C12 Chapter 12

When Heike reached the meadow on the other side of the cliff the moon appeared from behind the clouds and the castle came into view on the slope. It rose out of the terrible forest like an ancient threat.

Now he saw it the way everyone else saw it, not the way he had seen it that morning. It was the only way he could help Peter, by seeing the same things Peter saw.

He stood there for a while building up some courage. At that moment he felt very small and he feared the dark.

But the thought that Peter was up there and perhaps still alive gave him new courage.

He went on, but something was nagging him. Something he ought to remember. A fleeting sensation he had had at the cemetery. And then a little comment that Zeno had made to which he himself had responded.

He couldn’t seem to get any closer than that – he just knew that it was something important.

The nearer he got to the castle, the slower his pace became. He convinced himself that it was the climb that was taxing his energy but that was just self-delusion.

“Help me, Tengel,” he whispered. “Tengel and Sol and Mar, give me your support. It is not easy for someone who doesn’t know the limits of his own strength.”

All at once it was as though he wasn’t alone ascending the hill towards the black, gaping gateway. He could even hear footsteps, the footsteps of two young men and a woman, all wearing soft leather boots. Heike smiled to himself. Well, princess! You had better sharpen your claws. You’re going to be fought to the finish!

The first obstacle he encountered was the gate. How was he to get through it?

That morning, when he and Peter had been given the tour of the castle by the princess and Nicola, they hadn’t been shown the servants’ wing, so Heike didn’t know where the coachman lived, and he was also the gatekeeper.

In fact he hadn’t noticed any other servants there.

And now he thought about it: where were the horses that pulled the ghostly carriage? Horses were living creatures, but he hadn’t seen or heard them all that morning.

And what had become of the rest of that day? He had gone up to the castle in the morning to fetch Peter and when they left the sun had been about to set. It wasn’t until now that it occurred to him.

More witchcraft, apparently. For a moment he feared that several years might have gone by while they were up there inside the castle, but that couldn’t be because Zeno and Mira hadn’t noticed anything.

He realized that his three companions would be unable to open the gate for him: he had to do it himself.

The gate was locked, as he had expected, and he had no intention of knocking on it! Wasn’t there a saying about letting sleeping dogs lie? Heike wasn’t put off by the locked gate. He waited until the moon had glided behind a large cloud and then he started scaling the wall, using the crests as footholds.

He was young and lithe and strong, but the wall was high. From where he hung clinging to it, it seemed sky-high. Well, all he could do now was continue and hope that he didn’t fall.

The moon appeared and disappeared and was not particularly helpful. It was clearly allying itself with the princess because as soon as he managed to find the next small crevice or corner to grab hold of the moon would disappear and he’d have to wait until the clouds had their silver lining again. It was nerve-racking and sapped all his energy. For a while he stayed completely still, high above the ground, as he searched, without success, for a way to get higher up. When he gave up on that and instead moved sideways, more possibilities became apparent to him.

Finally he got his hand on the top of the wall and was able to clamber up.

He was now standing on the parapet, below which the roof of the castle dipped down towards the inner courtyard. He wandered up and down aimlessly.

What was he to do now?

And not least, where was the princess?

Heike listened for any sounds.

If he was hoping to hear voices or some other sign of life, he was disappointed. On the other hand, his sharp ears registered something else that was much more frightening. A hollow, subdued, bubbling or gurgling sound, a plaintive groaning, and a strange rattling that sounded like snakes twisting and writhing in dry leaves.

Precisely like the roots he had hacked through at the cemetery.

A chill ran down Heike’s spine when he grasped what it was.

The princess had put a spell on everyone’s vision, giving them the impression of the castle looking as it did now. But the sounds that Heike heard, of the real Cetatea de Strega, penetrated through the princess’s conjuring spell.

Once he realized this it was as though he lost his footing, as though the ground disappeared from under his feet, and for an instant he was able to see right into the castle in the strong moonlight. Though it wasn’t much and it wasn’t clear, he managed to catch a glimpse of where Peter and Nicola were situated.

