The Fallen Paladin's Riddle, page 1
The Fallen Paladin’s Riddle
C.Y. Russ
Copyright © 2023 by C.Y. Russ
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
For my Husband
For my friends
For The Inner Sanctum
For my Editor
This wouldn’t have ever seen the light of day without you.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Prologue
“There is nothing more to be done.” Xiomara was barely conscious, but she understood that. Understood what it meant.
Her memories were vague, the Sanctuary and the Creeping Shadow and horrible, tearing pain as she was devoured by it and then spit back out with it coating her insides.
Now she was corrupted, fouled, a carrier of the Creeping Shadow and could pass it to other places and things.
It couldn’t be allowed to corrupt anything else.
Xiomara knew what happened next, she knew what was coming, so why, when she was stripped of her Order, did it hurt so much?
She was nothing now, simply a carrier of the corruption that chewed on her insides and the only thing to be done was to endure it and find a way to separate it from herself in a manner that wouldn’t spread it anywhere.
There was perilously little of the world of Resham left that was free of the Creeping Shadow, but it was the responsibility of the Orders to keep what was left safe and Xiomara was no longer safe.
So she left, walked into the Creeping Shadow to try and fix everything. She could wait for death, or she could try and push the corruption back from within the heart of the Creeping Shadow.
There was only one choice she could make as a Paladin of the Quill.
One
The dream was old, old enough that the fact that it still hurt was ridiculous. Xiomara pulled herself upright, every muscle in her body screaming in protest and got to her feet, looking around at the rough walls of the cabin she’d found abandoned in the wastelands.
The walls were grey, but everything in the wastelands was grey. They were what was left after the Creeping Shadow finished with the goodness that was inherent in the land. The wastelands were all that was left for her because there was no goodness left in Xiomara either.
That was why the dream hurt so much, but there was no sense dwelling on it. She threw her armor on, she might be corrupted but she wasn’t an idiot. No one in their right mind was ever in the wastelands without armor. Of course no one ever went to the wastelands if they could help it.
Xiomara dwelt here, which she supposed made her a bit of an idiot. But this was her home now, it was the place she could do the most good. The only place that would accept her now that the Creeping Shadow leaked from her eyes when she wasn’t focused on it.
But there was nothing for it to harm out here and the droplets that escaped her hit the dry dust of the wasteland and vanished in tiny puffs that were made of despair.
Xiomara left the tiny cabin and walked around the corner. The verdant shades of the tiny plants she had managed to coax out of the despair that was the wasteland was hard to look at in the all consuming grey. But she was going to look, she was going to drink in the hard won little victory against the Creeping Shadow.
It was a tiny victory, but Xiomara was going to force it outward. She was going to grow an oasis in the heart of the wasteland and was going to force the Creeping Shadow to turn back on itself like an Oroboros and eat itself in the process.
Which meant that she was designing both a trap and a sacrifice. It had to be done as fast as possible, but at the same time she couldn’t force the growth too quickly. It had to be irresistible to the Creeping Shadow to force it to turn and right now the Shadow would wipe out her and her effort without a thought.
It had already killed her once and it would not hesitate to do so again.
She had to keep it secret until it could tempt the entirety of the Creeping Shadow to turn back on itself. And to do that was taking every ounce of what was left of her. Which wasn’t a lot, but she was going to make it be enough.
After all, no matter what the Masters had said, no matter that they had turned their backs and had closed the Orders to her, she was still a Paladin of the Quill and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for the remains of the world.
After all, if she was doomed to die then she was going to take the Creeping Shadow with her. Her final act of service for a world that had closed its eyes to her suffering.
Xiomara spent the rest of the day kneeling in the dust that was once fertile soil drawing careful runes in the only ink she had left to her. Scarlet laid the dust, restored a measure of fertility to the soil and took a little bit more of her with every stroke of her pen.
But she had something else that she had to do today, so she couldn’t spend herself on the growth in the way that she usually did. Today she had to go to the outpost and stock her cabin. Which meant that she needed to look like she wasn’t one of the Raveners that lived in the wastelands.
Which meant that she needed to look as though she hadn’t come from the wastelands. If they suspected, they would drive her back into the waste or kill her outright. And Xiomara had too many plans to die just now.
She was going to die saving the planet, not on the spears of the outpost soldiers. She was going to die proving to the Orders that even the Corrupted had worth.
