C1 Chapter 1

Tiili’s story.

It was like no other story in the world. It was unique in all of world history.

Fortunately. Because no one had been hit harder by Tan-ghil’s malice than little Tiili.

She was a sensitive and cheerful girl in the year 1284 in the Valley of the Ice People. She lived happily at home with her mother, Dida, and her twin brother, Targenor. She was particularly fond of animals; she felt great sympathy for those defenceless creatures who were so often made to suffer. During any frosty, harsh winter you could be sure to see Tiili walking about setting out whatever pitiful fodder she had managed to gather for both domestic and wild animals. The people of the valley smiled at her, but it was a tender smile. Someone like Tiili could never have any enemies.

She did have one, however ... But she also had a protector.

She had a strange doll. It looked almost like a small tree root, but to her it was like a friend, almost a living friend. The hardship and poverty that beset the Valley of the Ice People never really touched her home after she got that doll.

Her world stretched exactly as far as the eye could see. A bowl-shaped valley with tall, steep mountains, wonderfully beautiful in the summer and autumn, and sometimes also in winter and spring when the sun shone down on the bright snow. And she knew all the stars in the sky: they were her guardians, she felt, they twinkled so pleasantly down at her.

She had many friends and knew nothing about life outside the valley.

There was only one shadow to be found in the bowl-shaped valley. An unpleasant old man named Tan-ghil. He lived alone in a hut down by the lake. Everyone feared him. So did Tiili. And Dida, her mother, hated that man with all the force that was humanly possible.

Tiili didn’t know why. She didn’t know that Dida had been raped by him almost twenty years before. She didn’t know that Tan-ghil was Dida’s own grandfather. And that the same Tan-ghil was also the father of Tiili herself and Targenor. Dida had sworn that her children were never to learn about it.

No one knew that Tan-ghil now had his eye on Tiili.

Ugh! How she feared him! He could perform magic, it was said. With a single spell he had managed to freeze people in the ice or burn them into the mountain wall if they tried to escape the valley. He had put a curse of death on all those who had accidentally harmed him, even in a trivial matter like getting in his way walking along the path.

He was immortal, they whispered. But Tiili didn’t believe that.

Her mother and brother loved her immensely. Precisely for that reason, she was kept on a tight leash and they always kept a close eye on her. Nothing must ever happen to her.

Nevertheless, something did happen.

One day some children got hold of her wooden doll. Tiili didn’t know that it was Tan-ghil the Evil, the old man who lived in the scary house, who had tricked the children into doing it. Precisely to force Tiili, “the little flower”, out of the house, as well as getting rid of the doll that protected her and had prevented Tan-ghil from getting his hands on her.

She set out for the children’s house. But she never got there. She disappeared somewhere along that short road and was never recovered during Dida’s brief lifetime.

At the same time that Tiili disappeared, Tan-ghil did as well. But he returned after thirty days. Secretive and satisfied, maliciously triumphant.

Only Tiili knew what had happened.

She had been walking along the path between the houses. At one point the view was blocked by tall cliffs.

That’s where the abhorrent little old man was standing.

Tiili stopped abruptly and wanted to turn around and run back home. But Tan-ghil did something to her. He made a small gesture with his hand and muttered a few words, while his piercing yellow eyes gave her a look that paralysed her.

She was unable to move from the spot where she was standing.

He came closer. Tiili had turned pale with fear and couldn’t take her eyes off his nasty face. All he had left on his head were a few streaming wisps of hair, growing from leathery grey skin. His mouth resembled the wide gape of a newly hatched eaglet. His eyes were misty and surrounded by wrinkled skin.

“You were created for this purpose,” he said in his atrocious voice that was slippery and drawling but hoarse at the same time. “You are coming with me now!”

Tiili wanted to refuse, wanted to shout for help, but he had cast a magic spell on her tongue and she couldn’t utter a single sound.

“Follow me,” said the horrible voice, as though objecting would have been inconceivable.

And it was. Tiili had to walk in front of the little figure for she no longer had a will of her own. Her soul was shouting for help from Dida and Targenor, but they didn’t hear her mute calls.

He hurried her along, afraid that someone might see them. They had taken a cattle track that she was familiar with – it led up to the heights.

Every now and then he would nudge at her to indicate what direction she was to go in or to get her to move faster, but Tiili couldn’t stand him touching her. She would give a great start and try to shout for help again but to no avail. Tan-ghil got angry because she was so reluctant and sputtered long tirades of words she didn’t comprehend. But at one point she thought she heard him say, “I have planted ... now I’m going to reap ...”

It sounded unpleasant, she thought, even though the words didn’t really mean anything to her.

The tears streamed down her face. She was as frightened as anyone could be, and they were moving further and further away from any other people. If only they could meet someone here on the path! A hunter or someone herding their cattle.

But no, no one came.

Tiili grew tired because he was pushing her hard, but he didn’t seem to be getting tired at all. She stumbled along the steep path. My lovely tunic, she thought in despair. Mother sewed it from small pieces of leather; it took her a long time.

Her long, wide trousers, tight around the ankles, were badly torn by the juniper bushes.

What will Mother say? she thought, desperately holding back her tears.

Every time Tiili fell, Tan-ghil would grow impatient and hiss malicious words at her. She would quickly get back on her feet for she didn’t want that abominable creature close to her again.