Then the vision disappeared again. The witch’s power was stronger than that of the boy, Heike of the Ice People. He was still so very inexperienced and unfamiliar with his own abilities. But an inner voice told him that he was going to witness the full force of his unknown powers that night.

That knowledge consoled him because he felt he was going to be in dire need of them!

“Oh, Peter, poor Peter!” he whispered. “What have you dragged me into?”

His friend lay sleeping, that much he had been able to register when he had seen him just now. Sleeping with his arms around the lovely little Nicola. But danger was lurking just below the surface, something that Heike could feel rather than see. For there was nothing to see ... not yet.

He regretted having to disturb such an idyllic scene, but it was necessary if he was going to save their lives. Now he knew where Peter was. So he walked carefully along the roof until he reached an open window on the wall facing the courtyard.

If the witch is there and pulls me in by my feet right now I’ll scream, Heike thought with his gallows humour. But nothing happened. He wriggled through the narrow window and the next moment he was standing in a room on the low-ceilinged second floor, a part that the princess had not shown them on the tour she gave them.

It was clearly not a floor that was used every day. It resembled the attic of an ordinary house. Heike found a staircase and once again summoned all his courage before descending. He instinctively clutched his chest seeking the mandrake out of habit, but it wasn’t there.

But the gesture reminded him of something. He suddenly recalled the feeling he had had when he was at the cemetery. A sudden, fleeting feeling of peace and ... possibly gratitude? Whereupon Zeno’s brief comment once again arose in his memory, “That’s how they all become.”

“Yes,” Heike lamented, clapping his hand to his mouth. “Oh Peter, Peter!”

What an idiot Heike had been! To think that he hadn’t been able to see the connection before!

How was he to save Peter now?

“Tengel! Sol! Mar! Help me! I’ll never manage this on my own!” he whispered.

A light, teasing and encouraging nudge got him going again. It was Sol, he realized.

Now he had reached the gallery. In the cold, blue light of the moon it seemed as if all the portraits were following him with their eyes as he swiftly passed them. Things had to move fast now. Peter was in greater danger than he had initially anticipated.

But exactly what did the danger consist of? What was “this thing” that Zeno was referring to? The thing that Mira dreamed about and that had been twisting and hissing outside her window? The thing that had mauled and killed numerous men?

“The wings of the raven ...”

The dead bodies of men had been discovered covered in scratches, their eyes staring vacantly into space and their private parts ready to be put to use. A woman with her mouth agape mauled to ribbons?

The prospects didn’t look bright!

Heike heard four pairs of steps and not just his own as he walked along the last part of the gallery and through a door. It reminded him of the door he had seen earlier at the other end of the house and about which he had been wondering. The door to the heart of the castle. Unfortunately, he hadn’t seen it in the vision he had had on the roof but if he got the chance he would see what was behind that door.

If he got the chance! What kind of pessimism was that? The battle wasn’t lost yet, was it?

No, but he knew nothing about the power of his enemy. Only that it was awe-inspiring.

Heike entered the next room, which contained few windows so that no moonlight could enter. He stood still for a moment letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.

If only he had Zeno’s lantern with him now! But it would have been troublesome to carry it and his enemies would have discovered his whereabouts much more easily.

Finally he was able to discern the outline of the door. If he wasn’t mistaken he was standing precisely on the spot that he had seen when he was looking down from the roof.

So Peter had to be behind that door.

Heike couldn’t just fling the door open and shout to his friend to hurry up and get out of there. That would never do. He would have to slip in unseen.

The two lovers were sleeping. With luck, they wouldn’t hear him. Then he could find a hiding place in which he could remain until it, the unknown thing, arrived.

He just hoped they wouldn’t start making love again. Heike had absolutely no desire to witness other people’s intimate moments of love-making.

The door opened without a noise when he pressed down on the handle. He entered a large bedroom containing a canopy bed, the proportions of which could just be discerned in the light of a single candle and the moonlight shining in from outside.

His gaze was immediately drawn to the huge tapestry hanging on one of the walls. The picture made him turn away in disgust. Heike loved animals and it was beyond him that anyone would choose to have something so abominable hanging on their wall.

