They walked in silence, he and Kölski. It was pointless to bind the demon into shadow here in the wasteland. They crossed rocky hills and crevices, chasing some feeling, a presence that was so powerful all around that it was hard to discern where it was stronger and where it was weaker. It was like the wind, the sky over the earth, thin sunlight on a winter’s morning. The presence was the lava fields themselves, the conscious land.
The Stone Giant. The southern landvættur.
All Hrímlanders knew of the four landvættir, even though it was now forbidden to hold blót in their honour. Just as every person knew the cycles of high and low tide, or how the pitch black of winter is turned into the bright nights of summer, the vættir were known to all. The primal beings had not been seen for centuries, but that had never been considered to be reason to consider them mere myth or folklore. Sæmundur himself had never given them much thought before. He considered them a consequence of seiðmagn rather than being remotely related to galdur. Besides, how should he possibly communicate with these primordial beings? But that was before. Galdur was a force that could alter reality itself, but that was not all. Galdur was also a language that transcended the boundaries of time and causality. He felt that now he would be able to connect to this ancient, esoteric consciousness.
If he could ever find it. Only a single feeling reached him, saturating his entire being. An insatiable thirst for more – for understanding, for transcendence. He had plenty of time, but he’d waited long enough.
On the second day he came upon a battlefield. Corpses lay over rough stones, the thick moss absorbing the blood. Ravens sat and picked at the carrion. He made his way through the silent battleground. Dismembered limbs, bodies still with the weapons stuck in the killing wounds, men split in twain. Here no quarter had been given. The men were dressed in rags, armed with rusty swords and knifes, decaying shields of wood and leather. An unstable vortex of seiðmagn surrounded a particular spot, where shards of bone and body parts were scattered all around in a bloody mess. An unlearned kuklari had lost control of the seiðmagn he had tried to tame. Instead of being able to use it to cause harm, it had literally torn him to pieces.
Sæmundur stopped in the middle of the bloodied field. With a raw voice he started the galdur. His voice carried on the wind, an arcane whisper that moved silently around. The world reverberated with hljóð – a word that could mean both sound and silence. Just as Kölski had said about darkness having an essence, so did the silence. He now understood that galdur was also in the silence. As a composer breaks up his work with the absence of sound, he used the silences as well to draw in the power from beyond, lying behind the entirety of creation.
Faint shadows appeared like frost roses on glass, unclear and dark lights that indicated human forms, but not much more than that. He called to them, wove into the galdur a request of knowledge, of the battle and of the landvættur of the south. One by one they stepped forward, and he listened to their stories in the quiet stillness of the field.
Their fates had been decided generations before. They could not recall their names, but they recalled their clans. Grindvíkingar, Keflvíkingar, Vogamenn, Njarðvíkingar, mercenaries and opportunists from Sandgerði, Garður and Hafnir. Generation after generation fought and avenged, spilled blood for the sake of blood. Alliances were formed and broken according to the way the winds blew.
This time it was Grindvíkingar and Vogamenn who met Keflvíkingar and Njarðvíkingar, both parties with mercenaries on their side. Full of betrayal and counter-betrayal their voices crashed over Sæmundur in a contradictory flood of words, where every revenant was inconsistent with the next. With a high tone and a few choice words, which he had used years before when he put down Hóla-Skotta, he calmed the ghosts and made them listen. Where was the Stone Giant? Where was the vættur of the south?
The answers were vague. Poetic riddles, instructions from those who were no longer constrained by human fetters. Despite all the transformations that he had undergone, all the mysteries that had revealed themselves to him, he was still shackled to this mortal coil. The reality of these souls was completely unfamiliar to him.
He is where the shell cracks and the wolves howl.
You find him in the worm’s entrails, the wave’s foam,
the poisoned edge of the sun.
He is here. He is here and has never been here.
You do not seek him. He seeks you. But you have vanished.
He is the living lava! He lives!
He lives! He lives! The chained giant still lives!
Every answer struck some truthful chord, but it was only a fraction of the complete picture, which he could neither identify nor place. With a weary tone he put the spirits to rest, let them fade again
