The Dark Lord

PATIK (the 'silent'), Persian mercenary, formerly the Great Prince Shahin. Once a grandee of the Persian Empire, close relative of shahanshah Chrosoes, and commander of the Persian armies in Syria—the tall, powerfully built Patik has been reduced to a wandering sell-sword, finding service in the ragged band of men following Khalid al'Walid. By this circuitous route, he finds himself once more in the service of Persia, under the rule of his old rival, Shahr-Baraz.

MOHAMMED AL'QURAYSH, a merchant of Mekkah. After a long life of wandering on the fringes of the Empire, unable to find his destiny, Mohammed fell into the company of an Egyptian priest and into the crucible of war. Embattled and trapped in the destruction of Palmyra, Mohammed encountered true evil made flesh. Soon after, distraught at the death of his beloved wife Khadijah, he attempted to end his own life. Instead, a voice entered him and gave him new purpose and direction. Guided by the voice from the clear air, Mohammed set forth to punish the treachery of the Eastern Emperor Heraclius, precipitating a new war.

THE KHAZARS

SHIRIN, Empress of Persia. Wife of the now-dead shahanshah Chrosoes Anushirwan, Shirin is a young Khazar woman, forced into exile in Rome. Secreted for a time on the Artemisian holy isle of Thira, Shirin has escaped both the order and the clutches of the Eastern Empire. Lost in the ruin of the Vesuvian eruption, she searches for her lost children and her friend, Thyatis.

JUSUF, tarkhan of the armies of Khazaria, Shirin's uncle. A lean, laconic horseman who has variously served as Thyatis' second, Anastasia's lover and commander of the Khazar armies. In his youth, he spent time as a hostage in the Avar hring, and the T'u-chueh court of the reviled khagan Shih-Kuei. Widely traveled and an expert with horse, bow and lance.

DAHVOS, kagan of the Khazar nation, Shirin's uncle. The youthful son of the late kagan Ziebil Sahul. Now the weight of his responsibilities presses upon him, and he must choose whether the Khazar realm will continue to stand against Persia and beside Rome, or if they will strike their own path.

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

In the year 622, the Eastern Roman Empire was close to destruction, the capital of Constantinople besieged by the Avars in the west, and Persia in the east. As told in The Shadow of Ararat, the Emperor of the East, Heraclius, and of the West, Galen Atreus, launched a daring attack into the heart of their Persian enemy. The half-mad Persian shahanshah Chrosoes was taken unawares, and after great battles, he was defeated and his empire given as a wedding gift to the Eastern prince Theodore. At the same time, while the two ancient powers strove to overthrow one another, two critical events transpired.

First, in Rome, the young Prince Maxian Atreus discovered an ancient thaumaturgic pattern—the Oath— constricting the lives and dreams of the Roman people. Aided by the Nabatean wizard and Persian spy, Abdmachus, Prince Maxian embarked on an audacious quest to find the sorcerous power he needed to break down the lattices of the Oath and free the Roman people from their invisible slavery. Second, while the prince exhumed and revivified Gaius Julius Caesar as a source of thaumaturgic power, a young Roman mage, Dwyrin MacDonald, was swept up in the chaos of the Eastern war.

Attempting to find and save his pupil, Dwyrin's teacher Ahmet left the ancient School of Pthames on the Nile and struck out into the Roman Levant. By chance, in the ancient rock-bound city of Petra, Ahmet encountered an unexpected friend in the Mekkan pottery merchant Mohammed. Together, the teacher and the merchant found themselves in the service of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. At the urging of the Eastern Emperor Heraclius, Zenobia and the princes of the Decapolis and Petra gathered an army to resist the advance of the Persian army into Syria, under the command of the Great Prince Shahin. Unaware of Heraclius' intention to see the independent cities of the Decapolis sacrificed to divert Chrosoes' attention, Zenobia clashed with the Persians, was defeated and then besieged in Palmyra itself. Despite furious resistance, the City of Palms fell to the monstrous power of the sorcerer Dahak. Zenobia and Ahmet perished, and Mohammed only escaped with a small band of his followers through sheer luck.

While Persia collapsed, the Roman agent Thyatis, accompanied by the Khazar tarkhan Jusuf, entered Ctesiphon and stole away with mad Chrosoes' second wife, the Empress Shirin, Jusuf's niece. Though she was supposed to deliver the Empress to Galen, Thyatis chose instead to disguise her escape and flee south, making a circuitous and eventful return to the Empire via southern Arabia, the East African coast and the black kingdoms of Meroe and Axum. A dangerous decision, not only for the terrible peril of the voyage, but to thwart the desires of an Emperor...

