The year is 1395. A merchant vessel cuts through the dark waters off the Syrian coast, and aboard her sails a figure few can fathom, the Prince of India. Clutching an ancient leather roll of incalculable worth, he commands an entourage as strange as his mission: two white slaves bound to him by unknown oaths, a massive African man who moves like shadow. What treasure lies in that roll? What empire-altering design drives him toward a nameless bay at midnight? Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur, constructs here something stranger and more haunting than his famous epic. This is no simple tale of conquest. The Prince of India moves through a crumbling world, Christianity splintered, Islam expanding, the Byzantine Empire breathing its last, and his mysterious enterprise seems tangled with forces larger than any single empire. The fall of Constantinople hangs in the balance, and this enigmatic traveler may hold the key to whether the city stands or falls. For readers who crave historical fiction steeped in atmosphere and intrigue, where the true drama lives in secrets and the slow collapse of empires.
