“It is said that men must worship the gods of this earth, but none know whom the gods themselves must worship.” The crone’s breath stank of septic wounds and open graves. She leered at him. “I will tell you a secret—the gods worship fools such as yourself.”

Simon is that fool. Reviled as a halfwit, he is pursued across medieval Europe by a sinister league of conjurers, the Apostles of Light. Having erased his past, they will stop at nothing to steal his future. On the way, he joins the Knights of Palermo, a dubious band of wandering rogues, and attracts a mysterious young woman whose fate is somehow interwoven with his own.

Simon finds himself caught in a struggle for power between the shadowy Apostles, his adopted Knights, and the Weavers, a cabal of powerful women struggling to maintain order in a world bound for chaos. With only a broken sword and his own shattered memories, Simon must thread this maze of warring factions to discover who he once was, and why he is inexorably drawn to the haunted ruins of twelfth century Rome.