C13 Chapter 13

Nataniel’s day had been painful. He had felt as if spears were penetrating his soul, like an incurable torment.

There were three coffins in the church chancel. Benedikte’s, Hanne’s and Abel’s.

Young Christel was to be buried in her home region farther north.

Ellen ... his thoughts returned to Ellen as always.

She didn’t even have a grave, she was ... nowhere.

Nataniel stood speechless with sorrow in the church: he couldn’t even join in the singing of the hymns. He tried to suppress his loathing for Tengel the Evil, who had caused all of this. He wanted to grieve purely, without any bitterness, but it wasn’t so easy.

Benedikte was in good hands now. She had lived a long life and was now with the ancestors of the Ice People. But that didn’t mean that those whom she had left behind didn’t miss her terribly.

Hanne ... Vetle grieved over her deeply. As did the children. The grandchildren weren’t there, they were with Tula in the Demon’s Mountain, safe from Tengel the Evil.

Nataniel’s father, Abel Gard.

The patriarch was now gone, and his eight sons carried his coffin out of the packed church.

As they slowly made their way across the cemetery, Nataniel thought about his relationship with his father. Abel had been anything but young – he was seventeen years older than his wife Christa, Nataniel’s mother.

And really Abel and Nataniel had never understood one another. Abel’s almost fanatical attitude towards religion had made Nataniel uncomfortable. They could never talk to each other about the Ice People. But they were both friendly and polite individuals, so there was a good, warm atmosphere between them. His father had become a bit distracted in his older days; he would often recite a couple of lines from the Bible and Nataniel would get around it by not answering.

Yet still, as he stood by his father’s grave, he felt a great sense of devotion towards him. Christa had been happy living with him. She stood next to Nataniel, a black veil covering her face so that no one would see all the tears of sadness running down her face.

But what Christa felt was more sadness than downright grief. A long stage of her life was now over. Abel Gard had been a safe haven for her. Not for a single day did she regret marrying him. But her love, the kind that is so strong that it tears you apart, had only belonged to one man: Linde-Lou.

It had been so long ago, and yet she kept their short-lived love story as a precious memory. The odds were completely against it ever manifesting, they would never be able to have each other. But she had had the chance to love another person in a warm and strong and pure way once in her life. Not everyone is granted such an experience.

She went over to her husband’s grave and dropped a single rose petal on his coffin. Nataniel followed her.

And all his seven half-brothers and their children and grandchildren were there to bid Abel farewell. He had many, many descendants.

But Nataniel wasn’t even married.

Oh, Ellen, how can pain be so deep?

The funeral was over.

Nataniel needed to take the route leading to the Valley of the Ice People as quickly as possible so that he could join the others.

While he was sitting in the car in the funeral procession on its way to Linden Avenue he checked to make sure that the bottle with the clear water was in his pocket, as he had done so many times before. It was.

It had been hard to keep it on his person the whole time, especially in the hospital when he had been particularly worn down. He had been deadly afraid that one of Tengel the Evil’s henchmen would manage to sneak in and steal it from him, so he had tucked it under his pillow as soon as the nurse had left the room.

It was good that they were returning to Linden Avenue. It was precisely there, in his ancestral home, that he had an extra errand to take care of.

After things had settled down a little at Linden Avenue and all the funeral guests had left, Nataniel spoke to André and Mali about what he intended to do.

They nodded. They had already understood what he had in mind.

So they let him enter the oldest part of the house.

How small everything was in there, Nataniel thought, as he walked across the creaking, wide floorboards. The ceiling was so low. And yet this must once have been a rather impressive farm.

Everything was just as it had been back when Tengel and Silje took over Linden Avenue from the Meiden family. Of course, it had undergone repairs over the years, but they had been done so professionally and discreetly that they weren’t noticeable at all now.

The hall ...

That was where he had to go.

The portraits of the four children, Sol, Liv, Dag and Arv, were still there. Despite thorough restorations, they had acquired centuries’ worth of patina. They must have been lighter in colour when Silje painted them,

And there was the window. Benedikt’s tiny glass painting.

