"Not very often. Not to - random people. I do not have a good guess about why it happened this time."

She looks them over. Pauses, for a bit, at Korva.

She looks down and tries very hard not to think about anything.

"Weird. What's your business in Reykjavik, then, trying to catch passage south?"

"Maybe. But if no one has heard of Cheliax then probably I'm not going to discover it sailing south. It's not easy to miss, in which case I want to pick up the local magic and teach mine and be connected with the church of Asmodeus if you have one."

"Huh. They have many witches, in Cheliax?"

"Wizard. There are also witches but that's a different thing."

"Huh. All right, then, wizard. You won't find churches here, they're too many buildings for us."

"I see. What I need are priests, I suppose. They do not have to be in buildings."

"Well, we'll see if the priests have heard of such a thing. What is this church of Asmodeus like in Cheliax?"

"Asmodeus is the greatest of the gods of our world, and the ruler of Hell, and the patron of Cheliax where I am from. He has made Cheliax safe and prosperous enough to offer magic education to everyone and I want to do that here too, through his church here if possible."

"The ruler of hell, huh? What's hell like?"

"It is a place people go when they die. They serve Asmodeus, there. It is generally understood to be unpleasant, at first, to be faced with what you are supposed to be, but good once you have accepted it."

"I think that is probably much too vague to determine whether I know what place it is."

"It has nine levels? In my world you go there for being lawful evil but I think it works differently other places? It has devils?"

...this is honestly very confusing. She's definitely a confused something, but it's not very clear which thing she's a confused version of.

Maybe Catherine will know.

"Hmm. That sounds a little like a lot of things and not exactly like anything. What about her, is she from Cheliax too?"

"Yes. We were stolen out of the street at the same time. We don't know which of them whatever-happened was targeting. She doesn't have magic but I can translate for you if you'd like, or I can give you our language and then you could speak with her in that."

"How would you give me your language? The slow way, or are you saying you have a spell for it?"

"I have a spell for it. You don't have to do anything, I just use the spell that lets me speak yours first because I don't want to do magic to people without asking."

"Interesting. I suppose I'd better get the walrus back home before I go mucking around with strange magic - but look, we're almost there."

She dismounts her horse and leads it up to one of the longhouses, calling for someone inside to bring the slain animal in. Some men appear to do that, and then within a minute there's also a small crowd of children and teenagers, trying to get a glimpse of the wounds that killed it, chattering about how it's humungous, and how all of them together couldn't eat it in one night.

Someone else appears, following the children out.

"What's the occasion?"

"When I killed it the occasion was hunger. However, it is now that we have guests. This is Carissa of Cheliax. Don't ask me where Cheliax is, she doesn't seem to think it's anywhere. Carissa, this is Catherine, our court poet. I expect if you want to compare your religious traditions to ours, Catherine is likely a wealth of knowledge on the subject. If you're sure you want priests, then you should know that the highest-ranking priest on this landmass is me. Archpriestess Vigdis Yngling of Iceland welcomes you to Reykjavik."

Ah okay. "Thank you, Archpriestess. In Cheliax our priests can perform miracles on behalf of their gods, is that how it is done here?"

"When we're worthy of it, and when it suits them. Which often means we're on our own."

"I see. Do you know any priest who can send short spoken messages at a great distance? I might be able to use that to communicate with my home world."