The Flame-Gatherers

India, 1205. The ancient kingdom of Mandu gleams in the autumn light as the Rajah Rai-Khizar-Pál returns victorious from battle, his procession trailing captive princes in chains. Among them is Fidá, son of the enemy's leader, whose quiet dignity and wounded pride make him a unsettling presence in the palace. Though reduced to slavery, he carries himself with a grace that unsettles his captors andcaptivates the Ranee Ahalya, a woman trapped behind marble walls even more confining than her husband's iron cage. She has everything except freedom; he has lost everything except his honor. What begins as a glance across the palace gardens becomes a dangerous intimacy, two souls recognizing in each other the chains they cannot name. But in Mandu, love is a rebellion that neither can afford, and duty is a weight that bends even princes to their knees. Margaret Horton Potter, writing at just twenty, crafted a romantic tragedy that aches with longing and pulses with the exotic allure of a vanished world.