Ingvar marched up the hill with a grim determination. The brown scrub, soil below ever-frozen, crunched beneath his fur-lined boots, but he barely noticed. The scrub meant he had not gone far enough.

At last, he crested the hill and looked down at the shady hollow below. Shady, perhaps, being the wrong word, for while the depression was indeed partly in shadow, it was white with snow. As he walked down towards the solitary cottage below, Ingvar noticed the air grow a little colder. Not entirely unpleasant, the biting sting of deepest winter in the farthest north, but unseasonable to say the least, for though days were growing rapidly shorter, the time for frost had not yet come.

As he approached, Ingvar thought to announce himself.

“Eydis!” he called, “I am Ingvar Burisson! I have come far to seek your counsel!”

A moment later, even as Ingvar walked, a form emerged from the door of the grey stone cabin. That was when he got his first look at the woman stories called the Rimesage.

At a glance, she seemed simply a lovely young lady, answering the door in a thin summer dress of blue wool, golden-white hair tumbling about her shoulders. But Ingvar had heard that the Rimesage’s looks were deceiving, and did not take the woman he saw for a servant or daughter. Better to flatter someone else than insult the real Eydis.

Ingvar reached the woman, and gave a short nod as he removed his right glove and extended his hand. “I am-“

“Ingvar.” She said, taking his hand and giving a good shake. Her grasp, strangely, was as warm as anyone’s. “I am Eydis. You are welcome in to my counsel, provided of course you have something to give for it.”

At that, Ingvar unslung his pack from his shoulder, ready to list out the gifts he had brought as tribute for the woman’s wisdom, but Eydis raised her hand. “No, come inside. I have hospitality for any weary traveler out so far.

At that, she stepped in through the door, and Ingvar followed

Inside, the place was strangely austere. Some fine, local pieces of furniture and art gave it the impression of a home, but it was bitter cold. There was no fire set, and indeed the hearth looked clean of soot as though there had never been one.

“No fire…” Ingvar muttered.

“Nor will there be.” Eydis replied, “You were cruelly deceived if you were lead to think otherwise. I can’t abide the heat.”

Ingvar adjusted his coat. “The heat is fine.” He said, “But what do you do for light in the long night?”

“Well,” Eydis said, “I am a mage.”

A thought struck Ingvar, one far from his mission, and the dream that had sent him across the north in search of an answer, but he asked all the same.

“The why have a hearth?”

“Ah,” said Eydis, “I can see how that might confuse you. But the villagers built this place for me, as they supply me with all I require. In return I tell them when to reap, when to sow, where to cast their nets, and so forth. I dare say they spoil me, for I am gifted often far more than what I ask.”

She let the idea sink in. To Ingvar, it didn’t seem like a bad arrangement for anyone.

“Well,” Eydis said, “Perhaps, as with the hearth, they sometimes do not understand what I need.”

She smiled at Ingvar. “It’s for foreigners like yourself I charge a toll. Whatever you’ve brought is probably acceptable. It’s the thought that counts, and the idea that prophecy cannot be had just for the asking, so I don’t have hordes lining up at my door.”

Ingvar lifted from his pack a bottle of Heartland wine, the best vintage he could get on short notice, and a set of very nice pewter goblets.

“I see.” Eydis said, “Are you presenting me a price for consultation, or suggesting an evening’s diversion?”

“What gifts I could carry.” Ingvar said. As much as Eydis was a very beautiful, very young-seeming lady, something in her manner set the burly man’s teeth on edge. “They are yours, to do with as you please.”

“Very well,” said Eydis, “I accept your offering. Tell me why you have come.”

“I have had a dream,” Ingvar said, “That I feel in my soul to be far more than the delusion of sleep. I see a great tree, and Aralheim is nestled in its branches. But so vast is it, so long, and so black, I do not know whether I look at a tree that holds our lands in its branches or an Ormr that clutches the world in its jaws.”

“I see,” said Eydis, “Go on.”

“I have no fear of the tree, or the Ormr, though it is very terrible. But there is something I fear. A presence, moving along it, one full-“

“Full of malice.” Eydis said, “It is coming towards Aralheim on a wake of ashes and shattered dreams. Even the tree fears it.”

“How did you know?” Ingvar asked. Though Eydis the Rimesage was known to have some future sight among her gifts, this hardly seemed to be it.

“I know because I have had the same dream.” She replied. “I have dreamed of the great tree – for that is how I prefer to see it – many times before. But of late, the approach of this… this endbringer along it has weighed heavily on such visitations.”

“Then tell me, please,” Ingvar said, “How we may be spared.”

Eydis looked Ingvar in the eye, fixing him with her sapphire gaze. “I have seen farther than you.” She says, “Let me console you. This vast evil touches our home, but it does not tarry, does not destroy. Few suffer. Fewer if any die. It passes on, to destroy elsewhere.”

