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,
