It was on the third night after Sæmundur invoked the spirits that the land began to tremble. Heavy impacts shook the earth with a steady rhythm, as if a thunderstorm was moving through the ground itself. He didn’t seek shelter, but he reinforced the spell of hiding he had clouded himself in and was constantly – almost involuntarily – chanting. Two voices or more participated in the incantation. He didn’t know how many organs of speech he had sprouted underneath his robes, and he didn’t care. As long as it was useful to him, it didn’t matter.
Kölski climbed on top of a split stone and looked towards the source of the impact.
“You should cover your face, master.” The heavy sounds grew gradually louder. Whatever was moving was getting closer. “Stop reciting the incantations. Do not breathe in.”
“Why?’
Something moved in the dark. Something huge and ancient.
The demon flashed a malevolent smile.
“You of all people should know that.”
Dark outlines, which Sæmundur had thought to be a rocky hill, moved and trembled. The form grew larger, closer, and he saw what was coming. It was gigantic, like a hill which had one day decided to get up and start trudging along. Coarse and stone-faced skin, covered in craters and cracks. The cavernous maw hanging slack so the jagged fangs were clearly visible. A faint glow from the eye sockets, like glint in a cat’s eye. It walked on its knuckles like a beast, with a great and tall hunched back, but where the back should have ended in a sharp peak was an ugly, open wound and from it stood an evil growth. A thick cloud surrounded the creature, like a swarm of flies.
Sæmundur pulled in his coat and held his sleeve up to his nasal cavity and bared teeth. He hoped that whatever new organs that had possibly manifested on his body were able to close themselves off, or at least would manage not to breathe for a while – if they needed to at all.
The cloud surrounded him completely. For the first time in a very long while a real sense of fear came crashing over him. His heart pounded in his chest, in an irregular and sporadic beat. As if it were at its end. He wanted nothing more than to breathe, which was odd, because when he thought of it he didn’t quite remember having to do so recently.
The back of the night-troll was broken, like the shell of an egg. Mushrooms sprouted from the wound, large and thick like trees, their roots a thick mess of tiny, glowing fungal growths. They had burst out from the inside, pushed until the stony skin had cracked. With every step, every resounding impact, the mushrooms shook so that a thick cloud of spores came pouring out of them.
An enormous fist hit the earth. Shards of stone flew up at the impact and rained over Sæmundur. He retreated in a panic – the spores had hidden just how close the troll was. He tripped over a rock and fell onto the jagged, barren ground. The impact knocked the breath out of him and it took every ounce of willpower he had not to gasp for air. The spell of hiding would not help him now – he’d stopped reciting it as soon as he’d realised what was coming. The troll might have already seen him.
He lay still, in an odd and uncomfortable position, his face against earth and black sand. He was helpless, completely vulnerable. He was nothing without sound. Silence would be the end of him.
Another impact, so close that Sæmundur would have been crushed had he been just a few metres closer. So this is how he would die. Infected by the gandreið fungi in the wilderness. Killed by the plant which had made it possible for him to start all this madness.
The troll took another step. Further away this time. Then another. Sæmundur sat up. The night-troll had its back turned to him, moving on in its mindless march. It didn’t notice him. Didn’t notice anything. It didn’t need to. Everything that came upon its path became infected and died.
Sæmundur rushed to his feet. Water. He had to get to water. He was covered in spores, which stuck to him. He couldn’t shake all of them off and could not use galdur to remove them. One breath and he was doomed. The shore was too far off. He didn’t know the lie of the land, if there was a lake or a pond nearby. He hadn’t noticed anything like it on his travels. There was nothing here but fucking rocks.
Kölski was standing in the same place, still smiling. Sæmundur had turned a deathly blue from the lack of oxygen.
“Despite everything you are still just a man. Chained in flesh. Regardless of what path you choose, only doom awaits you in the end. You fear the fungus, to become its slave. To dance according to its invisible strings, like a grotesque puppet.”
