Sarantine Mosaic

Guy Gavriel Kay’s captivating novel brings to life Sarantium, an alternate Byzantine world and the dazzling, golden heart of an empire. Here, Caius Crispus, a master mosaicist, lives only for his craft, his soul still scarred by family loss. An imperial summons draws him east to the fabled city. Crispin undertakes a perilous journey, carrying a Queen’s secret mission, her seductive promise, and an alchemist’s talisman. He traverses a land rife with pagan rituals, mortal danger, and dark magic. Once in Sarantium, a city of gilded sanctuaries, chariot races, and dangerous intrigues, Crispin must discover his own source of power to survive its inherent violence. Unexpectedly, he finds it high on the scaffolding of his greatest artistic creation.

Lord of Emperors is the concluding volume of Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic duology, set in a richly imagined alternate Byzantine world. Crispin, the celebrated mosaicist from Varena, has found his life's great work high on the dome of the emperor's sanctuary in the golden city of Sarantium. But the isolation of artistic creation cannot shield him from the dangerous currents swirling around him: court conspiracies multiply, rumors of war gather, and strange otherworldly fires flicker and vanish in the streets at night. Most pressingly, the emperor himself is plotting a military conquest of Crispin's homeland.

Into this volatile atmosphere comes Rustem of Kerakek, a physician from a distant eastern kingdom, pursuing his own ambitions amid Sarantium's treacherous webs of passion and violence. As Crispin's destiny becomes ever more entangled with that of his imperial benefactor, loyalty carries a price that may prove fatal. Kay delivers a luminous meditation on beauty, mortality, and the claims of art and empire, bringing the Sarantine Mosaic to an emotionally resonant and historically textured close.