Ingvar breathed a sigh of relief. The travel, the goblets, the wine… they were all worth it to have that answer, to know that he had dreamed the truth, but that the fragile beauty of the world that he had been shown was not in mortal peril.

“You can leave now, if you want.” Eydis said.

“Or?” Ingvar asked.

“Or I can continue telling you of what I have seen, what I have divined on this dream we share. You have peace of mind. If that is all you require, depart with my blessing.”

Ingvar considered.

“It’s an odd choice.” He said.

“Really?” asked Eydis, “I was given the same one once.”

Ingvar said nothing, but with his eyes asked Eydis to continue.

“Ah, first,” she said, then uncorked the bottle of wine and poured a measure into each of two goblets, “Wine is meant to be drunk and I will be quite useless if I consume the entire bottle myself.”

She offered one goblet to Ingvar and he took it, but when his fingers brushed hers, it was as though he had laid his hand upon ice.

Noticing his startled nature, Eydis spoke.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “If I dispense with that particular illusion. It is taxing to maintain it for so much as a friendly greeting.”

Ingvar nodded as though he understood, and sipped the wine.

“In any case,” Eydis said, “When I was as young as I look, I was a very different woman. I was hot headed, short-sighted, and quite involved in the world around me, if you can believe it. I dare say had my life followed a different path, I might have been quite the warlord, or conqueror queen.”

“Hm. And what happened?”

“I met a stranger.” Eydis said, “Who spoke to me at length about strange things, and the nature of the world. Wisdom. Power. And we spent much time, she and I, until she told me that if all I wanted was the richness I had, I might depart, and would surely do well enough with it.”

“I take it you didn’t answer that way.”

“Of course not. I declared I wanted more. And then she asked if I desired more wisdom, or more power.”

“And of course,” Ingvar said, “You chose wisdom.”

Eydis shook her head. “Power. My soul yearned for it then, and I poured out every drop of myself into practically begging for it. My wisdom has been long and hard to gain, but as for power… the stranger, though hardly a stranger by then granted it, and made of me what I am today, more or less. My wish granted, and yet defied. I had what I wanted, but I lost other things, things that were very dear to me. For a time I raged, and the deeds I did would make your blood run cold if there were sagas to record them. Then, I sank into a deep sorrow, and hid myself away. Finally, I understood the beauty of what I had been given, and sought and found wisdom on my own, emerging into the world that had forgotten my dark days were anything but myth as Eydis the Rimesage, who now sits pleasantly in a chill hovel and lives on the charity others hold for the wise.”

“So do you mean to tell me to go, then, and be content with what I have. I do not deny I have heard what I could have wished for, but now that you tell me there is more…”

“Yes?”

“… If you had to choose again, would you make the same choice?”

“Yes,” Eydis said, “But I would do it for the right reasons, because true wisdom must be earned.”

“Then,” Ingvar said, “Speak on.”

“Think of the scale of the great tree.” Eydis said, “The one I have dreamed of so often since getting my precious power, the one you have seen apocalypse scurry along the branches of. What is Aralheim amidst this tree, and how foolish would we be to think ourselves alone in its boughs?”

Ingvar had trouble seeing the tree – to him, that dark shape was more the coiling Ormr – but he understood what the Rimesage was saying.

“It means… there are other lands, beyond all seas?”

“Beyond all seas.” Eydis repeated, “Yes, that is fair. And while doom will but graze our shores, what has set me straining my sight, casting runes and working all the divinations I might, is whether or not we might do a thing to prevent it from arriving in the distant lands to which it is bound.”

Ingvar nodded gravely, and took a sip of wine. But it seemed sour in his mouth.

“We cannot climb the great tree.” Eydis declared, “Perhaps there was a time when I might have, or so I’ve been told, but that time is long gone. There are those who do, however, who ride along it like the doom that now approaches, like the stranger I knew so long ago.”

Eydis looked down and away.

“In all my divinations, the hope of worlds lies with them. We can do nothing beyond our own.”

“Then why tell me this?” Ingvar asked, “What is the use, if we can do nothing but watch our own shores?”

“To know when to watch the shore.” Eydis replied.

The ancient young maiden shrugged.

“There is still much I do not understand. Each drop of wisdom is like rain upon an ocean of ignorance, powerless to change the vastness of the other. But I might have a hunch. Mark my words, Ingvar. Watch the shore, if you can.”

She stood, and walked to the door and opened it. “And you shall probably find more comfortable accommodations for the night in the village.”

“That is all?”

“It is all I can say.”

“Then,” Ingvar replied, standing and giving a bow, “I take my leave, Rimesage, and thank you for sharing your knowledge.”

At the door, he hesitated a moment, breath misty in the cold as Eydis’ was not, frost riming the edges of her gown and forming halos where her fingers touched stone or wood. He looked into the Rimesage’s icy eyes, and suddenly felt very small and afraid, as though the eyes of the vast, impossible Ormr were upon him.

Thus he departed, and did not look back to where Eydis the Rimesage silently and sorrowfully shut her door.