Once Constantinople was the meeting place of East and West, the holy city where subtle princes, rich merchants, and scheming priests built up great monuments to the glory of God and their own ambition. Once Byzantium was the center of the world's most fearsome empire, greater even than the famed empire of pagan Rome. Once, but no more. After centuries of power and tyranny, the Byzantine Empire is falling. Leo Ducas, the heir to one of the noblest families of the dying empire, must fight Turkish armies at the empire's border...and his own treacherous kinsmen in the empire's heart. Exiled to the wild hinterlands, Leo will see wonders and magics that no Christian man has a right to behold. Among the ruins of empires older than his own, he will encounter plots and conspiracies even more dangerous than he could have imagined...and find a beautiful Jewess who may hold the key that will unite all the peoples of Asia Minor.