She weeps the night she feels the first series of kicks, such is her relief. The old Wizard refuses to place his palm on her belly, and she flies into a fury, a madness unlike any she has suffered. She shouts and throws stones until he finally accedes. Of course the babe has ceased moving.
They happen upon a clutch of deer, and Achamian fells four of them before they can sprint into wooded obscurity. They feast. Then, in preparation for their eventual trek into the mountains, she skins the animals using the ensorcelled knife she found in the Coffers. “Chipmunk,” she calls it. The work horrifies her, more for its ease than its bloodiness. She thought she would need to sharpen the blade, its edge felt so rounded, but the Wizard bade her to use it regardless. “Mihtrûlic knives possess otherworldly edges,” he tells her. “And they cut only according to your desire.” He is right about the knife, but it disturbs her, peeling deer like rotted pears.
Draped in furs, they work their way into the mountainous footings. Since they know nothing of treating pelts, the skins rot even as they warm them. After two days of the Wizard gingerly rolling and unrolling the parchment and peering this way and that—including, alarmingly, behind them—he finally becomes excited, begins muttering, “Yes! Yes!” He raises two fingers to the south, gripes at her until she spies two peaks to the immediate south. “There!” he says. “That mighty ramp of snow climbing between them …”
A glacier. The first she has ever seen.
“The Gate of Ishuäl.”
The horns return that nightfall—a chorus of them, communicating from different points across the forests below. “Mobbing …” Mimara gasps, remembering the madness of the Mop.
They continue fleeing through the dark, relying on the Qirri to carry them. They follow high ridges, running at a ramshackle trot. The stars astound her for their strewn brilliance. The Wizard tries to show her a constellation of ancient fame—the “Flail,” he calls it—but she cannot pick out its principals. “Only in my Dreams have I seen it so high in the sky,” he says. “Only as Seswatha.” They skid down ravines and trip across gorges. They scramble until their fingers bleed. At last they find themselves staggering across sloping moraine, the glacier rearing enormous blue beneath a flaring Nail of Heaven.
They come across a river, which they follow until it breaks into a braid of white blasting streams. The glacier looms ever higher. The Sranc horns, when they blare, always sound incrementally closer.
Their breaths begin piling before them.
They gain the ice just as the sun broaches the low eastern horizon. The ice fields flash into kaleidoscopic life, blues sheeted with white and gold. For all the beauty, the crossing is arduous. Mimara quickly loses count of her falls. But at last they gain the glacier proper. Twice, they cross chasms with inner faces that gleam like mantlets of knives before plunging into blackness. They skirt blue-rimmed pits that rumble with hidden waters. They need only glance over their shoulder to see the Sranc—hundreds upon hundreds, thousands—filtering like some kind of plague across the icefields. The two climb and climb, race across fields of powdered snow, until the their legs cease burning and simply become numb, until their hearts hammer like trinkets of tin.
The skinnies gain more icy ground, a horde numerous enough to darken the glacier’s midriff. The Wizard and the woman can hear their shrieks, the raw edges of malice cawing through hooping delight. “Just run!” Achamian barks. “Let their howls be your goad!” But she finds herself turning whenever her flight affords her an opportunity and involuntarily clutching her belly through her golden hauberk.
Finally the two of them clamber onto slopes of drifted snow—ground they can trust beneath them—and the Wizard finally turns to face the surging masses. The Gnosis flashes pale in the high snow glare, cutting into the disordered rush immediately below them. The Sranc scatter, spread themselves too wide for the Wizard to strike en masse. War-parties dash out to either side, climbing so as to descend on them from above. Again and again, the Wizard sends light scything into the ring closing upon them, but the skinnies are too many, and they come from too many directions. For the first time, she senses the pin-prick absences of Chorae among them. She cries out a warning to the Wizard, but he already seems to know. Echoes carom across high and hanging places …
A cohort of hundreds closes upon them from the east. But just as the Wizard turns to them, they fall in a slumping sheet, all of them in unison, vanishing into tumbling explosions of snow and ice. The two fugitives watch slack-jawed. The shrieks and howls of the others climb to pitch, then dissolve into a world-engulfing roar.
Avalanche.
Thunder. Rags of blue darkness blowing across the sun. Blackness.
They are buried, but somehow able to move. The Wizard mutters, and the light of his eyes and mouth reveal a sphere of blue and white about his Wards: untold sums of snow, melting about the glowing curves, forming runnels of water. He raises his hands and a line strikes out, eerie for its geometrical perfection. It pierces the snow like tissue. Water flushes down. Steam blasts and sputters without release. A hole opens about the line, which the former Schoolman begins waving in wider and wider circles. Soon sunlight shines through the upward rush of steam.
Water rises about their boots, climbs to their shins.
