* * *
The sacrificial stone was filled with blood. It poured down on the floor in a steady stream. It was hot, and its stench was foul. The stone bowl was big enough for both of them. Styrhildur looked up at Garún, who cradled her in her arms.
“You killed me.”
Garún held her tight and tried to push Styrhildur’s intestines back in.
“No! It wasn’t me. It was those pigs. Those fucking pigs.” Hot tears stung her eyes. She had a terrible pain over her chest, so she could barely breathe. There was a foul taste in her mouth. “I’m sorry, Styrhildur. I’m so sorry.”
Seething hatred twisted Styrhildur’s face.
“It was you. All along.”
Garún couldn’t hold back. For the first time in so long she let herself cry.
“It hurts at first, but then you get used to it.” Hálfdán was standing in front of them. “Before you know it you can’t stop.”
Garún held Styrhildur tighter. He was here for her. She’d never let that happen.
“You’re dead! I killed you!’
He smiled mockingly, as if she’d unwittingly said something funny.
“You’re me.”
“No! Shut up! You’re dead, you’re nothing!’
Styrhildur was cold and still. She was dying. Garún shook off her jacket and pushed it against her wound. The intestines writhed out of her body like an angry pit of snakes. The foul taste in her mouth was stronger and she almost retched.
“The first time is always difficult. It takes a lot. But still, somehow less that you would have thought. It’s in all of us, I suppose. Then comes the thirst.”
He smiled and she noticed his teeth were stained red.
She held Styrhildur even closer.
“Shut up, you fucking pig!’
“Please, Garún, don’t. Stop. I can’t any more. Please.”
Garún loosened her hold. Styrhildur was weakly trying to push her away. New wounds had opened on her neck and by her collarbone. Dark red blood flowed out of her, into the bowl.
The bad taste was different in Garún’s mouth. She didn’t feel it any more. On the contrary, there was a sweet and salty taste on her tongue. She was so thirsty. So incredibly thirsty.
“Don’t …’
Styrhildur fell quiet when Garún leaned over her yet again.
* * *
Sæmundur wandered through the lava fields, purposeful but aimless, following a vague but strong feeling that guided him like a compass following the magnetic poles. It was fleeting, uncertain, wandering, but still guiding him somewhere. Every day was shorter than the next. The sun rose and set rapidly, so exhausted that it barely managed to peek above the horizon. Winter was here. The cold didn’t affect Sæmundur, but he was still relieved it didn’t snow. He didn’t have the time to waste energy in melting snow or chanting at the land to avoid pitfalls and other dangerous traps of the lava.
He didn’t feel tired so he didn’t rest. Occasionally he stopped to mutter a few incantations and words to try to sharpen his wits, try to locate the presence which was everywhere but nowhere. Usually it accomplished nothing, but sometimes he felt he was on the verge of uncovering something, locating the centre, but the knowledge slipped out of his grasp without exception.
The Reykjanes peninsula-turned-island was a hostile and life-threatening place. The seiðmagn polluted the landscape and saturated everything. Simple beasts like foxes or sheep were transformed into other, uncanny creatures, if they survived the contamination. The endless fields of barren rocks were in constant flux, never giving reliable shelter from malevolent beings or fierce weather.
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
