The Dark Paladin

  Copyright 2018 by Rex Jameson

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition (2018)

  ISBN (Electronic): 978-0-9989386-3-9

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-09989386-4-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Incidents, names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual locales, events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To find out when Rex Jameson has a new release, sign up for his email newsletter at https://rex-jameson.com/new-releases-email-list/.

  This book is dedicated to Grandpa Steve. I hope everyone in the world has someone in their lives with such knowledge, candor, humor, and moral fortitude. Plus, you’ve shown me it may actually be possible to live in, survive, and maybe even enjoy a house full of cats. Thanks, Steve!

  Table of Contents

  Map of Surdel

  1: The Makings of a Paladin

  2: The First Female Paladin

  3: The Holy One

  4: Thieves in the Night

  5: The First Offer

  6: Danger on All Sides

  7: High Lord Mallory

  8: Ashton’s First Visit to Kingarth

  9: The Unresurrected

  10: The Queen’s Reminder

  11: Family Reunion

  12: Orcus Emerges

  13: The Orcs Move

  14: The Red Poet

  15: A Loss of Confidence

  16: Challengers Appear

  17: Orcus Redirects

  18: A Paladin’s Last Stand

  19: The Southern Invasion

  20: The Second Offer

  21: The First Dungeon

  22: The King Loses an Eye

  23: For Whom the Bell Tolls

  24: The Blood Lord

  The Age of Magic Series

  About the Author

  Other Fiction by Rex Jameson

  1

  The Makings of a Paladin

  Despite his family’s poverty and hardships, Cedric Arrington adored his father. It wasn’t just that Sylas was a paladin who slew demons. Sylas was the paladin—the leader of the Order of the Holy One. He was everything Cedric aspired to be.

  His plate mail armor was always polished, and whenever he wore it, he looked magnificent. Everyone looked at his dad with admiration—even the people of Foxbro and Alefast who had been ordered by the royal family centuries ago to denounce the paladin faith and shun the paladin people. When Cedric walked beside his father’s horse in town, he always held his head a little higher and his chest a bit more poked out.

  Because of the King’s disfavor, Sylas never owned land. His only income came from fur trapping and simple contract work in nearby towns and villages. He knew the basics of armor repair and maintenance, but to Cedric, his father knew everything important there was to know. He knew how to kill fiery beasts—creatures that most common people thought of as nothing more than superstition and horror stories to keep their children in bed at night.

  But Cedric knew better. Demons were only figments of other people’s imagination because people like his father kept them underground. Every year, Sylas returned to their simple log home at the foot of Mount Godun with scorch marks on his armor. Cedric had cleaned the armor himself. He had felt the indentations and even helped buff the seared scratches out before being repaired.

  His father never bragged about smiting demons. He didn’t utter a word about the courageous deeds he did on the mountain, and that made Cedric adore him even more.

  And so, when he was thirteen and his father told him it was time for Cedric to visit Mount Godun, he couldn’t have been more excited. He knew his family’s legacy. He didn’t care what the common man might think of paladins. He wanted to ride atop a war charger. He wanted to wield a war hammer just like his father.

  To the rest of the world, the paladins had been wrapped in mystery, outcast by the King hundreds of years ago when they supposedly betrayed the realm at Xhonia, an elven city at the foot of Mount Godun. But to Cedric, the paladins were not a mystery or traitors. They weren’t vagrants who built homes on the King’s land at the foot of the mountain. They were family.

  Cedric had dressed warmly to trudge up the mountain with his father, who led over thirty paladins that day to celebrate the formation of the Order of the Holy One. Each man wore full armor and a bear-fur cloak made from the dangerous inhabitants of caves on Mount Godun.

  The wind whipped fiercely, howling like a beast and brushing snow from the surface of the mountain onto whatever ravine or conifer might hold it. Wolves watched the men in their trek, but no creature grew bold enough to try for a meal against the host of metal-clad paladins. If the wolves had been hungry though, they might have looked at Cedric in his light chain mail and thick furs.

