Ulf’s mother was a Seidkona, a walker of the Nine Worlds. His father was Úlfhéðinn as is Ulf himself. He has held a sword in his hand since his fourteenth summer. The burning land of Syria has been under Roman occupation longer than anyone can remember. And it is here that Ulf and his father Sven have sold their sword-hands following the death of Ulf’s mother.
The Roman governor of Antioch Damian Dalassenos has plans to keep the Fatimid threat at bay, but it soon becomes readily apparent that there are other forces at work besides those placed in power by the Emperor. Theophana, the Emperor’s half sister knows through channels connected to the secret society of Lampros, that the casket she is seeking may be with her grasp. She thinks she knows how to get it back and in so doing ensure her base of power will not be toppled.
When the shadows of Valhalla close over Sven at the battle of Apamea, Theophana directs her attention to Ulf, sure that he knows the location of the casket. She uses her niece Sophia, said to be the true daughter of the Emperor, as a way to entrap Ulf. When he escapes her spidery grasp at last with the help of Sophia, driven to desperation by the schemes of her cruel and conniving aunt, they flee Antioch. They must rely on one another or die. Sophia’s only promise of payment: a curious key with an eagle worked in gold upon the shaft and set with garnet eyes.
Their journey takes them firstly south to Emesa where Ulf has plans on assassinating a former Strategos who killed his mother. But the truths that both he and Sophia uncover in a shadowed Syrian street in Emesa will force both of them to reconsider everything they thought was true.
They journey north to Lycandos in Anatolia, a pilgrimage that takes them across the Cilician gates and the Taros Mountains, reaching a far flung old Roman villa in the middle of a vast expanse of sky and olive groves. Here is the reckoning and here Ulf and Sophia must come to terms with what they have learned and what they have come to mean to one another.