Sólsvertnir bowed before Rotsvelgur, spreading out his wings, and addressed him formally.
Krrxgkh-hraak. Lord-master. Hersir.
They whispered among themselves. Sæmundur felt dizzy from the skrumnir’s presence, now that he was closer. He almost glowed from the seiðmagn. Sæmundur thought of the power loaded in the blue-black feathers and felt a shiver run down his spine. But he did not avert his eyes, did not show any signs of weakness.
“I have known you for a long time, Sæmundur,” said Rotsvelgur in skramsl, making sure to speak slowly and clearly enough that Sæmundur could understand him. “And I have not found any reason to suspect you of malice. So far.” He spread out his wings, raised his head back. “What you suggest might spell the end of Krxgraak’úrrtek – or our salvation. We will glean what the future holds. Sólsvertnir!’ he crowed out over the hall. “Exercise the judgement of bones!’
The skrumnir ruffled around in his tattered robes and threw a clawful of bones on the floor. Ribs, jaws, skulls and bones of various shapes and sizes. Sólsvertnir huddled over the bones, investigating their layout and the shadows they cast carefully. Another náskári handed him a writhing sack and from it the skrumnir pulled a raven, tied at its beak and claws. The raven fruitlessly batted its wings. Sólsvertnir held the bird upside down over the bones and with a perfunctory movement decapitated it with one claw. Dark blood rained over the pale bones.
Sæmundur was familiar with this type of prophecy, but did not know the náskárar method specifically. He could not start to imagine what Sólsvertnir saw. He held an incantation mentally readied, a loaded gun or a dormant volcano, transformative words ready to erupt from his tongue and reshape the world.
Sólsvertnir pushed an occasional bone around with a long claw, contemplatively. He looked up at Sæmundur, right into his eyes. Then back to the bones, as if to verify something. Hesitantly, almost fearfully, the skrumnir glanced at Rotsvelgur’s chest – his helskurn – and down at Sæmundur’s feet. Where his shadow was cast in the wrong direction, towards the fire instead of away from it.
The skrumnir let loose a deafening screech and threw off his tatters. His blue-black feathers scintillated with an uncanny light, with streaks of turquoise so wondrous and maddening that Sæmundur couldn’t help staring. The skrumnir tensed up, his feathers ruffling, preparing to spread out his feathered cape and devour Sæmundur’s mind and memory. He couldn’t speak. He wanted to, but found himself completely frozen up.
Then a voice that was not entirely human spoke.
Everything came to a halt. Nothing moved. The only sound was that measured rhythm of an unseen voice, those sharp syllables that unravelled reality. A dark blast blinded Sæmundur and for a moment nothing existed except this inversion, this blinding void, and then the world was pulled again over his consciousness like a veil.
Two blóðgögl jumped off from the walls above Sæmundur, diving with their jagged claws extended. One was knocked away by an unseen force, thrown against the stone wall with a sickening crack. The other one dived into Sæmundur, but his claws found no purchase, as if he had attacked a stone pillar instead of a human being. With a sharp spoken word, the skin on the náskári’s back fissured open, erupting with blood, and the blóðgagl fell on the ground, writhing and twitching as it died in a pool of its own blood. The third blóðgagl jumped down in front of Sæmundur, crouching and pouncing with the krummafótur, coming at him beak-first. A wall of darkness burst from the ground, tethered to Sæmundur in long black coils. He ducked, and the náskári missed, crashing to the floor and sliding limply forward, the vivid darkness pooling rapidly towards it like ravenous carrion-eaters.
Sólsvertnir was lying on the ground. His feathers had lost their lustre and Sæmundur no longer felt disoriented looking at them. In front of him stood Kölski, now manifested from the shadow. He wasn’t sure who had spoken the incantation – himself, the demon in front of him or the demon inside him. Partly he felt that there was no distinction to be made. Not a single náskári moved. Everything was still. They were too terrified.
Rotsvelgur’s feathers were agitated with rage. He stared down at the man, or what he thought was a man, and the grinning demon at his feet. For the first time in the years Sæmundur had known Rotsvelgur, he truly feared the náskári and what he might do to enact his vengeance.
“Sólsvertnir,” Rotsvelgur said after a while. “Rise.”
The skrumnir raised himself, shaking like a feeble elder. Sæmundur noticed that he had been mistaken before, Sólsvertnir’s feathers were as dangerous and lustrous as before, the seiðmagn flowing from them like a fresh delýsíð painting Garún had made. But something was different. Something had changed.
Then he realised it. It was he himself who had changed. Not Sólsvertnir.
“What did the bones tell you?’ Rotsvelgur asked, without taking his eyes off Sæmundur. “What was the judgement?’
The skrumnir spoke in a weak voice. Not a soul stirred in the great hall.
“What has been bound in blood and locked in bone has spoken. The human carries –’ he said a word Sæmundur couldn’t quite understand – “in himself. Will that be both curse and blessing to us. He stands blinded at the cave mouth, ruin is within his power and the foulest sorcery. He has shown his nature with shed blood, but
