The Ice People 46 - The Black Water. Margit Sandemo

concentrated. “I don’t know. It’s so very strange.”

      “Dangerous?”

      “Definitely! But most of all ... strange! Come, let’s go on. It’s ahead of us somewhere.”

      Gabriel still stood there. Then he turned around. “We haven’t heard him for a long time now.”

      “Tan-ghil?” said Marco. “No, not since he plunged down to the moor with his heavy burden on top of him.”

      “Do you think he died?”

      “No, he didn’t. But I hope he was inconvenienced for a while.”

      Then they all dared to smile cautiously. But it was a stiff smile. They weren’t yet so hardened against possible future dangers that they had become foolhardy. So far, they felt a great deal of anxiety in their hearts.

      They crept slowly along between the cliffs that rose from the dead, ancient landscape.

      Suddenly, they all stopped, as Nataniel held up his hand towards them. They had reached an open space between the cliffs. It was full of boulders that had tumbled down from the mountains above, but with some optimism it might be called a plateau, or even a glade.

      “What’s this?” asked Ian quietly.

      “We’ve reached it,” said Nataniel, who shone increasingly blue the closer dusk came. “This is the spot where Sunniva the Elder felt that something was close to her. Something that made her absolutely terrified, so much so that she had to flee from the spot. I feel the same right now – but we aren’t allowed to flee.”

      Gabriel was already feeling that inexplicable anxiety, and he could see that Tova and Marco felt the same. Ian’s face was almost white and he looked about with an expression of terror.

      They all felt the same as Sunniva had once done, and later Tarjei. They all knew with certainty that this was Tengel the Evil’s work.

      But they could see nothing.

      “Can you find anything here, Nataniel?” asked Marco.

      The bluish figure turned slowly towards the mountain wall, which was now quite a distance from them.

      “I believe it’s up there.”

      Marco nodded. They began to walk up the slight slope, and Gabriel was sorry to find that he and Ian were lagging behind the rest.

      Perhaps this was just as well. Neither Gabriel nor Ian had the unseen abilities of the others.

      After a short while, they stopped, slightly confused.

      “I lost the trail,” said Nataniel, frowning. “All of a sudden I no longer felt that I was on the right trail.”

      “Tengel the Evil’s will is leading you astray,” said Tova. “You can be absolutely sure that he knows where we are.”

      “Damn!” Nataniel muttered.

      Marco had been wandering around.

      “Nataniel,” he called softly. “Come and see this!”

      They went over to where Marco stood. He was bending over the ground.

      “Somebody has been here before us,” said Tova, nodding, when she saw the tracks that were visible under the thin layer of snow.

      “Somebody – or something,” said Ian. “They’re so unclear they could be anything. They might not even be tracks.”

      As Nataniel scraped the snow away from one of the tracks, he said slowly: “Ye-s. You can see the direction something has been going in here. But what it is, a person or an animal ... I don’t think anybody can tell.”

      “Anyway, they’re pretty old,” said Tova. “From before the snowfall.”

      “Yes,” replied Marco. “But there are many of them. I believe ... it’s ... not exactly a trail but it can't be one creature that’s walked here just once.”

      “It could be the same creature that has been here several times,” Nataniel said.

      “Yes, or several. Anyway, the main thing is that they’re all heading in the same direction.”

      They looked up. Although the trail was unclear, there was no doubt that it led to the mountain wall.

      “Let’s take a look,” said Marco grimly.

      The dusk was heavy now, but they had grown accustomed to it. They shivered in the cold of the approaching night. The toxic landscape was affecting them. Tova muttered to Gabriel that she was pleased that she wasn’t here alone, and he agreed.

      They had followed the tracks as best they could. Now and then, the marks disappeared completely but they found them again. They led ever closer to the steep heights of the mountain.

      Finally, Tova said in surprise: “The tracks end here!”

      They stopped.

      “Yes, you’re certainly right,” said Nataniel.

      “Amusing,” muttered Tova. “What do we do now? We’re not Shira, who can open a cliff face with Mar’s torch.”

      Nataniel’s hands were working across the surface of the cliff.

      “It seems solid, and much too smooth and irregular in its contours to be able to hide a door.”

      Marco nodded. “You’re right. Abracadabra won’t work here!”

      Then Gabriel said, slightly awkwardly: “The snow.”

      They looked at him enquiringly.

      This made him feel confused. “Well, it snowed recently. Perhaps the snow is hiding something?”

      Marco praised Gabriel: “Very well thought out!”

      Nataniel was already squatting, and began scraping the snow away from the ground in front of the cliff wall.

      After a while, he said: “No.”

      Tova grew excited. “Can’t you see what you’ve done, Nataniel? You’ve uncovered new tracks, and they go on!”

      They followed these diffuse prints along the cliff wall.

      “This is where they stop,” said Ian.

      Nataniel immediately bent down and scraped away the thin layer of snow.

      “Step aside,” he told the others and moved back slightly.

      “What is it?” Marco asked, who hadn’t had a chance to see.

      “You’re treading on something. A flat stone, a hatch or something. We can’t risk that ...”

      Gabriel asked in a tremulous voice: “A burial chamber?”

      “We’ll see.”

      Everybody helped to brush the snow aside. The stone appeared bigger and bigger.

      “This leads to a crypt,” said Tova.

      “Shut up!” muttered Nataniel, with Gabriel in mind. “How was he able to build this? Up here in the wildest wilderness?”

      “Remember that he was out here for a whole month at that time,” said Marco. “Thirty days and thirty nights, wasn’t it? When he hid his vessel of water.”

      “That’s true. Now ... now.”

      They gazed at the stone. It was a rough slab, undoubtedly found nearby. Slate, of which there was plenty in the mountains.

      Gabriel muttered the vital words that were preoccupying them all. “How do you move it?”

      The three men tried to lift the slab, but quite in vain. It was not only heavy but also stuck. They couldn’t move it at all.

      They stood up slowly. They were puzzled.

      Nataniel