The Horde rose up, flurries become packed masses, waves swallowing wrack of tents and baggage, waves that abruptly burned in geometric cages of light …
A motley band of Witches and Schoolmen hung pinned above the passes, voices gravel for abuse, singing sorcery brilliant in proportion to the murk, dispensations small as silver needles beneath the black immensity of the Whirlwind, yet sparking as beacons across the Shigogli all the same, illuminating countless raving white faces, numbers like the sands about the sea.
The Ordealmen trapped in the gullies of the Occlusion rejoiced, loosed a cry that could be seen if not heard, and some dared turn to exult in the spectacle of masses convulsing afire.
But the Sranc came before the Whirlwind, and the Horde, which would have shovelled itself howling into such Gnostic furnaces before, fell still … utterly still … leaving only the cyclone booming about vacancy.
The Shroud was inhaled from the depravities, league after league, revealing a million godlike faces impassive beneath overarching cataclysm.
The Sons of Men traded their cheers for stupefied wonder.
Mog-Pharau, the Whirlwind, walked, robed in tempest, crowned in lightning, and the Horde shrieked forward, terrifying for the singularity of its animating will. The Schoolmen resumed coughing and crying out their songs, disgorging fires, spinning lattices, and watched appalled as the abominations leapt into their phosphorescent ministries en masse, running heedless of torment, faltering only for gruesome incapacity. They advanced as a continuous, pestilential surge, flinging themselves into thrashing heaps of char and tallow, fires that grew ever fatter, ever more liquid. The Schoolmen traded warnings, retreated to what seemed more secure positions, unaware that thousands of Chorae had been scooped from the wrack of Golgotterath and cast with all violence forward, again and again, passing as a cloud through the body of the Horde, until taken up in slings at the foot of the Occlusion.
The surprise was all but complete. The sorcerous lights—and the scenes of riot they struck from the hip of blindness—disappeared across the Black Furnace Plain. The flesh of kings and their captains lay spilled as treasure and splendour at the feet of the Derived, meat for their rapacious hungers.
So did the Great Ordeal of Anas?rimbor Kellhus perish in salt and butchery.
APPENDIX
ONE
The Encyclopaedic Glossary
Author’s note:
Steeped in the classics, Inrithi scholars commonly rendered names in their Sheyic form, opting for native forms only in the absence of antique Sheyic analogues. So, for instance, the surname Coithus (which is mentioned twice by Casidas in The Annals of Cenei) is in fact a Sheyic version of the Gallish “Koütha,” and so is rendered as such here. The surname Hoga, on the other hand, has no extant Sheyic form, and so is rendered in the original Tydonni. Kyranean place names (such as Asgilioch, Girgilioth, or Kyudea) are a notable exception.
The vast majority of the following proper names, then, are simply transliterated from their Sheyic (and in some instances K?niüric) form. They have been translated only where their Sheyic (or K?niüric) version does likewise. So, for instance, the Ainoni “Ratharutar,” which has the Sheyic form “Retorum Ratas,” is given as “the Scarlet Spires,” the literal meaning of ratas (“red”) and retorum (“towers”). The etymological provenance and translated meaning of place names can be found bracketed at the end of certain entries.
These would be the names as Drusas Achamian knew them.
A
Abbarsallas (4068—4106)—Mimara’s owner during her first five years in Carythusal.
Abenjukala—The classic treatise on benjuka, written anonymously in Near Antiquity. Because of its emphasis on the relation between benjuka and wisdom, many consider it a classic philosophical text as well.
Abskinis—“Groundless-Grave” (Ihrims?). Vast well plumbing the Upright Horn, where the Consult casts the bodies of those killed in the Golden Room, by the Carapace or otherwise.
Absolute, the—Among the D?nyain, the state of becoming “unconditioned,” a perfect self-moving soul independent of “what comes before.” See D?nyain and Conditioning, the.
Abstractions—An epithet for Gnostic sorceries. See Gnosis, the, and Metagnosis, the.
aculmirsi—Literally, “milestone man,” the epithet used by Near-Antique dramaturges to describe those who travelled for the sake of travelling.
Ad?nyani—“Little D?nyain” (K?niüric from ?meritic ar’t?nya, or “little truth”). The name taken by the followers assembled by Kellhus in Atrithau.
Aenaratiol—“Smokehorn” (Aujic). The mountain housing the derelict Nonman Mansion of Cil-Aujas.
A?ngelas (4087—4112)—A Werigdan warrior.
Aenk? Aumor—Ancient Me?ri fortress that once guarded Kelmeol, capital of the Me?ri Empire.
Aenk? Maimor—Ancient Me?ri fortress that once guarded Telmeol, now a scalper entrepot called Fatwall.
Aethelarius VI (4062—4132)—(Sheyic form of Athullara) The King of Atrithau, last of the line of Morghund, killed leading his Men against Cnaiür urs Skiotha and his Scylvendi at the Battle of Eels.
Aeviternal Seal—A great, ornamental plaque unique to every Nonman Mansion, typically set behind the king’s throne, widely thought to be the most sacred of their relics. According to the Holy Juurl, the primary scripture of the Nonmen, Imimor?l, who had hacked off his shield arm to create the Nonmen, took Siol, the House Primordial, as his shield against the Starving (sky). As a symbolic “Shield of Imimor?l,” each Seal was thought to be invested, if not imbued, with the essence of its respective Mansion. “Crack the Shield,” an old proverb went, “sunder the Mountain.”
Agabon, Coithus (4124—4132)—Ordealman and youngest son of King Coithus Narnol, among the first to perish on the Great Ordeal’s trek across the Istyuli Plains.
Agansanor—A province of south central Ce Tydonn, noted for the lengthy beards and martial zeal of its sons.
Age of Bronze—Another name for Far Antiquity, during which bronze was the dominant metal technology of Men.
Age of Cenei—The era of Ceneian dominance of the Three Seas, from the conquest of Nilnamesh in 2478 until the Sack of Cenei in 3351. See Ceneian Empire.
Age of Kyraneas—The era of Kyranean dominance of the northwestern Three Seas, beginning with the Kyranean victory at Narakit in 1591, and ending with the Breaking of Mehtsonc in 2154.