Peter was sleeping deeply with a blissful smile on his lips. All that was visible of Nicola was her hair, which covered the beautiful bed sheets with its flowing waves.

Heike looked around the room. He could sit on one of the beams under the roof. From there he would have a view of the entire room and could quickly jump down if necessary.

And he felt a little safer being able to observe everything from above.

However, he turned his back to the tapestry. He didn’t want to have to look at that.

Heike settled down, leaning his back against a beam. He wished he knew what the time was. Not long before dawn, he assumed. It was certainly way past midnight.

He could, of course, have woken Peter and quietly got him out of the room, but then he would have missed his opportunity to destroy the evil force. Also he doubted that he would be able to get Peter out quietly, and moving quietly was of the utmost importance, he sensed. It was Peter’s life that was in danger now: he was the one who would be attacked.

Heike could do nothing but wait.

If he only knew what he was waiting for!

Did the hunting scene play any kind of a role?

Heike did not want to turn around to look at it, and he didn’t think it was important. It was just ... so terrifying. And distasteful and frightening in its cynicism ...

The moon was truly an unreliable source of light. It would often shine for only a few seconds and every time it grew dark again Heike came close to panicking because the one feeble candle had almost burned completely down and would soon go out by itself.

If the moon chose to go behind a cloud at the critical moment he wouldn’t be able to see what was happening in the room, and Peter would lose his life.

But he really had to stop looking so much on the dark side of things. It was the gloomy atmosphere of the room that was affecting him ...

It was also cold. He didn’t understand how Peter could stand it. But then he was, of course, lying under all those warm covers between the dusty drapes of the canopy bed.

How dirty the room was! It came to him suddenly that that had not been his initial impression. When he had stepped into the room it had seemed orderly and clean.

He now realized that it was slowly and gradually degenerating before his very eyes, and a faint, unpleasant odour had arisen.

He carefully changed his position. He had been sitting there so long that his legs had fallen asleep and his entire body was aching.

He felt miserably cold and a strange sense of fatigue embraced him. He noticed that Peter’s breathing grew heavier ... his sleep didn’t seem entirely natural. It must be the room that was affecting the two sleeping in the bed.

Or ...?

No, he couldn’t be certain. The only thing he knew was that he would have to fight off his urge to fall asleep with all his might. Imagine if he were to sit there and nod off!

Time passed. The sky lightened and the moon faded and nothing happened. The candle had burned down long ago when Heike suddenly awoke from his doze.

The dim, grey light of dawn was entering the room, making everything look magical and mysterious. The hunting scene on the tapestry seemed to have lost all its colour and appeared now in shades of black, white and grey ... There was a diffuse sense of decline weighing down the room.

What had alarmed Heike was the smell. Or stench, rather. A stench of rot and death. It was so horrible that it almost made him nauseous. He tried to focus his gaze on the bed and then he was gasping for air.

“Peter!” he whispered. “Peter!”

Peter didn’t respond, so Heike was forced to shout loudly, “Peter! Look up!”

Peter opened his eyes drowsily at the very moment Heike jumped to the floor.

“What in hell are you doing here?” Peter cried out in indignation. Heike was already by the bed and pulling Peter out of it.

“Look!” he shouted. “Look there, get out, hurry!”

Confused, Peter turned in the direction Heike was pointing and then opened his mouth to scream but no sound came from his lips. He stared, paralysed, at the bed and at his sleeping companion.

The grey light of the morning was strong enough to reveal the whole unbelievable scene. In the bed lay a laughing skull, its eye sockets empty, and on the blanket where Nicola’s lovely arm had been lying only bones could be seen.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Across the bed, in Peter’s direction, her lovely black hair snaked along, black as raven’s wings. It was writhing and gliding slowly and determinedly, a mortal danger, towards the speechless lover.

“Get out!” Heike shouted, pulling Peter with him. The poor boy was, of course, naked and his manly pride showed clear signs of wanting to continue the love-making. Heike grabbed his clothes from a chair and threw them into his arms. Then he pushed his friend towards the door.

