The Stone In The Skull (The Lotus Kingdoms, Bk. 1)

This first volume of a new Eternal Sky trilogy takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south, into the Lotus Kingdoms.The Gage is a brass automaton created by a Wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works now as a mercenary. He carries a message from a powerful sorcerer to the ruling queen of one of the Lotus Kingdoms. With him is the Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the bodyguard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.They are walking into a dynastic struggle between the rulers of the shattered pieces of a once great Empire.The young queen of Sarathai must choose a husband - a husband who will become the master of her kingdom. The leading suitor is her repulsive cousin, who believes he is destined to sit on the Peacock Throne - if not through marriage then by conquest. Can sorcery and war in the hands of the Gage and a dead man reunite an Empire?