Was it really as small as that? No more than a peephole!

How could Ulvhedin possibly have been able to see anything through that? And why hadn’t anyone else seen anything since then? The chosen or the stricken ones?

But had there been many chosen ones since Ulvhedin’s time?

Benedikte! She had been the only one. And now she was gone, he couldn’t ask her.

Or could he?

“Good Tengel,” he said softly, “I wish to speak to Benedikte. Is that possible?”

He waited for a moment. Then he heard Benedikte’s familiar, friendly voice. “It was an elegant funeral, I want to thank you all for arranging it! I had the rare privilege that others can only dream about: to sit on the organ platform and watch one’s own funeral. Goodness, many nice things were said. I was an exceptional individual without knowing it!”

Her familiar, intelligent laughter resounded in his ears. But he was rather surprised by the sight of her, for it wasn’t the Benedikte he had known. She was a young woman dressed in the same sort of tunic as Halkatla. Benedikte would never have been able to win a beauty contest, but was that really necessary? She had so many other qualities, so much that was likable and attractive about her, that Nataniel was almost touched.

“I understand why Sander Brink fell for you,” he said with a smile.

“Thank you,” she said in a becomingly demure voice. “But you wanted to speak with me?”

“Yes, do you remember what Ulvhedin said at the Demon’s Mountain? That he had once noticed something in Benedikt’s window? Something that he couldn’t properly understand. You are the only stricken one since his time who has lived at Linden Avenue. And Ulvehedin was only visiting back then. Have you seen anything?”

“Yes,” Benedikte replied straightforwardly. “Hearing Ulvhedin’s words immediately struck a chord. Because I remembered that every now and then I had noticed a kind of movement outside the window of something that wasn’t really there. Because when I stopped to take a look there was nothing to see. So I just assumed that it had merely been some refraction of light in the uneven window pane. “

“That’s the most likely explanation, but I need to take a look at it.”

“I think you should. And I’ll leave you alone now. See you, Nataniel!”

Benedikte was gone. Nataniel slowly went over to the little window. From the sixteenth century, he thought. Created by a church painter and given to one of his students, the extremely gifted Silje Arngrimsdatter ...

What could such a window possibly hide?

Outside was the avenue of linden trees, the beloved old avenue. And part of a wicket, a small piece of forest and the new houses in the parish.

Nothing unusual.

Nataniel went to the side and then walked past the window just as Benedikte must have done.

Yes!

There was something!

That is, it seemed that there were some changes in the glass pane as he passed it.

But that was all.

However, Nataniel wasn’t about to give up that easily. After all, wasn’t he the seventh son of a seventh son ... and so on, that whole list of titles? If anyone was able to see something it would be him!

This time he went all the way up to the glass fragments. Tried looking at each of the various coloured squares.

One after the other.

There ...

Wasn’t there something there? In one of the corners of the square?

Something fluttered past. Something nervously anxious.

And it was gone again.

But now his senses had grown sharper.

“I can see it,” he told himself hypnotically and obstinately. “I can see it, I can see it, I can see it ...”

Then it came back, much clearer this time. But only in the bottom left-hand corner.

A face? Had it been a face?

But there had also been a background. One that was different to what was actually outside.

“Come back,” he whispered. “Come back!”

Strange! He could see the background now. The one that wasn’t real. It was ... it was a mountain moor?

And it was gone again.

It had been a mountain moor, but he had been seeing it from directly above.

The face! There it was. Nataniel tried to retain it but it fluttered by so quickly. And it was turned upwards! Up towards the glass. As though he and the wall were in a horizontal position and he was looking down at a moor where a human being stood looking up at him. Because what he had seen straight in front of him had been a head bent backwards and some shoulders. The body was hidden below the head and shoulders.

“Come back, one more time!” he implored.’

He didn’t have to wait long this time. The face flew past him. It was a woman’s face with startled, dark eyes. He got a chance to see it this time before the image vanished.

