The website of Allene R. Lowrey
Jorir took a little of his remaining coin, small though it was, to visit the bathhouse that night. He would give Thane Soggvar no excuse to abuse him that he could avoid. The next morning he put formal braids in his beard and – for the first time in many a year – wore the…
“Evening, strangers. My thanks for the invitation.” “The pleasure is ours. Have a seat.” The dwarf rumbled: it might have been a laugh. “Not many strangers call dining with a dark dwarf a pleasure.” Einarr offered a friendly smile. “A good friend of mine happens to be a dark dwarf. My name’s Einarr.” “Hmm. Kharmor.”…
Einarr once more offered Jorir the hilt of his sword in token of their pledge, and the dwarf grasped it without hesitation. “A test, my lord?” Jorir raised an eyebrow, his voice held low. “I was the one on trial, I think. Well, we gave them a story, anyway.” “You!” The show-off from the circle…
For a long moment, darkness and silence held sway. Einarr strained his eyes and his ears, but no light seeped into this cavern from above, and the only sound that reached his ears was the occasional plink of a drop of water falling into a pool below. Finally he heard the distinctive scrape of a…
The chatter of kalalintu from above rattled Einarr’s nerves. They were starting to feint at diving, trying to keep their prey from escaping, nudging them ever closer to the ledge. Not good. “Henir!” The blond man snapped his head around and Einarr tossed his bow back to him. The archer wasted no time nocking another…
“What’s this?” Erik paused to look back at Einarr. “Stop and listen a minute. Hear that?” After a moment, a growl came from low in Erik’s throat. “Better us than the repair crew.” Einarr nodded and pushed forward. Father and Bardr, at least, needed to know, and the rest probably should as well. Jorir, at…
Blue sky greeted Einarr’s eyes when they opened, and grass beneath his hands and neck that was soft rather than scratchy. He furrowed his eyebrows, trying to recall how he had wound up on the ground and failing. Already the details of the mushroom-visions had faded from his mind, leaving him with only the feeling…
The days following the battle with the Valkyries were somber, as well they should be: five Vidofnings fell to the Order’s hunters. Three of them had remembered Raenshold better than Einarr himself did. Those five had ridden the enemy ship to the afterlife in a blaze of glory, and left five more empty berths on the Vidofnir.
If there was one bright spot, it was the treasure they had found in the Geirskögul’s hold, packed into every spare inch beneath the deck boards of the Vidofnir. The morning after the funeral, Stigander had directed them north to a friendly port, only a little out of their way. No-one could quite get out of their head, though, what those five newly empty berths meant.
I’m going to regret this, Einarr thought even as he fell. The darkness was nearly complete. Nearly, because the Isinntog about Einarr’s neck gave off a faint white glow.
Einarr’s legs plunged into the moldering kitchen refuse of the jotün and his dwarf. The smell that assailed his nose nearly made him vomit. Putrid meat, rancid fat, and rotting vegetables all mingled together in a slimy slurry that, by some miracle, only came to Einarr’s waist. He covered his nose and mouth with a hand.
After what felt like an eternity of creeping, during which he kept expecting to hear the creak of hinges or feel the vibrations of the giant’s steps on the floor, he made it to the pillar on which he had glimpsed his goal.
