Paladin

Chronicles of Obscurity

In the days when the old kings were dust and their crowns were pawned in the markets of the coast, the lands of Paladinyhät knew no peace that outlasted a harvest. The passes of the north ran with wolves and worse; the roads of the south were taxed by whoever held a sword that season; and in every town the lamps were lit early, and the doors barred.

Yet Liysandor, the first city, stood. It was raised upon the hill where the first paladin had once knelt and sworn, and its walls were old when the oldest grandmother was young. There reigns Queen Cyilean, who is just but not soft, and who rides from city to city with the golden plates, her guard in burnished mail. Where the plates are seen, the knives stay sheathed and the purses stay full. Where they are not, the night belongs to others.

Now a darkness older than the kings stirs in the east, and no map names its source. Each dawn it drives another column of the homeless down the old roads — farmers with their ploughs, soldiers without a banner, children who have forgotten their villages — and each dawn the gates of Liysandor open to them, for the queen has never turned the desperate from her walls.

Inside, the city is loud with the Arena, the one bright thing left in the world. Many a newcomer, dazzled by its banners and the roar of the crowd, and with no future to weigh against it, sells the last of their hope for a wooden sword and a name on the roll of fighters.

So the people of the six towns sleep light, eat when they can, and pay the healer what they have. Some take up the sword for glory, and some for bread; some learn the temples’ prayers, and some learn to look away from the fallen in the street. The queen cannot be everywhere, and the arena is open every hour.

Who will you be, in such an age?