Paladin's Ruin | A Fallen Paladin, Holy Magic, Skinwalkers, and Grimdark Fantasy

Today's post is a little different from my usual musings and recommendations. Instead of talking about other books, I'm sharing a taste of my latest book :prologue from Paladin's Ruin, the latest book in my grimdark epic military fantasy series, Paladin's Apprentice.

If you've been following along, you know I spend most of my time here dissecting religion and culture, craft, and reviews/recommendations. So... consider this a change of pace. Paladin's Ruin is a nobledark fantasy built around a magic system inspired by the miraculous gifts of the saints—healing, visions, and stranger gifts besides—wielded by warriors who are far from pure. It's a story about a fallen paladin, a revenge quest in the midst of a civil war, and the brutal cost of reclaiming power in a world that grinds the powerless underfoot. If you like your fantasy gritty, your heroes morally complicated, and your faith-based magic paid for in blood, BUT that moves to nobility and a better world... Read on.

The prologue is below.

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Paladin's Ruin | Prologue

Of all the things King Uther had done in five years of holy war, the thing that would get him killed was an act of mercy.

He didn't know that yet. He was standing on the Sultan's balcony watching his men burn the city below, taking in the smell of incense and char, and thinking about nothing very much at all. His thumb traced a nick in the stone railing, back and forth, without purpose.

The gates had fallen on the twelfth strike. A pestilence—some called it an act of God—had swept through Qasr al-Sabal before a single northern boot touched the sand, striking its people with a wasting disease, and so what should have been a siege had been little more than an axe felling a sapling. Five years since the warships first crossed the Low Sea. Five years since the men had left their homes, their wives and children. Five years of bloody warfare, and somewhere along the way they had become something that God would not have recognised. Perhaps that was the thought Uther could not look at directly. He let the morning light burn against his closed eyes instead.

Penrose stood behind him. Penrose always stood behind him. That was what it meant to be a paladin—to stand behind someone while they looked at the things you couldn't make yourself look at directly.

"What is it, Penrose?" the king asked.

And that was the last peaceful moment they would ever share.

"Qasr al-Sabal has fallen, its rulers are dead by God's hand, and you couldn't look more golden, milord."

King Uther chuckled, though there was no mirth within his voice.

"You mistake what is the wreathing of the rising sun. Have a closer look and see what this five-year campaign has cost me."

Penrose's jaw worked once, then stilled. He shifted his weight and fixed his gaze somewhere past the king's shoulder. It was the same way he'd held himself the morning they'd buried Uther's father—two boys of fifteen, standing shoulder to shoulder at the barrow while the court wept behind them. Even then, Penrose had not known what to say. King Uther knew how he actually appeared. He was no more the vision of the young, virulent king whose aid had been called on by the Einards or the Holy Hierarch. Now the hollows beneath his cheekbones cut deep enough to hold shadow, and a scar like a white root forked from his left temple to his jaw. They'd called him the Lion of the North, but here, in the South, he had a different name:

Ben Sesh—Get of the Serpent.

So a serpent I shall be if it means an end to this madness, King Uther thought. As if in response, a woman's scream tore up from the streets below, joined by the rough laughter of soldiers. He'd heard it when the Sultan's forces had invaded the provinces of the north, and now he heard it as his men feasted all of their carnal desires upon the people that they saw as little more than demons.

King Uther's eyes swept over the dusty city. It was massive and swept out from the palace like a raging river come loose. It wasn't that it was without planning but rather that he did not understand its planning. All was the color of dust—matching the rolling sand dunes off in the distance. Only the palace and the minarets stood apart, their great domed tops caped in gold, the edges lacquered in bright colors and stained stones that caught the light like enchanted jewels. Were it not for the smoke and the screaming that carried up from every quarter, it might have been a beautiful view.

Penrose hummed in approval. "Let them suffer. They aren't even human."

"Aren't they?" King Uther lifted an eyebrow.

