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    Lorkdan: The Beginnings
    Lorkdan: The Beginnings
    Lorkdan: The Beginnings
    Ebook50 pages35 minutes

    Lorkdan: The Beginnings

    By AJ Cooper

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    About this ebook

    When Lorkdan, a foreign mercenary, arrives at a lonely inn down a dark road, he hopes for nothing more than a bed to rest his head and a meal to fill his stomach. But things are not well in the county called Valle, nor the kingdom at large; and as the hours progress, he finds himself thrust into a journey that will change him, and the world he knows, forever. This novelette includes a map and an illustrated glossary entry.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRealms of Varda
    Release dateMay 18, 2021
    ISBN9781005632694
    Lorkdan: The Beginnings
    Author

    AJ Cooper

    Cursed at birth with a wild imagination, AJ Cooper spent his youth dreaming of worlds more exciting than Earth. He is a native Midwesterner and loves writing fantasy, especially epic fantasy set in his own created worlds.He is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the author of numerous fantasy novels and novellas. His short stories have appeared in Morpheus Tales, Fear and Trembling, Residential Aliens and Mindflights, among others.

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      Book preview

      Lorkdan - AJ Cooper

      Lorkdan: The Beginnings

      Copyright © 2021 Andrew James Cooper

      Interior image copyright © 2015 Erlan Arya

      Published by Realms of Varda

      www.vardabooks.com

      All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.

      All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Lorkdan: The Beginnings

      Glossary Entry: Fairy Priestesses

      County Valle Map

      Newsletter Sign-up

      About the Author

      Contact the Author

      By a country road in County Valle…

      Lorkdan: The Beginnings

      By a country road in County Valle, near the banks of a river, beside a noisy water mill, sat the Inn of the Last Hope; and for seven-hundred years it had stood, through wars and tumults. People died within its walls, and young-bloods were married within it, and scandals were uncovered there, and disasters and events of beneficence befell those who dined in its booths and tables. To some who knew it, they called it the greatest inn of the Northern World; but few knew the Inn of the Last Hope, and few knew of it, hidden as it was amid dense forests and pines. Fewer still knew its secrets, or its rumors for haunting.

      It was spring of 1101, and the rains were lightly pouring, drizzling down from the sky, when I, Lorkdan, on a voyage to the west, stumbled upon the Inn of the Last Hope, and my life was changed forever.

      ~

      War was starting in those days, wars between the kingdoms of the west and the Empire of the far south. It was a terrible thing for the peasants of County Valle and elsewhere, even worse for the knights and men-at-arms, and unwelcome news to the cowardly nobles of the western kingdoms who wished to live in peace.

      But for me, Lorkdan, a hired sword, war was an opportunity to line my coin-purse, to survive, yea, thrive. And so, as I made my way to the capital, passing not intentionally through County Valle, riding on a donkey, my eyes looked to the heavens and saw a stormy sky, and then my eyes looked to the right, and through dense pine and mixed forest moss, I saw an overgrown sign which I could not read, being illiterate in those days, but which I recognized as an advertisement for an inn.

      And so to me, at that moment, it was either travel on a few more miles, at best, before the storm overwhelmed me, or it was to accept this delay of weather sent by the gods and spend a little of my coin purse which in those days was very fat.

      I jerked my donkey Lily on down the overgrown path, and as I forced Lily down that way, she resisted, which she often did, and though

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