* * *
Sæmundur waited outside for less than half an hour before he was summoned again. The board’s expressions were inscrutable – stone-faced and serious academics, the lot of them. Even Almía’s face was unreadable. In the middle of the room someone had placed a pile of irregularly shaped rocks. On the desk a thigh bone had been set out, along with a ball of rough wool yarn and an instruction sheet. Sæmundur already knew what was in store.
“The board has decided to consider your request,” Doctor Laufey said, “but feels that additional verification is in order. As such we’ve set up a practical test for you.”
She pointed towards the desk and shelf Sæmundur had noticed when initially entering the room, which now had a variety of components in place.
“A simple enough task for any postgrad student. Please.”
Sæmundur shuffled over to the desk and picked up the instruction sheet which had been placed there for him. The galdur’s description, instructions and invocations had been clearly written out by hand, accompanied with a few galdrastafir. Those magical symbols were believed to ground the galdur and provide it with more structure, helping the galdramaður to keep his focus and control the incantation. Sæmundur had quickly found them to be a crutch – and a bad one at that.
The galdur was intended to summon a tilberi, a mindless demon created for a single task. Traditionally it was used to steal milk from cows and sheep belonging to unsuspecting neighbours, writhing around like a bloated worm, the size of a newborn. It spat out the milk after having returned to its master, who fed the abomination on their own blood. It was a complex spell – for uneducated peasants – albeit with some practical applications. Sæmundur had used it as a basis when constructing the galdur for the cloth-golem, but it was a needlessly convoluted galdur. This made the incantation as a whole that much riskier.
It was a trite, convoluted mess of a ritual. The incantation was full of needless gibberish. The sigils, the hand movements, the burning of certain alchemical mixtures – all nonsense. He’d figured that out long before. It was an insult to the craft.
He took the end of the woollen thread and tied it around the femur. He fished out a knife from within his coat and ran it across his palm. He started reciting the incantation as he wound the thread around the femur while smearing blood into both.
The words flowed through him. Language. Sound. Vibrations of his own voice, moving through him. The bone started to change shape. The blood-matted wool grew together, starting to throb and ebb as though the bone was breathing. The end of the femur twisted and deformed into a mockery of a face.
He was doing it before he realised it. The traditional incantation was ugly, uncivilised, bafflingly idiotic in its coarseness. It was almost all superstition, there was no reason behind it. Reciting it like a mindless drone, without thought or intent, felt wrong. He knew better. He was better than this. And he would show them. He would prove to them how far he had come and how far he could go.
He wove the elements of the cloth-golem’s incantation into the galdur. The bone started to elongate and took on a pale shade of blue. Ridges rose in waves, a spine growing underneath the grey wool. The wool thickened and spun itself into a myriad of limbs, making the tilberi rise from the table on thin, spindly legs. At the end of the femur the head grew bloated and lengthened, a sharp crack divided into a mouth. Thin and razor-sharp teeth glistened in the newly formed maw. It had no eyes, but it looked around, tendrils feeling the air around it. He’d never made a tilberi such as this one. This was no single-tasked automaton. This was a complex summoning, capable of complex tasks. A ritual worthy of a master. It was the culmination of his work so far, the promise of what could be in store. He stretched out the last vowel and started to weave the galdur into a different incantation. With more sense and intelligence the tilberi could be a promising servant, if he only utilised the—
Sæmundur did not get any further. The words stopped in his throat. Professor Almía Dröfn Thorlacius was standing along with the rest of the committee, their clothes billowing in a wind unheard and unfelt. They were all speaking in unison, although he could not hear the words. He could not hear anything. Almía’s face was twisted in righteous anger. Sæmundur tried to combat their efforts, but he did not stand a chance against their unified efforts. His vision faded out and back in, rhythmically. They were unmaking his galdur. All of them, in unison. They had been prepared for this. Perhaps even wanted this. The tilberi shivered and fell as its weak limbs gave under its weight, its thin back cracked and shrunk in quick spasms. It threw back its misshapen head and roared with a cacophony of voices that sounded almost human. Its chest rose and fell with its breath. Then it burst. And the screaming stopped.
Sæmundur could hear again. He listened to the committee finish off the undoing galdur. When Professor Almía finished the incantation and started her outraged tirade he wished he was again trapped in that world of silence.
* * *
The committee exited the room, leaving Sæmundur by himself, bearing the weight of his failure on his shoulders. Only one of them lingered: Doctor Vésteinn. The man looked deep in thought.
“It was … interesting, what you were attempting,” Vésteinn said after a while.
Sæmundur leaned against the desk, forcing his hands to remain still. Trying to calm himself down.
“Crude, unfinished, but – inspired.” Vésteinn took out a handkerchief and polished his glasses, giving himself a moment to gather his thoughts. “You have some potential. Don’t give up on your work yet, Sæmundur,” he added quietly. “It could lead you to some very
