The last years of the life of a king who had aspirations to the imperial crown. A king who tryed to embrace all the knowledge of his time and to pass it on for posterity. An unforgetable king.

1281. Alfonso X arrived in Seville to prepare the campaign against the kingdom of Granada. There, he is informed about the revolt of his son Sancho, supported by a great number of nobles.

But things can get worse: at the scriptorium, The Book of the Chess, the Dice, and the Boards, a manuscript of incalculable value, has disappeared.

The anger of Alfonso reaches boiling point. Those who thought he was old, weak and incapable were wrong; they must face the king and suffer the consequences...

The princes, the nobility, the miniaturists, the men who wrote chronicles and made copies, the astrologers... all of them are the characters of this historical novel that blends politics and intrigue, and in which an ancient Arabian book of chess becomes the outburst of a plot of robberies, murders, and treacheries.

It is also a curse story: the curse which the king pronounced against his own son.