He hadn't the chance to remind his friend that it was because of the island merchants' petty trade desires they had been forced to attack the city of al-Seraq first. Had they come here first, like he'd insisted, the war wouldn't have lasted a year. But before he could speak, the sound of a woman's shriek, followed close by a chorus of King Uther's men, broke across the Sultan's courtroom.

A door was flung open and a woman dressed in dark garments stitched with fine jewels ran into the room, sprinting straight for the king. Black-and-white-clad clerics followed, giving chase, their faces masked by plague beaks and expensive goggles from the west. Penrose moved swiftly in front of his king, his sword coming free of its sheath. The air hummed and his skin seemed to attract the light, glowing with the allure of the full moon. Even without the active prayers of others, his faith was steadfast enough to conjure a pale double of himself. A double that seized the woman and bound her with ease.

The woman's nails raked across the double's forearm and Penrose hissed through his teeth, gripping his own arm where the welts rose unseen. Whatever the double felt, Penrose felt. Penrose, the real one, drew his sword—a needless gesture as the other paladins and guards moved to surround the king.

"She has the wasting disease!" shouted one of the men.

"Halt, leper, or you will be slain where you stand," Penrose exclaimed.

But the woman did not stop fighting to break free, only stopping at the sound of King Uther's words.

"Haq!" King Uther called, following up the command with the same word in his own tongue: "Stop." He added, "Release her! This is the Sultan's wife."

The men hesitantly did as he commanded and Penrose's double vanished.

"You are safe, so long as you obey. What is your name?" King Uther asked, stepping around his men.

Penrose stopped him, laying a hand on the man's shoulder. "She has the wasting disease, sire. I don't think this is a good idea—"

"And there is reason I am king and not you. Do not forget your place."

Swallowing loudly, Penrose stepped back. King Uther's eyes turned back to the woman.

Even with the marks of her affliction, it was easy to see why she must have caught the Sultan's eye. Skin the color of caramel with eyes of jade and lips that pulled with the knowing of a mind that moved two steps ahead of the next. A small ruby lay embedded in the skin between her eyes, marking her as the Queen of Qasr al-Sabal.

Scowling at the men around the king, she curtsied and held up a small bundle that she'd kept close to her bosom. Pulling back the cover, she revealed a small cherub face—a sleeping babe, peacefully suckling away at its thumb. Its skin was perfect, and it even had a thick lock of hair. She spoke in her tongue.

"I am Queen Zahara Nafad and I will die soon—"

"Milady," King Uther said, shaking his head. "No harm has come to your sisters and neither shall any come to you. I vow it."

Zahara Nafad twitched. "Unless you are a desert fool, I shall die. It is the fate of a leper. There are only three fates for me. A swift death. Exile. Or to suffer until Al-Umar decides it fit to take me away. It is all death, and I know of which I prefer."

"And what of the baby?" King Uther asked after a moment's pause.

"Take him for your own," she said. "He is untouched by the plague."

When King Uther didn't move, she fell to her knees, grabbing at his silver tabard—ignoring the lances and blades that came to hover around her body.

"Don't be a fool," Penrose murmured into his king's ear, putting together what was being shared between the pair. "You cannot take this child. Even if you could raise it as your own, it would always be an outcast."

King Uther frowned, considering the woman closely. How many more? The question surfaced unbidden, dragged up from the same black water that had swallowed his sleep for months. He looked at the child's face—untouched, impossibly whole amid all this ruin—and for one instant he saw not the Sultan's heir but a boy no older than three curled in a doorway in al-Seraq, dust on his lips, flies at his eyes.

To everyone's disbelief and the protests of the clerics, he reached down and helped the woman to her feet, speaking once more in his native tongue:

Return the queen to her room. She wishes a swift death to be free of her curse. Tomorrow we shall assist her with a humane and private end. See that she and her babe are placed in comfort until then.

His men exhaled as one, armor settling, a muttered prayer passing between the nearest guards. Zahara Nafad made a short, choked sound and bit it back. Uther's grip tightened on the railing.