Which was what the Paladins of the Orders became when they were attacked and overwhelmed by the Creeping Shadow. Ordinary people became Raveners, mindless thralls to the Shadow, but Paladins became Corrupted and were stripped of their orders and cast out to die.
Xiomara shook her head, the bitterness welling up in her heart for what had been done to her. She could have served, even as a Corrupted. She was a strong Paladin, even through the Corruption, and she’d deserved-
But it wasn’t about that now, now it was about saving the world from within the last refuge that the realm afforded the Corrupted. The Raveners lived in the wastelands too, but they were easily fought away and almost a non-entity without the force of the Shadow driving them at the fringes of the still sound land.
Xiomara removed her dented armor and pulled the dress that she wore when she went to the outpost. It felt unnatural, unsafe, but there was nothing that would advertise that she was from the wastelands more than dented, rusted Paladin armor.
It was a disguise, nothing more than that, and she would do what she had to to get through this until she could save what was left of the world.
The trip to the Outpost was longer than it needed to be because she couldn’t approach it head on. She had to curve up through the fringes of the wasteland and then back down to the Outpost as soon as she was out of sight of the walls. That way she could look as though she was from one of the villages further up the road and not right out of the Wastelands.
Xiomara wasn’t the biggest fan of the Outpost, but she was only here for one thing. She made short work of it. Beans and bacon and a fat cabbage that she could use to sprout new plants. The Outpost didn’t sell seeds, it was too close to the verge of the Wasteland to worry about growing things.
The worst of it were the Paladins. Every Order had a presence in the Outpost and it was torment to see them in their bright armor and know that door was forever closed to her.
So she kept her head down and a fierce grip on the corruption that swam in the spaces between vein and organ and in the places between her thoughts and gathered what she needed including a few potatoes and carrots before she made for the gates of the Outpost that faced away from the wasteland.
“Stand,” A voice bellowed from behind her and Xiomara froze. She knew that voice, knew that bellow. The last time she’d heard it she was being overwhelmed by the Creeping Shadow. “Paladin, turn.”
But Xiomara was no longer a Paladin and after a moment she shook her head and picked her heart and her feet back up to continue her march to the gates.
“Mara,” a softer call this time, an old nearly forgotten name that froze her in her tracks as a familiar face came into her view.
“I am no one, Master,” Xiomara forced her head up, forced the last vestiges of her pride to the fore. “You made me no one when you stripped me of the Quill and I have found another purpose.”
“Mara, listen, please.” the Master of the Quill sounded desperate and held out a thick tome to her. “Take this, it holds something-”
“Excuse me, Master.” Xiomara skirted her old Master, her old tutor and the closest thing she had ever had to a father.
But he got back in front of her and pushed the book into her arms before he vanished back into the crowds in the Outpost courtyard.
Two
Xiomara had never been more exhausted. The screaming pain was back and there was nothing that she could do to stop the inky corruption that fell from her eyes as the ceremony where she had been stripped of her Quill flashed through her head.
Her little verdant patch was small comfort, but it gave her the purpose that had been stolen from her and the determination to go on. She took her shopping into the cabin and focused on putting everything away in the grey cabinets and the grey baskets that sat on the grey counters. Even the fire that she started to cook the bacon she’d bought was tinged with grey.
But the book wasn’t. It was vibrant sea-green leather gilded with gold along the edges. It was massively thick and Xiomara wanted to hold it. She also wanted to burn it for what it represented.
It was from the Library of the Orders, the seal of the Paladins was stamped into the leather of the cover and Xiomara wondered if the burning gold would make the flame something other than grey.
She reached out a shaking hand and touched the green leather briefly. Opening the cover to the title page and letting out a broken, sour laugh. She’d thought that the Master of the Quill had given her something useful for the barest instant. Instead it was nothing more than a book of fairy stories.
She set it aside. She would keep it and watch the leather die the same slow death that she was. Would watch the vibrancy of the leather bleed out the same way that she did.
Xiomara finished cooking, made herself eat even though the food never tasted like anything after contact with the grey flame. It was still sustaining her, and that was all that she required.
After she ate, she went back to the tiny patch of growth and surrounded it in more bloody runes until she was exhausted and hurting and could do no more.
