Author: Shane Michael Jones

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2021-03-08

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 1532054475

Thomas Belson’s name has grown heavy with glory and honor. By his leadership, the nations of Thyro weathered Emperor Thaniel’s dread conquest. By his holy vows, humanity finally deadened the sorcerous shriek of the Old Religion. He walked through the World Below to arm the righteous with knowledge against it. Those who count themselves allies of goodness and grace owe Constable Thomas Belson the debt of their remembrance. But perhaps there are things worth forgetting too. How Thomas rages against the gods to whom he swore his Constable’s oath. How he laments nothing more than outliving his triumph. How he’s killed enough men to make a hard winter blush and not all of them guilty. Come to think of it, not all of them men either. Perhaps what Belson the Blessed learned in the World Below should stay between him and Hell. It was that secret that made him nail children to pillars as all the allies of goodness and grace averted their righteous gaze. Thomas Belson won his war, but he hasn’t stopped fighting in the decade since. Guilt and paranoia make him see Thaniel in every tin-pot tyrant, apocalypse in every shadow. His increasingly erratic behavior is a growing concern for the governments of Thyro. They’ve heard the rumors. They know he cries out in his sleep. The Matriarch of the New Church calls it a kindness when she absolves him of his oaths. After fifteen years of fighting, he can finally return to his family in The Confederacy to find peace. However, the powers that be have grown complacent in peace. Perhaps they watch apocalypse loom and dismiss it as shadows. Thomas Belson saw something in the World Below that drove him to atrocity, and Hell is nothing if not patient.