It's 1134. In a bleak monastery somewhere in Germany, Paul of Ardiun begins the chronicle he has been ordered by his religious superiors to write: the story of the knight Karelian Brandeis, for whom Paul once served as squire, who fell prey to the evil wiles of a seductive sorceress, thereby precipitating civil war and the downfall of a king. But before Paul can set down more than a sentence or two of this cautionary tale, the sorceress herself magically appears to him. He is a liar, she tells him, and always has been. She lays a spell on him: from this moment, he will only be able to write the truth.

And what is the truth? To re-discover it, Paul must go back thirty years, to the day Karelian and his men are driven by storm deep into the menacing Forest of Helmardin. There, they come upon a mysterious castle, where they're received as if expected. Inside is light and luxury -- and Raven, the castle's mistress, more beautiful and fascinating than any human woman could be. Karelian and his men fall deeply under her seductive spell. Only Paul, good Christian that he is, is able to recognize Raven's pagan sorcery, and to resist it.

Thus begins a powerful tale of ambition, delusion, obsession, and betrayal, focused upon four memorable characters: Karelian, jaded by too many years of fighting, who has come to question the beneficence and even the worthiness of the Christian god; Raven, priestess of the old gods, struggling to keep their power alive against the encroaching threat of Christianity; Gottfried von Heyden, Duke of Reinmark and Karelian's patron, who believes himself the heir to an incredible destiny and is determined to create God's kingdom on earth; and Paul, devoutly religious yet unable to suppress the forbidden desires of his true nature, doomed always to fall short of the purity he longs for more than anything else. These four, with their opposed beliefs and agendas, draw one another inevitably into an escalating spiral of violence that reaches out to engulf the whole of Reinmark. Meanwhile, behind their human conflict, a larger one plays out: between the ancient pagan gods and the new god of Christianity, who cannot rest until he possesses all the world.