Upon This World of Stone — James A. Hillebrecht

SECOND BOOK IN THE PALADIN TRILOGY The Juggernaut has smashed its way across the Plains of Alencia to the very walls of Jalan's Drift. But even as Darius rallies the forces of the Southlands to oppose it, questions begin to arise as a darker and more sinister purpose begins to make itself known. Mraxdavar the Great, Eldest of Dragons, heeds the call to render aid, but are dragons coming to the succor of their deadliest foes, mankind, simply at the behest of one human wizard? Duke Argus barters for the aid of the murderous priests of a renegade god, but are the blackest and most powerful summonings of their deity to be handed to a mortal lord merely for his personal advancement? And did the demonic scepter, the Ohric, actually exert all this time and power merely to enable a barbarian horde to break a single city, even one as large and rich as Jalan's Drift? In this second novel of the Paladin Trilogy, Darius struggles to understand the significance of these questions, while the unlikely team of the thief Adella and Shannon, Darius' teen-aged Daughter, is diverted to an isolated castle where the tyrant Regnar holds the power that has enslaved the states of the Plains of Alencia.