Not far away, in the ruined Persian city of Dastagird, Prince Maxian found the last piece of his puzzle—a crypt holding the stolen, hidden remains of Alexander the Great. As he did with Gaius Julius Caesar, the prince revivified the Macedonian and felt his power was at last sufficient to break the Oath strangling the Roman people.

In the year 623, as told in The Gate of Fire, the Roman armies of East and West returned home, and both nations rejoiced, thinking the long struggle against Persia and the Avar khaganate had at last come to an end. Great plans were laid, both by Heraclius and Galen, and many legionaries rested their weary feet. Yet, all was not well, neither within the Empire nor without. Heraclius' attempt to return home in triumph was spoiled by a sudden and unexpected illness. Galen's return was more joyful, for he found his wife Helena had at last borne him a son.

Worse, in Arabia the merchant Mohammed reached Mekkah to find his beloved wife Khadijah cold in the ground. Devastated, Mohammed climbed a nearby mountain and attempted to end his own life. As Mohammed lay poised between death and life, between the earth and sky, a power entered him, speaking from the clear air. The voice urged him to strive against the dark powers threatening mankind. Heeding this voice, Mohammed—after a brutal struggle in the city of his birth—set out with an army of his Companions, the Sahaba, to bring the treacherous Emperor Heraclius to justice. To his surprise, he found many allies eager to overthrow the tyranny of the Eastern Empire. First, the rascal Khalid al'Walid, then the lords of Petra, and finally the exiled Queen of Palmyra, Zoe. With their aid, Mohammed raised the tribes and the cities of the Decapolis to war against Rome. Heraclius' treachery would be repaid with blood and fire.

Indeed, even in Persia the enemies of Rome did not lie quiet. The sorcerer Dahak had escaped from the Roman victories with an army and made his way to the ancient, remote fortress of Damawand, high in the mountains of Tabaristan. There, in a shrine once held holy by the priests of Ahura-Madza, the sorcerer began to muster a great power—not only of arms and men—but of darkness. Deep within the fortress lay a door of stone, a door holding inhuman, implacable gods at bay. Risking his life and the earth itself, Dahak opened the stone door to capture the power of the ancients. By these means, he shed the last of his humanity and became a true master of the hidden world. At last strong enough, the sorcerer made his way to ancient Ecbatana and there—with the aid of his servant, Arad—placed the great general Shahr-Baraz on the throne of Persia. Now, a reckoning would come with Rome and Persia's lost glory would be reclaimed.

In Rome itself, events rushed to a devastating conclusion. Prince Maxian, flush with the strength afforded him by the legends of Julius Caesar and Alexander, strove again to overthrow the power of the Oath. Unwilling to sacrifice his brother Galen, the young prince failed, nearly killing himself and wounding his companion Krista. Fleeing to the safety of his mother's ancestral estate on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, Maxian struggled with his conscience. Unwilling to wait for his decision, Krista fled, bringing news of the prince's whereabouts and fatal plans to the Duchess De'Orelio—the Western Empire's spymaster and secret priestess of the Thiran Order of Artemis the Hunter. Her hand reinforced by the return of Thyatis, Anastasia ordered the prince murdered.

Thyatis, Krista and their companions found the prince on the summit of Vesuvius and after a deadly battle failed to kill him. The prince, mortally wounded, opened himself to the power in the mountain, bringing himself back from death and inciting the somnolent volcano to a staggering eruption that destroyed the cities of Baiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii. Maxian escaped aboard his iron dragon, while Thyatis chose to plunge from the flying craft into the burning wasteland rather than become his servant. Only the two survived, all else having perished in the cataclysm. Far away, in Persia, Dahak became aware of the prince and his growing power, realizing a rival had emerged to contest him for the world of men.

These bleak events omened further evil, and the year 624 proved devastating for Rome. As told in The Storm of Heaven, the Eastern Empire suffered disaster after disaster. In the Levant, the armies of the Sahaba, relentless under Mohammed's guidance, destroyed prince Theodore's Eastern legions at Yarmuk, captured the city of Hierosolyma after a long siege, and seized the critical port of Caesarea Maritima. In Mesopotamia, the armies of Persia marched west again, recapturing their lost provinces as well as the great city