Sæmundur collapsed into the dirt. His ears were ringing.
“Why?’ Kölski kept on. “Is that not all you know? Is that not the foundation of the illusion you call reality?’
Sæmundur’s vision darkened. He didn’t have much left. It couldn’t end like this.
Galdur transforms reality – can turn it upside down. It reaches out to something larger and greater than that which makes the world and pulls it back into itself.
Sæmundur had sensed how it was not the words themselves that affected the world, but the frequency, the rhythm. The sound waves. However, they had always come from him. A vibration from his throat, a sound sung out into the world. That was how he learned to use galdur; the galdur began and ended with the voice and will of the galdramaður.
He closed his eyes.
And he listened.
Kölski’s voice, mocking and cold, saturated with hate which welled up to the surface, an overflowing river. In the distance, the rumble of the night-troll, the rumble of rocks as they moved and shattered under its knuckles and feet. The delicate sprinkling sound of spores falling from the mushrooms, landing on the ground, brushing against each other on the way down before they sat on moss and stone. The wind howling over bare rocks, blowing earth and gravel, alternating between absolute stillness and fierce gusts. Chattering birds in the sky, hissing predators in their burrows and in the distance, the roar of the ocean, eternal and ceaseless. He listened and he heard everything. Everything he had learned to ignore, for how can you hear that which is never silenced?
He heard the moonlight shining on the ground. He heard the clouds gliding through the sky. He heard fine droplets of moisture condense inside them.
He looked up at Kölski, who fell silent in the middle of his speech. Sæmundur smiled his bare grin even wider. He exerted his will to the heavens.
And it started to rain.
Þrjátíu og fimm
The fortress in Viðey was laid out in detail in her mind. She knew every nook and cranny as if she’d grown up there. The living room where Hálfdán’s son had taken his first step. The garden where he’d walk around with the Crown’s most powerful consultants. The hollow where Trampe would sit by himself and smoke. Hálfdán had mimicked him in this and sometimes stood there by himself, with his pipe and his thoughts. The pantry where he’d sometimes meet the maid and take her.
The fortress was designed as the Crown’s last line of defence. Viðey could stand a siege for months, as long as their food supplies were ready for it. But if everything went sour the stiftamtmaður would still have to make his escape. In a few well-hidden places were invisible portals, crafted with seiður, hidden behind slabs of stone and secret trapdoors. Most of the routes were well monitored. The soldiers might not know they were there, but there was always a guard patrolling close by.
Garún started to draw up the rough outlines of the fortress by lining up rocks and drawing lines in the mud. There was an entrance here, guards here, change of guards here and here at these times. Katrín and Hraki listened with complete concentration. They’d need a boat to get to the fortress. Hraki thought he could sneak away to Huldufjörður to find a usable boat, preferably a regular rowing boat. There was a natural harbour just outside Huldufjörður, where rowing boats could probably be found. It sounded familiar to Garún. Most likely they belonged to fishermen from the village, or smugglers, perhaps. One of them should do, at least.
The deep blue sheep’s jaw was freezing cold against Garún’s chest, wher
e it was tied with the delýsíð sheet. She ached from the cold and the seething heat of the hatred, but in a good way. The bone hungered, and that hunger sharpened her mind. She would satiate it.
It was time for a reckoning.
* * *
The rain ran down his filthy hair, streaming down his neckline and soaking the rags he wore. Sæmundur was drenched. He hadn’t felt so good for a long time.
A fog had lifted from his mind. The Stone Giant was shining clearly, like a bright beacon. The power of the giant was all around him, but now its centre was clear, obvious. Kölski followed behind Sæmundur. The demon hadn’t spoken another word since Sæmundur had made it rain. If he didn’t know any better, he could have sworn the abomination was sulking.
