Shadows of the Short Days

by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

  On the door were two large valves that the guards turned until something clicked. A low hiss came from the mechanisms in the door. Two small iron discs turned and revealed a pair of keyholes. Each guard pulled off a glove, one from the right hand and the other from the left. Their index fingers had been removed at the joint and replaced by intricately made bronze keys. They turned the keys in the locks simultaneously. The door rumbled while its internal gears turned and clicked and moved. Gusts of steam blew out from the edges of the doorway and the massive iron door slowly started rolling to the side, sliding into a slot in the wall.

  Another bibliognost was waiting behind the door and he bowed gently to Edda without speaking, taking over the visitor escort duty from Árni. Black wounds remained where his eyes had formerly been. The only visible source of light in the inner sanctum was from an old lantern he was carrying. He also had a book chained to him, but unlike the others this tome was very small and ancient, made from a dark leather and almost falling apart at the seams. They went on down the narrow corridor, into the darkness. Behind them the machinery shut the door, entombing them inside. An immense sense of claustrophobia overtook Sæmundur until he realised that he wasn’t really trapped in there. Edda’s body was.

  The light from the lantern was incredibly weak. First Sæmundur thought that the reason must be supernatural, that the seiðmagn from the books was twisting the laws of nature, but he soon realised that the reason was because the entire corridor was made from pitch-black obsidian, which reflected almost no light at all. They went past closed doors, every one of them a different shape. One was a regular suburban door, the paint peeled and the wood rotten and soft; another was made from roughly cut logs, the next of rusted steel with a porthole, its glass cracked. Sæmundur wasn’t sure how many doors they passed, it was too dark. Besides, he couldn’t be staring at everything around him – it would be suspicious if Edda behaved as if she’d never been in there before. He couldn’t be sure how much the bibliognost could truly see.

  They walked straight ahead, moving step by step deeper into the abyssal heart of the library. Sæmundur had no sense for how long they kept going in the crushing darkness. Time slipped from the mind’s grasp like sand between fingers. Eventually they reached the end of the vault. It had only a single door.

  It didn’t fit into its frame, which was too angular and well made for a botched piece of work like that. Uneven boards made from driftwood had been put together, bent and pale, making a door that wouldn’t even suit a poor peasant’s cottage. There was no lock or keyhole on this door, unlike the others. The bibliognost stopped and gestured to Edda to go inside. Sæmundur hesitated but couldn’t manage to say anything. The air was too heavy here to carry words. He opened the door with a gentle creak, which echoed overwhelmingly in the silent void. Inside he faced an endless midnight. The bibliognost rummaged around in his pockets, pulled out a small candlestick and lit it. Sæmundur understood. This was the time he was allotted.

  He crossed the threshold.

  Tíu

  They beat their drums as if the world was ending. A relentless rhythm, constantly on the verge of cascading into noise and cacophony, a frenzied beat giving their voices structure as they cried out as one for justice and freedom, demanding the basic decency of equal rights. There was excitement and a sense of joy in the air. For a moment Garún relaxed and let her guard down. Smiling. Happy. Carefree. She felt as if things would change. She truly believed it, in that moment. There were more people attending than she had expected. For a moment the sun was blotted out as Loftkastalinn floated across the sky in the distance, the noise from its engines so loud that they had to raise their voices considerably. Biplanes buzzed around the floating fortress like wasps protecting their hive.

  Today was Óðday, the sixteenth of Harpa. It was fifty years since the naval fleet of the Crown had docked at Reykjavík. It was a defensive measure, they said, to protect the lives and interests of Hrímlanders against the war raging on the continent. The war ended, but the Crown stayed. And with them came development and the walls.

  No more gates! Tear down the walls!

  The hidden delýsíð laced on their placards bled out raw emotions that seeped into the parched crowd, saturating them with powerful feelings of solidarity, unity, outrage over the injustices of the world and the suffering the walls had brought upon them. Not that they needed the encouragement, as Garún had feared, ever the cynical, borderline pessimist, but the added sorcerous effect made them move and feel as one.

