Simpletons. Sheep. Ants.
They had forced his hand. They had left him no choice. Nobody would call Sæmundur “mad’ again. They would witness what it meant to be truly learned.
He went to the cabinets and pulled out the ingredients he had prepared. After lighting the stove he started warming up the leftover stock from the night before. He lifted the lid of the pot and smelled its contents, stirring it. It was a thin kind of soup, just slightly thicker than water, with herbs and powders that would protect his digestive system from what was to come.
Sæmundur fetched a ceramic jug from the cupboard. He filled another pot with water and lit the stove. While the water rose to a boil he put on thick cloth gloves, took a handful of dried mushrooms from the jug, deathly pale in colour, and put them in a coffee press. The gloves went in the bin. When bubbles started forming in the water he poured it into the press. A potent stench of mud rose from the broth and the water became brown and murky, as if it had been fetched from the marsh. Sæmundur picked up the manuscript he’d been reading and gave it another read, tried to chisel it into his mind. He didn’t dare mumble it out loud to practise.
He pressed the mushrooms and poured the brown liquid into the broth on the stove. He lifted the pot and held it up so the foul steam would rise to his face.
For a brief moment he was assailed by doubt. It wasn’t too late to stop. He didn’t have to go through with this. For that short moment he allowed himself to feel that doubt; he let the weight of the decision he stood in front of to fully settle in. Either because of his certainty or his foolishness, the doubt could not sway him. He wasn’t sure if this obsession came from a place of weakness or strength. It was too late to stop now. He had started down this path a long time ago.
He started to chant in a low, steady voice. He pulled out a large clump of dried highland moss from the bag the cloth-golem had brought and ground it over the now bubbling broth on the stove. Communicating with and controlling the fungus would require some seiður mixed with the galdur he was about to weave. The moss sizzled and dissolved immediately. He felt his body resonate with the galdur he was chanting. The foul-smelling mushroom broth was ready.
If he didn’t go through with this, he was just a waste. A waste of talent, intellect, emotions, meat, bone, life. He told himself this, over and over again.
Sæmundur took a large swig of the broth, forcing himself to chug until he almost threw up. He focused on drawing in the seiðmagn from the moss and fungus, weaving it into the galdur connecting his own body to the gandreið fungus. When the bowl was empty he tossed it in the sink and put on his coat. It was a grey woollen coat, large and bulky like Sæmundur himself, all the buttons torn off and the ends worn. Mæja rubbed against his legs when he was putting on his shoes. He felt nauseous. He pushed her away, surly, but somewhere in his groggy mind he realised that she was probably very hungry. Who cares, that was not his problem right now. He didn’t have much time.
A dim afternoon gloom covered the city. Light had started to fade, it would be dark soon. Sæmundur walked hurriedly towards the University’s main building. Electric lamps flickered with amber light, turning on one after the other, as they prepared for the coming darkness.
The university was less than fifteen minutes’ walk from Sæmundur’s apartment. The main building was a huge, grey concrete mass, planted where the land rose the highest. A curved road led up to the main building, as if it was a noble manor rather than an official government building. Along the road were ragged tracks and a small tram platform in front of the main entrance. The tram was just a few minutes from arriving when Sæmundur came along. It was a considerable distance to Svartiskóli from the main campus and its surrounding university facilities. A few students were waiting at the platform.
The mushrooms were starting to kick in, but with the power of the incantation and the amplifying effect of the moss he could contain the effects. He tried to remain inconspicuous as he kept his distance from the others waiting. The tram rattled up to the platform and stopped.
He didn’t recognise anyone on board, but their suppressed glares indicated that he was not a total stranger to at least some of them. He didn’t care if he was looked down upon for using and selling moss to students, or if they thought he looked like a vagrant. Dealing moss was probably more of an advantage, since it could be hard to get to a reliable source of seiðmagn besides what the university supplied. What did incense him with a shameful rage was when he was looked down upon for his delusional ideas. For foolishness. When they called him Sæmundur the mad.
The tram jolted down the small incline, past the great, flat university grounds where geese sat in the dwindling autumn light. The route went on with regular stops in the student apartments in Vatnsmýrin, right towards the looming hill of Öskjuhlíð where Svartiskóli loitered by the edge of the forested hill, crowned by the thaumaturgical power plant in Perlan. It was a behemoth of dark steel, its glass dome illuminated from within with eerie, pulsating lights.
Svartiskóli was newer and more fortress-like than the other university buildings, as if it was purposefully designed to dominate the more traditional main building. Sæmundur saw ripples move over the school’s pitch-black walls and pseudopods stretch out from it. He forced his eyes shut,