At first he had hoped, in vain, that it was Ellen’s face, but that didn’t make any sense. This girl was dark, with much darker hair ... and darker eyes. And she was younger ...

He waited again. This time it seemed to take longer.

A mountain moor. She looked up. Up into a corner of the window pane.

It didn’t seem as though the vision would be returning, the only thing he could see now was the landscape outside Linden Avenue.

The pleading glance?

A cry for help.

Nataniel walked away from the window and sat down on the old-fashioned sofa in the hall. He began to think systematically through the history of the stained-glass window.

For he realized that he had seen something very special.

He called André and Mali. They came, and he told them what he had seen and experienced and what he thought it might be.

André nodded gravely. “So you think that something has been seared onto the window pane – the image of a woman staring up into a horizontal window. Like the holy shroud in Turin that had an imprint of the suffering face of Christ?”

“Something like that,” said Nataniel. “That’s why I’m going through the history of the glass painting. When was it mounted horizontally? And high enough for someone to stand below it? A small person? The girl I saw was very slender.”

“The window was up in the Valley of the Ice People,” said Mali.

“When it was put up ...”

“No!” André interrupted. “Yes, you’re right, Mali, but I don’t think that’s when it happened. Because there was snow back then, and you didn’t see any snow, did you, Nataniel?”

“No, I didn’t. It could have been late summer. But it was hard to tell. You mean ...?”

“The escape from the Valley of the Ice People, yes. The little window would have been loaded on the back of a horse.”

Nataniel immediately understood what he was getting at. “Which explains why you are only able to see the picture in a corner of the pane. That was all that protruded from the horse’s pack.”

“Was it Sol you saw?” Mali wondered. “Or Silje? Or little Liv?”

“No, no, none of them. If anything, it would most likely have been Sol, for she was as dark as the night, but she would only have been six years old back then so it doesn’t add up. The girl I saw must have been at least ten years older.”

Mali summarized: “So someone, a slender young girl, was appealing to them for help as they fled from the valley up towards the pass between the mountain peaks.”

“My impression was that it was an elevated mountain moor, yes,” Nataniel confirmed.

“And the intensity of her gaze was so strong that it became imprinted on the window pane ...”

“But they didn’t see her,” André added.

“Should we conjure Tengel the Good and ask him?” Mali wanted to know.

Nataniel had been silent. “No,” he said quietly. “No, they probably didn’t see her. They couldn’t see her. But I would like to conjure someone else ...”

“Yes,” said André, who was beginning to get an idea of whom he was referring to. “Do it, Nataniel, you have the power to do it!”

“And if it’s wrong? And she never appears again?”

“Can you draw the face you saw?”

Nataniel grew shy. “I’m not an artist like Silje, it would be a disaster.”

“Summon them,” said Mali gently. “Or I think they might get upset. We will have to prepare them for a possible disappointment.”

Nataniel nodded. He was able to summon any spirit he wanted without having to go through Tengel the Good first, yet still that was exactly what he decided to do.

When they had told Tengel what they intended to do he immediately grew interested. “We never saw her,” he confirmed to them. “But your theory is good. And interesting! Let’s try. I’ll ask them to come!”

And the next moment Dida and Targenor were there, and it was getting cramped in the tiny hall.

“Perhaps André and I should leave?” asked Mali.

“No, no,” said Tengel the Good, “There’s room enough.”

Nataniel greeted Dida and Targenor and explained to them what he had seen, that Benedikte and Ulvhedin had also seen something, but something hazy, and then Tengel the Good recalled that he, too, had caught a glimpse of something in the window but that he, like the others, had thought it had been the unevenness of the window pane that had created an optical illusion when they walked by it.

And they put forward their conclusion.

Dida’s and Targenor’s faces looked as though they had been carved in stone.

“We may have been mistaken,” said Nataniel.

“I understand,” said Dida. “We’re prepared for that.”

“So you give us permission to try to bring the image forth again?”

“You must,” said Targenor, his distinguished face completely pale.

“And if we don’t succeed?”

“We’ll try again!”

