Tower and Knife - La série

There is a cancer at the heart of the mighty Cerani Empire: a plague that marks each victim with a fragment of a greater design. And as the geometric patterns cover the skin, so the victims fall under the power of the Pattern Master. The lost prince Sarmin, the emperor's only surviving brother, lies locked in a hidden room. As the pattern draws closer to the palace he is at last remembered, and now he awaits the bride his mother has chosen: Mesema, a Windreader from the northern plains. She is used to riding free across the grasslands, now she must learn the politicking of the Court is not a game, but deadly earnest. Eyul, imperial assassin, is burdened by the atrocities he has committed, and his advancing years. As commanded he bears the emperor's Knife to the desert in search of a cure for the pattern-markings. Conspiracies soon boil over into open violence and the enemy moves toward victory. Now only three people stand in his way: a lost prince, a world-weary killer, and a young girl who once saw a path through the waving grasses...

After spending most of his life in captivity, Sarmin now sits upon the Throne of Cerana. But his reign is an uneasy one. And the emperor’s own heart is torn between two very different women: Mesema, a Windreader princess, and Grada, a lowborn untouchable with whom Sarmin shares a unique bond. In times past, a royal assassin known as the Emperor’s Knife served to defend the throne from menace, but the last Knife has perished and his successor has yet to be named. Sarmin must choose his own loyal death-dealer . . . but upon whom can be he bestow the burden of the Knife-Sworn?

The world is at breaking point. The nothing, a terrible darkness caused by the festering wounds of a god, bleeds out the very essence of all, of stone, silk - and souls. Emperor Sarmin thought he had stopped it, but it is spreading towards his city, Cerana - and he is powerless to halt the destruction. Even as Cerana fills with refugees, the Yrkmen armies arrive with conquest in mind, but they offer to spare Sarmin's people if they will convert to the Mogyrk faith. Time is running out for Sarmin and his wife, Mesema: the Mage's Tower is cracked; the last mage, sent to find a mysterious pattern-worker in the desert, has vanished; and Sarmin believes his kidnapped brother Daveed still has a part to play. The walls are crumbling around them . . .