Every living thing ran from his path, like animals fleeing a fire. Outlaws lay still in hiding, frantically whispering prayers and kukl, incantations of protection against the malevolent being. Him. He was death itself made flesh.
He heard them long before he saw them. They tore through the land like an avalanche. Without any regard, an unstoppable force of destruction. They were supercharged with seiður, drawing in the untamed force from the land and conducting it through themselves so they burned with almighty supernatural force.
Seiðskrattar. Sent after him. They were so mercilessly driving themselves that there was no chance they’d survive. The human body wasn’t intended to handle these amounts of seiðmagn flowing through it in such a short period of time, regardless of how powerful the seiðskratti was. But it didn’t matter. The demon-worshipper should be destroyed, no matter the cost.
The landscape started to writhe as they gained on him. Undulating. Clumps of rock melted again, shining amber-red with heat. Boiling water erupted from freshly formed geysers, steam roaring like a lamenting choir. The earth shook. Trembled from joy or revulsion at the destruction which was being unleashed.
They shone like two suns in the sky. Sparks of lightning flew from the floating human shapes. Their robes were tattered, the black masks like melted wax.
With their seiður came the most wonderful cacophony Sæmundur had ever heard. Like a child hammering a piano but still managing to produce sounds one could call music. Something undisciplined and ugly, but undeniably music.
They stopped at a distance from him. He felt them draw in power, bloat themselves even more with the unending flow of seiðmagn from the land. It looked as if they intended to unleash it all at once. The thaumaturgical explosion would vaporise all of them. The crater would span kilometres. Their plan was to obliterate Sæmundur into molecules, leaving nothing of the demonic infection behind. He felt around them and found the edges of runes of fate and protective incantations which held up a shield against galdur and demonic possession. It would be hard for an average galdramaður to break through these defences in time.
But Sæmundur was no longer an average galdramaður.
He listened to the frequency of their bodies. Of the vibrations of the bones, which resounded with sound and life.
And there he opened a gate.
* * *
Garún jumped up. Again she had been awoken by a sound. Some terrible sound. The oil lamp was lying on the floor next to her. In the fading light she saw Hraki standing by the exit. Away from her, like she was a wild beast.
The sound suddenly stopped. It was her. Her own screams. She felt hot tears on her face. Katrín was kneeling next to her, as if she was about to wake her up, but had hesitated for some reason.
“Are you all right?’ said Katrín in a weak voice.
Garún nodded. “Just a nightmare.”
“I got the boat,” said Hraki. “But it was close. There are houses burning in Huldufjörður. Soldiers. We should get moving.”
The sacrificial stone was a sombre, vague form in the darkness at the end of the hall. She wanted to take a closer look, make sure that it was not filled with blood. But she didn’t have the courage to. Nothing was as terrifying to her as the thought of taking one step towards that stone.
She checked on Styrhildur. Her skin was feverishly hot, sweat beading on her forehead. She hadn’t regained consciousness since they got here. Her breathing was rapid and shallow.
“You’ll stay with her?’ Garún asked. Hraki nodded. “Good.”
“I’ll wait for you,” he said. “Styrhildur will be awake when you come back.”
She nodded, unwilling to shatter his delirious hope.
* * *
The smell of the ocean was a welcome feeling. The waves tumbled up to the beach and made soothing sounds as they drew back the small stones. Garún took a deep breath. She felt a little bit better already. She couldn’t understand how Styrhildur and Hraki had stayed in those ruins for days, perhaps weeks at a time, as children.
“There’s no sense in waiting.” Garún started to push the boat out. “I do not want to spend another minute in this place.”
“Agreed,” said Katrín.
Garún pushed the boat out to sea. Katrín jumped in first, then she followed. Garún rowed, as Katrín’s arm was all but dead weight. Hraki stood still on the shore, alone and helpless with the looming castle ruins behind him. He didn’t move. Garún tried to keep an eye on him, to make sure he went back, but it was dark and cloudy and he quickly melded with the night.