Then she went to bed, curling up beneath the blankets on the hard, lumpy bed and willing herself down into something resembling sleep. To contend with the night terrors and the memories that ate at her.
In the morning, she forced herself up and did it all over again. Each day got a little harder, but each day saw the little green patch grow larger and Xiomara took as much comfort as she could in that while her body broke down further and further.
And through it all, the book stayed as vibrant as it had been when the Master of the Quill had pushed it into her arms. She found herself starting to take comfort in it, in its glowing vibrancy. As she fell asleep at night it was with one hand on the cover.
And on the heels of comfort came curiosity. The Master of the Quill had told her it contained something, but what on earth would have persuaded the Master to come all the way out to the Outpost to giver her a book of fairy stories.
And how had he known where she was?
One night, when the pain and the terror were too bad for her to sleep, she reached for the book. Weak enough that gripping it was a struggle, she managed to get it into her lap and open it. When she flipped to the first page, an envelope with her name on it stared back instead of the beginning of the story.
She flipped the envelope, meaning to put it aside, but the seal stopped her. It wasn’t the official seal of the Master of the Quill. Instead it was the man’s personal seal, the one with his initials emblazoned on it. The one that was at the bottom of her adoption documents.
Fury hit her. Fury and a sadness so black that the Corruption was light by comparison. Tears spotted the envelope, the Darkness flowing from her eyes and splattering alongside the saltwater of her tears.
She nearly ripped it up, but the longing was too strong. These were his words to her. Words that came from her father and not from the Master of the Quill and the part of her that still ached with loneliness wanted those words desperately.
So rather than shred the letter with her nails and feed the scraps to the grey fire, she broke the seal and opened the envelope. The letter was short, full of sorrow and regret that practically leaked from the page.
The second page was a treatise on something that was so far gone that it was essentially legend. It would have been laughable if he didn’t point out all of the connections to real world events and places. Even those that had been lost to the Creeping Shadow.
Xiomara’s brain was in overdrive. The things that his words could possibly mean gave her a vicious hope that she’d all but forgotten. If what he said was correct, there was a possibility-
But it couldn’t be, there was absolutely no way that old fairy story was even remotely true. Xiomara folded the letter and set it to the side along with the hope that was trying to sink claws into her psyche.
She was Corrupted, there was nothing left to her but the growth and the trap and a death at the hands of the Creeping Shadow as she saved what was left of the world of Resham.
There was nothing left for her now.
But the days went by and when she wasn’t drawing the scarlet runes around the growth that was her trap, she was reading.
The hope was irresistible and she probably spent far too much time with it. But what else was there to do in the wastelands? Wasn’t it better to try to do something productive than to simply wallow in her determination and despair?
And the assertions in the letter that he’d written her kept knocking at her mind.
What was the harm in trying?
Three
Xiomara might be insane, at the very least she sort of felt that way as she scoured the wasteland and the Outpost for the components that she needed to do what the book had hinted at. It had only been a hint, from a time long before the Schism that had allowed the Creeping Shadow into their world.
With the Schism had come loss, and with the loss had come a defenselessness that had led to the creation of the Orders. At least that was what the letter from her father said. The book sort of backed him, but the stories were told with that historic perspective and it made translating them to the real world difficult.
The letter and the book, but Xiomara had never wished for access to the Library of the Orders more. So there was really only one thing that she could do. She was going to have to experiment. Which she hated, but there were too many variables.
The Outpost had supplied her with virtually everything that she needed and for the last thing, for the sage, she’d taken a single leaf from her little verdant patch. She could sacrifice a single leaf, and that was all it would be. She was giving herself three attempts to see the variables at work.
Within those three tests, she should be able to make the adjustments to the spell to learn if what she was trying to do was even feasible. If her Rialta even existed out in the world as it was.
It was too far-fetched to truly be real. Rialtas were legend and myth and nothing more than a dream. There was no proof that they had ever even existed save the fairy stories and a few headstones deep in the wasteland.
She was wasting time that she could be using to grow her trap, time that she could be using to draw the runes or rest or any number of more productive things than contemplating this.
But if her Rialta did exist, if the stories were right, and the Schism had simply severed the links that held between the pairs, then if they could be restored, she might have a chance to dispel the corruption in her body.
If she could do that, if she could manage to reverse the damage to herself, then maybe she could reverse it for Resham. But it was all conjecture and painful hope until she could make it prove out.
