The Dark Paladin Page 2

  Their younger sister Allison was different. She was bolder and far more willing to take risks to please their father and prove her worth. She shared her mother’s light brown hair and spirit, but she grew very cold and distant whenever her mother was mentioned, for it was during her birth that her mother Vanessa had died.

  She bounded into the room.

  “Are you decent?” she asked after she had already opened the door.

  Someone had helped her into her armor, possibly one or both of the twins. She looked magnificent. The armor was not fitted for a woman. She had insisted that she wanted to be treated like one of the guys, even if it made her less comfortable.

  Jonas sighed as she twirled around, barbute helmet in hand. Cedric’s style was a close helmet with uplifting visor, the same as his father’s. Cedric put down the mirror to admire her. She twirled another time just for him.

  Her father appeared to be getting uncomfortable. Cedric naturally thought Jonas had noticed him looking at his daughter, but that was not the case.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Jonas complained to her. “My oath only requires my sons.”

  “I can do anything they can do,” she replied defiantly.

  As an obedient adopted son, Cedric bowed his head slightly and didn’t object to the head of household. He would never do anything to offend Jonas.

  She placed her barbute helmet with the Y-shaped opening on a nearby wooden table in Cedric’s room and began aggressively pulling her hair into a knot at the back of her skull. Her eyes dared her father to continue.

  “It’s not a question of what you can do,” Jonas said. “I just don’t want you to have to make the same sacrifices. I want what’s best for you, and this is not it.”

  “And what’s best for me, Father?” she shot back.

  “Abandon this idea of yours,” Jonas said. “You can wear the armor all you want. I bought it for you, had it made by Master Nathan in Perketh. Be an adventurer. Travel the world. Kill a dragon in Visanth, if you like. Have babies.”

  “There it is,” she said, as she slammed her helmet down to the small bevor of her armor.

  “Did you not hear anything I said?” Jonas asked.

  She glared at him.

  “You don’t understand the sacrifices your brothers and I must make,” he said. “The oath demands only my sons, not my daughters. That is a reason to celebrate, child. You are relieved of our burdens.”

  “Because only sons should have to slay demons?” she asked. “Infuse my sword with the Light of the Holy One, and I’ll outdo all of you!”

  “Your mother wouldn’t—”

  Jonas stopped, seeming to realize the pain of the path he was treading. Allison didn’t speak. She just fumed there, staring at Cedric’s breastplate. She looked up briefly at her father, her eyes angry, begging for a fight. She chewed at her bottom lip.

  “I love you, girl,” Jonas said finally. “I only want what’s best for you.”

  She stomped her metal-clad foot on the floor, rattling the wooden boards.

  “Did you warn Corbin or Constantine?”

  “I can’t,” Jonas said, holding her by the arms. “The oath forces me to train my sons for the Order.”

  “Well,” she said, “you trained me too.”

  “I trained you,” he said, “because in this world, you have to be able to fight. There is no mercy, especially for the daughter of a paladin.”

  “Do you believe demons are going to attack us?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And does any of that training matter if I don’t have a weapon infused with the Light?”

  “Against demons?” Jonas asked. “No, but—”

  “Exactly,” she said. “You trained me for a reason—”

  “No,” he interrupted her. “No, no, no-no.”

  “I’m going to be a paladin,” she said. “There’s no doubt. There’s only one question. Are you going to try to stop me?”

  Jonas swallowed hard. He seemed to want to nod and scream yes, but he just closed his eyes and shook his head. He cleared his throat multiple times as if fighting off allergies before excusing himself and leaving the room.

  Cedric and Allison were alone. She eyed him with mock mischievousness.

  “Finally alone,” she said through the y-shaped opening in her helmet.

  “Have you seen yourself yet?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “do you have a mirror?”

  He handed her the large copper mirror, and she snatched it from his hands.

  “Father gave you this?” she asked. “Are you serious?”

  “Perhaps, he thought you’d just look at yourself all day,” he joked. “You can have it if you want.”

  He smiled, inwardly hoping she would accept the gift. He knew what he felt for her. He just had no idea if she reciprocated. She teased him constantly, and it always made him grin like an idiot. Any attention from her just made him feel goosebumps all over his body.

  She squinted her eyes and scowled at him, but she continued to look at her reflection. She took the helmet off and redid her hair to remove any stray strands from falling across her face. He watched her, smirking. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but she was the most attractive. She worked hard. She fought just as hard as the other boys in training. She never took “no” for an answer when she wanted something. And he really hoped that one day, she would want him.

  She put the mirror down and looked at him briefly.

  “And that’s how you’re going to go?” she asked.

  He kept grinning, hoping that maybe it would be contagious. He couldn’t think of anything humorous to say. So, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

  “Are you trying to get me to take my armor off?” he asked.

  She punched him with a metal glove to the chest.

  “You take that armor off,” she said, “and I might accidentally kill you with a sword thrust.”

  She took off her gloves, licked her fingers and fussed with his hair.

  “I’m probably going to put a helmet on,” he said. “Do you really feel this is necessary?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess that’s true. You ready?”