  So when the police showed up in force with shields and batons charged with seiður, positioning themselves around the square and in front of City Hall, blocking it off, the crowd grew only bolder, stronger in their conviction, more determined not to be cowed into complacent silence. City Hall was a blocky, fortress-like building, lurking by the city pond. It had only been finished a few years earlier, its striking architecture a popular topic of debate among the citizens of Reykjavík, as with any other new building. Passers-by were stopping at a safe distance to watch the demonstration. Jón came up to Garún as she was shouting words of protest, a megaphone in his hand, pointing out to her a group of people, two of them carrying unwieldy wooden boxes.

  “Journalists,” he said. “And they brought cameras.” He smiled. The cameramen set their boxes down and started unpacking the cameras. “We’re making history, Garún!’

  He brought the megaphone to his lips and led a new chant. An old, familiar chant, not uttered for years. Decades.

  “Free Hrímland! Free Hrímland!’

  He handed Garún the megaphone, joining her in the rest of the chant.

  “Hrímland out of Kalmar, no more Crown!’

  The crowd joined in, the drumbeats growing in strength and power. The rows of police officers tightened. After a few rounds of the chant, Jón started his speech.

  He spoke with conviction and fire. He spoke of a better world. One where the plentiful resources found here could be used to make a better society. An equal society. A society where there was a place for every race, every person as they were. A place where people could be free. Where walls were not a tool of imprisonment and oppression. Where seiðmagn was not harvested for military use, but for the improvement of society. The thaumaturgical power plant in Perlan was a symbol of Kalmar’s failure to the Hrímlandic people. Instead of a shining beacon of hope and healing, it was enslaved to the monstrous military fortress they had built. The seiðmagn could be used to power seiðskrattar working in hospitals, healing diseases, or greenhouses, growing new and wondrous produce for the people. The walls were an even greater failure, a structure built for protection instead used for oppression. For segregation of the Hrímlandic people and violence against the citizens the Crown allegedly swore to protect.

  They cheered, beating on drums, applauding, shouting. The flash of cameras went off, once, twice, just out of sight.

  No more gates! Tear down the walls!

  Free Hrímland! Free Hrímland! Hrímland out of Kalmar, no more Crown!

  Garún patted Jón on the back, congratulating him for a job well done. He had voiced their common thoughts, which Garún had grown so tired of hearing. But now, she felt as if she was hearing them for the first time. Now they meant something, outside the bubble of their secretive meetings. She saw movement up in the windows of City Hall – curtains being moved, shadows stirring in offices.

  Styrhildur sidled up to Garún, leaning in towards Garún and nudging her playfully.

  “It’s happening. Just like old times.”

  “What do you mean?’

  Styrhildur smiled awkwardly. “Like when we were kids, playing Fallen Stick, and you’d move in and save us all.”

  Garún furrowed her brow. “What on earth are you talking about?’

  The smile faded on Styrhildur’s lips. Someone started chanting anew, and Garún joined in, raising her fist and cheering, unaware of Styrhildur’s numb expression next to her, barely holding it together.

  J
ón handed the megaphone to Jónas Theium, who was leafing through a worn notebook. He had been adamant about wanting to speak, to “recite powerful, revolutionary poetry’. Garún was of the mind to tell him to shut up and listen to something beside the sound of his own voice for once, but people had raised their fists in support and she’d let it go. Let the pretentious bastard play out his little role. At least he’d shown up, despite having been so opposed to the protest. Garún guessed he just saw it as a platform to further himself. Whatever. Let him have his little moment.

  A crackle from the police lines. Somewhere at the back, a person was speaking into a megaphone system.

  “This is an illegal protest. Disperse and vacate the premises immediately.”

  The drums kept on banging, the chants fired up again, doubled in force. The tinny voice on the megaphone repeated itself.

  “This is an illegal protest. Disperse and vacate the premises immediately.”

