Moir's promotion to junior priest should have been the best day of his life. He'd worked hard to earn that title... too hard, as it turns out.

Serving four gods is a complicated road to follow when each god manifests in both Light and Dark aspects, in Good and in deepest Evil. The Creeds are intended to provide a set of guideposts, preventing junior priests from straying into heresies. Senior priests mentor junior priests for the same reason. And junior priests are never, ever sent out by themselves.

Moir's initial joy at reaching junior rank chills sharply when he learns where he's going next: not to a posting in Bright Bay, as he'd expected, but to Salt City, the most sacred of all Church holdings. By himself. Far from guidance ... and far from his secretly, patiently waiting lover.

His personal misery is soon swamped by a succession of bizarre and frightening events that force him to confront questions for which the Creeds have no answer. And if gods are involved, either they're of a completely alien sect ... or the Church has been lying all along.

As the northern kingdom begins its spiral into that dark time later named "The Purge", Moir's choices set him on a uniquely perilous road, binding his future to the whim of creatures that were old before humanity was born. He must decide who he serves: Church, King, gods ... or something so tenebrous and dangerous that it could well overshadow every one of those entities.