At the height of the Seljuk Empire, a lone figure emerges from the mountain range skirting the Caspian Sea, his sights set towards the east. At his waist he conceals a dagger. Beyond the desert lays the great city of Nishapur, and it is here his destiny lies. Eshaal is not like others who travel this road, he is not a merchant or a nomad, pining not for riches or reward, his is a singular purpose. Since childhood he was honed for the blade as it was for him, a disciple of the Isma’ili Nizari, an assassin. Rulers may hide behind walls of stone and armies of men and a hundred thousand horses, yet still they are undone by a solitary man with a dagger. But what becomes an instrument when the heart to wield it is given to another?
A tribe of children wander through a dark primordial forest, drawn onwards by an infant’s distant wail. At the foot of an immense rise they come upon a youngling, naked and shivering, its cry perverted for the cleft in its upper lip. None of the tribe think this peculiar, for they were each abandoned here, each with a comparable blemish to flaunt. Whether bizarre growths or blotchy skin or limbs gnarled, these were their marks, and they carried them with pride.
For most it was enough just to survive in this savage land, but not so for the clubfooted girl who stood among them. Stonepaw was burdened with a curious mind, and though it caused her no end of trouble, she couldn’t help but wonder at the strangeness of the world. Where had they come from? Might there be others? Had their presence anything to do with the towering beast that stalked the forest? And more importantly, what lengths would she go to that her questions might be answered?
The year is 1630 AD, war rages across Europe, pitting Catholic against Protestant and decimating all in its path. The casualties are many, but it is not the corpses of foreign enemies that line the streets of Würzburg, it is the sorry remains of those executed for witchcraft.
Father Friedrich Spee had abandoned the role of inquisitor years ago. But upon his arrival, the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg forces him to reassume the mantle, and dispatches him to the mountain village of Gramschatz to investigate a mysterious death. Never did it occur to him that there was anything to find. There he discovers a woman of Persian descent, a woman whom the townsfolk have gone to great lengths to conceal, and in her all his beliefs are tested. She is a talented healer, possesses otherworldly powers, reveals the different layers of reality and the evil that lurks in between.
Where might one come upon such knowledge if not by a pact with the Devil?
