Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 42 - The Calm Before the Storm

The small creep who was born the night after the day of the black sun was cruel right from the beginning, which children aren’t normally. Evil is something you acquire from the milieu you grow up in, along with how you are treated. However, you can have certain bad traits from birth. The child, Tan-ghil, had a lot of evil in his DNA, and the many magical rituals performed when he was conceived and later at his birth didn’t make him any better.”

“Poor little child,” muttered Christa.

“Yes,” said Nataniel. “That’s what I’ve been thinking all this time.”

Rune cast him a sidelong glance, which was difficult to interpret. Then he continued his account:

“Teinosuke and his shaman wife were furious because I hadn’t co-operated but had disappeared on the night the child was conceived. Because I wasn’t present, the child would always lack something in its character ...”

“What?” Nataniel snapped.

“I don’t know,” Rune mumbled, much too fast for anybody to believe him. The audience gathered that this lack had to remain secret for the time being. But why? They couldn’t make sense of it.

Rune hurried on before anybody had time to ask any more questions.

“So in his anger at my ‘uselessness’, by which he meant my defiance, Teinosuke sold me to another man in the clan. My life with this man was more tolerable, but I could no longer keep such a close eye on Tan-ghil.

“Thanks to Nataniel, I’ve now come to know of something that has so far been kept hidden from me. Nataniel witnessed a very important episode in Tan-ghil’s life. I only remember that my master mentioned in a horrified voice that Teinosuke had died. Something terrible had happened to him. Nobody really knew what, but his wife complained loudly for days and nights, covering herself in ash, and afterwards she didn’t speak with anybody for many months. She seemed scared. Scared because she felt that her life was in danger. Now we know why. In a vision, Nataniel saw how young Tan-ghil killed his father, Teinosuke. No wonder his mother was filled with grief, horror and anxiety.

“After the murder of his father, Tan-ghil was freer, and his destructive acts came to the fore. His mother, the shaman woman, no longer had any authority over him. He did just as he wanted. He became a pain and a bother to everybody, not only in the nomad tribe’s winter camp but also when they moved on to find fodder for the yak herd. We mustn’t forget that this tribe was notorious for black magic and was mistrusted by all others who lived on the steppe. You all know that the yak horns were the tribe’s totem, and as time went by, they became such a feared symbol that all other tribes and peoples fled as soon as they appeared. The reason for this anxiety, was, of course, the boy Tan-ghil, who without any qualms would kill anyone who didn’t please him. As time went on, they were many. Others did try to do away with him, but he was like a rat and suspicious of others to the point of paranoia. They never got hold of him. Instead, he would strike at those who tried to kill him.

“This was a horrible time, which I prefer not to remember. When Tan-ghil was so big that he no longer needed his mother, he also got rid of her, simply and without feeling. He was no tribe leader; my current master ruled by virtue of me. Tan-ghil wasn’t interested in leadership because it called for too much responsibility, too much consideration for others. Instead, he would keep to himself and yet he had absolute power within the clan. He scared everybody to death. He got many young people to join in his evil deeds, teaching them to become shamans because his mother had been careless and taught him shamanism. However, all the good, small miracles that a shaman ought to be able to master, he rejected with absolute contempt, and his disciples were taught only mean acts. This was how evil spread through the camp.

“There was nothing I could do,” Rune said pensively, sitting there in deep thought. Everybody looked at his strange face and discovered that now he really resembled the Ice People’s mandrake that they had known for centuries. It had never been famous for its good looks. Everybody had found its face, head and appearance shockingly awful. Rune wasn’t any better looking.

In his strained, creaking voice, he continued: “I no longer belonged to Tan-ghil’s family. So, completely powerless, I witnessed what happened within the tribe and how all the mental brutalization spread.

“Then the rumours about the cruel nomad tribe reached the resident population, and their central authority – if you could speak of something like that in those deserted and extensive steppes. A troop of horsemen was sent to put a stop to all the talk about shamans and witches and wizards of the worst kind. But they not only had to stop all the gossip. They were also ordered to wipe out the entire tribe.

“I sensed that something dangerous was about to happen. So I made my master believe that they all had to flee. It was at the very last minute, but they managed to get away in time, taking all their belongings with them on their journey northwest.

“The walk was horrendous; I don’t want to think of it. There was so much suffering and so much renunciation. Everybody feared the person we had brought with us: Tan-ghil. They would probably never get rid of him. By now, he was a young man, cunning and evil but handsomer than anybody I had seen before. Despite the fact that he never mixed with the others, he dominated them completely.

“As time went on, he had come to realize that I was useful to him. And so he wanted to possess me. But I could only be bought, and my master wouldn’t sell me. In my master’s family, everybody survived the harsh walk and they were never in need of anything. Tan-ghil tried many times to kill him so that he could get hold of me, but I always protected him. Besides, if I were stolen, I would be valueless. Finally, Tan-ghil gave up and waited until my master had to sell me – before he died.

“But before that, Tan-ghil experienced something incredible.”

“Exactly,” Nataniel said. “The sources.”

“Yes,” said Rune, looking at him. “Now we’re arriving at the sources.”

Chapter 2

While everybody listened carefully, Rune said: “What remained of the small flock arrived in Taran-gai, the Land of the Red Snow. This mountainous region was ideal for the tribe from the east. It was wild and inhospitable to look at, but the pine forest there provided a shield against the storms.”

“I remember that forest very well indeed,” said Vendel Grip. “It was beautiful.”

Daniel joined in: “Yes. But there was already a tribe there when you came, wasn’t there?”

Rune smiled. “Yes, I think so. We must ask Shira to tell us about that.”

Shira stood up. “Yes, it was AginaharijaR who told me about them when I reached the final gate to the source of the clear water. He and his crew had sailed there from the west. They suffered for many years because in those days there was no forest, no vegetation. Then a wild tribe came from the east – not your group, Rune, this was much earlier. That particular tribe brought their religion with them, and their seven gods settled on the Mountain of the Four Winds out in the sea. They built the grotto as the source of life for the consolation of human beings.

“But Sharma, the spirit of stone, also resided on the island, and he forced the gods to create a counterpart to the source of pure water. AginaharijaR succeeded in reaching the source of goodness and by means of the water from it he created the forest and endowed the sparse vegetation with fertility. He and Techin Khan also spoke about the very few that remained of your people, Rune. At the time, only very few of the old tribe were left in Taran-gai. But the new tribe, the one that was later to become the Ice People, adopted the religion that reigned in the country. With the seven gods and the spirits and Shama.”