Nataniel took a deep breath and walked over to Benedikt’s little window. The others followed him. Tengel the Good was still with them, but he yielded the best observation spots to Dida and Targenor.

A hand took hold of Nataniel’s and squeezed it in excitement. He thought it was Mali’s but to his great surprise he discovered it was Dida’s. A spirit’s hand! So concrete, and as hard as iron. She clearly hadn’t noticed what she was doing, she was entirely focused on the window.

“There!” Targenor gasped suddenly. “I saw something!”

“Me too,” said Dida in a dead tone. “But it was just a flicker, a glimpse of ... Well, it could have been just about anything.”

“Yes,” said Targenor.

“Perhaps if we all concentrate on getting the image to come back, we might succeed,” said Nataniel.

It grew quiet. They were all concentrating so intensely that Nataniel could almost hear the wheels turning.

André’s and Mali’s concentration didn’t make much difference, but they certainly wished just as intensely as the others that the image would re-emerge.

No one thought about time anymore, whether it was seconds or minutes that were passing.

Then it flickered once more and they all started.

“A face,” said Tengel the Good. “I saw it.”

No one said anything. The silence was dense.

All at once everyone shouted again. The pleading woman’s face that Nataniel had described emerged again. So movingly helpless. So terribly lonely. For a split second it had been there, and then it was gone. But it had been enough.

Dida shouted out loud. Heart-wrenchingly.

“Tiili! It is Tiili!”

“My beloved little sister,” whispered Targenor. “Oh, come back, come back!”

“That won’t work,” said Tengel. “It’s so terribly long ago that her image was caught in the painted glass.”

Tengel’s voice was full of sorrow. “Her spirit sought help from me and Silje the day we fled across the mountain moors. We must have got frightfully close to the spot from which she disappeared three centuries earlier.”

“We’ll have to change our whole plan of action,” said Targenor curtly as they reluctantly left the hall. Dida was still standing near the window, her finely formed fingers gliding across the glass pane as though she was trying to pull her daughter back towards her.

“How would you like us to do it?” Nataniel asked Targenor.

“I’ll have to summon what we refer to as the general staff. With the Paladins and all the Taran-gais that belonged there. But leave that to me and Tengel. You chosen ones should proceed as planned, you are to take the clear water to the valley. And you, Nataniel, must get going immediately.”

“Yes,” said Tengel the Good. “I was actually on my way to warn you when you summoned me. I haven’t yet told you what my errand is.”

“What is it? Has something happened?” Nataniel asked anxiously.

“Yes, Marco is about to enter a fatal trap. “

“What? Marco? He ought to know better!”

“Well, trap might not have been the right word. It is probably due more to coincidence than anything else.”

Nataniel made an impatient gesture of powerlessness. “And I have no car! Marco and the others had to take it.”

Tengel’s face was expressionless. “You don’t have a car under any circumstances, I can tell you.”

“What? Have they wrecked it?”

“If that’s how you choose to put it, then yes, that’s what they’ve done.”

“But how I am to get there? By train, or plane?”

“You won’t be able to make it in time that way,” said Targenor. “They are already facing the catastrophe.”

“They? How many of them? And where?”

“Marco, Tova, Morahan, Gabriel, Rune and Halkatla. They have reunited. In the Udgård Mountains. It’s a terrible region. But ...”

Targenor smiled dryly. “I once transported my protegé Vetle from Europe’s battlefield back home faster than the wind. I could take you to the others.”

“No,” said Tengel. “We need you in the Supreme Council if we are to devise a new strategy. I suggest that Nataniel, who is authorized to do so, summons one of the wolves of the black angels.”

Targenor nodded. “It’ll go even faster.”

“Can I really do that?” Nataniel wondered.

“This is a crisis,” Tengel the Good responded. “Take with you what you need and go out into the avenue where you can call on it.”

Nataniel liked the suggestion. “Things are coming to a head now. Will we see each other in the Valley of the Ice People?”

“We will,” said Targenor calmly. “Now we’re going to mobilize everyone we can who can possibly partake in the battle.”

“All our combat units,” said Nataniel.