And so our narrator begins his tale. It is 1937, in the thick of the Spanish Civil War. JosMara and Montse are two of a group of Spaniards thrown together, forced to wait out the war in refuge at the Spanish Academy in Rome. Unlike the rest of his compatriots, JosMara has no strong feelings either way about the Fascist or Nationalist ideologies that are causing such bloodshed in his home country; it is only the beautiful and bookish Montse who ignites his passion. When Montse and JosMara sell a sixteenth century text discovered in the Spanish Academys forgotten library, they unwittingly become embroiled in an underground Nazi plot to collect mystic artifacts for the practice of the black arts. The most powerful artifact soughtthe one most coveted by the führeris The Map of the Creator, a legendary document depicting the power centers of the universe, said to be penned by God himself.