mother-Supreme. He overpowers Malowebi and severs his head, which he transforms into one of the Decapitants bound to his hip.
Aftershocks hammer the Imperial Capital. Kelmomas follows the White-Luck Warrior through the collapsing palace into the throne room, still thinking him a servant of Ajokli. But when he glimpses his father standing with his mother upon the dais, he realizes that the assassin hunts no less than the Aspect-Emperor—and at his mother’s behest. The little boy gains the assassin’s attention, hoping to assist, but the man gazes at him as though dumbstruck, as if a completely different soul has awakened behind his once implacable eyes.
The ceilings give way, and the boy learns that what is ruined can become more ruined still.
CHAPTER
ONE
The Western Three Seas
There’s a rumour they say,
that lures our husbands away,
from field and pillow,
and babe and willow,
to the Ark, to the Ark, to the Ark,
to the dark, to the dark, to the dark,
to the Idol more fearsome than its God.
—ancient Kûniüric Harvest Song
Mid-Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Momemn.
His father sang into the tumbling world—a Metagnostic Cant of Translocation, Kelmomas realized. Sorcery scooped him whole, then cast him as grains across the face of nowhere. Light lanced through the sound of clacking thunder. Crashing, crushing darkness became the miracle of sky.
The Prince Imperial curled about convulsions. His ears roared for misery and cacophony both, but he could still hear his mother keen. Grit scored his cheek. Vomit clotted his hair. His fabled home shrugged and fissured in the distance, collapse dragging down collapse, all the taken-for-granted spaces clamped into ruin, the Andiamine Heights vanishing into mountainous, ashen billow. He spit and heaved, wondered that he had stood within those stone shells but heartbeats before …
Watching Ajokli murder his father.
How? How could this be happening? Theliopa was dead—was that not proof of the Four-Horned Brother’s will? Kelmomas had seen him, concealed in the cracks where no eyes strayed, preparing to strike his father the way he had struck his uncle—to murder the last soul that could sound him, threaten him. Mother would have been his! At long last, truly, utterly his! His!
Not fair. Not fair.
Maithanet dead. Theliopa dead—her bitch skull hammered into a sack! And then when it came to his father—the only one that mattered—the Narindar had crashed from the Unerring Grace—and after glimpsing him no less! That was the mockery, wasn’t it? The Godspit, as the Shigeki slaves called it! Or like dramas written by slaves, where the heroes always perish by their own hand. But why? Why? Why would the Four Horned Brother give such a gift only to take everything away?
Cheat! Deceiver! He had committed everything! Gambled his very—
We’re dead! his inner brother wailed, for he towered above them both, their father, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, the Holy Aspect-Emperor. Abase yourself! Samarmas demanded. Grovel! But all Kelmomas could do was cramp about his nausea, expel the honeyed pork and onion he had last eaten. He glimpsed his mother kneeling on the far side of his father, gagging on her own misery.
They stood upon one of Momemn’s walls, near the Girgallic Gate. The city smoked below, levelled in places, reduced to shattered shells in others. Only ancient Xothei stood untouched, rising through the haze of ruin, a monumental miracle in fields of raked charcoal. Thousands streamed about, over and between the wreckage, crawling like bugs over their losses. Thousands wailed.
“Momas is not finished,” the Holy Aspect-Emperor called over the roar. “The Sea comes.”
; The eye balked at the sight, the Meneanor rising such that the city whole seemed to drop down. The River Phayus swelled along its length, drowning first the piers and then the banks, pulsing monstrous through the canals, slipping black and shining into the alleyways and streets, clotting into muck with accumulated wreckage, engulfing bug after racing bug …
His nausea subsided in the wake of his wonder.
The boy glanced to his mother, who looked only to the calamity that was his father, her face raised in anguish, cheeks silver beneath black-smeared eyes. It was an image the little Prince-Imperial had seen many times before, either hewn from panels of wood or stone, or daubed in paint across plaster walls, the desolate mother, the soul who had given only to be ransacked. And there was joy even here, he realized. There was beauty.
Some losses could not be fathomed.
“The-Thel-Thel—” she stuttered, clenching bumbling hands together.
Thousands drowned below them, mother and sons pinned beneath the ruin, gagging, jerking, drowning. The water climbed the stages of the massive city, making a great sty of its lower environs. The Sea even broke across the eastern walls, rendering the heap that had been the Andiamine Heights an island.
“She’s dead!” his mother barked, her eyes pinched in anguish. She shook like something ancient and palsied, even as the violence of her grief made her seem young.
The little boy watched from across his father’s booted stance, possessed of a terror greater than any he had ever known. He watched her eyes pop open, fasten upon him in lunatic fury, pin him as certainly as a shipwright’s nail. The lips thinned into a venomous line.