  This was his first time being invited to the annual celebration. He had only seen his father return from it, beaten, bloodied and burned. Sylas never confided in what happened on the mountain, but the evidence seemed obvious. His father and his closest friends, the only people the Arringtons trusted in the whole world, had been fighting demons.

  “Be careful,” Sylas had warned him as they approached a clearing on Mount Godun, “You’re not a paladin. You’re not ready to fight these creatures. Courage means nothing here. If one makes it past me, you don’t engage it. You run. Do you understand?”

  Cedric nodded emphatically, but in truth, he didn’t fully comprehend the danger. Demons were still stories to him—much like they were to the villagers. He had no idea what he would see at Godun. He only knew that he needed to see these fiends, so that he could truly understand and bask in his father’s strength, heroism, and legacy.

  The thirty paladins formed an arc around a boulder with the Council of the Order of the Holy One poised for battle at the center of the curve—right where the demons might charge. His father’s longtime friends Jonas Shelby and Francis Jericho flanked him with their weapons at the ready. A dozen of the lower ranking paladins along the edge moved to one side of the boulder and looked back to the three leaders of the Council. Sylas motioned for Cedric to retreat twenty yards or so behind him.

  Cedric was freezing within his leather jerkin, light mail and bear-skin gloves. So, he welcomed the chance to get his blood pumping. He eagerly sprinted behind his father to see the boulder. On its face was engraved the symbol of the paladins, a sun rising from the earth. However, this one was more detailed than the one on his father’s chest. Above the sun were two stars falling to the ground.

  “Welcome to the annual Trial of the Holy One,” his father said in perfect, cadenced diction—which only emphasized the importance of the event to Cedric and made him more excited. “Each year, we come to remind ourselves of why we sacrifice so much. Long ago, the elves seeded the land with ice magic, trapping the demon hordes below. In their vanity, the elves left their cities open, where their populations and magic thrived. They thought they were strong enough to fight back the demon and undead swarm. They were wrong. As the elves die out, we are all that stands between human civilization and ruin.”

  Sylas held up his steel war hammer, and a white light filled the weapon, casting shadows on Cedric.

  “We stand high above Xhonia,” Sylas said, “sealed long ago when the elves realized their folly, only too late. They made an escape route, through the ice magic, up to this summit and placed an icy boulder over the exit. Today, as part of our annual ritual, we remind ourselves of what we fight and the danger our world still endures. Despite our persecution and sacrifice. Despite the loss of our freedoms, our lands, our lives and even our children’s lives, we must fight on. For we are the only ones with the power to make a difference in this war against and amongst the evil and the damned.”
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  Sylas motioned for the circular rock to be unfastened, and two men unclamped one side and then the other. The paladins waited patiently for the two men to return to the side with the host of metal-clad men ready to push the rolling stone. The two runners looked back to Sylas.

  “Ready yourselves,” Sylas said, “for death comes for us all.”

  The paladins pushed hard on the rock, and it rolled freely from its fastenings. They hurriedly moved it to the other side and looked into the dark cavern as they passed.

  At first, there was only darkness. Then, two fiery red eyes opened and a host of other pairs popped up behind the creature in the passage.

  “Look alive, boys!” Jonas Shelby shouted. “We’ve got a higher up!”

  The lead demon growled in a way that was almost like a cat’s purr. It stretched its fiery hands as it moved along on hind legs. It was about seven feet tall and mostly black except for red fire that leapt from cracks that formed and resealed all over its body.

  Cedric found a tree behind his father and leaned against it, trying not to fall over at the shock of what he saw.

  “Almighty Cronos!” Cedric whispered. “They’re real!”

  The paladins who had been pushing the boulder retreated back to the human arc around the opening. Their weapons glowed with unnatural white and yellow light.

  “Well met, paladins,” the lead demon said in a harsh, guttural voice as six other demons fanned around it. “My name is Sharmat, and we mean you no harm. We seek an escape from this conflict in the underworld. We are deserters. Let us pass and we will not harm you or your kind. On this, I swear.”

