It came with a hiss that pierced the air as if all the snakes of the desert had raised their heads from the sand. At the peak of its trajectory it hung, motionless and glittering, in a sky brightened by the first light of dawn, then plunged to its goal, striking the gate tower with a crash. Fragments of brick and stone exploded in every direction; the tower's foundations shook; the outer shell,split to its base, listed slowly and began to slide to the ground,dragging with it the beams of the upper floors. Above the roar of collapsing masonry briefly resounded the screams of terrified men as they pitched forward into nothingness, and then the entire upper story gave way, toppling onto the defensive wall and opening a breach alongside the gate. An immense dust cloud arose, obscuring the rubble. A fresh projectile, hurtling down with its malign hiss, vanished in the grayish pall.

...

Florence, 1291. In a disused church on the outskirts of the city the disfigured corpse of a master mosaic artist sits at the foot of his latest - unfinished - creation. Young, ~ambitious Dante Alighieri, Prior of the City, is sent to investigate. He quickly                      _     _   . discovers not only that the church hides secrets of its own, but that the murdered man was connected to a shadowy organisation known as the Third Heaven, a disparate band of scholars and adventurers whose influence could undermine the city's government - in favour of the all- powerful Catholic church and its brutal emissaries.

Seeking to uncover the truth in the mosaic that was too-dangerous to be told, Dante is drawn into a power struggle that leads him back into the secrets and myths of an ancient imperial dynasty- and into peril.as the charms of a mysterious smoky-eyed dancer begin to blind his reason...