"I should've known not to expect anything of you, Ben Sesh. May the buzzards feast upon you and the dunes forget your name."

Bowing, Zahara Nafad allowed the clerics to escort her away.

"You made the right choice," Penrose said. "It would only have been a cruelty to bring that demon back with us."

King Uther, however, was not so convinced. But this he kept to himself as they returned to waiting.

Waiting for the clerics to finish cleaning the dead out of the palace.

Waiting for the dip of the evening sun so that Esh-Elmehk could be purified and the temple once more ordered to the true and proper God.

But these were no longer what King Uther awaited.

King Uther sighed. What is a few more hours of waiting?

***

The Glory Vision hit Penrose like the hilt of a sword.

One moment he was toweling off after an exquisite late-night retreat to the Sultan's bathhouse, and the next he was crumpled on the ground. Penrose's eyes stung, but not because of the balsamic-sweet undertones of the ghar and neroli-infused water, but because of what stood before him.

An angel wreathed in fire.

It wore the flames like the finest of garments. The angel was bald, with eyes so deep they could have drunk the night. Stepping forth, its wings unfurled—filled with obsidian feathers that refracted off the colored lanterns that the people of Sabal-Rihi so enjoyed.

Penrose could do little more than avert his gaze. Prostrating, he beheld the greatness and glory before him, body trembling and voice cracking as it called for him to rise.

"I am your servant. For what purpose have you called upon me, Glorious One?"

When the angel spoke, it was not in words but in vision, in sight, in sound.

Anointing oil, sweet as honeysuckle, tinted by morning primrose and woody sandalwood meeting the softer notes of khezamine—lavender, worn only by the women of the Sultan's harem.

A child's cry, precious and soft, mewling as it tried to draw milk from its mother's failing nipple.

A woman's lullaby in a tongue so ancient that only the desert wind still remembered the first mouth from which it sprang.

A man's voice, hushed and soft. King Uther, pushing aside the beaded doors and appearing like some knight from a forgotten epic.

Beside him stood a man in cleric blacks and whites with a beard as ragged as the years upon his face.

"I will take your child and raise it as my own. But none must know it is yours."

King Uther reached out to take the baby from the woman.

Queen Zahara Nafad hesitated, looking to the mysterious man at the king's side.

"This is Brother Milodrad. He will help us keep this secret. I trust him with my life," King Uther said.

At that, Milodrad unwrapped the bundle held within his arms. Both he and the queen winced at the sight of the unbreathing infant.

"Did you—"

"Never," Milodrad said softly. "This child died of pleurisy. Its lungs filled beyond what our healers could save. Even miracles have a limit."

As he spoke, a tear shimmered faintly at the corner of the man's eyes, leaving a bitter taste within Penrose's mouth.

"We shall swap infants," King Uther explained.

As he did, he removed a ring from his finger and pressed it into the blankets in which the queen's son was swaddled.

"You shall claim your son died from a disease brought by the Northern barbarians, and Milodrad and his student will keep your son safe until we are returned to Varengarde. I have only daughters and shall claim that my wife is unable to produce a male heir. Thus, it shall be said that King Uther adopted a son by which to carry on his line."

"And shall you ever tell him the truth?" asked the queen.

King Uther stared back at her, his face still as cut stone, and his mouth did not open. Such would be impossible. The queen's breath faltered, raced, and slowed. A moment later and she had regained her composure. Kissing her son, she beheld the babe one last time before handing it over—

The vision faltered and shifted. No longer were they in the foreign reaches of that arid place, but the warm halls of Varengarde's most eminent castle.

The smell of blood hit first—warm and sweet beneath the iron, like the taste of a split lip.

A man's rattling breath in the instants before death.

Tears on the skin, warm with the salt of sorrow and exultation.

