Vigdis is hunting. It's her first summer of being allowed to hunt things properly, with horses and dogs and bows and arrows, not a child trapping rabbits or shooting down birds, not a mad wolf tearing through the countryside. This is a real hunt, for real animals. Probably stags, but she wouldn't say no to a wild boar. That'd be kind of awesome, killing a giant wild boar on her first real hunt, at least if the boar didn't kill her. Hell of a story for whichever one of them walked away, though.

She doesn't find a boar. She finds a naked man face-down in the dirt. He's probably a lunatic, but she can smell that he isn't dead. For a moment she wonders whether he's a wolf, like her, but the timing's all wrong, the moon won't be full for another ten days or so. She hops off her horse and hands the reins to one of the men with her. Her retainers advance with her, close enough to help her in a fight but far enough not to crowd whoever it is they've found.

"Hey," she says to the naked man. "You doing OK?"

"I've had worse days."

He tries to move. His limbs are stiff with the memory of pain. In theory he should be fine, perfectly healed, but in practice it seems his ordeal has left more than the physical kind of marks. Even speaking takes an unreasonable effort.

"Where am I?"

Not home, he thinks. He doesn't recognize the language, when he concentrates well enough to hear it.

"Akershus. Where're you supposed to be?"

"Nowhere in particular, I suppose."

With considerable difficulty, he sits up. His thoughts instinctively reach out to call his sword to him—and nothing answers. Right. His sword did not make it through that experience still meaningfully intact.

Does he dare try to use magic like this? After everything that's happened, in the condition he's in, without his sword around to mitigate his mistakes?

...No. No, he does not.

He sighs heavily. "Any chance you could help me find some clothes? I'm a bit useless at the moment but I can owe you a favour for later."

She stares at him, slightly amused, lets out a sputtering half-laugh, and points at one of the men in the group that's taken to following her around.

"You. Go back to the palace and get this man some clothes."

"Thanks!" he says cheerfully.

Well. He's not a wild boar, but he isn't boring, either.

"I'm Vigdis Yngling, Shieldmaiden and Princess of Scandinavia. What about you, you got a name?"

"Siran. Siran Tavaryse. Arguably a prince."

"Of where?"

"Well, there you have the 'arguably' part."

Another half-laugh. It's not even odd, really; there must be lots of former princes of conquered lands wandering around these days, though most of them aren't wandering around Akershus and most of them aren't lying naked in the dirt. One assumes. 

"Where were you prince of?"

"Isettavar."

"Never heard of it. Oh well."

She waits for her rider to return, then throws a set of clothes at Siran.

"I didn't expect you to."

He puts on the clothes. His mood seems much improved, but he's still moving a little clumsily, and it takes him a couple of tries to stand up.

"How'd you wind up face-down in the dirt, anyhow? Not a good place for anyone, let alone an arguable prince."

"Oh, I did something stupid. Actually I did several stupid things in a row."

"Well, at least you know now. Can you ride? You don't look - super confident about the whole standing up thing."

"I am... probably capable of not falling off a horse," he says, not super confidently.

"...you can just ride behind me. I don't think there're any giant boar around here anyway, s'not like we'll be missing much if we turn around and head home."

They'll be missing a bit. But sometimes you go looking for stags and the gods hand you a naked man who thinks he's a prince, and you ought to at least figure out why they handed him to you before you go ignoring him.

She helps him up onto her horse and rides at a gentle pace towards the palace. Her actual retainers follow. Most of the rest of the group breaks off to go rejoin the hunt, since that is in fact what they came here to do.

"You're very helpful. I appreciate it."

He turns out to be fully capable of not falling off a horse.

"I take interest in interesting people."

When they get to the palace she can set him up with food and something in the way of a bath, that seems like a thing you might need after lying naked and face-down in the dirt for an extended period of time.

He is pretty thrilled about food and a bath! By the end of those, he's moving more or less normally again. And much cleaner.

Oh good. She tells someone to find her a room for him and then informs him that he has one.

