Dismay Goes Before Him

Sandalphon was never the hero people said he was.

For years, the miller of Ghede has lived off a lie: one panicked act in his youth, inflated into legend by villagers who needed a story to believe in. He has grown older, more pensive and more ashamed of the name they gave him.

Then the blood sorcerer Thistledred comes looking for a hero, to claim the Lamp of Ariadne from the dying god beneath the mountain.

Thistledred needs a sacrifice: the blood of a hero, and the blood of the innocent. Sandalphon is taken. So is his daughter, Cimarron. Bound for sacrifice, he can no longer hide behind the lie that shaped his life.

But death is not the end of Sandalphon’s story.

Raised from the pit with a cursed sword, pursued by sorcerers, gods and the dead, he must follow Thistledred’s army before Cimarron becomes another of Thistledred's sacrifices (not that she needs saving). To save her, Sandalphon will have to become the one thing he has always known he is not.

A hero.