C3 Chapter 3

“Journeying on foot along the Arctic Ocean to Tröndelag in Norway wasn’t something you did in one day,” said Rune, sinking dreamily into his memories. “They had no objective; they didn’t know where they were walking or where they would end up. They just walked because they wanted to find a better settlement. I had a good time. My new master’s chest kept me warm, and in return I protected him against danger. Tan-ghil was often after me because he soon discovered where I was. He tried to cheat my master, tried to assassinate him, tried to steal me, but I was on my guard and prevented all his cunning attacks. I wasn’t quite sure what Tan-ghil wanted of me. After all, I had very nearly caused his death, perhaps he wanted to seek revenge? Or did he still believe that he could control me? He should have known better. His father, Teinosuke, had previously treated me badly. Tan-ghil was a thousand times worse than his father.”

Sol said: “So you were a mandrake in the service of good?”

“I suppose I was,” said Rune thoughtfully. “Not completely. Not from the beginning. But because of many good efforts, not least from among the Ice People, I turned out to be quite an honest creature ...”

The others agreed.

Then he began his account of the little migration.

“The journey to Tröndelag took several years. Some people in the flock died and new ones were born. Some settled in various places on the way. Others joined us and settled in with the Taran-gai. They weren’t always people of the best quality.

“The hardships were unbelievable: ice-cold winters with blizzards that cut through to the marrow, making it impossible to continue. Big rivers and lakes had to be crossed. Hospitable Finns welcomed us into their small settlements, but they chased us away quickly when they discovered what sort of people we had with us. As time went on, all in the group despaired at the burden we had with us: Tan-ghil, who made everybody’s lives a misery. Although we had another leader with us on the journey, he had become the de facto leader – the leader of the entire world – and there was no end to the sacrifices he demanded from his fellow travellers. He hated the rural regions we passed through. What sort of a world was this to seize power over?

“You must remember that Tan-ghil had really never seen anything but steppes and tundra and wilderness. He knew nothing about the cities of Europe, crowds, palaces or art collections. Nothing of that which makes human lives easier. He didn’t even know the word ‘luxury’. This was one reason why he remained for so long in the Valley of the Ice People. The only place he had seen of any size was Nidaros, which fascinated him immensely. It gave him an idea of what might exist. Tan-ghil wasn’t an educated man. When you begin your struggle against him, you must bear in mind that his train of thoughts is extremely primitive.

“Eventually, from the country of the Lapps we entered Tröndelag. We were so ignorant that we thought we would have to follow the coast of the Arctic Ocean all the way. This made our journey unnecessarily long. Anyway, now we had reached more inhabited regions. This was the first time that the Taran-gai saw big farms with cultivated land in seemingly unlimited degree. They were truly amazed. Tan-ghil wanted to seize the first large farm we passed on our journey, because now he thought that we had reached the end of the world and nothing could be any bigger than this. Fortunately, we had sent scouts out in advance, and they were able to tell us something different. So we continued. We reached Nidaros and the sight of the cathedral left them dizzy and speechless. It was still being built at the time – but nevertheless it was the largest ‘yurt’ they had ever seen. Nothing so big was believable! Who could live there?

“Tan-ghil had a lurking expression in his eyes. That building could only be for him, the ruler of the world. Therefore, in the darkness of night, he sneaked up to the door. It was easy to get inside because there were men working on the building.

“Phew, what a sickening atmosphere! Tan-ghil spat and hissed. I can tell you this because he had seized my master to go on his nocturnal expedition. Tan-ghil would always hide behind somebody who had been chosen to defend him. This time, it was my master.

“Tan-ghil rushed out of the church and never set foot in such a building again. That was his first meeting with the church community, which he came to hate so intensely. Anyway, that was when I saw his weakness, and as you know, it was something I used later on, in the Valley of the Ice People. When I succeeded in convincing him that the power of the church was too vast for him to be able to crush it in a jiffy.

