When a demonic entity attacks Timber Stead's rural village, murders his nephew and kidnaps his niece, he swears an oath by his god to retrieve her - a promise which will steal the rest of his years, sending him to places of unutterable darkness.
"He couldn't move but only watch as the red stone took a living shape, uncoiling from the floor and moving toward him, three red eyes like blood, staring without blinking, a crocodilian grin, four arms pulled up and four hands reaching forward..."
Even transformed into a holy knight by the searing, celestial light of the Sun he worships, he may find himself unable to banish the monsters of Ocera - or the ones lurking in his own past.
"Claws that irrigated reminded him of the damnation his blessing had been, teeth that scalped taught him that answered prayers were only a half-wheeled wagon..."
In this second novel of the ever-dark Ocera series, we learn the nature and the fate of the man named Sunshield.