"Thanks! I will remember your generosity. Which I imagine is a much less promising statement coming from a former prince, but it's what I've got."

"I'm not exactly in terrible need here. Though I am curious whether you know how to, like, do anything? What all d'they teach princes in Isettavar?"

"I'm pretty good with a sword. I can also do magic but they don't teach princes that, I'm just reckless enough to try it anyway."

"What kind of magic?"

"A dangerous kind. Useful, too, though."

"Useful how? What can you do?"

"Mm."

Is he recovered enough to demonstrate? Yeah, he thinks he can risk something small.

He holds a hand up in front of him and concentrates, and then it's wreathed in threads of flame, spiraling down around his wrist and then back up again to circle his palm and dart between his fingers. The fire gathers, brightens—the heat is tangible even from where she's standing—and then he closes his hand, and it all winks out. Only a few faint wisps of smoke are left behind.

"That, for one."

"Niiice."

He grins. "I'm glad you appreciate it! Fire is one of my favourite things."

(And just about the only one he has left, but let's not think about that.)

"How'd you learn it? Most of the magicians I've heard of are old people."

He shrugs. "I found someone who knew a little and asked them to teach me. And then did a lot of thoroughly reckless experimenting."

"I guess that's how people learn most things. How dangerous is it, what all happens if you use it wrong?"

"If you're not careful, and sometimes even if you are careful, it'll spin out of control and do more than you meant it to. And the more you were trying to do with it when it broke loose, the more and weirder messes it'll make before it's run its course."

"Huh. Like what kind of mess?"

"Setting things on fire that you didn't want to set on fire, growing an enormous tree through the roof of your house, turning people into dragons..."

"Wicked. Can you do all that stuff on purpose?"

He laughs a little. "Some of it! I've never turned anyone into a dragon, but I've set plenty of things on fire and grown some pretty big trees."

"Sounds awesome. Can it be taught to anyone? We could have people practice in the wilderness somewhere if the effects are all local. Only so much you can mess up the tundra."

"You'll run out of safe tundra after enough of that. Old mistakes can linger for hundreds of years if they were really bad; it was one of those that left me in the state you found me in, and if I'd been anyone else it would've killed me. Not that I'd necessarily mind teaching it anyway, but I'll have to think about it and I want to be sure you know the risks."

"Can't go ruining the whole countryside, if it's likely to do that. We'd better get a better picture of what can go wrong, what sort of person is least likely to make it go wrong, and what the potential benefits are before we try anything serious with it. I'd love to learn it myself, but it'd be sort of inconvenient if I went and died, so I'll have to hear more about it first."

"Sure," he says agreeably. "I can tell you what I know. Or try to, anyway, I'm not sure how good I'll be at explaining."

"Might be better long-term to have this sort of information written down. Can you write? I can find someone for you to dictate to if you can't."

"Princes learn that too, where I'm from, but not in this language."

"Makes sense. I guess you should probably take a day to recover and stuff, can't imagine you're all better after one bath."

"...might be a good idea," he admits. "I don't know. I've never... almost died quite that much before."

"Hey, I think even the best of us need to take a bit to recover after finding themselves face-down and naked in a random forest. Sort of takes it out of a person."

She is totally speaking from experience.

...he laughs a little, wryly. "Yeah. I guess so."

"I'll send someone by with dinner and you can start working on magic documentation in the morning, unless you're still tired then. It sounds fascinating but we're not exactly under time pressure unless you plan on dying any time soon. Obviously in the meantime you can wander the grounds, long as you can politely listen to the nice armored men with spears who keep people out of certain places."

"Yeah, I think I can manage that. Sounds good. And thanks."

"My pleasure."

A servant appears with dinner a little while later.

He eats dinner.

He... really isn't sure what to think of this place.

On the one hand, he likes Vigdis a lot. On the other hand, she seems like she wants magic and doesn't fully grasp the problems with wanting magic. He's probably going to have to tell the whole story of how he got here, but not to a book, he doesn't think. The book can get all the history and anecdotes he's got from before his big mistake; he'll save the end of the world for Vigdis.