“But I am jumping ahead. We stayed in Nidaros for a long time. Tan-ghil had to hide from the citizens because they couldn’t stand the sight of him. He had come to look terribly cruel.

“I’ve no idea how many lives he took in Nidaros because he was irritated by those ‘stupid human creeps’, as he called them.

“I had great worries myself. Various diseases spread among the population, who lived close together in their abodes, and my master had been sick for quite a long time. No matter how much I strove to protect him, other sicknesses struck him down. In the meantime, the earth was really beginning to burn under Tan-ghil. Nidaros was full of mercenaries, and they had orders to catch and kill the obnoxious one, whom people would see from time to time, and who did so much damage. He gathered the few remaining members of the tribe and told them that things weren’t working. They had to move on. Many in the group had settled down and wanted to stay in Nidaros, but Tan-ghil wanted as many as possible to join him. ‘We have to form a new society,’ he declared, and nobody doubted that he saw himself as the ruler of this society.

“Then one night, we left Nidaros and headed south. It was certainly high time to go, because we were chased out. The Taran-gai didn’t resemble the tall Norwegians. They didn’t blend in with the natives, and this was something that neither humans nor animals had ever tolerated. The nice, short Taran-gai became scapegoats. As a matter of fact, they had to flee in order not to be captured and perhaps killed. Of course, the city dwellers were most terrified of the particular individual who was in our group.

“At the time, I often wondered why Tan-ghil was so reluctant to seize control of mankind there and then. But he was absolutely shocked at all the new things, which just overwhelmed him: the city, the crowds, the foreign culture ... There was another reason as well,” said Rune with a smile. “I knew the reason why. I tried to fulfil my promise to the four spirits. Now I couldn’t do so much, since he wasn’t my master, but I could inspire him with indecision whenever I had a chance. I entered his thoughts, loading him with insecurity and anxiety. So that he really didn’t know what to do.

“We were on our journey again, this time through the villages of South Tröndelag. Immediately after we had left Nidaros, the thing I most feared happened: the hardships were too much for my sick master.

“Our small caravan stopped – on Tan-ghil’s order. Everybody was surprised that he would show mercy towards somebody who was fatally sick, because that wasn’t really his style. But he knew perfectly well what he was doing. He asked to be left alone with my master.

“And, of course, it was because he wanted the mandrake. He knew he had to own it – I mean buy it – otherwise it wouldn’t work. He harassed and threatened my dying master, shook him and hissed at him and wanted to know what he had paid for me. Finally, my master managed to give the answer: it was a little shell from the beach.

“Tan-ghil looked about feverishly. Of course, there was no beach in that vicinity, only a dusty ditch. He grabbed hold of a harebell, pulling it out of the earth, and was just about to tear off the flower in his eagerness. Because now my master was more dead than alive.

“‘Here! Save your soul now and sell it in return for this! Will this do?’

“The poor man was hardly able to nod. Tan-ghil tore the string from his throat and put it around his own neck. He just let the man collapse on the floor and left him lying there. I was now Tan-ghil’s possession.”

Rune turned towards the audience. “Daniel, you know that if I want to, I can make myself completely inert.”

Daniel remembered the time when he left the mandrake to his son, Sölve, and how the latter asserted that the mandrake had been silent, lifeless. What he had felt was more of a wait-and-see attitude. As if the mandrake was waiting for somebody.

Now everybody knew that it had been waiting for Heike, Sölve’s son.

“Exactly!” said Rune, when Daniel had finished speaking. “I can really make myself passive if I want to. No matter how hard he tried, Tan-ghil got no response from me. In fact, I opposed him as much as I possibly could. Planted in him treacherous thoughts that he would have to wait and wait because his time had not yet come, the church was too strong ...

“He became increasingly indecisive. It nearly cost the lives of the whole group. The mercenaries were pursuing us. Tan-ghil could easily have killed them with his power and wizardry. But I confused his mind so that he ordered us to flee into the forest and up into the mountains.

