She could find her way in and out from memory now. She’d started following Kryik’traak out to train herself, and had gone back and forth until she knew the way by heart. Each night she headed out for a short excursion. In the skin she kept the audioskull and spray cans filled with clear delýsíð.
She enjoyed swimming by the dark river bottom. At times she saw marbendlar swimming in the distance, but they never approached her. She suspected that their presence there was a well-kept secret and she liked the thought that someone was on their side. Underwater was a new world, filled with tranquillity and peace. Sometimes she could see the bright moon through the rough river surface.
That night Kryik’traak found her swimming in the river depths. He motioned for her to follow him to the surface. He told her that a man had approached him that night, the same man she had met a few days earlier. His negotiations had been successful.
Loftkastalinn would fall in two days’ time.
Þrjátíu
Sæmundur drove the last post down into the shallow hole and righted it by piling rocks around its base. The wind was sharp and relentless. The third horse’s head was larger than the others and difficult to lift up to the stake. His breath was short and his hands trembled from the weight. He almost dropped the head, but eventually he managed to lift it on top of the stake so that it was securely in place.
A níðstöng was simply a gateway, a guiding post that directed forces from beyond into this world. It was up to the galdramaður to raise the post correctly and recite his incantations well enough that the weapons would not turn in his hands. Níðstangir had rarely been successfully used, as far as human knowledge went. The ritual was incredibly difficult and known to few people. Only the most vile users of svartigaldur in Hrímland would dare to cast this galdur, as more often than not the ritual failed in a catastrophic manner. No matter who was on the receiving end of a níðstöng’s power, the result would be complete disaster, without exception. Even now, not a single blade of grass would grow on the land of Skálholt’s former temple, due to the níðstöng that had been raised there in ancient times.
He took a step back and considered the three posts. Bloody and empty-eyed horses’ heads were impaled on top of each one, their mouths hanging half-open as if they were trying to say something. It had taken him a considerable time to cut the ritual circle into the turf around the níðstangir. Still harder had it been to dig for the posts, as the earth was half-frozen. Eventually he had managed to dig deep enough that they would be stable. He had grown weak and would have preferred to use galdur or what little he knew of seiður to make the work easier. But every apprentice knew that the portal into this world had to be firmly connected to reality, a solid anchor that would hold the galdramaður steady in the raging tempest to come, which he could neither sense nor understand. Sæmundur knew that his perception of galdur was by now considerably clearer than with most other galdramenn, alive or dead, but he still saw no reason to take any unnecessary risks.
Sæmundur started the ritual by carving the lips, tongues and eyes off the heads while he hummed ancient verses to himself. Kölski was standing nearby, intently watching in silence. They were in Öskjuhlíð, away from plain sight but still far enough from the trees to have a clear view from the hilltop over the city. Spread out before them was Reykjavík, the city that cowered underneath the tower of Haraldskirkja, and above all of it – Loftkastalinn.
Öskjuhlíð was covered with a dense forest that few dared to explore. The trees were twisted and gnarled, constantly moving, even when the weather was completely still. The forest was home to countless creatures. Some of them had perhaps once been foxes, skoffín or small birds, but the seiðmagn had long since turned them into something unrecognisable. Even after Perlan was built and the thing under the hill had been harnessed, its influence could still be seen in the forest. The creatures kept to the hill, addicted to the faint residue of seiðmagn the thing radiated. Every year corpses were found on the outskirts of the forest, usually teenagers or hobos. This was a cursed place.
Sæmundur hadn’t detected anything as he walked up the overgrown hill a short while before, a heavy and bloody sack over his shoulder. As he cut down three trees and carved them into sharp stakes the forest kept quiet, holding its breath. Now that he had finished the opening ceremony of the ritual he felt how the power in the earth amassed at his back. He was no seiðskratti, but he knew well the power of seiðmagn. An overwhelming presence came over him and he knew that the unearthly thing in Öskjuhlíð, trapped in the technological slavery of Perlan, wished nothing more than to assist him, to take revenge upon the city that had numbed and killed the land since colonisation. But even if he heeded its call and unleashed its power, it would not help
