The ground was trembling lightly underneath their feet.
Then it grew quiet.
For a long time.
“Something has happened,” said Ian dryly.
They waited.
Tova’s gaze met that of a demon. The bright, expectant look that had crossed the demon’s face at the sound they had just heard made a chill go down her spine.
Doesn’t anyone see the danger? she wondered mutely.
But I can’t say anything. All I can do is be sad, and scared!
“Let’s go on,” said Marco faintly.
They walked in silence, determinedly, obstinately, prepared to encounter problems.
“The day is dawning,” said Tamlin.
“Well, there’s still a way to go,” said Tova. “But it is going in the right direction.”
“Look!” said Gabriel, who stood bent over the unhealthy-looking brook. “Look at the water!”
Everyone went over. Without having to be told, they knew what he was referring to. They could see that the brook no longer had the sick colour it had once had. It wasn’t clean but was much better than it had been.
“Well, what do you know?” said Tova. “Dare we interpret it as a good sign?”
“I think we should,” said Marco calmly, though they could hear the hesitation in his voice.
They fought their way up the last steep hill. They were just at the periphery of the snowstorm, which seemed closer the higher up you looked.
Everyone stopped, touched and bewildered at what they saw now. The light of dawn made it easier for them to see a small bird sitting on a rock in the brook drinking the water. The banks were ruined, of course, and their colours were sick-looking, but the water was crystal clear!
Tova and Ian looked at one another, broad smiles spreading across their faces.
But Ellen knelt slowly down and touched the cold, suffering earth that Tan-ghil’s black water had so contaminated.
“Look!” she whispered. “Look!”
The others bent down. They had to lean rather far down in order to see anything.
“Grass,” Ian whispered. “Tiny shoots!”
Everyone sighed slowly. Marco put words to their thoughts. “That can mean only one thing,” he concluded. “Nataniel and Shira have survived.”
At that very moment they heard distant, shrill screams from the mountaintops.
They looked at each other for a long time.
“Only Tan-ghil screams like that,” Tova muttered.
“Come! We have to go up there,” said Marco.
“But how?”
They looked around at the crevices.
“Among the standing stones,” said Villemo.
“Yes, that’s the best solution.”
A deathly scream that resounded through the mountains made them stop for a moment. The scream vibrated in the air, spreading like ripples in water further and further and further out. Never before had they heard such a wild, powerlessly furious scream: the sound went right through them, while the memory of it lived on in them.
Then they rushed upwards. The demons flew ahead of them, led by Typhoon, accompanied by many eager orders and suggestions from those among them who couldn’t move that easily.
The climb turned out to be rather difficult. The humans had to struggle for a long time, tried other routes, waited for each other, helped each other.
And time passed.
Nataniel, Nataniel, many of them quietly whispered to themselves. A painful feeling of impatience and an even worse sense of helplessness gripped them.
The demons returned.
“Only a big glacier,” Typhoon reported to Marco. “We saw a small depression in the valley with green grass and flowers right next to a massive mountain wall, but there was no one there.”
“What could that mean?” Marco interrupted him. “It would seem that Shira’s clear water was sprinkled there. But ...”
He gestured with his hands to show he didn’t understand
“We didn’t understand a thing, either,” said Typhoon. “Especially because there was nothing but snowdrifts, it was white everywhere.”
“There was nothing to see?”
“Nothing.”
They looked at one another. They lost their courage. How were they to search if there was nowhere to search and nothing to search for?
Ellen started to weep silently. Bitter tears of disappointment.
But none of them could avoid noticing the great sense of relief that emanated from the ground. Gabriel afterwards said that it was as if a huge giant had let out a slow, satisfied sigh under their feet.
Tan-ghil, the curse and fright of the whole world, was gone.
Chapter 4
Then they reached the top. Right before them lay the wide expanse where the wind whispered and whistled so sadly.
From where they stood they couldn’t see the little depression in the valley that Typhoon had mentioned. All they could see was the glacier, mighty and white.
The snowstorm had subsided considerably, which improved the visibility. But there was nothing to actually break the whiteness: the glacier seemed to merge with the sky, for the mountains on the opposite side were not visible.
They felt pathetically small and very sad.
“Take us to the flowery valley,” said Marco tiredly to Typhoon. “That’s the only thing we have left to go on.”
“I would be more than happy to do so. But we’ve already searched there. And below the ice sheet. We found nothing.”
Discouraged, they began to cross the ice.
“Do you think Nataniel has stayed inside the mountain?” Tova asked Marco in a very low voice so that Ellen wouldn’t hear.
“I’m afraid so,” he answered, just as quietly. “In which case it has completely closed around him. But then I don’t understand how he managed to defeat Tengel the Evil. Out here!”
“Shira might have done it,” said Tova, which wasn’t much consolation.
“Look!” Halkatla shouted. “Look up there! What is it?”
They could just discern some dark clouds approaching the snowy air. The shadows grew bigger and bigger. The group stood motionless just staring at them.
“Black angels,” whispered Gabriel. “And so many of them! Help!”
“All twenty, I think,” said Trond.
No one had had a chance to say another word before the gigantic creatures landed on the ice before them. Everyone greeted one another politely, for that sort of thing didn’t happen every day, especially not for the Ice People – that much they understood. They waited to see what the next move would be from the new arrivals.
One of the tall, black-winged men bowed deeply before Marco and said: “The valley is free, we can travel in it once more. All of you, and the chosen one in particular, have pleased our master greatly. Don’t ask any questions,