LITMIR.BIZ

      This is what the legend says. Nobody knows whether it is true, but in the 16th century, a cursed child of the Ice People was born. He tried to turn evil into good, which is why they called him Tengel the Good. This legend is about his family. Actually, it is mostly about the women in his family – the women who held the fate of the Ice People in their hands.

      Chapter 1

      The blackest day in the history of the Ice People. You would have to give that designation to 8 May 1960. They had undeniably had their share of bleak moments through the centuries. On that day, however, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

      The entire proud expedition to the Valley of the Ice People had failed at the halfway point. Tengel the Evil had proved stronger than they had anticipated. It was his fear of their reaching the Valley that lay behind all the misery.

      Little Gabriel, the only child of Karine and Joakim, lay senseless on an inaccessible ridge above the Gudbrandsdals River. And the cliff, the bare rock, gave him no protection. This was Shama’s territory.

      The wonderful Marco, in whom everyone put all their trust, had fallen into the river in his attempt to save the child. A helper of Tengel the Evil had cut the rope that Marco had been using.

      Ellen was gone: for just as Nataniel had predicted, one of them would have to pay with their life and perhaps even drag the other one down with them if they gave in to their feelings. That was what he had seen in the flash of a painful vision the first time they met.

      And Nataniel himself had been badly hurt by the grenade that had been thrown at them, though no one knew how badly, least of all himself. In his agonizing state of pain, all he could hear was Linde-Lou’s despairing voice: “Gone! She’s gone into the Great Abyss, the void that the demons fear most of all! The Great Abyss has taken Ellen!”

      And then Nataniel was surrounded by darkness and nothing else.

      The fifth of the chosen ones, Tova, was running for her life into a big forest farther up the valley. She was pursued by unscrupulous men with murder in their eyes: Tengel the Evil’s men. Nevertheless, she still attempted to drag the terminally sick Irishman Ian Morahan along with her, trying to save him from a quick death only to condemn him to a slow and tortuous one, because she wasn’t thinking straight but doing what she thought was an act of compassion.

      It was clear as day that those two didn’t have the slightest chance of getting out of this alive.

      And in the hall of Linden Avenue Tengel the Evil himself had taken on the shape of Per Olav Winger – and Mali had not recognized him.

      The day couldn’t have been darker.

      The local men who had been trying to help rescue Gabriel stood paralysed, staring down into the abyss where Marco had disappeared.

      “He was a brave man,” murmured one of them. “May heaven have mercy on his soul.”

      “We’ll have to search for him farther down the river, of course,” said the doctor. “But he couldn’t have survived that fall. We have to concentrate on the boy.”

      The sheriff, who had been urgently summoned by the doctor, had other things to see to. He and one of his men had gone off to find the knave who had slashed the rope. The farm hands heard a volley of shots from farther into the forest.

      Then the sheriff returned. “He escaped in a vehicle. I’ve sent several men after him but our cars were parked farther away so he had a head start. How’s it going here? Who’s willing to be lowered down this time?”

      There was an embarrassing silence.

      “Naturally we’ll make sure that nothing like that happens again,” added the sheriff quickly. “The rope will be monitored at all times.”

      All the men probably wanted to go down and fetch the boy, but they were frightened by the abyss. They thought of their wives and children at home and hoped that one of the others would volunteer.

      Suddenly a strange figure emerged from the forest. The men said later that they had never seen anything so hideous. A stiff-legged man dressed in brown, who had hair that resembled hemp and sunken eyes. In a creaking voice he asked if he could go down and rescue the boy.

      Everyone gave a sigh of relief and without giving much thought to his peculiar physiognomy they carefully tied a new rope around him.

      “There was another,” said the doctor, “but he fell into the river.”

      Rune nodded, as though he was already aware of it but didn’t seem too concerned about Marco’s fate. Those who had been there from the start found the situation extremely bizarre: first the most handsome man they had ever seen had attempted to save the child, and now by far the ugliest one they had laid eyes on was going to try.

      Slowly

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