“At last, we reached the mountains. We found the valley by pure chance. The ice gate was pretty large at the time because it was late summer. We got everything we needed inside: our few cattle and all our poor belongings.

“In that way we reached the Valley of the Ice People.”

“To begin with, my attempts to oppose Tan-ghil were just vague, without any actual objective. I had made a promise to the spirits, which was why I did it, but it was the only thing I had to go after. Tan-ghil soon discovered that he couldn’t move about with me, because it caused him great discomfort. I could make myself as heavy as lead around his neck or I could scratch him badly on his chest when I didn’t like what he was doing. For this reason he soon hung me on the wall, furious and swearing. But from there, I continued to infect his brain so that he became irresolute and lacked drive. I want to be allowed to boast a bit because during the years when he owned me, he couldn’t do so much damage to the world.”

Sol said: “You were probably stronger than we ever suspected.”

Rune smiled. He was embarrassed. “Sometimes, Tan-ghil went out of the valley. He hadn’t forgotten Nidaros and its splendour ... the mercenaries hadn’t forgotten him either, so all he got out of these sorties was to defend himself against their ‘mosquito bites’, as he called them. Of course, he caused a lot of harm and damage to the bailiff’s troops – and the farms he passed on the way. During these years, Tan-ghil was known as ‘the evil wizard of the mountains’. He was not yet known as Tengel the Evil. As we know, this was something that came about later.

“He took me with him on these journeys. But he carried me in a net because he no longer dared to have me around his neck. Every time he had killed or violated or vandalized, he would maintain that it was my influence that had generated such a good result. It was just so unfair because I managed to avert an absolute disaster for these poor people."

“He often worked with me! He knew that I was able to give him everything he wanted – but I resisted. He never understood why he never got the power and the honour and the riches he had been promised by the source. He thought that I held the key to all this. However, I was the one who showed restraint. I darkened his thoughts. This was the only method I could use to clip his wings.”

“It was a very wise method, Rune,” said Tengel the Good. “You couldn’t prevent all his assaults on humans and nature. Not directly. But by confusing his mind, you nipped the evil in the bud. We couldn’t have had a better ally than you.”

“Thank you so much, Tengel. Well, now we come to a new phase. When Tan-ghil was already old in human terms, he decided that he wanted descendants. The evil legacy, which he had promised by the source that he would maintain, had to be established. He was cynical and chose a woman in the valley to breed a child with. She was married but that didn’t bother him. The main thing was that she was young and strong and she already had a son. Unfortunately, I was present in Tan-ghil’s house when she was lured there and raped by the appalling old man.”

Dida muttered: “Poor soul. I can well believe how she felt!”

“Yes, Dida. She wasn’t even his close descendant as you were. She wasn’t related to him in any way, but her shame and horror wasn’t any less because of that. Anyway, her husband disowned her and she wasn’t allowed to see her young son anymore. Alone in the forest, she bore the hard-stricken Ghil (Tan-ghil gave him that name) and alone she died there. She bled to death after giving birth. Tan-ghil ordered her parents to raise Ghil. He was a terrible child, and as a grown man he soon acquired the nickname Ghil the Terrible. Describing all his horrible crimes and assaults would simply be a list of atrocities, which is beneath our dignity.”

“You’re quite right,” said Benedikte.

“Tan-ghil had never loved anybody. In his youth, before he visited the sources, he might take a woman now and then because he desired her. After he had drunk of the water of evil, he felt neither love nor desire. When he took a woman, it was merely pure, evil calculation. He did so once in Taran-gai, in order to found a tribe there. That was Winter Sorrow. Twice in the Valley of the Ice People: first, to have a descendant, then to have one who could follow him on his conquests out in the world, someone who was his slave. This second time he wanted to ensure that his descendants had the right attitude – so he flung himself upon his granddaughter. I don’t want to reopen the old wound, Dida, so we won’t mention the villainy he inflicted on you.”

“Thank you,” murmured Dida, very pale.

