About Shadow of the Exile
Written by Wayne Mansfield
40 pages / 19000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-834-0, 1-60370-834-0
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, Sony-optimized pdf, epub
The village of Melkin sits high in the mountains of a faraway land. Karl lives in Melkin, and he's a simple man with a farm on the outskirts of town. Karl longs for adventure, for a mote interesting existence, and it seems like he's found it on the way home from the market one day. If an accident that leaves him unconscious can be called adventure.
Karl wakes up to see the handsome face of Rune, who he soon realizes is the nephew of the evil sorcerer, Earl Drorgen. To make matters worse, Karl's inside the Earl’s castle on Gristle Mountain. Yet there is something about Rune he is drawn to. Through persecution, evil spells, and Viking raid, Karl and Rune learn that they have great feelings for each other, but will those feelings be enough to see them through?
Review
Kiernan Kelly, author of In Their Own Skins, Shifting Sands, writes:
Karl is a farmer in a provincial village whose life if changed forever
when he is clipped by a charging horse-drawn coach and nearly killed.
Rune is the nephew of the coach’s mysterious owner, Earl Drorgen, who
tends to Karl after the accident. Brought together by misfortune, Karl
and Rune find true love, but their new lives together are shadowed by an
unspeakable evil.
In “Shadow Exile,” Mansfield draws the reader into a story bursting to
the seams with magic, mystery, and mayhem, interspersed with a sweet
love story and steamy scenes that will keep the reader’s pulse racing
from start to finish.
Sample
The sun was a white hot ball of fire in the sky as Karl trudged home from the village market. Rivulets of sweat ran down his muscular torso, sticking the dark hair of his chest to the tanned skin beneath. As he moved the heavy basket of supplies from one hand to the other, the perspiration snaked its way down to the fabric of his breeches, bleeding into the weave and turning the color a shade darker. His feet were damp inside his calf-length, leather boots, and his back was coated in a thin layer of dust from the track. The shirt he’d worn into town was now draped over the basket with one sleeve dragging in the dirt.
Humming to himself and enjoying the harsh rays of the sun on his face, he was oblivious to the rattling and creaking of a horse-drawn cart hurtling toward him from behind. In an instant, two jet black horses burst around the corner, manes and tails flying in the breeze, nostrils flared and hooves sending up great dust clouds as they pounded into the well-traveled road. A whip cracked. Karl spun around and was confronted by an enormous, blurred object almost upon him. He cried out, but the driver saw him too late.
He caught sight of a figure pulling back on the reins, straining in an attempt to bring the beasts to a standstill, and heard the horses neighing and the sound of their gait slowing, but the edge of the cart clipped his shoulder and sent him flying into a shallow ditch by the side of the road. The wicker basket flew out of his hand, and its contents scattered across the road and into the small gully. An explosion of pain sent stars swirling about in front of his eyes. The taste of dirt. And of blood. He spat once as the world around him went spinning around. Dirt. Grass. Flowers. Darkness.
It was nightfall when he regained consciousness. He was in a bed that was not his own; he could tell by the nest of soft pillows beneath his head and by the quality of the bedding. Carefully, and with more effort than he expected, he lifted his head and looked at the unfamiliar, candle-lit room through squinted eyes. Immediately he was assaulted by a sharp, jabbing pain that shot through his brain and made his eyes water. A wave of nausea flooded his body, and he choked back the taste of vomit that had bitten the back of his throat. His head dropped gently back onto the pillows, and he closed his eyes.
At the same moment his cheek touched the silky texture of the pillows, the door to the room creaked opened. He willed himself to open his eyes, but it wasn’t until his visitor arrived at the side of the bed that he was able to accomplish the task. It was Rune, famous in village gossip for his association with the sorcerer known as Earl Drorgen. In fact, he’d seen Rune several times before in the market place and at a distance, traveling to and from the castle he shared with the Earl high up on the crags of Gristle Mountain; the mountain that in the late afternoon cast shadows across Karl’s small farm.
Rune was even more handsome than Karl remembered. Probably around thirty years old, he estimated. Beneath a black, cassock-style robe tied at the waist by a thick, black cord, Karl noticed that the man was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck to reveal a tantalizing tuft of thick, curly chest hair. The dark shadow of Rune’s unshaved jaw accentuated the perfect whiteness of his teeth, and when he smiled and handed Karl a goblet of fresh river water, Karl felt his cheeks flush.
“May I?” asked Rune, gesturing towards the bed, his voice deep and rich; his words tinged with the last remnants of an accent.
Karl nodded and swallowed a mouthful of water.
“I’m Rune,” he said as he sat down on the mattress. “I’m sorry we had to meet under such circumstances. I’m just glad that you weren’t too badly hurt.”