But it was too late. With a sweeping hiss, the hair glided onto the floor and rushed with lightning speed to the door, where it prevented Peter and Heike from escaping and began to creep up Peter’s body.

The boy half fainted from fright and hit out at the hair, which had wrapped itself around his face and neck. He spat out long, black locks of hair that were crawling between his lips as he desperately clung to Heike.

Heike grabbed hold of the disgusting mass of hair and tugged at it to free Peter. He felt how the tresses tried to wind themselves around his hand but he managed to open the door and push Peter out; then he himself squeezed out and slammed the door shut behind him.

Before the door shut a hissing and sputtering could be heard as when lightning strikes. The hair had succeeded in squeezing itself out of the door with them!

Heike took hold of his friend’s hand and ran frantically through the gallery. Passing them, the black, snake-like object glided across the floor.

Peter screamed like one possessed, “We’ll never get out! We’ll die, we’ll die!”

“Keep quiet! See if you can open the door and I’ll deal with this nightmare!”

But it was Peter, the lover, whom the hair wanted. When the two young men reached the end of the gallery they were temporarily unable to see the hair. Heike let out a sigh of relief and flung the door open. Now they entered another hall and ran for their lives.

Suddenly Heike stopped in his tracks. “Where are we? We’ve reached a dead end and there are no more doors to be seen.”

They turned around. The morning light was still faint but they could easily see what it was that was slowly gliding towards them from one of the beams.

“Damn it!” Heike whispered.

With a swish, the hair flew through the air, landing once again on Peter’s throat. It twisted itself as fast as lightning around his entire body, cutting into his skin and leaving deep weals, but mainly concentrating on his throat.

“Save me, Heike, save me!” yelled Peter, half-choked.

I can’t do this, Heike thought in desperation. He shut his eyes and gathered all his strength.

“Oh, all the powers of the Ice People, help me now!”

Peter let out a half-stifled moan and collapsed on the floor, enveloped by the disgusting thing that relentlessly tightened its grip around him.

Heike sensed the presence of his kinsmen who, though they were unable to do anything themselves, could act through him.

And then came the words he himself did not understand. He could hear that he wasn’t reciting them alone. Another voice was chanting the incantations with him, someone who spoke the original language of these magic formulas. It must be Mar, Heike thought. Sölve had told him about the tribe that lived in Siberia. Thank you, thank you, Mar!

The words streamed from Heike’s lips. And Peter was able to breathe once more. The hair fell limply to the ground.

Heike paused. He got his friend on his feet and took his hand. “Come! We have no time to waste!”

Peter’s voice was gravelly and he was coughing.

“Did we neutralize it?”

“I doubt that. The incantation just made it loosen its grip. Come!”

They ran on, rushing through the hallways and passages of the castle, but it was as though a force was concealing the exit from them.

And then they made a mistake that many others before them had also made. They ran through the carved door.

It wasn’t so surprising. The hall was so dark that they didn’t see the troll runes on the door in the corner. All they were aware of was a door they hadn’t tried to go through yet – and a door that might be their chance of escape to the outside world!

Instead, they were now deep inside the heart of the castle.

“Out!” cried Heike when he realized his mistake. “Get out, quickly, if you want to save your life!”

There wasn’t much he could do to fight the evil force in the castle, not until he had got Peter safely out. But that seemed impossible. Every way they turned they met obstacles.

This time the door was deadlocked and wouldn’t budge.

Their wild flight had exhausted them. Heike had no idea what awaited them but he was expecting the worst. The lost Anciol was unlikely to give up so easily!

“At least put on your clothes,” he hissed at Peter. “You look completely ridiculous.”

The unhappy Peter tried to conceal his fatal condition. As he fumbled to put on the few clothes he had, Heike hastened into the next room. But he stopped abruptly.

“Oh!” he moaned, “Oh no, oh no!”

Peter came hopping behind him on one leg, trying to put on his breeches. He, too, stopped at the door. “Oh ... Heike, I think I’m going to throw up!”

