Who is the Aspect-Emperor?
Anas?rimbor 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 Ishu?l 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 C?’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 Ishu?l—the hidden stronghold of the D?nyain, 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 D?nyain. At long last, they see it, Ishu?l … 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 D?nyain. 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 Ski?tha, 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 Anas?rimbor 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 D?nyain 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.