Trenara never thought she would have to guide a student she loved to become a messiah, but it is the only way this second trial Starguider can salvage her world. Torn between her devotion to Joshan and the fate of her kind, Trenara struggles against accusations of murder, the onset of war, and the loss of her faith in gods who have turned their backs on her. The only people she can trust to help them are two war-ravaged heroes; the boy's life-long trainer and an old sea captain everyone thought was a ghost. Their only weapon, a ten-year-old boy who wakes one morning to find his childhood gone and his hands filled with a power he couldn't possibly understand--or control. Together they must destroy a psychotic enemy and a religious order that has been running the Imperium for a thousand years; a system they have all taken vows to protect.