Sæmundur nodded. Grákufl. The name he’d told Kölski to call him. How had the demon arranged this?
“I thank you for my passage.”
“Right.”
The captain stared straight ahead, down towards the prow.
Sæmundur stepped out on to the gangplank. The gathering went quiet, like a smell of rot that slowly spreads. People jumped out of his way. Bektalpher’s whispers were clearly audible, and Sæmundur was glad that he had covered his face, so people would think it was him doing the whispering. He didn’t want to deal with any trouble if these fine people became upset for no good reason. He started to walk up the stone stairway cut into the cliff. The crew rapidly pulled away the gangplank and cast off from the dock so they could get away from this wretched place as soon as possible. People stood and stared, or tried not to stare at Sæmundur. The men were gaunt and dressed in rags or torn sailors’ clothing. The women wore determined looks, in fishery workers’ uniforms, their aprons filthy and shadows under their eyes. There were stories of outlaws that hid in the rough and rocky lava wastes of Suðurnes. Sæmundur now realised that it was the people themselves who were all outlawed, cut away from the land centuries before like a malignant tumour. He smiled. It was appropriate for him to end up here. The ship went on its way along the narrow channel and Sæmundur walked with heavy steps up to Suðurnes.
* * *
If anything was comparable to the miserable hovels in Bæjarháls, it was the cursed timelessness of the Forgotten Downtown. The same feeling dominated the air in this place, the uncomfortable notion that time and the world itself had forgotten this place, that it had slid through the cracks and left nothing behind to be remembered by. Only two houses came close to being something that could be called buildings, ugly and grey houses of concrete with crumbling walls and slumping roofs. Everything else was unshapely shacks made from rotten wood and rusty corrugated iron, badly constructed turf houses, lava rocks and dead grass. One of the concrete buildings appeared to be some type of gathering hall, the other was completely dark.
He had intended to head straight into the lava fields, to start his search without any delay, but there was something calling out to him. How long had it been since he had been a man among men? Drunk beer and laughed, told stories and listened, enjoyed the heat and companionship that comes with belonging to a society? Neither thirst nor hunger, cold nor heat, were still tangible concepts to him. He knew that, just as he knew that the moon waxes and wanes, the sun rises and sets. Still he headed slowly towards the light.
The conversation hadn’t been lively before he went inside. What little there was died down immediately as the door shut behind his back. He pulled away the scarf covering his face.
Behind an old and crooked counter stood a teenager holding a large clay pitcher. Sæmundur walked up to him in complete silence. Bektalpher’s whispers surrounded him like the rustle of autumn leaves in the wind.
“What have you got there?’ asked Sæmundur.
The boy looked away, as if looking for help. Sæmundur turned around but everyone averted their gaze, acting as if nothing was amiss.
“L-landi,” the boy finally stuttered.
“I will have one glass, with thanks.”
Sæmundur’s voice was muffled underneath the scarf wrapped over his mouth. He pulled the scarf away.
The boy froze. He stared at Sæmundur as if he’d seen a ghost. Something worse than a ghost. With shaking hands he poured liquid into a grimy glass. Sæmundur picked it up and sniffed it. A potent smell of unfiltered moonshine. The landi was murky, probably borderline toxic. What the hell, all these fine people drank it. He downed the glass of alcohol.
Something was different. He didn’t feel any heat from the liquor; the taste of pure spirits wasn’t disgusting to him, as usual when he had strong stuff like this. Instead the liquid felt cold and thin, tasted like muddy water. He was about to ask for another glass when he saw that the boy was standing and whimpering in front of him, his entire body shaking.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” he said, and searched his coat pockets. “I have a few krónur hiding somewhere.”
“No!’ the boy shouted. “It’s free, do you want some more?’ He poured Sæmundur another glass. “There’s more than enough, also fish and some soured meat.”
Sæmundur felt someone sneaking up behind him. He turned around and a bent old woman handed him a tray full of blood sausage and jellied meat, dried fish, herbs and hard rye bread.
