The Scions ride out to the southwest of the Army of the Middle North, tasked with securing game—a mission the young hostages bemoan for its safety. Nevertheless, Sorweel’s knowledge of the Istyuli allows them to track and destroy a wandering Sranc clan. They discover and begin following a great elk trail shortly thereafter, only to find the herd that authored it butchered across the plain. Eskeles, who continues to teach Sorweel the rudiments of Sheyic on the trail, recognizes the carnage as the consequence of a Hording, a massing of Sranc. But only Sorweel, relying once again on his knowledge as a native of the plains—and impossible communications with the Dread Mother—can see the true significance of the slaughter. The Consult, he tells the wondering Mandate Schoolman, prepares an ambush. Days later, they find an entire legion of Sranc hidden to the south of the Great Ordeal.
Now divided into four armies, the host plumbs the great, vacant heart of the Istyuli. The outriders begin returning with tales of Sranc congregating just over the northern horizon, a vast and raucous Horde strewn across the path of all four armies, growing ever more numerous as clan after clan joins its inchoate retreat. Soon all the Ordealmen can see the great, bilious clouds of dust the creatures have kicked across the horizon: the Shroud. Soon all can hear the shrieking cacophony from afar.
Kellhus, meanwhile, begins meeting with Proyas in his private chambers, where he confesses to things that have long troubled the Exalt-General’s heart. Achamian, he tells the Believer-King, was right about him all along.
As the Scions race back to warn the Great Ordeal, Sorweel at last confides in Zsoronga, who has been wary of him ever since the Aspect-Emperor declared him one of the Believer-Kings. Sorweel tells his friend about Porsparian—and more importantly, about Yatwer, the Mother of Birth—begging for whatever insight he has to offer. Zsoronga tells him he is Narindari, a divine assassin sent to murder Anas?rimbor Kellhus.
Sorweel is denied the luxury of ruminating on his friend’s mad assertion. The Scions push their ponies to the limits of endurance in an attempt to reach the Great Ordeal ahead of the Consult Legion. The Scions find themselves fleeing across treacherous ground through the darkness, their numbers dwindling as more and more of their exhausted mounts fail. When Eskeles is thrown, Sorweel leaps from his pony to assist the portly Mandate Schoolman. Sranc overrun them, cluster about the sorcerer’s Wards. Eskeles panics, but Sorweel remains calm, instructs the man to find some means of warning Anas?rimbor Kay?tas and the Army of the Middle-North. The sorcerer casts a Bar of Heaven, revealing the Legion to the embattled Norsirai, and so saving a mighty fraction of the Great Ordeal.
The following morning Sorweel and Zsoronga swear an oath to be as brothers, boonsmen until death. Kay?tas declares him a hero, saying that his actions had saved the Army of the Middle-North from almost certain destruction. What Zsoronga said earlier was true, the young Believer-King realizes: the Dread Mother of Birth positioned him within the Great Ordeal. In typical Anas?rimbor fashion, Kay?tas follows his praise with the demand that he kill his slave, Porsparian. The Great Ordeal is running out of food, the man explains, and the Aspect-Emperor has commanded that his Believer-Kings put down all their noncombatant servants and slaves.
Sorweel bids Porsparian to follow him into the grisly tracts of dead Sranc, planning to release rather than murder him. But it is the old Shigeki who leads him into the bloody wrack. The slave clears a pocket of turf, then begins unearthing bones from the soaked muck: a skeleton that takes on the ghostly image of the Mother herself. Skeletal hands reach into a vacant womb and draw out a strange pouch, which Sorweel takes in trembling hands. Porsparian throws himself upon a spear before the youth can question him.
Sorweel investigates the leather pouch in his tent later that evening, knowing what it contains even before he draws it open: a Chorae. Zsoronga had called him Narindari, an assassin of the Gods.
Every assassin needs a weapon.
Later that night he seeks out Anas?rimbor Serwa, the Grandmistress of the Swayali, on the pretext of thanking her for saving him. She cannot see that he lies, nor can she sense the Chorae within the pouch the Mother of Birth has given him. He departs knowing that in the entire World, he alone possesses the means both to deceive—and to kill—the Aspect-Emperor.
The Great Ordeal continues crawling north toward the ever-withdrawing Horde. The desolation of the Istyuli gradually gives way to the knuckled landscape of ancient Sheneor, a High Norsirai nation prominent in the Holy Sagas, and the Ordealmen rejoice for finally reaching the outskirts of scripture. At the behest of their Aspect-Emperor, the Schools begin what comes to be called the Culling, drawing up in long lines and floating out over the masses of the Horde, killing and burning as many of the obscene creatures as they possibly can. The slaughter is great, but as the Horde withdraws, it scoops up ever more clans: the Culling can do little more than slow the foul mustering of their foe.