A young man pulled the knife from the king's neck and let the blood pool across the floor. The same ring that King Uther had given the infant now shone in the hearthlight. For a long moment, the dark-skinned murderer stared at the blade. Then, letting it drop, he spoke in a voice, regal and fine:

"Long live the King. Goodbye, Uther, now my father is avenged."

The vision vanished, and with it the angel. Penrose was too stunned for words, ignorant to the fussing of his body servants.

King Uther is making a terrible mistake! The Glory Vision had been clear enough. If his friend saw this through, his fate would end at the hands of that very child. Pushing the body servants away, he ordered his clothes brought to him. He dressed swiftly and rampaged through the halls of the palace, eventually finding King Uther and Brother Milodrad sneaking—led by a servant of the queen—through a series of prayer rooms. A secret servant's passage had just been opened, revealing a false panel along a colorful wall, when Penrose reached them.

"Stop, Uther! You cannot go through with this."

King Uther blinked, his hand hovering momentarily over the hilt of his sword. Realizing who it was, he relaxed—though Penrose's eyes remained fixed upon those firm hands.

They were smeared in blood, drops raining from the cuffs to the floor.

"You're injured!" Penrose started.

"The price of love."

"Allow me to heal—"

But King Uther shook his head. "I should've known you would find me."

"I was blessed by a Glory Vision, my king. If you save that child, you shall die."

King Uther's face hardened, and suddenly he looked very much like the old man who'd been slain by the heathen's hand.

"Will you try and stop me?"

Penrose, starting to speak, blundered into silence. He hadn't expected that. His friend had always listened to reason—at least until these last months, when something in the man had seemed to break.

"No," Penrose said. "But think of your wife. Your daughters—"

"They will be fine."

"But my vision," Penrose blurted.

"A private revelation," King Uther said, perhaps a little more sharply than he intended. "Do not think you are the only one given such gifts. I had one as well, and this is something I must do."

Penrose stepped closer, hardly believing his ears.

"But you will die."

"So that more shall live."

King Uther's face softened as he placed both hands on Penrose's shoulders. He leaned close, his breath warm against Penrose's ear.

"How many did we kill?"

"Many heathens," Penrose confirmed.

"And how many people?" King Uther asked. "Perhaps it is justice, if I am to die, or perhaps I am a fool who has had enough of God's game."

Penrose jolted back from his friend, shaking his head.

"You don't know what you're saying," Penrose said, sidestepping into the mouth of the secret passage and barring Milodrad from his passage. "Give me the child. I will do what needs to be done, and you shall be none the wiser."

But the king only shook his head.

"Will you stand with me or against me?"

Neither man spoke. Somewhere deep in the passage, water dripped against stone in a rhythm older than both of them. From beyond the palace walls, the muezzin's tower carried the faint, anguished cries of the city up through the night air, and for a breath they both listened to it—to the cost of everything they'd done to arrive at this moment.

Penrose answered by drawing his sword and leveling it at the babe. Its soft coffee-colored eyes looked at the point, and it cooed at the way the lanternlight danced off the edge of the blade. Penrose's arm wavered, the sweat pooling along his back.

Brother Milodrad, perceptive as he was persuasive, pushed the blade gently aside and spoke to the queen's servant in that high-toned accent that the people of Varengarde were so well known for.

"This one is with us. Lead the way."

The servant, ebony as the night, didn't look so confident, but at the cleric's nod moved past Penrose. Brother Milodrad followed close behind, pausing only to close the panel, saying:

"Your will be done, milord."

"Very good," King Uther said—never once breaking his gaze from Penrose.

Even as the door closed, the two held each other's stare, neither blinking, neither breathing, until Penrose broke first.

"You shall have nothing to worry about from me, my king," he said. "I am but your loyal servant."

"And friend?" King Uther asked, but by the time he finished the question, Penrose was already gone.

***

That's the prologue. If it hooked you, Paladin's Ruin is available for pre-order now—grab your copy and find out what the fallen paladin's revenge actually costs.

Order Paladin's Ruin:

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