The Diamond Throne: David Eddings

Book I of The Elenium. After ten years of exile, Sparhawk returned home to take up his duties as Pandion Knight and Queen's Champion. But his Queen, Elhana, was supposedly stricken with the same fatal disease that had killed her father, King Aldreas. She lived due to the sorcery of Sephrenia, instructor of magic to the Pandions, encased in a block of crystal and doomed unless a cure could be found within a year. The corrupt and ambitious Church Primate Annias had made Ehlana's bastard cousin, the weakling Lycheas, Prince Regent and now ruled through him. He planned on using the kingdom's treasury to buy his way to the Archprelacy and power over all the land. Only Sephrenia and the Church knights opposed him. But worse, behind Annias was Azash, the demon-god Zemoch, and his armies are stirring again, ready to destroy the one person who might defeat him - Sparhawk. Cover art by Keith Parkinson.