The Well of Mimir

Night had crept cold around the mountain, wrapping the air in an icy blanket and sucking the day’s heat from the barren stones on the heights. Thorsur slapped his numb fingers against his thick, bare arms and breathed a cloud of white from between clenched teeth. It did little to warm him on this night.

He sat in a crevice long ago formed from rock slabs fallen off the mountain side, without the warmth of a forbidden fire, and stared down into the dark valley below. Somewhere in that black mass was a forest, cloaked by night, and his village, visible only as inviting, burning-orange sparks in the enveloping darkness around it. High above, the night was clear, the stars shone blue and white, glittering crisply in a sky that seemed brighter than the land below, a dark blue opposed to inky black.

Perhaps the bridge to the Gods’ Halls would appear tonight. That was the whole reason for this ritual, after all. Young warriors sought wisdom from the spirits who had gone before, their fathers and brothers and ancestors who had fallen in battle and been accepted into the shining Halls of the Gods beyond the mid-of-night. These spirits might come to you and tell you the shape of your wyrd, the immutable pattern of your life woven by the Fates.

Given the chill this night upon the mountain, Thorsur thought it appropriate to expect them — only the dead would be comfortable in such a chill. Again, he thought it was too close to the cold season, that the winter snows would blow soon. That they might blow tonight and leave him a frozen corpse hidden among the crags was a lingering and distasteful thought.

He stood, cursing under his breath, slapping his numb fingers against his bare arms once again to warm them. The sharp sound echoed down the mountainside like clattering stones. Thorsur was not a happy vision-seeker. The snows were coming, and he knew it in his bones, though he denied it in his brain; yet waiting to seek this vision until the thaws and milder climes of spring would have left him wintering the mutters and quietly disapproving stares of the village elders.

The circumstances fit. Seeking a vision in this clime was a warrior’s task! The cold was a test from the gods and spirits of his ancestors — of his mettle and resolve — though that did not make him any more happy about the situation. He quietly muttered something unflattering about the choices of the spirits, just not loud enough for them to hear even if they had been seated invisibly next to him, and comforted himself in the fact that the night was at least moonless and cold.

None of the legendary white mountain wolves would be out hunting warm flesh; they would all be safely curled together in their dens until the silver crescent of Nal’s Ship again shone down upon the forests and barren mountain rock. He would not have to fight them off in the mid of night. If any were out…Thorsur’s hand brushed unconsciously against the hilt of the heavy sword buckled at his side and he chuckled…if any were out, he would probably die before he knew the hunter was upon him since it would be better able to see!

A blast of cold wind roared down off the heights above, stinging his bare skin bitterly and bringing painful, icy tears to his eyes. The night grew darker, and he knew the snow was coming. Curse his luck! Vision or not, it was time to get off this mountain; freezing to death in the on-coming storm would do very little to show him the pattern of his life, except its end. He only hoped he could reach the shelter of the boreal forest before the first flakes of ice fell.

As he began carefully picking and feeling his way downwards his eyes caught a flash of white in the darkness down the slope. Curse this Hel-blasted moonless night! He reversed his direction, sliding rear to put his back into the crevice, trying to hide even the slightest hint of his pale flesh in the all-enveloping shadows there.

His sword slipped out quietly, and the hilt had settled comfortably into his hand long before the thought occurred to him: perhaps what he had seen was no creature, but a glimpse of one of the very spirits he had been seeking. Still, if it was a spirit, it would call him a fool for not meeting it with sword drawn. So he stayed crouched, eyes locked onto the black, unseen slopes below, trying to ignore the tricks the dark played with his eyes, and watched for that certain flash of white once again.

He did not need to wait long.

It approached, coming straight up the mountain at him, weaving out from behind what must be a pile of rocks below, loping low to the ground. A hungry white wolf out hunting in the moonless dark that had caught his scent…well it would find no easy meal here!

He checked himself from rushing the white form in the darkness and breaking his neck upon unseen rocks, and crouched down in the shadows of his hiding place, body tensed. The form moved swiftly towards him, the white coat shining in the darkness, almost the only thing visible among the black stones of the mountain. He drew the sword back to skewer the beast as it approached and…

Short screams of surprise and cursing followed. Thorsur lowered his sword and studied the woman that had risen suddenly before him. Even in the dark, he could tell she was a young, pale thing with graceful features and the dark hair of the southern folk, and even in this light he could see her eyes were as blue as the winter ice, for they seemed to hold some inner light.

Those fetching orbs also held surprise, and beneath that something he could only identify as a steely anger.

He had mistaken the hooded fur cloak she wore for a wolf’s hide, unsurprisingly, for it was the white hide of a mountain wolf. “Woman, who are you to climb a mountain in the dark?” he growled, “I nearly had your head before I realized you were no wolf!”

“And who are you to point swords at strangers in the dark?” she shot back.

Thorsur realized he still held his bared blade pointed fore to skewer her, and after careful consideration of her strange-lit eyes he turned the steel aside, though he did not sheathe the weapon. “What spirit are you to climb this mountain in the dark in the teeth of a storm?” he demanded.

…to be continued…