THE VILLAGE OF ONE THOUSAND SHIPS In the wild and white north, there is a village that has two names. The first name is Nordlor and comes from the man who discovered it: Fredrick Nordlor, the great explorer who sailed farther into the Northern Sea than any man before. And the second name--the name that has made it famous worldwide--is the Village of One Thousand Ships. Nordlor sits beside a long fjord that stretches all the way to the Great Northern Sea. When it was first settled, no trees grew nearby, so when Fredrick Nordlor wanted to build the village's first house he did not have many options. He built one with snow, but it melted when the spring thaw came. He wove a house from grass, but it turned brittle and crumbled in the summer. He even built a home from seashells dredged out of the fjord, but when winter came there were so many gaps in the walls that it felt colder inside than out.

In desperation, Fredrick Nordlor pulled apart his own ship and used the wood to build a house. It worked a lot better than the snow and the grass and the shells he had used before. But there was one peculiarity. Even in summer the house was cold and wet, and every night it rocked back and forth as though the ship still sailed upon the sea instead of standing broken on land. Fredrick Nordlor thought this peculiarity was limited to the wood pulled from his own ship, but when another boat washed aground and was used to build the village hall, the same thing happened. It was as though the wood from northern ships possessed a special power that made it hold on to the memories it made while still at sea. Fredrick Nordlor liked this trait in the wood--"It gives it a sense of northern character," he would say--and so, even when saplings were planted and grew into tall, thick trees in the mountains around the village, it became tradition for all the buildings in Nordlor to be made from sunken ships. Over the years, whenever a whaler sank, or even just a small fishing boat, it was dredged into Nordlor Harbor, pulled apart, and built back up into something new.

And that is how the village of Nordlor grew. Houses went up, a dock was built, and taverns lined the shore. As Nordlor itself grew, so too did its reputation. Soon, people all over the North and South spoke about the village built from sunken ships. "Fredrick Nordlor had the idea himself," a man from Islo said. "He always was a smart one." "I heard he got the idea from his wife," whispered a woman in Iceblown Harbor. "Behind every great man is an even greater woman telling him what to do.

" "Apparently," swore a boy in Whitlock, "the village is made from exactly one thousand sunken ships and not a single one more." Nordlor became so famous that a prince in the South spent two thousand golden crowns to have a replica built within the walls of his castle. Little Nordlor, it was called, and he loved it more than anything else, even his only son. But for a village where everyone wanted to go, hardly anyone ever went there. The snow was too deep, the air was too cold, and the days were too short and dark. It was so rare for people to come to Nordlor that when a new person arrived it always caused a stir. Like the time Lady Summer left the South and took up residence in Whalebone Lane. Or the time Mister Bjorkman fled Mournful Harbor and built a tower out of ship masts in the main square.

But the one visitor who caused the greatest stir of all was the fortune teller, Freydis Spits.