Well, any which way, the thing to do is go to sleep and tell stories in the morning.

Vigdis is not a hundred percent sure what she thinks of Siran, either. Like, on the one hand, he is probably a little insane. People who you find naked and face-down in random forests who are claiming to be princes of lost realms probably have a pretty high rate of insanity. On the other hand, he's demonstrably a wizard, and while most magic is too finicky to be worth the time, as far as she can tell, she has a pretty good feeling about being able to call fire into existence. It's also super dangerous. This is hardly unique - she is, after all, trying to get herself made a commander and be sent off to the front lines of the war in the south - but for most things she has a better sense of what the dangers are. So it's gonna be a lot of talking first, and while she could do that herself, she's not sure it isn't the sort of thing that can't be done by other people. Specifically one other person who has been doing an excessive amount of hiding lately, actually, although it probably isn't obvious to everyone else because she still gets paraded out every time they have a feast or a moderately important visitor.

She heads to the hall where the concubines live and raps on her aunt's door.

"Hey. S'me. I have a task for you."

"What is it?"

"So I found a naked man lying facedown in the woods while I was hunting," she says, as if this is a perfectly normal opening. "Claims to be a former prince. He's probably kind of insane, but he's lucid about it, you know? He's got some magic I wanna know about - that or some really advanced sleight-of-hand, in which case I wanna know that's what it is - and he says it's very dangerous but I don't know if I can get a full understanding of all of the dangers out of him. Or I maybe can but it would take a while. So I think you should go and get as much as you can out of him about the benefits and potential disasters associated with using magic, OK?"

"You want me to assist you in practicing witchcraft."

"Well. Yeah. You can report back that it's probably all demonic influences or whatever, if you want. But I don't wanna get him burned as a warlock or anything, y'know? And you're good at drawing stories out of people and you aren't busy and you know how to write and I'm like really really sure you're not gonna report back that it's all fake and then secretly teach yourself magic and steal the title of strongest Scandinavian wizard from me."

"I suppose I probably wouldn't do that."

"You don't think it'll be too hard, do you? S'just writing. I didn't think that made you tired, but if you think it's gonna be a problem for you then, like, tell me to piss off, you know?"

"I don't have any reason to believe it will be. It could be anything. Could be sitting in dark rooms or attending parties. Could be me."

"Well. Tell me to find someone else if it is. I dunno how pregnancy works, but I don't want you to lose any babies over investigating wizards, alright?"

"I'll talk to this person. I make no promises about finishing any projects I begin right now."

In the morning a servant appears at Siran's door with a meal, then informs him that the court poet of Akershus will meet with him in the gardens as soon as he's ready.

Sounds fancy! He can go meet the court poet of Akershus as soon as he's done eating breakfast.

Sounds good! 

The court poet of Akershus is waiting for him outside, sitting at a stone table with a stylus and a pair of wax tablets.

"Hello. You're the one I'm supposed to talk to about the hazards of magic?"

"I suppose so. You're the man Princess Vigdis found while hunting? Siran Tavaryse, former prince of Isettavar?"

"Yeah, that's me." He's smiling as he says it, cheerfully amused by his questionably princely status, but after a moment the smile starts to look a little distant. He shakes his head slightly and sits down.

(His hand goes to his side as though he's used to finding a sword there, and needing to get it out of the way when he sits—but of course there isn't one.)

She does not smile back. "How did you come to enter the Empire of Scandinavia?"

"Well that's a long and moderately unbelievable story. —I hate to tell the truth and be thought a liar, but that's a me problem; the actually important thing here is I don't want anyone to come away from this believing in the power of magic but not its dangers. The power is real but so are the dangers, and when you understand one without the other, bad things happen."