“My apologies, my lord,” she said in a quavering voice. “We are poor workers and do not have much. But all we have to offer is yours, only if you—”
Another woman stepped forth and placed a hand on her arm, softly but determinedly, slightly shaking her head. The old woman put away the tray and walked away, ashamed.
Sæmundur’s knowledge, and the entirety of his senses, had undergone such tremendous and rapid changes these last few days that regular, everyday happenings went completely unnoticed by him. He now felt the morbid fear that was lying in the air – fear of him, as if he was a butcher in a sheep shed. He now noticed children, hiding behind chairs and benches, underneath tables. Everyone stared at him but looked down in submission as soon as he glanced towards them. And there! In between them, the most awful monstrosity he had ever seen. That was the reason they were acting in this manner, not because of him.
Except that he was staring into a mirror. A filthy mirror hanging on the wall. He saw what the Suðurnesjamenn feared.
The hair and beard that remained hung in uneven patches. The cheeks were sunken, the flesh pale and stretched across the skull. The lips were gone, completely eroded, along with a great part of the flesh around the cheeks and mouth. The bare bone and teeth were shades of blue. An ugly hole was where his nose had been. But the worst part was the eyes. They were sunken and deep. The right one was crimson and the iris glowed dark blue. The left eye was worse. It was a void. Nothing. Not an empty socket, not the black of the pupil, but a void. Nothing. Blank. An abyss. A negative space the eye could not capture, the brain could not comprehend.
He was the king of the huldufólk on New Year’s Eve, who repaid lack of hospitality with cruelty. He was the horror in the darkness, who carried the promise of warm murder on its voice. He was the ancient creature who stole children and people into the night.
Without a word he picked up a piece of dried fish and some slices of rye bread, in the hope that the people would see that their offering had been accepted, that they had no reason to fear.
“I give you my thanks,” he said, but his mouth did not move in the reflection.
In surprised delight, mixed with a distant and elusive sense of horror, he realised it was not him doing the talking, but Bektalpher, or something else, a new growth upon his flesh. Of course. How could he speak, looking like a withered corpse?
“Your hospitality is to your great credit,” he managed to say, his thoughts in disarray. “I will now continue my journey.”
It had started to rain. Drops played on the iron roof. When he shut the door behind him he felt how the entire town breathed lighter. In harsh wind and rain Sæmundur walked out into the dark lava fields.
Þrjátíu og þrjú
The moon was out and strokes of clouds few and far between. Garún stood on the ruined battlements of Hrímland’s only medieval castle. There was not much left standing. The towers had collapsed long before, the wounds like badly healed bone fractures. Half-sunken stones littered the earth. Time and weather were ill custodians; to add to that, the earth shuddered and shook every few years. It was as if this land didn’t want to host anything at all. Or perhaps it knew that this place was cursed and best kept buried and forgotten.
She looked over abandoned farmsteads, bathed in the moonlit night. Low, grassy ruins of turf houses marked the landscape like ancient etchings. More recent concrete foundations stood silently, sometimes accompanied by a lone, crumbling wall, solemn like abandoned monuments, tombstones. Garún felt as if someone was
watching them, but every time she looked towards the ruins she saw nothing except the dark.
Sálnanes was a landscape dotted with ruins, some ancient, others merely a few decades old. Every once in a while someone got the bright idea to start farming on Sálnanes, regardless of what folk tales and superstition said on the matter. It had rich soil, some of the best farmland in the country, and it should be used.
A few months later the farms would be abandoned. Every single one. No one knew exactly how it happened. The details were of no consequence. Everyone knew why.
To the north the city cast a faint yellow light towards the sky, its source mostly covered by the city walls. Black columns of smoke were still rising from Loftkastalinn’s chaotic attack, but they had grown fewer in number. Over Starholt a thicker and darker smoke was rising. Fresh fires. Perhaps retaliation from Kalmar. Or demonic mayhem.
