Sæmundur sat at the bar and ordered a stout. The soft foam of the beer drenched his moustache when he took the first sip. He felt better immediately. He went through piles of old newspapers and enjoyed listening to people talk. There was something healthy and vigorous about these sounds, the polar opposite of his workings with Kölski. He smiled to himself. A woman laughed, a man ordered a beer and joked with the bartender, someone did an impression with a funny voice, people clinked their glasses together in celebration. The chatter merged into a single sound, as if one voice spoke ceaselessly. He looked up from his newspaper and felt as if there were threads streaming out of people instead of words, long threads that wound up on themselves and wrapped around above them and Sæmundur knew that with a couple of words, one incantation, he could pluck them and make them—
Someone touched his shoulder and Sæmundur came back to himself. He’d been lying over the bar table, hands over his head. He’d been mumbling, perhaps moaning – he wasn’t sure. Leifur, an old schoolmate of his, was looking worriedly at him.
“Sæmi. You all right?’
“Hmm? Yes. Yes, yes, I just … uh … I was thinking.”
“All right, man, sure,” Leifur said condescendingly. “Maybe you just need a little bit of fresh air,” he added.
“Yeah,” Sæmundur said. “Fresh air.”
He couldn’t stand the tone – not from this stuck-up asshole. They’d attended the Learned School together. Leifur had frequently purchased moss from him when he was a first and second year studying seiður. The additional seiðmagn had given him the edge he needed to excel in his exams. He was now on the fast track to take on an apprenticeship in Perlan under Doctor Vésteinn Alrúnarson. He had a chance to become a leading academic in the field. A pioneer. Or, he could become a living weapon of the Crown, a royal seiðskratti. Power and prestige were laid out before him in neat, clear lines.
Leifur sat back down at his table, where his friends were waiting expectedly. They didn’t try to hide their smirks and stares. He recognised some of them. Second- and third-year students of seiður. As soon as Leifur sat down the others leaned in and started asking. He didn’t have to listen in, he knew what they were saying.
It’s him, isn’t it? That guy who was expelled. Sæmundur óði – Sæmundur the Mad. He does look like a mess. It’s true what people were saying. His name obviously suits him. Sæmundur the Mad!
Leifur had everything. Sæmundur had nothing but blood on his hands.
He couldn’t stay here. None of this had any significance – Leifur, their mockery, it was all just noise. The world had changed in the room with Kölski. He couldn’t act as if it hadn’t. He downed his beer and prepared to leave. Then he glanced at the headlines of the newspapers he had been leafing through.
ILLEGAL PROTEST TURNS VIOLENT
The article painted a dark picture of unruly and violent anarchists who had staged an illegal protest outside City Hall, threatening civilians and resorting to violence when asked to vacate the premises. The confrontation escalated into a bloodbath when náskárar had attacked the police, murdering several officers in cold blood, forcing them to retaliate with open fire and tactical use of seiður to disperse the mob. The authorities were offering a significant cash reward for any leads resulting in arrests of the dissidents.
Accompanying the article was a grainy picture of a crowd, their protest signs askew and in disarray as they were hastily retreating from armoured police officers, seizure-truncheons up in the air, sparking with seiðmagn. In the background he saw a line of crouching riflemen, bracing heavy skorrifles up against their shoulders, and there in the back, almost hidden in the black and white grainy photo, a pale inhuman face. The mask of a royal seiðskratti.
He scanned the crowd, his heart racing. People were carrying others, who looked as if they couldn’t stand. The people who had been shot. He looked for her, there in the mass. He couldn’t find her. The crowd was a mess of people, only the occasional tail of a marbendill separating individuals from each other.
She might be dead. They could have killed her. Or arrested her. She could be imprisoned in the dark of the Nine as he was sitting there, drinking beer and feeling sorry for himself. He’d let her down so many times. She could already be lost to him, forever. He had to get back to Kölski. He had to know she was all right. He had to find her.
“Hey, Sæmi!’ Leifur shouted after Sæmundur as he was heading out. There was something about his tone of voice. “Did you hear about Svartiskóli?’
A cold shiver ran under Sæmunder’s skin. He slowly turned towards Leifur, sitting with his friends.
“No,” he said in a quiet voice. “What about Svartiskóli?’
He felt his face getting warm. They knew. They knew it was him.
“It’s crazy, man,” Leifur continued slowly, swirling his glass of beer like it was wine. Stirring up the foam. “The entire campus has been shut down, placed in quarantine. People are still held in there. We should be in class now, you know? They say it’s because of an accident with seiðmagn,
