Featuring a tragic romance between knight and cleric, a classic conflict in the human heart between love and duty... Gathir, senior commander of the knights of Queen Nandira, has spent his life in loyal service to the queen, surrogate father and mentor to her only heir, the beautiful and unruly Princess Zemida. But beneath the ivory armour of the perfect knight, Gathir harbours a secret, forbidden passion for another man: Zaras, a magic-wielding cleric. Despite Gathir's own bouts of confusion and jealousy, not to mention the strict vows of knighthood that bind him, the two lovers have kept their association successfully hidden in the shadows of the court for these past eighteen years. When Princess Zemida runs away with the son of a nomad chieftain, it falls to Gathir and Zaras, as knight and cleric, to fetch her back. Wrestling with Zemida's betrayal, Gathir finds himself torn between his duty towards the princess and his love for Zaras. Even as the man he loves above all things urges him to turn back, Gathir stubbornly pushes them both onward, deeper into the intrigue that Zemida has woven, into the sinister desert, domain of the sand-witches, where mundane steel cannot protect them...