“Don’t,” Heike said dryly. “At least wait until we’re out of here!”

If we get out, he thought.

They were just vaguely able to make out the corpses of two men, one in the early stages of decay, the other comparatively more recent.

“Good God,” Peter whispered. “Good God, they’ve been strangled by that thing, you know. And they tried to escape. Look at the weals on their bodies. And around their throats! Heike, that could be me lying there now if you hadn’t come!”

“We’re not out yet,” his friend reminded him. Heike was fairly shaken himself. “But there are only two of them, Peter. Only two!”

“It must be the Frenchmen, don’t you think?”

“Yes, without a doubt. But where are all the others, then? According to what we’ve been told these two were far from the first. She’s wiped out the whole village in her desire for passion, not to mention all the visiting men who have managed to lose their way in this godforsaken valley.”

Peter was hardly listening to him. “But ... they’re ... they’re still capable of making love!” he cried out incredulously, vainly holding his arm across his own crotch in order to conceal his misery. “At least the later one. The other has become a little ...”

He couldn’t say any more.

Heike was more down-to-earth. “She must have kept them for a while as her lovers. It’s so dry and cool in here that they’ve probably been preserved for quite a while.”

Peter turned around. His face had assumed a greenish colour. “Keep quiet,” he said hoarsely. “Bear in mind that I myself have just ...”

“I apologize,” said Heike. “But we have to get out of here. You have to, anyway.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ve promised to try to lift the curse on this valley. And as far as that is concerned, you’d just be in the way.”

Peter was taking deep breaths. “I am strong now. I want to help.”

“Thank you,” said Heike, touched. “But you do realize that you are the one she’s after, don’t you? You’re the one who would suffer the most ...”

“Heike!” Peter interrupted him “Look up!”

Heike jumped aside. The hair was creeping down from a beam, as slippery as an eel, raven-black and shining.

“Now we’re in trouble,” Heike shouted, pulling Peter away from the frightful object. “There’s no escape from here.”

“There’s got to be a way out!”

“If there were, those two wouldn’t be lying here!”

Heike jumped aside once again with Peter just as the hair made a slapping lunge at them.

“Tengel, Sol and Mar, help me!” he shouted. “I don’t know what to do!”

He had heard about all the things the deceased of the Ice People could do for their descendants. About how they had once bewitched the captain of a privateer, making him see the most frightening visions. About their struggles to get Ulvhedin on the side of good. But these stories had concerned living people. Anciol was a witch, deceased, just like themselves. Now they had to act through Heike: everything depended on him and how he cooperated with them.

It was clear that Anciol would have nothing to do with him. Perhaps she had a certain respect for him, perhaps she feared his abilities or the abilities of those who stood behind him.

Peter screamed as he tried to avoid yet another attack. But as soon as Heike managed to free him and cast the locks of hair away they would immediately pounce on Peter again.

Anciol’s thirst for revenge was so great that no lover was ever going to be allowed to escape!

Heike sighed powerlessly. It wouldn’t do, it was much too obvious who was going to win that fight. At the end, once the two men were completely exhausted, the bundle of hair would victoriously crawl over their entire bodies ...

If only Heike had time to think, but as soon as he paused the bundle of hair would launch another attack.

Suddenly a few thoughts began to come to him. At first they were vague, but very slowly they became clearer: “The sun, Heike, the sun!”

What did that mean? He concentrated and then it occurred to him.

The castle did not have any windows on its sunny side. None at all!

And he hadn’t noticed it at all before!

Looked at from below, the castle seemed to boast many window openings, but that was just an illusion like everything else. When they had walked about inside the castle he had discovered that the windows were merely dazzling panes of glass attached to the outer wall. Nowhere could you look out at the valley from the castle.

The sparse light that entered the building came from the side facing the mountains, not from the valley side, where the sun must by now have risen.

As Heike struggled to free the exhausted Peter from the bundle of hair, he thought more about this. He studied the opposite wall – the one facing the valley.

It consisted of colossal boulders and seemed immovable.