They had rested through the night, in a castle chamber the siblings had sworn was safe. Garún was certain that the stories surrounding Sálnanes were nothing but folklore, but she was still not about to challenge them. They had sworn that it was a safe haven, and that they had stayed there before when times got tough. Back when they were young, presumably after Garún had left Huldufjörður. The village was only a short distance away to the south.
She had gone up there to clear her mind and smoke a cigarette, but she was nowhere closer to collecting herself. Her thoughts were static, a haze of fear, anxiety and regret. She felt exhausted. As if she wanted to sleep for ever and forget everything. The only thing that was any real source of energy to her was the delýsíð sheet, still up against her, burning with resentment, cradling the blue bone.
She went down the stairs into the courtyard. The open entrances to the castle stood black and empty, the doors ruined ages before. A rusty iron portcullis blocked off the main gate, but the walls had crumbled. She lit an oil lamp hidden behind a pile of rocks. Inside was a steep spiral staircase.
“Garún. Can I talk to you for a second?’
She jumped and turned around to see Katrín, who had sneaked up on her. Her arm was resting in a makeshift sling.
“What the fuck was that?’ said Katrín quietly.
“What?’
“Artillery fire on Reykjavík? That was never in the picture.” Her voice was trembling with rage. “And whatever this … this Sæmundur did – it was supposed to be a nuisance to Loftkastalinn, not to open a fucking demonic portal in the sky above the city!’
“Do you think I foresaw any of this? That I asked for this? He said he could handle the galdur! Nothing about this was a part of the plan!’
“Who the fuck is this guy? How did he do that?’
“It doesn’t matter. He was the only one who could give us what we needed.”
“What we needed. Right. Those … things. Demons that murdered and possessed innocent people. Was that what we needed? It vanished, Garún. It was there and suddenly, not. Where the fuck did it go?’
“I don’t know. And for what it’s worth, I don’t care.”
“Right. Because who cares about soldiers? Or pilots? Or engineers, chefs, electricians, janitors? They didn’t deserve this. Many of them were regular Hrímlanders, such as you.”
“They were nothing like me,” she said through gritted teeth.
“No. I don’t expect so. They were human.”
Garún punched Katrín as hard as she could. Katrín reeled back, blood flowing from her lip. She stared at her, bewildered, as if she couldn’t believe Garún had laid hands on her. Garún stared her down, dared her to repay the favour.
“Right,” she said. “I’m not human. I’m not proud of what happened today, but if this is what it took, then so be it.”
“So be it? To kidnap this piece of shit? Did I perhaps lose my arm all for him? For a fucking nobody?’
There was a dangerous hint of panic in her voice. She was near breaking point. Garún couldn’t afford to lose her as well. She needed help.
“You know who he is,” said Garún. “Trampe’s right hand. That’s what you said. He was escorted by a royal seiðskratti. He’s someone.”
“So what? What does it matter? He won’t tell us shit. And even though we’re hiding here, where only fucking insane people think to hide, they will find us. They have seiðskrattar. And now that Loftkastalinn is gone, they’ll call for backup. An armada of warships. We’re all fucking dead in the water.”
The wind wailed over the fortress walls.
“Unless we do something drastic.”
Katrín spat blood on the ground and walked inside.
Garún let loose a breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding in. One argument and she had resorted to violence. Ready to ruin everything and completely lose sight of what mattered. Katrín had seemed likely to do the same. They were exhausted, she told herself. Exhausted and under pressure. Maybe this had happened because of the bone up against her heart, cold and still, wrapped in the hate-filled delýsíð sheet, pushing her towards acting on her relentless anger. Or perhaps it had been inevitable.
The sky had begun to grow brighter. Late winter morning was upon them. The light stung her eyes. She headed inside the castle. In the weak dawn gleamed faint outlines of humanoid forms, crowding hungrily around the entrance like maggots on carrion.
* * *
The walls leaned inwards, the shoddy construction giving way after centuries of weathering. The stone floor was muddy and wet. Where the ceiling or walls had collapsed, their path was sometimes blocked by large piles of stone. She managed to squeeze her way past or climb over the stones. There were few windows in the castle and the only light came from her lamp.