  “A demon’s oath means nothing to us,” Sylas said. “We don’t believe your lies. The Holy One has shown us what you do to the living. If you don’t retreat back to your hole, we will smite you to the Void.”

  Sharmat spat and hissed in an aggressive-sounding language to his pack. He then turned back to Cedric’s father.

  “You dare speak of the Abyss like this?” Sharmat asked. “What could you know of the Void? No, you have not seen it! You do not know despair. Not yet. But you will. All of your kind will.”

  Sylas gripped his war hammer and brought it back behind his shoulder, as a blacksmith might ready his instrument for a strike against an anvil. Sharmat snarled and hissed commands to his underlings.

  The other demons were only about five feet tall, but they looked fast and ferocious. They pawed at the snow for a few seconds, sniffing at the ground and air, but they were only stalling and trying to catch the Order off guard. The demons lashed out at the paladins near the cave. The screech of their fiery claws along the steel armor was high pitched and piercing. A small, flailing black creature launched onto a paladin, driving its claws into the man’s shoulder. The man yelled defiantly but in pain.

  A man to his left ran a Light-filled sword through the creature’s bowels, and it tumbled off the wounded man. It gurgled and spewed fire in its death cries before shattering into sputtering fragments that floated into the wind and disappeared like parchment in a bonfire. Another paladin swung a glowing spearhead in an arc that sliced through a second demon’s abdomen like a hot knife through butter. The fragments of the two demons set off a panic in the four remaining creatures.

  “For your freedom!” the demon Sharmat screamed, pointing toward Sylas and the passage down the mountain beside Cedric.

  The four demons dropped to their hands and feet and bounded toward him. Cedric’s eyes grew wide as he realized the fight might be coming to him. The demons cleared fifty paces quickly. Sharmat dodged a downward swing by Sylas and rushed through the gap left between him and Jonas Shelby. Sylas managed to ram a shoulder into the demon, charring his pauldrons and knocking the creature to the ground. It scrambled to its feet while two men in reserve, behind the arc as a last resort, moved to intercept the charging fiend.

  The smaller demons were felled quickly by Francis Jericho with his hammer and Henry Claymore with his two-handed sword. Jonas Shelby chased after Sharmat as the paladins dispatched the other two demons with Light-filled swords, hammers, and spears.

  “Cedric!” Sylas yelled.

  Cedric panicked at the sound of his name and looked for a place to hide. There was no hole big enough for him, and if he ran down the road from which he came, he would have been in the direct path of Sharmat’s escape. He stumbled and rolled to his right, trying to get behind part of the arc, out of the way of the demon, but it was too fast.

  Cedric’s father regained his footing as Sharmat did and sprinted toward his son. Sharmat sent a fiery fist through the chest of a young man named Collinsworth and flung him around on his arm trying to get his hand free. As Sharmat ran toward Cedric, he looked like a giant, one-winged bird attempting to take flight. The demon knocked the other reserve paladin to the side. The knight’s plate hissed as it took the blow.

  The creature’s eyes were frightened but determined, like an elk running for its life through a pack of wolves.

  “Is this your cub?” Sharmat yelled.

  It sneered as it raised its free claw to strike down Cedric some ten paces away.

  And then Sylas was there. His armor clanked and jostled as he caught up to Sharmat. He didn’t have time to raise his hammer, or perhaps, he didn’t think to. He ran his shoulder into the demon again, toppling it onto its back as his white-fire hammer skidded and sizzled across the snow. Sylas grappled with it as he fell atop and over it.

  The demon began ferociously mauling his father as they rolled in the snow.

  “Dad!” Cedric yelled as he reached out to help.

  Henry Claymore caught Cedric before he got too close. Jonas Shelby dropped his hammer down on the creature’s head, and Sylas Arrington rolled free of the demon as it disintegrated. His breastplate was black and singed. The blackest parts weren’t the armor, though. There was a gaping scorched crater in his father’s chest where the demon must have plunged its hands.

