Perlan did a number of great things for Reykjavík. It provided the city with electricity, heat, even limited fuel creation for ships and automobiles. There had been grand plans to use the marvel to further improve the lives of Hrímlandic citizens, but they were put to a halt when Kalmar figured out how to engineer the skorrifles and seizure-bludgeons, the weapons and engines of the flying fortress. Now, Trampe was intending to completely take over Perlan’s operational power, denying the people the benefits of the power plant.
The board of Hið Hrímlenska Hlutafélag, the company designated as the owners of Innréttingarnar, was composed mostly of powerful human Hrímlanders. Making up a majority of the board were Katrín’s father and his fellow members of the Citizens’ Party. The party supposedly stood for home rule, but they were consistently ambivalent towards the Commonwealth when it suited their own needs. Now, they wanted Kalmar to dance to their tune.
Sheriff Skúli, the chairman of the company and the party leader, was the instigator of the meeting that took place in Katrín’s home that night. Losing the power plant’s capabilities completely to Kalmar’s military ventures would deal a devastating blow to Hrímlandic society – but it could do wonders for their own personal profits. The way they saw it, their financial gains benefited the people of Hrímland much more than heat and electricity. The problem was persuading Trampe to offer them a good enough deal. Skúli had suggested that the Crown would lease Perlan’s power exclusively for a century – ensuring a generous military cash flow to the shareholders’ pockets. Kalmar had been churning on a slow burn of warfare for decades now; there were always new wars to be fought. The shareholders had just nabbed themselves a golden goose.
Or so they believed. Trampe denied the deal. He was confident in his ability to slowly take Innréttingarnar over completely and attribute all of Perlan’s energy output to war. He held all the cards.
The press exploded with the news, leading Trampe to issue a temporary law censoring all publications. But it was too late. Resentment towards Kalmar spiked. The politicians in the Citizens’ Party tried to save their political careers by denying the allegations of trying to profit by selling a national energy resource to the military, but confirmed that Trampe was moving to completely militarise Perlan. Trampe put out the fires before they got out of hand by claiming that the Crown had no intentions of so condemning Reykjavík, and further solidified it by swearing that all deals regarding Perlan were off the table indefinitely. To Garún’s immense disappointment, the people decided to let the whole matter go without any major repercussions. But the resentment towards both governments still remained, and the Crown’s intention of fully weaponising Perlan was stopped.
For now.
It would only be a matter of time until another plan to weaponise Perlan would surface. That didn’t change the fact that Katrín had put everything on the line to stand up to the powers that be and send them a message that enough was enough. Perlan was supposed to belong to the people, not capitalist leeches and the military lackeys of the Commonwealth. Katrín had betrayed her own father for the cause. That had been good enough for Garún. Or so she’d thought at the time.
The audioskull improvised brooding tones as Garún moved through the city. She had the feeling she couldn’t keep wandering for much longer on the streets of Reykjavík, looking for Katrín. If she hadn’t been arrested she could be anywhere. Perhaps in Sæbúavogur or Elliðabær, maybe Starholt. Garún couldn’t risk going there. The Forgotten Downtown was only connected to Reykjavík’s city centre, not the other neighbourhoods. Going out of the central area meant losing her method of escape.
She started looking for the unique static of the audioskull and let it lead her back towards a crossing to the Forgotten Downtown.
* * *
Garún was heading towards the fishermen’s workshops when she suddenly stopped. Unfamiliar tones sounded in her headphones, rapid staccato notes that she hadn’t heard before. This hadn’t happened before, the noisefiend didn’t work in Rökkurvík as it did in Reykjavík. The music sounded faint, distant. At first she thought she was imagining it. The electronic music swung up and down the scales in sync with a frantic heartbeat rhythm. The streets were empty. She waited, apprehensive, but nothing happened. As she started walking again the new sound stopped. It was a warning, but different than usual. She felt that the alarm wasn’t exactly aimed at her. It was more like a call for help. She turned around and listened. The music started again and led her towards the backwater.
Unlike its twin in Reykjavík, which was almost completely man-made at this point, with clouded, grey water, the situation was quite different in the Forgotten Downtown. A muddy mire stretched over a large area, all the way up to the edges of the dirt tracks that more or less lay parallel to the streets of Reykjavík. Maybe this is what the pond had originally looked like, some centuries ago. In the middle of the mire was the backwater, a murky and stagnant lake. Hrævareldar floated lazily over the dark waters. Garún avoided looking straight at them, but some part of her wanted nothing more than to stare into their seductive lights. In the pale gloom cast by the enthralling lights she saw a person in the mire, trudging her way towards the lake like a zombie. It was a woman, covered in mud and her skirts torn, her dark hair dishevelled.
It was Katrín.
Garún called her name as loudly she dared, but it accomplished nothing. In front of Katrín a swarm of hrævareldar floated and Garún felt as if she heard voices in the distance, cheerful and alluring, calling her to them. Without being aware of it, she had taken off her headphones so she could better hear them. She put them back on and held them tight, so nothing but the pounding music could reach her ears. Katrín was close to the ditch and stumbled in the mud. The hrævareldar swarmed around them, circling like carrion birds around a carcass, always closing in. Garún closed her eyes and blindly walked into the mire.
