A Storm of Shadows (Shatterborn Book One)

Chapter I, A Stranger on the Road

The waves of winter had finally begun to let up in Herondale when he arrived. Travelling on the Trader’s pass, a wide, winding road that crossed the border from Atheria to Solara, he arrived on foot. No entourage trailed behind him, nor did he walk beside a wagon and his horse. Over his shoulder he had slung a small rucksack, and in his right hand he clutched a golden staff. Apart from this, he appeared unburdened.

This alone was enough to cause a massive stir in Herondale. After one of the harshest winters in living memory, the pass had seen no use for eight months. And when a traveller came down the Trader’s Road, he very rarely came without some kind of baggage. A lone hunter spotted the stranger from the woods overlooking the entry to the pass, and he rode back to Herondale as fast as his aging gelding could carry him. In his mind, the image of the stranger burned.

When he burst into Narrowstone Inn some hours later, the town was bubbling with excitement. Several other hunters and farmers had seen the stranger as well, and had arrived before the hunter.

Disappointed, Dom the hunter sulked up to the bar in Narrowstone Inn. After eight months of winter, and not a trader to be seen, there was only one kind of mead to be had, so when Dom grunted “mead,” the innkeeper reached below the bar, poured half a jug and filled the other half with snowmelt.

“Pisswater,” Dom grumbled, slurping at the watery mixture.

The innkeeper glared at him. “Mead’s mead, Dom, and by the end of the night, I could sell you snowmelt and you wouldn’t know the difference.”

Dom chuckled. “What do we call this then? Iced booze?”

“Exactly,” the innkeeper said with a smile. “Did you get any game?”

“No, but I did see that stranger travelling down the pass.”

“And arrived a few hours too late to share your story,” the innkeeper said drily. “Do you think you might need a new horse, Dom?”

Dom thought of his gelding and sighed. “Stella can still carry me, can’t he Tom?”

            The innkeeper, Tom, smiled. “Yes, about as fast as a snail in a slingshot he can.”

One of the other drinkers in the tavern, a farmer named Jace, jeered at Dom. “Oi, Dom, saw you and your gelding riding into town all sweaty like. You and Stella been at it again, ‘ave you?”

Dom groaned to himself. It was a running joke in Herondale that Dom was too thick to know the difference between a gelding and a mare, thus his horse’s name being Stella. Without turning to the farmer, Dom shot back, “Have you and your wife been at it in the fields, Jace? Or was it that pig of yours you had a muddy romp with?”

The inn collapsed into laughter. Blooming red, Jace shot up, straight as a pole, glowering fiercely at Dom.

Dom turned around and got off his stool. He towered over Jace by a full head, and was quite considerably bulkier too. Jace, on the other hand, was thin as the rod of the tool he used to till his fields. Instinct kicked in, and Jace sat back down in his seat with a thud, much to the amusement of the drinkers.

“That’s what I thought,” Dom said, not without a trace of humour.

However, the attention of the inn had been well and truly drawn toward Dom now. As he sat back down onto his stool, he could see and feel the eyes of every man-and many of the woman-in the pub.

One of the maids brought Dom a breadbowl of soup. As she handed it to him, she smiled shyly and asked if he had seen the stranger on the road.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Dom said with a smile as he took his meal. “He was well into the pass when I stopped following him, a few hours ago. Saw him past the tree line, you know, friendly citizen of Atheria and that.”