The lights of Rome have dimmed. When the Scorpion and his friends get back to the Holy See, it is a place of fear and death they find, a city cowering under Trebaldi's boot. Their only chance to destroy the Pope's power is to heed Rochnan's last words and look into the past of the Scorpion's mother. Dodging warrior-monks and Inquisitors, they begin to unravel a story that could yield some answers too horrible to contemplate -