  Garún looked around. She saw people who looked a bit unsure, afraid of the police force that had surrounded them. But they still went on. She found Diljá in the crowd and joined her, seeing the same fierce determination reflected in her that she felt burning in her own heart. Sometimes that fire burned so much it hurt. Today she could let it burn brightly. Today she could find it an outlet.

  “The weight of suffering breaks the worker’s back,” Jónas Theium started, enunciating into the megaphone in a theatrical voice, “as the dawn’s rays strive to reach him, still eluding—”

  Theium didn’t get much further in his recital as thunder echoed through the square. One of the burning blue-white shots burst through the air crackling with a violent, unnatural energy. Streaks of chained almost-lightning shot over the crowd, following the volley of blasts. People screamed and cowered, Diljá grabbed Garún by the arm and reached out to her and the other huldufólk. A wave of empathy washed over the crowd, agitated feelings of fear, worry and outrage feeding back on each other, as the huldufólk and blendingar checked if anyone was injured. Nobody seemed to have been hit. Warning shots. Then Garún saw the firing squad, a line of the Crown’s soldiers that had just stepped out from behind the line of policemen, stepping behind them to reload as another line stepped forward, crouched, aimed their skorrifles at the protestors.

  People were screaming obscenities at the soldiers and police, telling them that this was a legal protest, that they should fuck off, that only a tyrannical government would shoot at its own citizens. Another flash from the cameras. People weren’t running. They stood their ground. Garún shrugged Diljá’s hand away and took off her backpack. She’d been prepared for this. With a chilling realisation, she felt that part of her had been hoping for this. She poured out the pack’s contents. The stones were weighty in her hand, but not too heavy. Styrhildur and Hraki had emptied their backpacks as well and people were grabbing the stones. Garún felt Diljá’s disapproving feelings on the matter as she reached out to the group for consensus, but she ignored it.

  The first stone went flying through the air, crashing into the police lines. Styrhildur followed its trail intently. Hraki threw his stone after his sister’s and the crowd followed, letting loose a rain of stones beating down on the rows of officers and soldiers behind them. They raised their riot shields and held fast. Garún saw a few of them go down, their faces bloodied.

  Then they fired.

  The skorrifles whirred and flared with a blooming whiteness, crackling energy surging through them, around them, finding tender flesh and warm blood. Where the thaumaturgic shot found purchase the energy latched on to the wound like hooks, coiling around it and burrowing into its victim, exploding in a blossoming gore as bone and muscle and stringy tendon burst out in a twisted, cancerous growth.

  A handful of protestors ran off from the crowd. They were chased by police, hit with thaumaturgic batons, collapsing in violent seizures and throwing up as they were arrested. A few escaped their grasp. Most stood their ground. Why weren’t they running? If they all made a run for it, they had a good chance of making it. The police hadn’t blocked them off.

  The delýsíð. The seiður emanating from it was keeping them unified, determined to an unnatural degree. Subduing their survival instinct. Garún felt it herself. She didn’t want to run. She felt as if they could win. As if facing this slaughter could somehow be a victory to their cause.

  “Garún,” Diljá said, reaching out to her, finding no connection, looking at her pleadingly. “The signs are messing with people.” She looked around at the angry crowd, stones in their arms. “We have to take them down. People are going to get hurt.”

  She nodded and rummaged through her pockets, found her red-tinted googles. She put them on.

  The world was almost unrecognisable. People looked like weathered statues. The sky was flat and grey, all of her surroundings distant and artificial. Seiðmagn was the only thing that stood out in this bland world.

  Their signs flared like violent rashes, hyper-coloured, pulsating sickeningly with an unnatural turmoil. The seiðmagn bled out from the signs and over the crowd, which drank from it, becoming tainted by its aura. It held them all under its spell. She had to unmake it.

