A Cast of Stones by
Patrick W. Carr is both his first novel and the first book in
The Staff & The Sword trilogy. It is an epic fantasy set in a world where the church is second only to the king, though seemingly not by much. Errol Stone, the village drunkard, is paid handsomely by a church messenger to deliver a package to Pater Martin, a priest who lives outside the village, on the other side of some challenging terrain. Errol knows the way like the back of his hand, but surefooted as he is, he runs into trouble when he realizes he is being followed by a man in black who apparently wants him dead. He makes it to the cabin, but only just barely. This would only be the first in a long string of instances where he likely wishes he had never volunteered to deliver that package, because he ends up becoming a reluctant member of a small party setting out for the city of Erinon - the seat of both the kingdom and the church - and his life is never truly his again.