The others were resting in a long chamber with a high ceiling. A glimpse of sun made its way through a hole in the roof. At the end of the room was a raised floor, a dais carved into the natural rock in the ground. In its middle was a massive and unshapely stone; in it was a deep bowl, naturally formed. The walls were covered in faded and incomprehensible runes and symbols, all the way up to the roof where the scribbles met. A holy silence lay heavy upon this place.
In one corner were filthy blankets and an assortment of items and junk. Empty wooden bowls, rotten fish skins, piles of discarded bones. Garbage left by whoever had been desperate enough to make this their home for a while.
A vagrant’s bed, Garún thought to herself. That’s my life now.
She threw off her backpack and sat down on the ground. She was exhausted.
Katrín had taken over watching the prisoner for Hraki. He checked on Styrhildur, who was resting, the wraps around her wound stained dark red. She would likely die in the next days unless they got her to a doctor who knew seiður.
“You could take her to Huldufjörður,” Garún said, and sat down next to him.
He shook his head. “They’re probably already there looking for us. We’re fine here.”
“You said this place might save her,” Katrín said. “Earlier.”
“I was upset.”
They left it at that. He was keeping something from them. Garún looked into her backpack and got out a bundle of dried fish. She handed Hraki a piece, and went over to Katrín to offer her some as well. She took it, begrudgingly.
“So this temple keeps … them away?’ asked Katrín, after they had eaten quietly for a while.
“Yes,” said Hraki. “We’ve stayed here before. Years ago. At least we’ve never noticed anything in here. But sometimes going in or out we can see them.”
“Who?’ asked Katrín.
“Ghosts. Afturgöngur. They’re angry but we always manage to get away,” he said between mouthfuls. “It’s only if you move here for good that they take you. Or if you spend too much time outside the temple, in the castle. This room is the only place they avoid.”
“How do you know?’ asked Garún.
Hraki shrugged. “Fæðey told us, years ago. Back in Huldufjörður. She wanted us to have a safe place to hide if the worst came to the worst.” He tore a bite
out of the dried fish. “I guess it’s come to that.”
* * *
Garún pushed the prisoner up against the wall. He was like a piece of meat, a sack of potatoes. He remained completely silent and detached. Removed from emotion, like a monk. For the first time she wondered if he knew any seiður.
“We’re not giving up,” she said. Katrín and Hraki stared at her, confused. “Trampe’s still managing things. Holding the fort until reinforcements arrive. We can’t let him do that. We can’t have brought all this upon people and not have anything to show for it.”
“So what are we going to do?’
“We’re going to complete our mission. No matter the cost. We’re going to capture Trampe and follow through with the plan.”
Katrín looked uncertain, so Garún reached out to Hraki. He accepted her and she felt the pain he was going through. The anger at the injustice, at his sister dying for a cause which could flicker out into nothing. The horror at the things he had seen. And she felt something else – an emotion almost resembling hope. A malformed, unrecognisable form of hope, tainted with despair and lunacy. He was certain his sister would come back to life.
She, in turn, shared her intentions with him. She saw the conflict on his face, no connection needed. Then she felt his acceptance.
“Wait,” said Katrín, looking between them uncertainly. “What’s going on?’
She’d never tried using this dark heritage – this gift she’d received at birth, which had followed her mother’s clan like an ancient curse. Garún sensed that the ability was there, just as she could reach out to other huldufólk and huldumanneskjur. She had felt it stir in the terrifying, overwhelming moment she’d experienced in the darkness of the Forgotten Downtown when the huldumaður had moved over her, had felt it resist and desire to fight, because it wanted to feed as he did, not be fodder for someone else.
She pulled the hood off the prisoner. The man refused to open his eyes. As if he knew what she was about to do. She grabbed his head and kept it still, forcing his eyelids up with her fingers. For only a moment his dark pupils met hers. That was enough.
Shadows of the Short Days Page 39