  Henry let go of Cedric and dropped to his knees, as did the other paladins.

  “Close the gate,” Jonas commanded the paladins near the cavern. “Lock the boulder!”

  “Go to your father, boy,” Henry said. “He’s not long for this world.”

  Cedric dropped to the snow beside his father and gathered him into his arms. Sylas was heavy in his plate armor, and his body emanated unnatural warmth from being eviscerated by the fire demon. Thankfully, there was no blood. Cedric opened his father’s stylish close helm and then took off the helmet when he couldn’t see enough of his dad’s face.

  Sylas grabbed his son by the arm and struggled to breathe.

  “Prepare yourself,” Sylas whispered.

  “I will, Father,” Cedric said, tears running down his cheeks and off his chin where they froze against his leather armor. “I swear I’ll become the finest paladin in the land. I’ll make you proud!”

  “Death comes for us all,” Sylas said.

  “Please don’t speak,” Cedric said. “Just hang on, Dad.”

  “Tonight,” Sylas said, looking past Cedric to the faces of Jonas, Francis, Henry and the paladins who now encircled Cedric, “Lady Death comes for me.” He sputtered and struggled for breath. “I know her face well.”

  Sylas looked at his son. Tears lingered there as his father struggled to breathe. “I fear you’ll know it soon, too.”

  Sylas’ eyes closed, and he exhaled for the last time. Each paladin touched Cedric lightly on the shoulder and offered a short prayer to the Holy One and the Creator Cronos before returning to the path down the mountain.

  Cedric stared at the spot Sharmat had fallen under Jonas Shelby’s hammer. All that remained of the demon were small flakes of burnt flesh. Cedric couldn’t remember the creature’s face. In his mind, all he could see was blackness and red eyes. It was hardly enough for Cedric to focus his eternal wrath on. So, he thought of an act. He looked at the marked boulder and dreamed of opening it, raising a glowing hammer, and smiting every last demon in the underworld.

&n
bsp; “Whatever it takes,” Cedric vowed to himself. “I’ll destroy every last one of you, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  2

  The First Female Paladin

  Five years later, Cedric stood in his adopted home at the foot of Mount Godun. Jonas Shelby helped Cedric equip his first plate mail set. It was the most gorgeous thing Cedric had ever seen and gleamed silver in the lamplight. As Jonas tightened the various straps along the metal pieces, Cedric wondered if his father Sylas could see him—watching over him from the afterlife somehow.

  Jonas handed Cedric a twelve-inch copper mirror to admire himself in.

  Cedric briefly forgot his slain father and beamed to Jonas as the lamp light glimmered from the polished pauldrons, breastplate, and plackart.

  “It’s amazing, Uncle Jonas,” Cedric said.

  He felt bad that he didn’t have anything to give Jonas in return. An armor set like this was always made of re-smelted metals from other sets and whatever new metal alloys a family might save up for. All paladin families were poor, and an adopted son of a paladin was even more destitute. Cedric could never repay his adopted family for the food, housing and now armor that they had provided him with.

  “Do you need help putting your armor on?” Cedric asked hopefully.

  “Maybe later,” Jonas said as he continued to fasten and cajole Cedric’s armor into a tighter fit.

  Jonas had a family of his own. Cedric frequently played and sparred with Jonas’ twin sons Corbin and Constantine and their sister Allison. Corbin and Constantine had both taken the paladin oath the year before. Cedric desperately wished he had been there to congratulate and cheer them in their ceremony, but only paladins and initiates were allowed. Today was his and Allison’s day. Everyone he knew would be there.

  Staying with the Shelby family had been quite natural, despite the circumstances, and he got along well with the twins because they were each so alike. They shared the same blond hair that he did. They had lost their mother in much the same way as he had lost his, during childbirth. They all appreciated the same periods of silence and quiet contemplation. Whenever they jousted and hunted, the twins were as focused and stoic as he aspired to be. Since they had become paladins the year before, he mimicked them and tried to pry them for answers and hints for what he needed to learn and do.