The Wizard abandons the line, begins throwing Odaini Concussion Cants into the breach above them. Snow booms outward, sparkles as it heaves beneath high sunlight. They are uncovered, thanks to the Wizard’s damnation.
Wet and numb and shivering, they climb back to the surface.
White light and the absolute absence of smell. There is no sign whatsoever of the Sranc.
She is crazed for exhaustion—she knows this—but never has she felt quite so sane. Other mountains loom about them, isolate heights rendered fellows for the gaping emptiness that surrounds them. She can even see the white smoke of the wind blowing across them, as if they were nothing more than winter drifts heaped to the stature of clouds. At last she understands why men look up when they call out to the Heavens, even though the Outside lies nowhere and everywhere relative to the World.
The human heart possesses its own direction.
They continue their arduous trek, labouring across plains stepped in blank desolation. Two specks beneath peaks that spiral in the sunlight.
The final, wind-sickled crest draws down with every laborious step, revealing the world beyond in creeping stages. The white-cloaked heights of the far mountains give way to snowless pitches, then to monstrous slopes mossed in pine forests. At last the two of them stand side by side on the glacial summit, sucking air that never seems to nourish, gazing out across the basin of an enormous green-and-black valley.
And they see it clutching the roots of the nearest peak to their left …
Ishuäl. The home of the Dûnyain. The birthplace of Anasûrimbor Kellhus.
At long last, Ishuäl … The sum of so much toil and suffering.
Its once grand bastions overturned. Its curtain walls struck to their foundations.
Another dead place.
Character and Faction Glossary
House Anasûrimbor
Kellhus, the Aspect-Emperor.
Maithanet, Shriah of the Thousand Temples, half-brother to Kellhus.
Esmenet, Empress of the Three Seas.
Mimara, Esmenet’s estranged daughter from her days as a prostitute.
Moënghus, son of Kellhus and his first wife, Serwë, eldest of the Prince-Imperials.
Kayûtas, eldest son of Kellhus and Esmenet, General of the Kidruhil.
Theliopa, eldest daughter of Kellhus and Esmenet.
Serwa, second daughter of Kellhus and Esmenet, Grandmistress of the Swayal Sisterhood.
Inrilatas, second son of Kellhus and Esmenet, insane and imprisoned on the Andiamine Heights.
Kelmomas, third son of Kellhus and Esmenet, twin of Samarmas.
Samarmas, fourth son of Kellhus and Esmenet, the idiot twin of Kelmomas.
The Cult of Yatwer
 
; The traditional Cult of the slave and menial castes, taking as its primary scriptures, The Chronicle of the Tusk, the Higarata, and the Sinyatwa. Yatwer is the Goddess of the earth and fertility.
Psatma Nannaferi, Mother-Supreme of the Cult, a position long outlawed by the Thousand Temples.
Hanamem Sharacinth, Matriarch of the Cult.
Sharhild, High-Priestess of the Cult.
Vethenestra, Chalfantic Oracle.
Eleva, High-Priestess of the Cult.
Maharta, High-Priestess of the Cult.
Phoracia, High-Priestess of the Cult.
Aethiola, High-Priestess of the Cult.
The Imperial Precincts
Biaxi Sankas, Patridomos of House Biaxi and an important member of the New Congregate.
Imhailas, Exalt-Captain of the Eothic Guard.
Naree, a Nilnameshi prostitute.
Ngarau, eunuch Grand Seneschal from the days of the Ikurei Dynasty.
Phinersa, Holy Master of Spies.
Thopsis, eunuch Master of Imperial Protocol.
Vem-Mithriti, Grandmaster of the Imperial Saik and Vizier-in-Proxy.
Werjau, Prime-Nascenti and Judge-Absolute of the Ministrate.
The Great Ordeal
Varalt Sorweel, only son of Harweel.
Varalt Harweel, King of Sakarpus.
Captain Harnilas, commanding officer of the Scions.
Zsoronga ut Nganka’kull, Successor-Prince of Zeüm and hostage of the Aspect-Emperor.
Obotegwa, Senior Obligate of Zsoronga.
Porsparian, Shigeki slave given to Sorweel.
Thanteus Eskeles, Mandate Schoolman and tutor to Varalt Sorweel.
Nersei Proyas, King of Conriya and Exalt-General of the Great Ordeal.
Coithus Saubon, King of Caraskand and Exalt-General of the Great Ordeal.
The Scalpoi
Drusus Achamian, former Mandate Schoolman, lover of the Empress, teacher of the Aspect-Emperor, now the only Wizard in the Three Seas.
Lord Kosoter, Captain of the Skin Eaters, Ainoni caste-noble, Veteran of the First Holy War.
Incariol, mysterious Nonman Erratic.
