The Guardian's Speaker

For Líf, her ability to see each person’s guardian spirit had always been a double-edged sword. She hated drawing attention to herself, especially by those who thought her mad, and yearned for a quiet life. That is until another upended her world. This man brought with him the warning of an invisible plague that would destroy their race and claimed that he was the only person who could prevent it, for like Líf, he also had an unexplainable gift. The problem was that he was a slave. And he was not hers to free....

For Líf, her ability to see each person’s guardian spirit had always been a double-edged sword. She hated drawing attention to herself, especially by those who thought her mad, and yearned for a quiet life. Her greatest fear was that her siblings might not return from the summer raids. Being at sea terrified her—the surging waves, the rolling motion of a longship, the murky depths below—and yet her society flourished from the wealth brought from war and water.

Since birth, she could see each person’s guardian spirit. Whether gifted or cursed, Líf was viewed as an outsider, an oddity, and perhaps even mad. She had thought that she was the only one with such an unexplainable ability until she met Brasir, a slave unlike any ever captured during the summer raids. He warned that a plague was destroying their race and swore that he could stop it because he was able to see what others could not. When Líf freed Brasir, who had been claimed by a powerful jarl, her family was forced to flee the only home they had ever known.

Líf had been unable to stop the sentence of full outlawry that was now imposed upon her and her entire family. They escaped their enemy’s grasp only by sailing away once again, although this time, it was to the very outskirts of Midgard, the world of man. They were compelled to continue their quest no matter what the cost.

Men could not survive outside their world. Líf believed this. Her family believed this as well. So, what they had done was just short of impossible. They had left Midgard’s shores only to arrive in Jötunheim, the realm of giants that gave this land its name. Gods be with them. After freeing the slave, Brasir, Líf, and her family were outlawed. The only way to regain the good graces of their people was to prove that the warning Brasir brought was true.

Líf and her family have traversed Jötunheim, the realm of giants, and survived. Yet many men in the disgruntled Viking band were not as fortunate. Worse, their inglorious deaths have forfeited them the chance to enter Valhalla. And those that remain are sullen and quick to anger. Their quest to save humanity is based upon one man’s warning. An outsider. An escaped slave. And one who shares a gift similar to Líf’s. But Líf is growing weary. Loyalty to her family and its undertaking has waned.

Ever since Líf freed the slave, her life has been in peril. Now, an unknown world awaits the young woman and her family. Other realms have harbored vile creatures, vengeful giants, and vicious elves who have baited, tracked, and pursued the small band of survivors like animals for slaughter. Many on this wretched odyssey have been killed, others wounded; all are exhausted. Have the gods forsaken them?

Banished from their homeland, attacked by beings beyond the world of man, the dwindling crew must now confront the wrath of nature. Summer never came. Spring and autumn are mere memories. Winter continues to ravish the nine realms, and an endless season of bitter cold has trapped them in a land far from Midgard. Líf and those she loves are starving. Their quest to save humanity may yet cost them their lives. Where are the gods? Why have they not answered her prayers? As a blizzard screams around the travelers, burying them in a tomb of snow, a new threat arises.