Heartful of Scars

By Eve Morton

Three dozen missing people. New gods vs. old gods. A battle as old as time ...

The Winterlands is a place of desperation and misery when David, a former spiritual soldier, shows up at a local inn. When he is refused a room, he makes fast friends with a scared priest named Garrison who is on a mission to expose a rival spiritual leader, named The Mountain Man by the locals. Though David does not believe in a single thing -- and refuses to give his real name to anyone -- he joins the priest on this mission into the snowy mountains of the Winterlands.

There he comes face to face with monsters he never thought possible, testing his faith at every turn, and making him fall for Jasper, the son of another soldier lost in battle. Will he and Jasper ever get out of the mountains together? Will Garrison find and defraud the prophet? Or will their entire party join the ghosts of the over three dozen souls who dwell beneath the ice?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jul 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685502102

Book preview

Chapter 1

The only things I ever believed in, before this particular job with the Mountain Man, were wealth and women.

These were the only things that, without being a woman myself and without ever possessing any wealth myself, I still found enough evidence to convince me that they were true and real. They were even worth obtaining if I ever wanted to put in an effort to do so. But since I generally preferred the company of men, and since I never liked the way wealth made people stick to one place for longer than was smart, I didn’t put in an effort for either—until a priest of the old gods came into the inn where I was drinking and trying to barter for a room.

That night changed everything.

At first, I didn’t think much of the small man in a black suit that didn’t fit him. His brown hair was curly, nice to run a hand through, but he was pale and forlorn. Not my kind, not my type, I thought. He sat on a stool a couple places down from me. He asked to drink whatever was on tap. I barely noticed or cared when the bartender asked several times what he had ordered, as if he had gone deaf.

You sure, sir? the bartender said. Once it’s past the lips—

I know the words of warning, and I’m sure. Give me what ails me.

I don’t know if the gods would—

I don’t care about them right now. The priest slammed his hands on the counter. I don’t care about my vow of sobriety—or any of my vows right now. I can’t care about anything at all. Not when there’s a lunatic out there.

I started to pay attention here.

The priest gestured to the inn door that had opened once again and a group of people came in while also dragging in the snow. The storm had started after I had arrived in the Winterlands, as if to live up to its name. I was always a meticulous planner, and I never let myself get too far away from a place to lay my head without some sort of provisions. Since I no longer had a tent and the mountain gear the Winterlands required, the inn was my best place to lay until I decided my next move.

But first they had to let me stay. The bartender was serving me, but the innkeeper at the front had yet to change her mind about letting someone like myself grace her beds. I figured once the fae lady, who could always see when people were lying, switched to the night crew, I’d have better luck getting a room.

There are monsters out there, the priest went on when the bartender was quiet. And most of them are human. Don’t be one of them and just serve me.

The bartender sighed as he poured whiskey for the priest. The bartender made the magical sign for the old gods, a warding gesture, which only made the priest laugh. A low cackle, as if he was now on the other side of the wrong religious war.

So what ails you? I asked. I shifted two seats over to be closer to the priest. In the better candlelight, the priest was younger than I figured. A man right out of school, his voice and balls barely dropped low enough to make his parishioners take him seriously when he lectured on the required afternoons and evenings. He was human, too; his hair revealed his ears to be like my own, not elfin, or any of the other creatures I’d read about in the Winterlands.

The priest drank, ignoring me. I leaned closer, my face under the light, so he could see my scars. All half dozen of them. I asked, ‘what ails you?’ I bet I have a better story to tell.

His gaze met my scars first. Then my blue eyes. Then my older clothing. He scoffed. Unless those marks were made by some of the new gods, the ones that take men’s souls and give them eternal life, I can’t care about a drunk solider.

I’m not drunk, I said. And I’m not a solider.

He scoffed again.

Who says these scars weren’t? I said and gestured to the six on my face. "I have