The Thousandfold Thought (The Prince of Nothing, Book 3)

“Magic and monstrosities aside, one feels one is reading about a place as real (or a real place as convincingly reinvented) as Robert Graves’s Rome. It’s a subtlety, and an intelligence, that informs and challenges at every level … To properly appreciate the scope, sweep, and power of this series, not to mention its complex thematic structure, [The Prince of Nothing] must be read from the beginning. And it should be read. Violent, passionate, darkly poetic, seethingly original, these are books that deserve attention from all true connoisseurs of fantasy.”

—
SF Site,
www.sfsite.com

“The Holy War fomented ... in
The Darkness That Comes Before
, the critically acclaimed first book in the epic fantasy trilogy by Canadian author Bakker, explodes in [
The Warrior-Prophet
]. … The all-too-human tale of love, hatred, and justice ... keeps the pages turning. … A daringly unconventional series in the Tolkien mould.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“A class act like George R.R. Martin, or his fellow Canadians Steven Erikson and Guy Gavriel Kay. He gets right away from the ‘downtrodden youth becoming king’ aspect of epic fantasy … But he also reminds us of the out-and-out strangeness that fantasy can engender, in a way no one has since Clark Ashton Smith. No clunky analogy of medieval Europe here. Odd, fascinating characters in a world full of trouble and sorcery.”

—
SFX Magazine,
“Ten Authors to Watch”

“[This] impressive addition to the high-fantasy genre … deftly skirts the many and considerable pitfalls of the genre, gradually revealing itself as a smart, compelling novel that will leave readers frustrated with the wait for the next volume.”

—Quill & Quire

Also by R. Scott Bakker

the prince of nothing series

The Darkness That Comes Before, Book One

The Warrior-Prophet, Book Two

penguin canada

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2006

(RRD)

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

S.A.

eISBN : 978-1-590-20626-3

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To Tina and Keith
with love

In pursuing yonder what they have lost, they encounter only the
nothing they have. In order not to lose touch with the everyday
dreariness in which, as irremediable realists, they are at home, they
adapt the meaning they revel in to the meaninglessness they flee.
The worthless magic is nothing other than the worthless existence
it lights up.

—THEODOR ADORNO,
MINIMA MORALIA

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked
by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.
So. Here are the dead fathers.

—CORMAC McCARTHY,
BLOOD MERIDIAN

What has come before ...

The First Apocalypse destroyed the great Norsirai nations of the North. Only the South, the Ketyai nations of the Three Seas, survived the onslaught of the No-God, Mog-Pharau, and his Consult of generals and magi. The years passed, and the Men of the Three Seas forgot, as Men inevitably do, the horrors endured by their fathers.

Empires rose and empires fell: Kyraneas, Shir, Cenei. The Latter Prophet, Inri Sejenus, reinterpreted the Tusk, the holiest of artifacts, and within a few centuries, the faith of Inrithism, organized and administered by the Thousand Temples and its spiritual leader, the Shriah, came to dominate the entire Three Seas. The great sorcerous Schools, such as the Scarlet Spires, the Imperial Saik, and the Mysunsai, arose in response to the Inrithi persecution of the Few, those possessing the ability to see and work sorcery. Using Chorae, ancient artifacts that render their bearers immune to sorcery, the Inrithi warred against the Schools, attempting, unsuccessfully, to purify the Three Seas. Then Fane, the Prophet of the Solitary God, united the Kianene, the desert peoples of the southwestern deserts, and declared war against the Tusk and the Thousand Temples. After centuries and several jihads, the Fanim and their eyeless sorcerer-priests, the Cishaurim, conquered nearly all the western Three Seas, including the holy city of Shimeh, the birthplace of Inri Sejenus. Only the moribund remnants of the Nansur Empire continued to resist them.

Now war and strife rule the South. The two great faiths of Inrithism and Fanimry continually skirmish, though trade and pilgrimage are tolerated when commercially convenient. The great families and nations vie for military and mercantile dominance. The minor and major Schools squabble and plot, particularly against the upstart Cishaurim, whose sorcery, the Psûkhe, the Schoolmen cannot distinguish from the God’s own world. And the Thousand Temples pursue earthly ambitions under the leadership of corrupt and ineffectual Shriahs.

The First Apocalypse has become little more than legend. The Consult, which had survived the death of the Mog-Pharau, has dwindled into myth, something old wives tell small children. After two thousand years, only the Schoolmen of the Mandate, who relive the Apocalypse each night through the eyes of their ancient founder, Seswatha, recall the horror and the prophecies of the No-God’s return. Though the mighty and the learned consider them fools, their possession of the Gnosis, the sorcery of the Ancient North, commands respect and mortal envy. Driven by nightmares, they wander the labyrinths of power, scouring the Three Seas for signs of their ancient and implacable foe—for the Consult.

And as always, they find nothing.

Book One: The Darkness That Comes Before

The
Holy War
is the name of the great host called by Maithanet, the Shriah of the Thousand Temples, to liberate Shimeh from the heathen Fanim of Kian. Word of Maithanet’s call spreads across the Three Seas, and faithful from all the great Inrithi nations—Galeoth, Thunyerus, Ce Tydonn, Conriya, High Ainon, and their tributaries—travel to the city of Momemn, the capital of the Nansur Empire, to become Men of the Tusk.

Almost from the outset, the gathering host is mired in politics and controversy. First, Maithanet somehow convinces the Scarlet Spires, the most powerful of the sorcerous Schools, to join his Holy War. Despite the outrage this provokes—sorcery is anathema to the Inrithi—the Men of the Tusk realize they need the Scarlet Spires to counter the heathen Cishaurim, the sorcerer-priests of the Fanim. The Holy War would be doomed without one of the Major Schools. The question is one of why the Scarlet Schoolmen would agree to such a perilous arrangement. Unknown to most, Eleäzaras, the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, has waged a long and secret war against the Cishaurim, who for no apparent reason assassinated his predecessor, Sasheoka, some ten years previously.

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