Wheel and Serpent

Wheel and Serpent launches new adventures and conspiracies amid the chaos of the crusade against the Cathar heresy in southern Europe in 1213.

Taresa of Valeros has one task: Pedro of Aragon needs her to lead Yusuf, her scholarly brother-in-law, from Toulouse to Paris, serving as translator and guide through the ways of Troubadour culture. Her own secret goal: to be made a knight when her chore is done.

But feral children rob them, a murderer at a Templar monastery frames them as rebels, and renegade heretic hunters arrive in the hills of the Languedoc. An enigmatic woman in crimson promises shelter but leads them into catastrophe. And then the Languedoc world falls into total chaos.

In times of madness, some strive for power and others run for shelter. A few do whatever it takes to save the innocent. Taresa has her wit, uncanny second-sight into others' memories, and her lover's third-best sword. Will that be enough to protect her friends and fulfill her hopes when pandemonium reigns?

Taresa of Valeros first appeared in the Accidental Heretics series when she traveled as a laundry woman in the Aragon army into Andalusia. She chose that disguise to protect herself from a bad marriage and ended up among the family and friends of Valeros, a community of warriors in the Catalan Pyrenees. In this first book of the new Legends of Valeros series, Taresa fights for life on her own terms, in the face of a military and cultural invasion that seeks to supplant the Languedoc way of life.