The Serpent's Tongue: Empires of the Mist, Book One (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798193780144)

** A sweeping historical novel of war, love, ambition and betrayal, set in a forgotten kingdom south of the Silk Road. **

HE CAME FROM THE MIST.
HE WOULD REMAKE AN EMPIRE.

Sixteenth century. South of the Silk Road. Beyond the great eastern rivers, a kingdom is rising.

Senglung has never seen the kingdom of his father.

Raised among the warriors of the mist-covered hills, he knows the forest, the blade and the woman he loves. He knows nothing of royal courts-and nothing of the blood that binds him to one.

Then a royal messenger arrives.

Senglung is the forgotten son of a king and half-brother to the ruler of a rapidly expanding eastern kingdom.

Summoned from the mountains and given a new name-Konseng-he enters a palace of carved dragons, silk and suspicion, where power is won with steel and can be lost with a single careless word.

Trained by the kingdom's greatest general, Konseng rises from outsider to commander.

He fights rival kings and queens.

He leads armies through jungles and river valleys.

And when a formidable Turkic army advances from the west with powerful new firearms, Konseng must help defend the kingdom that has finally claimed him as its own.

But the most dangerous enemy is already inside the palace.

A prince watches Konseng's fame grow with hatred.

A captive princess hides a secret of her own.

And a king who has conquered enemies on every frontier is beginning to lose control of his own family.

Caught between the brother who needs his sword and the woman who still holds his heart, between the kingdom that gave him a name and the hills that made him a warrior, Konseng must decide where his loyalty truly belongs.

Because armies can be defeated.

A whisper is harder to kill.

The Serpent's Tongue is a sweeping work of historical fiction about love, war, ambition, brotherhood and betrayal, inspired by documented events from a rarely fictionalised kingdom of the eastern frontier.

First Book of the Empires of the Mist Trilogy.