"All stories worth telling are moderately unbelievable. At the moment I intend to counsel Princess Vigdis against using your magic regardless of what you say about its nature, but as I will not be surprised when she ignores me, I am going to attempt to record any specific dangers there are and allow her to make poor decisions with as much clear-sightedness as I can offer her."

"That's good!" he says.

"So. Magic of the kind I'm familiar with is known throughout Isettavar; most people have never touched it, but everybody's heard of someone who has. You seem to have magic here too, or at least to have heard of the concept, but I can tell it's not the kind I know about because I wouldn't have to explain about the dangers if it was. There's no such thing as doing magic without it going wrong, where I'm from. Or—anybody can do magic once without making a mistake. Maybe as many as five times. Maybe they can keep it small enough that even when they fuck it up it doesn't get any worse than starting a small fire or blowing up some furniture or turning a horse purple or putting a hundred years of growth into a garden in five minutes. But if you make a habit of doing magic you're going to fuck it up. I'm the best caster I've ever heard of and I have fucked it up spectacularly even when I was trying very hard not to."

"Norse magic is... frequently less dramatic. I suppose you could say it often goes wrong without making it immediately obvious."

"One thing I'll say for our magic is that it's very obvious when it goes wrong. It's obvious to the caster because you can feel it escaping your control, and even when it doesn't do something blatantly bizarre it's obvious to everyone else present because there's a specific smell when the magic gets loose—I've no idea how to describe it, it's not quite like anything else, and I don't want to show you because deliberately letting a spell run wild is generally a bad idea even in controlled conditions."

"I appreciate it. What sort of problems do people in your homeland typically call on magic to solve?"

"'None' is generally the sensible answer, but some people manage to keep it more useful than otherwise doing things like a little bit of healing, a little bit of encouraging crops, a little bit of nudging the weather around... I used to think I could do better than that. Not so sure anymore. And I wasn't really interested in solving anyone else's problems so much as in making life easier for myself."

"I see."

"As for how I got here..."

...maybe he'll tell her part of the story, at least.

"...there's a thing we call a cursed city. When someone does a lot of magic, and it gets free of them—and it nearly always does, at that kind of scale—it can run so big and so wild that it settles in around wherever they were when they did this foolish thing and stays there, being big and complicated and wild and magic, for hundreds or thousands of years afterward. Mostly people avoid them. Occasionally some idiot disappears into one. Once in a very long while somebody survives one and comes back with wild stories—trees roaming the streets walking on their roots, catching birds out of the sky and crushing them to death—fish swimming through the air, wolves made of broken glass chasing people down and eating them alive—I've never seen any of those myself, but I don't doubt they're the sort of thing that happens, if you pile up enough spellfray in one place. That's what we call loose magic, spellfray."

She silently records the important bits of this in very small lettering on one of her wax tablets.

"So—I was having a bad day for mostly unrelated reasons, and I ran into a cursed city, and it tore apart everything I was wearing and carrying and would've torn me apart too if I hadn't had the magic to put myself back together, and it threw me very very far away and I landed in that forest."

"At this point it's not obvious to me why you've bothered with magic at all."

Well, it kind of is, impulsive pursuit of power even when it's definitely going to cause horrible problems is kind of a familiar concept, but one shouldn't skip asking questions just because they've already made assumptions.

"Why I bother with it or why any of us do? I started doing magic when I was too young to really grasp how bad it could go, and got good at it before the understanding of consequences had time to catch up to me. I guess there's probably other people who do it that way but I think a lot of it is... people who think, maybe they'll just try it once, anybody can get away with it once if they're careful enough, and then the next time it's easier, and maybe they stop after a few more or maybe they manage to keep it small enough but maybe they keep going until it bites them. Oh, and big enough natural disasters will bring out the amateurs a lot of the time—when a lot of people are about to die anyway, in a fire or flood or famine or drought or earthquake or whatever else, usually at least some of them will decide magic can't make the situation that much worse, and they'll try something a hundred times bigger than they would've dreamed of before that point. And then if they're lucky they're right, and if they're not lucky you've got another cursed city on your hands."