So prophecy works here and weak fortune-tellers are probably just casting the fortune-telling spells that existed in Golarion, too, when prophecy worked, and more powerful ones are, what, consulting the gods? Several of them?

Maybe she can use their magic to develop scrying she can then use to contact Cheliax. 

She nods. The woman didn't say anything about the Zara thing and she doesn't want to volunteer it. 

"Do you have maps of your world, Archpriestess?"

"Scandinavians don't use maps. Don't need them. What do you want to see?"

"I was hoping to confirm my guess that Cheliax cannot be reached by any sea because it is on another world."

"I see. I'm not sure anyone has a map of every place that can be reached by sea, I think there are some places that nobody's ever fully explored. But I think Scandinavians know the world better than anyone else, and I've never heard of a place called Cheliax. I guess it could be on the other side of the Muslim lands, or past China, or out in the sea somewhere no one here has ever made landfall at all, but if it's nowhere we know of then a map wouldn't help you anyway, would it."

"And my people have also explored our world, and do have maps we think of the whole thing, and we've not heard of yours. In my world wizards think that the stars in the sky are suns like ours with worlds like ours around them. We have made contact with some other worlds from other stars. I think - maybe that explains this. Or maybe this is a demiplane."

"Hmmm. Do any of the nine worlds have a place called Cheliax in them?"

      "I am not so sighted as to see to the ends of this earth," says Ýrr, "and the others are only known to us by the gods and the dead. There are many unknown things within them."

"Is there any way to get to the other worlds?"

     "Not that men know of," she says. "But no man yet knows where this realm ends, or where he might sail into another."

Vigdis spends a while thinking about this.

"You said you arrived here in a magical accident?"

"Yes. My people know how to travel between worlds but I don't, personally. I could maybe learn it someday but it'd be a very long time and most wizards of my abilities who try to get that good never succeed."

"How would you go about trying to learn it? Is it possible, separated from the rest of your people?"

"Uh, I know how to do spell research. I'll need a lot of spellbook-quality ink for it and it runs some chance of killing me but not much. And - I'll need to become much more powerful, which happens over time, and by fighting in wars with magic. It seems like a particularly dangerous spell to invent but before I get that powerful I'll get powerful enough to contact my home world and then I can maybe figure out a way to copy spells off other people."

"Well, I'm sure fighting in wars with magic can be arranged, if that's what you want to do. 

"I was sent here primarily to explore the lands beyond Iceland. We know that there are other islands out there, ones with no known inhabitants. But it seems to me that it would be very short-sighted to focus on them to the exclusion of exploring ways of contacting other worlds, since that could also be invaluable to the empire. 

"I think we should determine how to get you what you need for spell research."

"Ink. It has to be high quality but Hauskuld had some that was fine. Parchment. For enchanting weapons I need special metals that hold a spell, I don't know if you have them here. The one that's most common in my world is soft and silvery-white, and tarnishes in the air; we call it spellsilver."

"Hmm. I'm not sure if we have any spellsilver, but I can look into it. Ink and parchment we can obtain."

"Thank you. I can teach the wizards in your court to do magic in my system, if they would like that."

"I think they would! We'd be interested to learn as much as possible about your people and their magic, all the more so if it's possible to use it to travel between our nations. Do you think you'd like to keep talking things over with Ýrr until dinner, and I can track down our wizard? Under normal circumstances I'd introduce you to someone more, you know, specialized in making diplomatic contact with new peoples, but I'm afraid you've caught me without a full set of officials, just yet. But I'm sure we can make do."

It is actually a relief not to be talking to diplomats with all kinds of magic items for mindreading and sensing motives who see right through you and can guess the exact best words with which to keep you compliant. "I'd be delighted, thank you."

"Excellent. If she's being very concerning you can also talk to Catherine. Don't worry about being a bother, she likes visiting. I'll see you for dinner."

And she grabs an axe and heads off to get her horse again.

"How does one become a seeress?" she asks Yrrr.

"A court seeress is chosen by her liege. One ought to be sighted, and well-versed in the ancient lore. Able to see the ends and beginnings of things. Of course, not all seers who serve under kings and their children were chosen for possessing any particular wisdom beyond other men and women."

Most historical societies had no sense of what made one wizard more powerful than another. It is a modern inventions, comprehending wizards in terms of the most powerful class of spell they can cast, dividing spells into classes of power at all. She nods. "Are people born  - sighted, gifted in prophecy - or do they learn it?"

"Children are not sighted. But it appears in many people, eventually, in free men and slaves, in men and in women, in the sick and the healthy, in those educated by kings and in those who have worked in the fields since they were small children."

"Huh. In Cheliax prophecy is broken and I know little about what it was like when it worked. Maybe it was like that."

"It sounds like a hard way to live. But I suppose that many live without it anyway."

"I think the important things are locked in anyway."

She sighs a little, long and quiet and only barely distinguishable from a breath that isn't meant to communicate anything at all.

"What would you say the important things are?"

"The grand plans of the gods, things like that."