By the time the battle-hardened remnants of the First Holy War laid siege to Shimeh, Kellhus had achieved absolute authority. The Men of the Tusk had become his Zaudunyani, his Tribe of Truth. While the Holy War assailed the city’s walls, he confronted his father, Mo?nghus, mortally wounding him, explaining that only his death could realize the Thousandfold Thought. Days later Anas?rimbor Kellhus was proclaimed Holy Aspect-Emperor—the first in a millennium—by none other than the Shriah of the Thousand Temples, his half-brother, Maithanet. Even the School of Mandate, who saw his coming as the fulfillment of their most hallowed prophecies, knelt and kissed his knee.
But Kellhus had made a mistake. Before reaching the Three Seas and the Holy War, his passage across E?rwa had delivered him to the lands of the Utemot, a Scylvendi tribe renowned for warlike cruelty. Here he had struck a murderous compact with the tribe’s chieftain, Cnaiür urs Ski?tha. Mo?nghus had also fallen into the hands of the Utemot some thirty years prior, and had used the then adolescent Cnaiür to murder his chieftain father and effect his escape. The youth had spent tormented decades pondering what had happened and had come to guess the inhuman truth of the D?nyain. So it was that Cnaiür and Cnaiür alone knew the dark secret of Anas?rimbor Kellhus. Before his disappearance, the barbarian revealed these truths to none other than Drusas Achamian, who had long harboured heartbreaking suspicions of his own. At the coronation, before the eyes of the entire Holy War, Achamian repudiated Kellhus, whom he had worshipped; Esmenet, whom he had loved; and the Mandate masters he had served. Then he fled into the wilderness, becoming the world’s only sorcerer without a school. A Wizard.
Now, after twenty years of war, conversion, and butchery, Anas?rimbor 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, Anas?rimbor 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 Anas?rimbor 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 Anas?rimbor, convincing Kellhus and his children, Serwa and Kay?tas, 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, Mo?nghus—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 Irs?lor, and the Great Ordeal loses a full quarter of their contingent, as well as the Vokalati, a Major School. At Swaran?l, 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 Ishu?l, he believes, he can answer the question that burns so bright in so many learned souls …