  There was more movement behind the line of soldiers, who were busy reloading their thaumaturgic skorrifles. A thick, heavy cloud of murky, sorcerous energy, potent and almost caustic in nature, blurring one’s vision just to look directly at it. A cloud pregnant with malevolence and the promise of violence. She slid off the goggles and saw it. Heavy red robes marked with esoteric runes. She caught only a glimpse of the bone-white mask, its long beak-like nose, crimson lenses identical to the ones in her own goggles.

  Garún’s heart plummeted. She wanted to throw up. It was here. It could see their delýsíð signs, clear as day, luminous with seiðmagn. It was watching them. A predator in hiding.

  With trembling hands she reached deep into her nearly empty backpack and found the can of spray paint hiding in there. She rushed to the centre of the crowd, where they had dragged the wounded, their wounds a grotesque growth of sharp, twisted bone and deformed flesh.

  Jón came to her as she was spraying on the ground. His hands were covered in blood.

  “Garún, what are you doing?’

  “It’s here – it’s watching us. We have to run, we have to make a break for it.”

  She painted a circle within a circle. An eye. She struck over it with two parallel diagonal lines. She wasn’t sure what she was basing this on. Some half-remembered sigil. It didn’t matter. Anything that could possibly work to counteract the protest signs. To her it screamed fear, suffering, blindness. Run.

  Some form of realisation dawned on Jón.

  “What did you do?’

  He looked up at the signs of protest, still held aloft, took in the drumbeat, still sounding out, the foundation upon which the ongoing protest shouts were based upon. He saw people picking up more sharp stones and throwing them at rigid lines of cold, hard uniforms.

  “What did you do to us?’

  She finished the sign and grabbed the megaphone from Jón’s hand.

  “Seiðskratti!’ she screamed with all her might. “They have a seiðskratti!’

  A flash of lightning. Thunder, in the distance – but she could feel it resounding through her. Jón was staring at her. His left eye twitched, rolled lazily to the side. Then his head burst in a coral structure, a sickening crystalline flower made from bone growing like frost on a window before her very eyes. In an instant he was gone and this malformed thing was standing there instead.

  He dropped to the ground, dead. The blood-red growth kept blooming. People were screaming. Another flash, but not from the firing squad. Cameras. There were more of them now.

  “Run!’ she shouted.

  Diljá was looking at her, filled with horror as people around them lay dying, screaming, their bodies twisted and broken.

  “Grab the wounded!’ Diljá shouted. “Run for it!’

  The spell was undone. People woke up
from the trance, fear in their eyes. Two marbendlar picked up a wounded huldukona and a human man, carrying them easily, but moving slowly. People shielded them by throwing stones, holding up signs. The police moved in to make arrests now that they were broken up. They beat down the outliers with brutal force, the batons collapsing a woman instantly. The man she had been supporting fell down, the gnarled bone-branch growing out of his leg breaking with a sickening snap. He was not spared from the beating, sending him into a seizure. Blood welled from their mouths and spattered the street.

  Garún picked up a wounded man, his shoulder deformed into an asymmetrical aquatic flower, and dragged him as fast as she could. Behind the enemy lines she saw that pale mask, still as emotionless as before, but now it looked almost livid. It was watching her. It saw what she did. Her knees gave out and she almost vomited. She was going to die. They were going to arrest them all and execute them one by one.

  Then, hands underneath her arms, pulling her up. Styrhildur. Hraki and Diljá pulled up the man she had been dragging. They ran, stumbling. There was smoke in the air, tears welling up in her eyes. They ran forward, but the police were closing in on them.

  They landed with a heavy thud, crushing the officers beneath them in an instant, using the momentum to lunge forward, eviscerating even more on their coarse, jagged beaks. Náskárar. They jumped forward with their powerful feet, using their wingspan to elevate even higher, then dived down again, crushing and gutting those unfortunate enough to find themselves within range. Garún looked up and saw a squadron of them diving into the firing squad, their wings beating as they tore into the soldiers in a wild spray of blood and gore. She saw a man, clad in a soldier’s uniform, holding in his guts as they poured out.