“Right, Heike,” Tengel the Good whispered in his ear. “You’re strong now. You have four times your normal strength.”

“Peter!” he shouted above his friend’s stifled howling. “Try to get over here! Hold it off for just a minute, I just have to ...”

“Right! Precisely that stone!” Tengel’s voice said. “Hurry!”

Heike leaned on a stone block in the wall with his shoulder and was given a painful reminder of his earlier injury.

He felt an enormous amount of energy gathering within him. He wasn’t alone!

There were frightening gurgling sounds coming from Peter’s throat.

With a deep, rumbling, scraping sound the stone moved!

“Heike! Help!” Peter moaned hoarsely. “I can’t last much longer! The hair is winning!”

“Hold on! Just another moment!”

In that instant it was as though the evil spirit in the room grasped what Heike was busy doing. Suddenly the entire mass of hair was on his face. It clung across his mouth and nose and was about to strangle him.

“That won’t do!” Sol’s calm voice could be heard. “Now you listen here, you confounded bitch, let go of our friend! Mar, please say a little ‘prayer’. The boy can’t get a single word out.”

Strange incantations hummed monotonously through the room, pronounced by a voice that wasn’t a voice but more of a feeling. It was such an alien language that, in his semiconscious state, Peter thought he had been transported to a demonic world. But Heike wriggled himself free and the hair fell powerlessly from his face.

The incantations ceased and the hair leapt upon Peter again, making no more attempts to stop Heike, who threw himself at the wall with all his might. Suddenly the stone shot out from the wall and with a tremendous boom fell over the edge of the cliff and down to the bottom of the valley.

The sun, which had just risen in the east, flooded the room with its sharp morning light, so yellow and familiar that Heike involuntarily let out a trembling sigh.

Without wasting any time Heike turned to Peter, who was now completely entangled in the hair, which was starting to cut through his clothes and into the poor boy’s skin.

Brutally, Heike dragged him into the light, grabbed hold of the hair that lay around his throat and tore it away with a violent yank. Then he tried to throw it out through the hole in the wall.

That was easier said than done. The hair resisted. The entire disgusting, living scalp was only halfway out. It lay there on the very edge of the wall and for a moment it looked as if the hair would turn around and sweep back into the room again. But it was too late. The sun was too strong.

Wide-eyed, the young men watched the hair writhing in the sun. It hissed as though it were burning up and the long, shining locks curled up while a pungent, penetrating smell reached their noses. In less than a minute the hair was destroyed and lay like a small sticky blob in the hole in the wall.

Peter collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath.

“How are you?” Heike asked.

“Good,” Peter gasped. “Tell me the worst is over now. My whole body is aching. And I feel so sick!”

“I understand why you’re aching. You have long, red weals all over your body.”

Heike walked over to the wall and touched it.

“The castle is still standing,” he said, bewildered. “And Peter ... forgive me for asking such a personal question, but ... do you still have ... you know what I’m referring to?”

Peter nodded uneasily, holding his hands in front of his private parts.

“And the dead men are here as well. This is worrying! In fact it’s horrifying!”

“What do you mean?” Peter asked. His words turned into a howl of terror. A single strand of hair, the very last one, had twisted itself around his throat like a violin string and was tightening its grip. Heike couldn’t get hold of it, it kept slipping from his fingers. Peter was already blue in the face when the deep, chanting voice could once again be heard. The strand of hair loosened its grip, Heike pulled it, rolled it up and threw it out into the sun where it burned up. Now they were definitely free of the abomination.

Peter took a deep breath. “What did you mean by what you said before?”

“I meant that Anciol, whom Sol so politely called a confounded bitch, is still alive. If you can talk of being alive in connection with the undead. All this around us – the fact that nothing has changed – seems to suggest it. We must find her, Peter!”

“But ... wasn’t she lying in the bed?”

“Yes, in her own bridal bed. That was where she took all her lovers. But I don’t think she’s there any longer. I’m afraid I’ll have to give you another shock. I’m going to have to show you what I saw yesterday morning!”