The draugur thought for a while. With every minute that passed Sæmundur started doubting himself. What could be better than to let her touch him, to feel her teeth break through skin and tear flesh? What a sweet release that would be, to bleed into her mouth, to let her drain him of his life’s essence, to fade away into nothingness in her soft, tender embrace.
The haugbúi agreed just as Sæmundur was about to give in and beg her to devour him, let him into the dark behind her eyes. She released him and immediately he started to frantically dig at his feet with his bare hands.
It took him all day to dig her up. The sun had started to set and it was likely that soon people would start looking for him. Sæmundur dug until he’d torn off most of his nails. Eventually he found Hóla-Skotta’s bones. He gathered them carefully and made sure to get each and every single piece.
When they were all gathered up he shattered the femurs so Hóla-Skotta fell down, crippled. With his dagger he carved a stave of drowning upon the skull and smudged his blood over the symbol, making Hóla-Skotta cough up water until she drowned again. He then took the bone fragments and cast them into the boiling hot springs of Heiðarstaðahverir, the bottomless deeps of which were said to reach down to the eternal inferno itself.
When Sæmundur came back to Hofteigur, the farmer asked where he had been and he spoke plainly of it. The farmer was so terrified of the boy’s knowledge that he dared not keep him on as a farmhand and sent him straight to Reverend Hrafnkell, who was also the most learned man in the county.
Reverend Hrafnkell treated Sæmundur better than the farmer in Hofteigur. For a long while Sæmundur imagined that Hrafnkell was his father, but he knew well that it was nonsense. He still found it comforting to imagine. The priest asked Sæmundur about Hóla-Skotta, after verifying that the haugbúi was indeed placed to eternal rest, and how he had learned to draw galdrastafir. Sæmundur knew it was very bad to know galdur without being allowed. He convinced the priest that the farmer hadn’t taught him, which was true. The farmer used staves and minor incantations of galdur to fish well or bring in bountiful hay for the winter, as every man in the county did, some minor occult meddling that usually never worked. But Sæmundur had studied those symbols and seen what had worked in them and what didn’t, although he couldn’t explain why, and so he had made the stave of drowning up on the spot by turning a defence against drowning into its opposite.
The priest had never heard anything like it, and it was a mercy that Sæmundur had ended up with a man who was such a tolerant scholar. He strictly forbade Sæmundur from ever doing such a thing again and told him vile stories of demons and possession, men who had lost their minds and flesh to inhuman beings who only wanted to destroy and deform. Most others would have charged the boy to the magistrate, but Hrafnkell saw in him a talent that was meant to be nurtured, disciplined and controlled. He taught Sæmundur to write, read, recite a few relatively innocent incantations and words of power. It was the first time Sæmundur felt that his life meant something. This is what he had been born to do. This was his destiny.
Sæmundur enjoyed his time with the priest, but resented the weekly church visits. Kneeling in front of the king’s idol, singing hymns and praying to the distant throne – it was all something he found unnatural and idiotic. The mountains outside invoked in him a much greater sense of reverence than the supposedly divine king of Kalmar. Remaining after the Mass and watching the local big shots of the county gossip and plot was terribly dull. He never mentioned this to the priest. After all, Hrafnkell was faithful and kept true to the doctrine he preached, even though he was more tolerant than most other priests.
After a few years of strict preparation and studies, Sæmundur started his tutelage in the Learned School in Reykjavík, where he made friends for the first time in his life. It was a joyful experience, but simultaneously a painful one. In the remote reaches of the north there were few peers his age, and he rarely met them. Reverend Hrafnkell wrote to him regularly and sent him money when needed, which Sæmundur managed to spend wisely for the first few years, out of fear and respect for his benefactor.
At first he liked the Learned School, the studies were demanding and opened new worlds of knowledge and skill to him. It didn’t last long, however. Soon he butted heads with his teachers and was sent to the rector’s office more than once for arguing with them during classes and refusing to do the tasks laid out for him. His new-found associates grew distant and he spent more time alone in the library than in their company.
Soon he started to drink, more out of boredom than anything else, and waited for the chance to get out of school and away from Hrímland, which he had started to despise with all his heart. Hrímlanders were nothing but a bunch of peasants and petty fishermen who thought too much of themselves, all of them as thick-headed as the next. Soon after that he started to smoke highland moss and experiment with seiðmagn, which was when he met a young blóðgagl that called himself Rotsvelgur. When he graduated at eighteen, almost all of his funds were spent in drinking and nonsense, but even though he barely had enough for ink or coal he managed to remain at the top of his class.
It was decided that the Royal University in Hafnía would be the best preparation he could receive for