She listened for the tune that would lead her towards Katrín. It was drowned by the warning alarms caused by the hrævareldar and the mire itself, but she could still faintly detect it. Garún knew how to listen for the hrævareldar and avoid them, as she was dead-set on never falling for their lethal charm again. The mud gripped her feet tightly, making it a great effort to pull herself out of the muck and take another step closer. Slowly she made her way forward, hoping that the noisefiend would lead her from the fires and towards Katrín. The pale glow of the hrævareldar flashed through her shut eyelids. Her instinct was always to open her eyes, to see and recognise the danger, but she steeled her resolve and held her eyes shut, taking another step, contrary to what her instincts of self-preservation told her to do.
The water reached above her knees. Her thighs hurt from the effort of wading through the mud and she had no idea where she was. Had the hrævareldar already got to Katrín? If she opened her eyes, would she see a motionless body floating in the ditch? Or would she be all alone in the mire with the hrævareldar, Katrín spirited away?
When the putrid water had reached her waist, Garún’s fingertips came across something. Something coarse, wet, covered in mud. She groped blindly in front of her and got a grip on Katrín. Katrín resisted, tried weakly to heed the call of the hrævareldar. Garún pulled her in and placed both her hands firmly in front of her eyes. Katrín struggled, tried to fight her way out of the grip, but Garún held on for her life. She was faintly aware of a series of flashes and despite the music she could hear cold and deep voices rising from the darkness.
Katrín suddenly threw herself backwards, making Garún lose her grip and fall back. Garún intended to leap back up and grab hold of Katrín before she could escape, but stumbled when a blood-curdling scream came from Katrín. Garún was so startled that for a moment pure reflex took over. She opened her eyes.
A moon-white creature rose from the pitch-black water, its skin waxen and its flesh sagging. The hrævareldar swarmed around it, like carrion flies around a rotten corpse. The creature’s maw was lined with jagged teeth, its jaw jutting unnatural
ly far out. Limbs erupted from its body like broken branches, more than a dozen gaunt appendages that reached towards them, clawing forward on the marshland, trying to get a hold on the muddy bottom. Katrín stood, frozen, staring into the beast’s terrible mouth. Garún felt its rancid stench on her, like an open mass grave. Its eyes, bloated orbs on twisted stalks, turned towards Garún and she felt as if she was all alone up against the bottomless abyss.
She frantically got out her can of delýsíð and the dagger she had at her belt, sprayed the knife’s blade and threw it with all her might at the abomination’s head. The knife slid without resistance into the creature’s flesh and it let out a terrible wail that cut through bone and marrow. The creature’s appendages flailed and tore out the dagger. Yellow pus burst from the wound. Its eyestalks flailed in agony, like a nest of maggots. One eyeball turned dark with coagulated blood, bloating like a terrible fruit about to burst. The hrævareldar flared and scattered as the creature retreated into the dark waters of the ditch. As soon as it vanished from sight Katrín collapsed into the mire.
That’s when the sun rose.
A red sun lit up the empty sky. It flickered intensely, an eye burned into the pitch-black night. Then it multiplied and scattered, spreading out to cover the abyssal Rökkurvík sky. That was no sun. Those were flares. They moved with an unknown purpose, bathing the world in crimson light.
The Crown was here.
Garún threw Katrín over her shoulders and started running.
Tuttugu og eitt
The flares spread across the sky. Red, agitated lights, like a swarm of wasps. Þráinn Meinholt watched them move with great satisfaction. His eyes in the sky.
“We have full visual,” Magister Gapaldur hissed through their beaked mask, their voice muffled and distorted. “Coverage stands at optimal capacity. The hrævareldar will not pose a threat as long as the lights shine.”
Þráinn gave his affirmation with a grunt and turned to Officer Lárus, the person designated as his law enforcement liaison during this operation. Lárus was older than him by a good decade, a beat cop who had risen slowly but surely through the ranks to inspector. Lárus found himself working with the Directorate often, much to his chagrin. Þráinn requested him due to his renowned thick-headedness and tendency for unchecked brutality, features that usually posed an inconvenience in everyday law enforcement, but in cases such as these they were transmuted into refined and desirable qualities.
“Inspector, have your men all moved through the portal?’
“The last squad should come through any moment.”
“Good. Assemble them as soon as they’ve stopped retching. We’re moving out.”
“All right.”
“I remind you that Commissioner Kofoed-Hansen expects this to be executed flawlessly and efficiently. Make sure your men understand that.”
“Will do. Sir,” he added.
Þráinn was used to the reluctance of the police and military in accepting his authority during joint operations. That didn’t mean he tolerated it – on the contrary, he took exception to blatant disregard of the chain of command. Dealing with the rank and file grunts was routine enough, and he’d had time to put Lárus in his place, but working with not one but two seiðskrattar was a different beast entirely. The royal seiðskrattar were technically classified as high-ranking military officers, although they operated in a separate branch. This meant that the seiðskrattar did not fall under his authority, although Þráinn was in command of the operation. The seiðskrattar were asked to comply with his commands, but if they so felt they could safely overrule or defy him. The two seiðskrattar were Count Trampe’s frequent advisors. Having both of them here meant that the stiftamtmaður intended to see that this operation went off without a hitch.