Sarl, Sergeant of the Skin Eaters, long-time companion of Lord Kosoter.
Kiampas, Sergeant of the Skin Eaters, former Nansur officer.
Galian, Skin Eater, former Nansur Columnary.
Pokwas (“Pox”), Skin Eater, disgraced Zeümi Sword-dancer.
Somandutta (“Soma”), Skin Eater, Nilnameshi caste-noble adventurer.
Sutadra (“Soot”), Skin Eater, rumoured to be a Fanim heretic.
Xonghis, Skin Eater, former Imperial Tracker.
Koll, one of the surviving Stone Hags.
Ancient Kûniüri
Anasûrimbor Celmomas II (2089–2146), High-King of Kûniüri, and tragic principal of the First Apocalypse.
Anasûrimbor Nau-Cayûti (2119–2140), youngest son of Celmomas, and tragic hero of the First Apocalypse.
Anasûrimbor Iëva (2125–2146), treacherous wife of Nau-Cayûti.
Seswatha (2089–2168), Grandmaster of the Sohonc, lifelong friend of Celmomas, founder of the Mandate, and determined foe of the No-God.
The Fanim
Fanayal ab Kascamandri, the Bandit Padirajah, and sworn foe of the New Empire.
Meppa, the Last of the Cishaurim.
Malowebi, Mbimayu Schoolman, and the emissary sent by the Satakhan of Zeum to assess Fanayal and his insurrection.
The Dûnyain
A monastic sect whose members have repudiated history and animal appetite in the hope of finding absolute enlightenment through the control of all desire and circumstance. For two thousand years they have hidden in the ancient fortress of Ishuäl, breeding their members for motor reflexes and intellectual acuity.
The Consult
The cabal of magi and generals that survived the death of the No-God in 2155 and has laboured ever since to bring about his return in the so-called Second Apocalypse.
The Thousand Temples
The institution that provides the ecclesiastical framework of Zaudunyani Inrithism.
The Ministrate
The institution that oversees the Judges, the New Imperium’s religious secret police.
The Schools
The collective name given to the various academies of sorcerers. The first Schools, both in the Ancient North and the Three Seas, arose as a response to the Tusk’s condemnation of sorcery. The so-called Major Schools are the Swayal Sisterhood, the Scarlet Spires, the Mysunsai, the Imperial Saik, the Vokalati, and the Mandate (see below).
The Mandate
Gnostic School founded by Seswatha in 2156 to continue the war against the Consult and to protect the Three Seas from the return of the No-God, Mog-Pharau. Incorporated into the New Imperium in 4112. All Mandate Schoolmen relive Seswatha’s experience of the First Apocalypse in their dreams.
The Kellian Empire in 4132 Year-of-the-Tusk
Anasûrimbor Kellhus was proclaimed Aspect-Emperor after the defeat of Fanayal ab Kascamandri at Shimeh in 4112. Both the Kianene and the Nansur empires collapsed shortly thereafter, leaving him the undisputed master of the Western Three Seas. Thirteen years of internecine and expansionist war followed. Many factors were instrumental to his success, including his martial brilliance and the fanaticism of his Zaudunyani Inrithi. But it would be his control of the Thousand Temples (which allowed him to so quickly consolidate his gains) and his alliance with the School of Mandate (which gave him the sorcerous advantage on every field of battle) that would prove decisive. The so-called Unification Wars ended with the final capitulation of Nilnamesh in 4126, rendering Anasûrimbor Kellhus the greatest conqueror since Far Antiquity. Not even the legendary Triamis the Great (2456–2577) achieved so much in so short a time.
The Ancient North
At the time of the Great Ordeal
Under the direct leadership of the Aspect-Emperor, the Great Ordeal marched into the Istyuli Plains early in the year 4132. With a decade of preparation and nothing less than the destruction of Golgotterath as its goal, the campaign remains one of the most daring and ambitious in the history of Men. The New Empire fairly collapsed about the resulting power vacuum, such were the resources dedicated.
Acknowledgments
The Second Apocalypse has grown to such an extent that I’m beginning to feel the need to thank everybody who helped along the way. The myriad agents, editors, illustrators, and translators across the globe. The web reviewers and moderators. Most of all, I want to thank you, the reader, for placing your trust in what must have seemed a mad experiment back when it was all new. Things are starting to get big …
Otherwise, I need to thank all the habitual offenders: Darren Nash at Orbit UK (I already miss you, Dude!) Adrienne Kerr and David Ross at Penguin Canada. Aaron Schlechter at Overlook. And last but not least, my agent, Chris Lotts.
I also need to thank my brother, Bryan Bakker, and Todd Kuhn. My deepest debt of gratitude I owe to my wife, Sharron, and to our breathtaking little girl, Ruby.
R. Scott Bakker, The White Luck Warrior
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