“Dida has already spoken about the evil she and her brother Krestiern suffered. I’ll move forward a bit in time if that is all right with you. To the day when Tan-ghil realized that he had no use for me whatsoever, and that I was a disaster for him. The fact that he kept me for so long was only because I was able to obfuscate his intellect.

“Of course, he tried to destroy me. By means of fire, chopping, burying and so on. It just didn’t work. I can’t be destroyed like that because, as you know, I was created in the Garden of Eden where no death existed. The Creator forgot me entirely when he succeeded in creating the first human being, Adam.

“Finally – after many attempts to kill me – Tan-ghil grew so sick and tired of me that in fury he threw me in the brook.

“Of course, sooner or later I would have come back to him because he owned me: provided nothing completely out of the ordinary happened.

“I came dancing down the waves in the brook on my way out to the lake when all of a sudden I sensed strong goodness nearby. Nevertheless, I also felt the presence of Tan-ghil’s blood. I discovered Tiili, Little Flower, where she stood on the beach. I allowed myself to land at her feet. I myself was thoroughly tired of Tan-ghil. I wanted very much to change owner, but I had to think of my promise to the four spirits. Here I had Tan-ghil’s daughter, even if the two of them were as different as chalk and cheese.”

“One moment,” said Henning, who was a slow thinker and was one thought behind in Rune’s account. “You mentioned that Tan-ghil tried to destroy you. However, since we in our folly have cut bits and pieces off you from time to time, surely he could have beaten you into a pulp as easily as anything?”

“No, there’s a big difference,” Rune answered. “You needed small chips of me for magical purposes. Of course, I agreed to that. But complete destruction was something I opposed with all my strength. I made myself as hard as stone and as tough as leather when he began to cut me.”

Mali stood up. She was ashamed of herself. “Rune, my dearest friend. Do you know what I have in a locket around my throat? A tiny, tiny bit of you. Which has been passed down through the Grip family via Havgrim and Petra the Elder and then me. I had planned that my son, Rikard, would hand it on to his daughter Tova, my grandchild. But would you like me to return it to you, Rune? Incidentally, what part of you is it?”

Rune laughed. He was shy. “I know that you have it. It was a piece of root that Arv Grip passed on as a gift to his son. Daniel Ingridsson gave it to Arv. Ingrid was the one who cut off a tiny bit of me. It’s just a bit of one of my toes. You can keep the tiny piece because it wouldn’t be of much use to me now.”

“Thank you. Please tell us a bit more about Tiili because her fate is of great interest to us.”

“Yes, I stayed with Tiili and Dida and Targenor. I now regarded myself as released from being owned by others. I thought that from then on, I was free.”

The audience muttered in agreement.

“I had the most fantastic time with those three. I’m sure you’ll all understand that up until then, my life hadn’t been the very best. But I was happy with Tiili, Dida and Targenor. This was also when I began my true struggle to conquer Tan-ghil. I had something to fight for. I would have done anything for Dida, Targenor and Little Flower. They stood for benevolence – something I hadn’t encountered too much in this world. Since then, I’ve tried to help those members of the Ice People who wanted to fight evil.”

“You’ve been a very important and very great ally,” said Heike. “Only this evening have we truly come to realize how immensely important you are.”

Rune bowed his head slightly in thanks. “I must ask you to forgive me that my story has been so brief. If I had been a person at that time, I would have had much more to say about the countryside that surrounded me. About the steppes in the east. About the barren, sparse and yet beautiful Taran-gai. About the unfortunate Valley of the Ice People and its inhabitants ... but I was merely a root. I seemed to see through a dark veil, as if I had a blanket around me. My “fingers” were sensitive but they were merely sensitive roots. I understood human beings more via my instinct than through my senses. Do you understand me?”

“We understand, and we admire your ability to express what you experienced,” said Sol. “You reproduce it so concisely that we don’t need the details. Please continue your narrative. What were your relations with Tan-ghil like after you left him?”