  He nodded, still having a hard time thinking of something useful or interesting to say. “Have you practiced what you’re going to say?”

  “They told you the oath already?” She asked, gesturing with her hands as she launched into an agitated complaint. “It’s so unfair! Why am I always—?”

  “No,” Cedric interrupted her. “They haven’t told me anything. I guess it’s a surprise.”

  They both nodded awkwardly.

  “Yeah,” she said finally. “I guess it is.”

  “Your father will be there,” Cedric said reassuringly. “He’ll make sure we know what to say.”

  Her eyes softened. “I’m sorry your father can’t be there too. I can’t imagine—”

  He nodded and waved off the conversation, remembering his father dying in his arms at Mount Godun.

  “I’m sorry your mother can’t be there,” he said. “She’d be proud of you. We’re all proud of you.”

  She froze in place, and he noticed tears trickling down the sides of her nose. There were a few sun freckles there. She noticed him looking and angrily wiped them away.

  “It’s ok to cry,” he said.

  “As a woman trying to be a paladin?” she asked. “You don’t think they’d throw that back in my face? Look who’s being emotional!”

  “I cried when my dad died,” Cedric said, “as I held him in the snow. My father used to say that love and loss shape us into who we are.”

  She sucked her lips in and tried to fight off tears. He watched her lips disappear and lamented it. Unfortunately, his brain didn’t get the message that these thoughts should stay internal.

  “Don’t do that,” he complained as his brow furrowed, and he stared at her lips.

  She punched him in his breastplate and forg
ot she had left her gloves on the table when she messed with his hair. She grimaced as she nursed her hand.

  “You said it was OK to cry,” she reminded him.

  “I wasn’t talking about you crying,” he said.

  “Then what were you talking about?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and gesticulated, trying to figure out how and what to lie about. He couldn’t just tell her that he wanted to look at her—that he sometimes dreamed of just watching her sleep. Finally, he gave up. He pulled her to him and kissed her with an open mouth. He lingered there with his eyes closed. When he finally pulled away, her eyes were open with surprise at first and then squinted with suspicion.

  “Is this part of some deep game you and my father are playing?” she asked.

  “How—?” he asked, his fingers leaving her metal-clad back and sides, and confusion all over his face. “What—?”

  “First my father talks about me having babies,” she said, obviously getting more amused at his speechlessness, “then you’re kissing me in your bedroom.”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. He admired her polished armor for a moment. Her set had been forged new—an expense that must have been extreme for Jonas. He knew how little general contracting, hired field work, and non-apprenticed blacksmithing paid. Her set had been a labor of love for a favored daughter. He thought of something witty to say about it.

  “If this had been planned,” Cedric said, “I would have kissed you before either of us were wearing armor.”

  She looked him up-and-down and smiled suggestively. “Perhaps you just like a challenge.”

  He reached for her hands. She grasped them and grinned widely and earnestly.

  “Perhaps I’ll just kiss you again if you want,” he said.

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  “We’ll see?”

  “Maybe after the initiation ceremony.”

  She let go of his hands and raised her eyebrows with an air of mystery as she grabbed her gloves and helmet and walked backward out of the room. He readjusted his tasset several times, trying to make room in his breeches for what she had done to him with that first kiss and her lingering mischievousness.

  He needed to relax a moment and acclimate to the rigid gear. He was used to the flexible leather armor that every paladin initiate trained in.

  He extended his arms fully until his hands rested on either side of the mirror laying on the table. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe regularly to calm his heartrate, but it didn’t do any good. Eventually, he just left the room and walked past her brothers and father in the common room and through the door to the porch. He stood out there for a few moments, rubbing his hands together in the cold and unsure what to do next.

  He heard footsteps inside the spacious but rickety home at the base of Mount Godun, in an area deemed untenable by the Crown. Heavy footsteps came closer to the door, and then it swung open.

  “You forgot your helmet,” Allison said, handing him his close helm.

  It had been his father’s helmet. This was one of the few pieces that had not been melted down and reforged. Cedric had broader shoulders than his father and was noticeably more muscular, so the pauldrons and leg armor had needed to be redone. The breastplate had been so mangled that Jonas had needed to recommission that entirely. The helmet and vambraces had been mostly untouched except for some polishing.

  “Thank you,” Cedric said, happily accepting it. They both laughed nervously, but she smiled as if waiting for him to say something else. Her eyebrows raised again, and he felt his heart melt.

  “Did you want something?” he asked, thinking that perhaps she wanted that other kiss now rather than later.

  “A bit cold out here, don’t you think?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing his hands together again and making a big show of blowing air into his hands.

  She handed him his fur-lined gloves for winter, and the metal gloves that fit over them. He had left them on the table also in his haste to leave the room and get comfortable again.

  “Right,” he said.

  “You forgot those too,” she said loud enough for her brothers and father in the common room to hear. “You must have been in a hurry.”

  “Yeah,” he said, gulping. “Big day today. Initiation ceremony.”

  She nodded and seemed to savor every moment of his discomfort. She retreated through the door and pulled it closed.

  He sighed and leaned his head back against the oak wall. “That went well.”