They’d set up a perimeter by a lone, decrepit house in an open mud field. The house had already been secured as a safe house by their undercover agents in Rökkurvík, now acting as their base of operations. Þráinn walked through the wet mud, idly wondering how the earth managed to be this wet when it never rained here. Magister Ginfaxi stood by the portal, channelling violent streams of seiðmagn through themselves to manipulate the portal they had opened in the middle of the field. Obsidian pillars jutted out of the ground in a rough circle, their bent, coarse shapes looking like malevolent fingers bursting through earth. The air was thick with vibrant currents of seiðmagn, making Þráinn’s stomach turn and his hair stand on end. A group of armed police officers appeared in the middle of the circle, moving through the flickering wound in reality. The rift was not clearly visible, being freshly made and still bleeding, so to speak, but with time and the efforts of the seiðskrattar it would solidify. The police officers jogged to the edge of the circle and collapsed as soon as they were out, most of them retching and throwing up. Lárus barked at his subordinates, telling them to fall in line. Þráinn approached the seiðskratti, the force of their channelling changing tone as the last officers went successfully through.
“Are the other gateways sealed yet?’ Þráinn asked the seiðskratti.
The seiðskratti lowered their hands, causing an ebb in the flow of seiðmagn around them.
“You were briefed about the extradimensional nature of this place, Agent Meinholt,” Magister Ginfaxi hissed, their voice sounding almost serpentine. Through red-tinted glass Þráinn could see the hints of feverish eyes, gleaming with fervour and wild sorcery. “First the portal must be anchored. When it does so, it will cause the other gateways to seal shut over time. Like coagulating blood.”
Þráinn bristled. “I recall the briefing just fine, magister,” he said in a stern voice. “What I am telling you is that I want them shut – now.”
The seiðskratti stared at him stoically, the long white mask lending them a skeletal, predatory semblance. Magister Ginfaxi slowly clasped their white-gloved hands in front of them. Þráinn tried to hide his discomfort. He couldn’t discern anything about this son of a bitch.
“Perhaps you need another seiðskratti, Agent Meinholt,” Ginfaxi said in a measured, flat tone. “One more capable of following your brilliant plan.”
The portal started flickering, wavering in and out of existence.
“Don’t waste time playing games. I just want it done, magister.”
Magister Ginfaxi nodded slowly, almost bowing.
“Of course, sir.” They spat out the last word like a curse. The portal sputtered out for a moment, then reappeared. “Please rest assured that this humble servant of the Crown is using their meagre abilities to their best to serve your noble plan. Should that not be adequate, well … Then we will retreat and request that Count Trampe find a suitable substitute.”
“No, listen … All right. Just get it done. As quickly as possible.” “Very well. I will continue the work. It will proceed according to the plan laid out in the briefing – with your blessing, that is.”
Þráinn nodded. He could almost hear the smile in that abomination’s voice. He marched over to the formation of officers and the seiðskratti turned again towards the portal, the seiðmagn flaring up with a muted thunder as the gate again solidified, the thaumaturgical energy around the gate tightening, making his stomach turn with inexplicable vertigo.
The police officers stood at the ready in tight formations, skorrifles in hand, the front line with their shields raised, armed with thaumaturgic batons. The riot gear lent them the appearance of inhuman golems rather than human flesh and blood. Þráinn grinned. This he understood. Feet on the ground, weapons in hand.
“All right,” he said, activating a small charm on him that caused his voice to boom as if he were speaking into a megaphone. “This interdimensional anomalous zone is now under the official jurisdiction of the Directorate of Immigration. Any and all denizens of this area are now considered in violation of the borders of the Commonwealth of Kalmar. Any persons encountered are classified as international criminals and can be assumed to have non-citizen status.”
Inspector Lárus ste
pped forward.
“For the thick-skulled of you out there,” he bellowed loudly, “this means that there is no paperwork when you gun them down – keep that in mind!’
Þráinn nodded before continuing.
“This is a clear-cut operation. Comb every street, break down every door, arrest any persons found and shoot any who resist with extreme prejudice. I want to turn this godforsaken place back into a ghost town within twenty-four hours. This is also a manhunt – one rogue galdramaður, likely having manifested an Omega-class transmundane infestation in his corporeal form, and one half-breed terrorist, known to use a form of liquid delýsíð. Do not take off your mask under any circumstance. It might not necessarily save your life, but the filter should hold off the seiðmagn for long enough that you can put her down. Both of these individuals are high priority. Apprehend or neutralise them at any cost. Any questions?’
He glared at the lines of constables. His own little army.
“Move out!’
The police officers moved quickly and silently, weapons raised, spreading out over Rökkurvík. Þráinn approached Magister Gapaldur, who was standing by.
“We need to find the galdramaður and the half-breed. Fast.”
“She was at the protest,” they said. “The one who has so creatively utilised the delýsíð.”
Shadows of the Short Days Page 25