“During the years in Dida’s house, I made myself so strong that Tan-ghil couldn’t get near me without almost falling sick. He couldn’t get near Tiili when she had me by her. But his intellect tricked a child into stealing her ‘doll’, which was me. I assumed, of course, that was Tan-ghil’s work. I thought that you realized that, Dida and Targenor. That feat had disastrous consequences for you. Tan-ghil needed a virgin to carry out the long ritual in the wilderness when he had to hide the vessel containing the water of evil. The one he had chosen was Tiili, his own daughter. He was livid at having to wait while I protected her. Then he succeeded in tricking the child to steal me – leaving Tiili unprotected. He disappeared into the mountains with her and she hasn’t been seen since.”

“What happened to her?” asked Dida, Tiili’s mother, in a trembling voice.

“Poor mother of a lost child, I have no idea,” Rune said regretfully. “I know nothing about his actions up there.

“So then Targenor took care of me. He carried me around his neck and that was where I thrived. He and I belonged to one another. We once met Tan-ghil on a path, and the evil creature wanted Targenor to join him and go out into the world. But he couldn’t get near me, he had to pull back and Targenor was set free – at the time. But Tan-ghil was very cunning.

“He had an assistant, his own stricken descendant Guro, who told him about the rat-catcher in Hamelin. Tan-ghil wanted very much to meet him. The evil ancestor sent Guro to trick Targenor so that he had to take off the mandrake. Tan-ghil remembered how he had once cheated my master in the same way in Taran-gai. When he was going to bathe in a mountain lake, Guro said he needed assistance with his fishing rods, which had fallen in the water. I was left at home and Tan-ghil – or Tengel, as he was now called – was waiting on the beach. This meant that Targenor was lost. Tengel the Evil took control of his soul. Targenor abandoned me and went out into the world with his father and his grandfather’s father.”

“We know their fate,” said Heike. “Now we want to hear yours.”

“Yes,” said Rune, and his ugly face looked sad. “Of course, I stayed with Dida during her entire life on earth, which was a good time for me. I had a good time in her house. Of course, I felt her sorrow and her constant worry at what had happened to her two children and I was very sad that I was unable to console her. She was old when she died and passed me on to Sigleik, so that I wouldn’t end up in evil hands once more. Although I wasn’t by her side all the time on her deathbed, I heard Sigleik say that at the moment she died she lit up in a smile and whispered: ‘Targenor’.”

“That’s true,” said Dida. “As I’ve mentioned before, I saw Targenor sitting at the edge of my bed. He accompanied me to the wonderful life which all we unfortunate members of the Ice People now find ourselves in.”

“Yes,” said Rune. “I had a good time with Sigleik. Also with his son, Skrym, even though Skrym hid me in a cupboard together with the treasure.”

“I knew no better,” Skrym said regretfully. “Remember that I wasn’t one of the stricken.”

Rune said with a smile: “It was all right. I didn’t suffer. It was much worse when you left me to one of the evil stricken, Halkatla.”

Halkatla bent her blonde, curly head in shame. But Rune gave her a tender smile. “Don’t feel sad, Halkatla. You didn’t do me much harm. Even though you used me for your evil, magical rites, which I didn’t much relish. Besides, I didn’t know how I was to extricate myself from you because at the time, there were no members of the Ice People left in the valley. So I stayed with you because you were lonely and I tried to influence you for good ...”

“Maybe you succeeded,” said Halkatla quietly. “Maybe it was your influence that meant Tova could make me understand how wrong my life had been?”

“I certainly think so,” said Tova in a serious voice.

“Me, too,” said Tengel the Good. “We mustn’t underestimate your contribution in this instance, Rune.”

“I had the mandrake in my bag when they took me,” Halkatla exclaimed. “What happened to you afterwards, Rune – when I died?”

“It was a very confusing time,” he replied with a smile. “Nobody understood the value of the treasure you had, and ignorant people wanted to burn ‘the dirt’, as they called it. A sensible woman pointed out that it rightly belonged to Halkatla’s father, who lived in Trondheim. So the woman had to take it home, where she kept the bundle and forgot it.

