In a kingdom on the verge of a grand renaissance, where natural science has displaced failing sorcery, someone aims to revive a savage rivalry….

The beleaguered king of Sabria hires a trio of confidential agents to investigate a murder and find a vanished friend. But the three - a failed student of magic, a foppish nobleman, and a brooding, brilliant young sorcerer with heretical ideas and a violent temper - become embroiled in an ever-shifting landscape of murder, old secrets, and some unholy sorcery that blurs the boundaries of magic, nature, and the divine.

About the Author
Carol Berg majored in mathematics at Rice University so she wouldn’t have to write papers. But at the same time she took every English course that listed novels on the syllabus, just so she would have time to keep reading. Somewhere in the midst of raising three sons, earning a computer science degree, and pursuing a software engineering career, a friend teased her into exchanging letters written "in character." The game quickly got out of hand. Since her first novel was published in 2000, Carol has taught writing in the US, Europe, and Canada, has been flown to Israel as a guest of the Israeli science fiction community, and answered mail from as far away as New Zealand, Kuwait, the slopes of Denali, and beneath the Mediterranean Sea. Her mythic fantasy novels have earned national and international acclaim, including the Geffen Award, the Prism Award, and multiple Colorado Book Awards. Her Lighthouse Duet, Breath and Bone and Flesh and Spirit, won the 2009 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

The novels of Carol Berg are

"Altogether superior."   -Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Gut-wrenching, serious fantasy fiction."   -SciFi Weekly

"…lush, evocative storytelling…"   -Library Journal