  He looked up at Mount Godun and wondered if his dad had noticed his awkwardness with Allison. He thought of his dad fighting on Mount Godun. He remembered the way the wind whipped around the clearing and the sound of metal hitting the charred, fiery skin of the demons. He gulped as he remembered the way a man’s insides looked when they were roasted from within. As the man lying in the snow became clearer in his mind, he heard his father’s last breath.

  He stared through Mount Godun as he recalled the men slogging through the snow, back down the mountain with his father on their shoulders. And as he remembered the sobs of the people who held his father aloft, he renewed his vow to kill every last demon on or under Nirendia.

  3

  The Holy One

  Cedric walked ahead of Allison and the other initiates in a place of honor as they trudged up the windy pass of Mount Godun. Jonas didn’t say why he put him ahead, but Cedric figured it was likely out of respect for his father.

  The paladins were fully armored for battle, but their aim was not the place his father had died. The thirty paladins of the Order of the Holy One marched to a place of worship, maintained by the Monks of Godun.

  Allison followed him in the procession. Two other teenagers were being inducted: Fred Collinsworth and Allen Bigsby. Fred had lost his father in the same battle that Sylas had fallen. For that reason, Cedric always nodded in respect to Fred whenever he saw him. Cedric could still see the demon trying to get its hand free from Fred’s father’s torso. The power and savagery of the creature, tossing a grown man around like a rag doll, still unnerved Cedric.

  Flanking on either side of the initiates were the surviving members of the paladin order, each carrying their Light-infused weapons. Cedric gripped his with resolution, waiting for his chance to make his father’s memory proud.

  Jonas had told Cedric to choose his own weapon to be infused at the ceremony, but Cedric had brought two. His father’s war hammer and a long spear for charging on horseback. Jonas had said that paladins generally only infused one weapon in a ceremony, but that he knew of no rule against it. Cedric might very well be the first to wield two Light weapons since recordkeeping began. Of course, that just meant more weight to be carried up the mountain.

  No one said anything as they ascended for hours. It was a slow and somber walk. Cedric spent the trek mostly thinking about his dad. He only occasionally looked back at Allison, smiling at her through his fur-lined visor.

  The first person to break the silence was not a paladin but a young monk named Thomas, when he greeted them as they reached the entrance to another cave in Mount Godun. He wore a simple, gray habit and curly brown hair. Thomas could not have been more than twenty years old.

  He beamed widely and openly, beckoning them toward the boulder-locked cave.

  “Not to worry,” Thomas said, seeming to notice Cedric’s concerned look. “This cave is deep within the permafrost of the mountain. Perfectly safe from the naurun here.”

  Cedric was surprised to find that the cave was similarly secured to the mountain as the one his father had fought and died in front of. He hadn’t expected to find a second one on the mountain. He readied his weapons despite what the monk had said and regardless of the fact that he knew his weapons were not blessed yet and ineffective against demons. He simply felt anxious.

  The monks removed the clasps along the sides of the circular boulder and rolled it aside.

  “There we go,” Thomas said. “Go on. Plenty of warmth insi
de. We’ll begin in a moment.”

  The room was circular and chiseled from the stone of the mountain. In the center of the room was a white marble altar that was ten feet long and roughly three feet tall. Lit sconces fastened to the walls every ten or eleven paces. Light filtered in through small holes in the cave wall where the smoke from the lanterns also escaped.

  Thomas shuffled behind the altar, his head bent piously as the paladins filled the room around the altar. Cedric started to follow them in moving to the edges of the open area, but Jonas guided him and the other three initiates to the foot of the altar, looking over it at Thomas. Cedric knelt there beside Allison. Fred Collinsworth and Allen Bigsby knelt to his left and Allison’s right.

  The symbol of the paladin order bedecked the altar top and side facing Cedric. Cedric stared at it, thinking of the day his father died. Behind Thomas and along a high pedestal, Francis Jericho, Jonas Shelby and Henry Claymore ascended and turned back toward Cedric.

  Thomas turned slightly toward Jonas at the center of the pedestal.

  “Shall we begin?” Thomas asked.

  Jonas looked hard at Allison and nodded. Cedric placed a hand beside her reassuringly. Her father might still not approve, but Cedric thought she was brave and the strongest woman he had ever met. She grabbed his hand, and Fred reached out to him to join in the show of solidarity—obviously thinking this was part of the ceremony and not affection between the two. Cedric had no choice but to accept Fred’s hand. He nodded, and Allison and Allen also joined hands. Jonas and Francis Jericho exchanged a look and a smile.

  Cedric straightened his back, despite the heavy armor weighing him down. He felt an immense sense of pride in what he was doing. Internally, he vowed a dozen things. He would carry on his father’s legacy. He would pay back Jonas Shelby’s hospitality with blood and maybe even marriage to his daughter Allison Shelby, if she would have him and if Jonas would allow it. He would kill a thousand demons and try to find a way to keep their bodies from disintegrating so he could put them in a trophy room. And if the demons could actually reincarnate from the Abyss, as Jonas had told him, he would find Sharmat each time he reappeared and send him back to the Void.