“Then Halkatla’s brother, Halvard, returned to the valley with his three children. And the woman remembered Halkatla’s bundle and passed it on to Halvard. He didn’t understand much of it and didn’t know that it was the Ice People’s precious treasure. But his badly stricken son, Paulus – who was the reason why Halvard had to return to the Valley of the Ice People – had it in him. He knew what the treasure was worth. He asked to have it, and that was how I ended in the wrong hands once more.

“Paulus was difficult to have as a master. Much of what you see today, my mutilated hands and feet, was done by him. He was a very evil creature, who you must be very careful of. This has already been said tonight. It was very true that Paulus’s spirit was Tengel the Evil’s tool when you, Eskild, listened to the farmhand who told you about Eldafiord.”

“But the farmhand was old and Paulus died at the age of sixteen,” Eskild protested.

“Paulus reckoned that you would pay more attention to an old man than to a boy. He changed his age, as he could easily do with the help of Tengel the Evil. Remember what the spirit in Fergeoset, the ferryman, was capable of. When he needed to, he turned into the innocent Livor.”

“Yes, that’s true,” interrupted Benedikte.

“Fortunately, Paulus passed away at a young age. If not, I might not have any arms or legs. After a few years with Halvard’s inconspicuous daughters, I came to their children, Jahas and Estrid.”

Rune smiled. “It was a crazy time. Those two knew how to make use of my erotic attractive force. They used tiny bits of me in their love potions, which they gave to each other. With or without the other person knowing of it.”

Jahas and Estrid laughed. They were delighted.

“Oh, well, I suppose they did worse things with my help and with the magic stuff in the Ice People’s treasure ... but they were quite harmless so I didn’t interfere in their experiments. Except when they got angry with a grumpy neighbour and used black magic to make his dunghill whirl, covering his whole house and windows with muck. That made me cross (after I had finished laughing) and I punished them for a whole week with nettle rash.”

“Was that you?” Jahas yelled. “We lay in bed, covered in a red rash, thinking that we were about to die at any moment. We felt awfully sorry for ourselves. And you were to blame for it!”

“It was tit-for-tat. I just let fine, dewy drops of dung rain over you, and made your skin sensitive to it.”

Estrid giggled. “We’re sorry, Rune, that we cut chips off you.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Things got worse with the next person I came to.”

“Yes, you mean Tobba the witch, don’t you?” said Ylva, the daughter of Estrid and Jahas. “I was stupid enough to believe that she was eligible to receive the treasure.”

“I do,” said Rune. “Giving it to her wasn’t very wise.”

“No, I gathered that. Afterwards. When I saw her moving through the air.”

“Oh, that,” Rune sighed. “That was when she cut off a good slice of me,” he said, raising his mutilated left hand. “That was when she was about to go to the Brocken.”

“So it was her I saw?”

“No. As Sol explained, she was lying in bed. What you saw was her spirit. She had a so-called out-of-body experience and it was quite a powerful one, since the ointment she had rubbed on herself had all the right ingredients.”

“I thought she was on her way to Tengel the Evil,” said Ylva.

“No, she wanted to fly to the Brocken and meet Satan,” said Rune. “Tobba was a very, very beautiful witch and also very sexually disposed. What you thought is true, Ylva. She behaved appallingly towards the men she lured into her house. She was like a female spider who killed her lovers after making love to them. This is why I warn all you men, who will be joining in the struggle. Beware of Tobba! I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tengel the Evil sets her loose on you! If you fall for her charms, you’re not worth much!”

That warning sounded shocking. Tova glanced at Marco and Nataniel. Would they be able to resist Tobba’s attack if she appeared?

Tova hoped she wouldn’t appear at all.

“Tobba was old,” Rune said. “After her death, there was a fierce struggle about me between the two witches of equal standing: Vega, ‘the woman down by the lake’, and Hanna.”

“Oh, Hanna!” yelled Sol. “She was the best person that ever lived!”

“Was she?” asked Rune flatly.