* * *
The pillar was unshapely, a crooked and jagged monument in the wasteland. It stuck from the earth like a dagger in a wound. At a distance it seemed a part of the rough and barren landscape, but as it drew closer it was more apparent that even here in the sorcerous lava fields this rock did not belong. Every day the rocky terrain changed, but the rock’s shape always adhered to the original form that it had taken when it had erupted from the heart of the earth. It was a rock pillar that would have belonged at the shoreline, a lone column left alone, chipped and polished by waves and time. It had a hole going all the way through at ground level, making it seem as if it stood on two solid feet.
Sæmundur stopped at the roots of the Stone Giant. The overwhelming vortex that came pouring over him made his mind reel, swirling around him in powerful waves.
This was the eye of the storm. The epicentre.
Sæmundur walked around the rock. There was nothing unusual about it, except for the lack of geological explanation for its place there. But there was something there. Something so potent that its presence covered the entire land. A sleeping giant who, if disturbed from his sleep, could tear the land apart. Kölski waited while he walked, silent and grave.
The seiðskrattar were hanging in thin air like carcasses hung on meat hooks. The demons infesting their bones had deformed them completely and the long-lasting effects of the seiðmagn in their bodies had started to devour them. It was barely perceptible that the creatures had once been human. He considered sending them back to Reykjavík, to let the Crown taste their own medicine, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He remembered how the cannons had let destruction rain over the city. The demons that must have manifested and torn through the streets. Reykjavík had suffered enough by his hand.
Nothing worked, no matter how he tried. The energy that raged here was too chaotic, too disturbing for him to grasp. He made one of the seiðskrattar float down and reached up to the half-melted mask that was still hanging on their face, tearing out a red lens. Through the gap he saw a crazed eye flickering back and forth, the pupil split in three and dilated. The skin was pale and the veins a patchwork of inky darkness.
He didn’t really need the lens, but it was a matter of concentration rather than utilising the filter in the thaumaturgical lens. He looked through the crimson glass and tried to concentrate. Let everything tune out of focus, so he could glimpse the bigger picture. In the thaumaturgical storm that raged all around him, the rock was shining like a crashed sun. The brightness was overwhelming. But somewhere there, deep within the chaos, was a shape. Glowing blue with arcane power.
Þrjátíu og sex
The fortress of Viðey rose from the horiz
on. A fortified wall covered the entire island. Over them the towers of the main fortress could be seen. The residence of the stiftamtmaður, one of the oldest buildings of the Crown in Hrímland. The fort had grown and prospered as the years passed. Inside the walls were upscale houses of high-ranking officials and military officers, army barracks, a botanical garden and a small village, where the servants and lower-ranking bureaucrats lived.
Garún knew that Viðey was by now crawling with soldiers and without a doubt more than a handful of seiðskrattar. The fall of Loftkastalinn was an impossible shock, which called for the highest possible state of emergency. It made things harder for them, but they couldn’t afford to wait. With each day that passed the Commonwealth’s net tightened around them.
The approach to the island was the most dangerous part. Everything depended on them getting to the walls unseen. It was impossible to see in the dark, but Garún knew that up there soldiers would be on guard, even more alert than usual. But if there was a seiðskratti up there, gazing out over the battlements to the sea, they might just as well have sailed up on a fine summer day in clear weather. She had her headphones over one ear and listened to the noisefiend. It was more to calm her nerves than to ensure that they approached unseen. It was a long way still to the fortress and the audioskull didn’t have that kind of range.
Her arms burned from exertion. Rowing was difficult, but twice as difficult when trying to be as quiet as possible. The boat creaked with every pull of the oars. The sound merged with the waves, but Garún felt it must be so deafeningly loud that it was impossible to think it would not carry right to the top of the island walls.
“We’re here,” Katrín whispered. “Quick, before we hit the shore.”
Shadows of the Short Days Page 41