Tiili didn’t consider the fact that he wasn’t carrying his jar with him, for she knew very little about that. Tan-ghil had already visited its future hiding place and explored the area. All that was left now were the last thirty days of the ritual.

He looked at his captive and smiled with great anticipation. Tiili noticed that smile.

“Mother! Targenor! Help me!”

In the twilight her evil captor came to a halt. By now she was so out of breath after the hard walk up there, and her throat was so sore from all the sobbing she had done, that she was wheezing.

Tiili lifted her tear-filled gaze and saw two almost identical mountaintops above her. They looked threatening, she thought, but it was no wonder in that particularly terrible situation. With darkness falling, the horrible creature behind her, the uncertainty, the fear ...

Targenor had always been there to protect her. But he knew nothing about this. Neither did her mother.

Her friends, the stars, lit up the sky. But on that evening they seemed dead and inaccessible, as though they had retreated in disgust and horror at her escort.

Tiili felt hopelessly alone and unprotected.

And frightened beyond all reason.

Tan-ghil gave a hoarse bird-like shriek directed at the ground before them. The mountain echoed back the scream.

Tiili shuddered and sobbed in the stillness that followed.

Then ...

Could she believe her eyes ...?

Out of the sloping ground emerged tall, dark men wearing monks’ habits. Beautiful creatures with furtive eyes. She almost lost consciousness from sheer shock. Only hazily did she register that Tan-ghil spoke to them in a guttural foreign language and that they gave him smirking smiles in response.

Then they began to approach her ...

The unfeigned desire in their eyes ... the jagged teeth that became visible as their smiles grew wider ...

She let out a trembling gasp. Was scared out of her wits.

But Tan-ghil stopped them. He held his hand up towards them, shouting in a shrill voice long, menacing diatribes of which she didn’t understand a word. But the message was clear. She was his sacrificial lamb, so hands off!

Tiili found both alternatives equally horrific.

What did he want with her? She couldn’t understand it. What had she ever done to him?

Mother! Targenor! Help me out of this! I’m begging you! Help me!

Tan-ghil had put the men in their place. They stood motionless as though he had tied them up with invisible chains.

Then he started chanting.

He was actually conjuring up something, but Tiili couldn’t tell the difference.

Out of nowhere new figures emerged. On a small prominence just below the two sheer mountain peaks sat three unpleasant-looking men with big, flat drums on their crossed legs.

How horrible they looked! They resembled caricatures of the oldest inhabitants of the Valley of the Ice People, the ones who had come with Tiili’s relatives from the country in the east, from Taran-gai. She knew that there had been shamans there, but that they were so awful to look at she would never have guessed.

Tiili was looking at Winter Sorrow, Kat and Kat-ghil. Tan-ghil’s own descendants. So it wasn’t so strange that they looked frightening.

The horrible little creature gave them a signal. Then he turned to Tiili with a satisfied and expectant look in his eyes.

Never had she seen anything as atrocious as that smile!

It became too much for her.

She let out a pitiful whimper, then spun around and tried to run away.

But Tan-ghil’s controlling magical powers were too strong. He stopped her with a movement of his hand, and then all she could see were his horrible eyes. She felt a great dizziness come over her as everything started to spin round and round and the only things she could see that weren’t moving at all were his yellow eyes.

When he saw that he had her in his power he turned back to the three shamans. At a given signal they started pounding on their drums, rhythmically and very heavily at first. So that the roaring sounds echoed against the mountain walls.

The group of men in monks’ habits stood quietly waiting.

Tan-ghil turned to Tiili again.

“Dance,” he said with his snake-like, slippery voice, hissing and drawling. “I know that woman has taught you the ancient dances of the tribe. So get started! Dance!”

“That woman?” He was referring to her beloved mother, Dida. She had wanted to preserve the old culture from the east, and since Tiili was so graceful and loved to dance, the lessons had just been for fun.

And Tan-ghil the Evil had been secretly observing them!

It hurt to think of it.

Tiili had no wish to obey that creep. But she no longer had a will of her own. Furthermore, the sounds of the drum were so magnetic that she couldn’t have resisted them even if she had wanted to. The rhythm had become more powerful and rapid and the shamans had also begun to sing. If you could call their monotonous, fluctuating chanting singing, that is.

“Dance!” Tan-ghil hissed.

Her feet moved of their own accord. As she fell into the rhythm of the music with the short, stomping steps she had learned she saw something else from the corner of her eye: all around the shamans, strange transparent creatures began to twist and slither in the air, creeping closer and closer to her only to draw back again.

Tiili knew nothing about Kat’s and Kat-ghil’s own spirits, which constantly followed them. She just grew scared but couldn’t do anything about it. She was caught in a hypnotic rhythm, moving in a trance with frightened eyes and tears streaming down her cheeks.

The drumming grew faster and faster. She heard excited moans from the beautiful, black-clad men; they could barely stand still. Had Tan-ghil’s willpower not held them back they would have hurled themselves upon her at that very moment, Tiili could sense that now. There was a horrible stench in that little glade, like the strong, oppressive stench of goats on heat, and from the look in Tan-ghil’s eyes it was clear that he too was affected by her. He was also breathing more heavily, she sensed.

She understood that it was the shamans’ song that was influencing everything that happened. Exactly what it contained she didn’t want to know but she sensed that it was what she had heard about as a child. About rituals from the old country in the east, about virgins sacrificed in the presence of the oldest members of the tribe – how their juices were rekindled at the sight of the virgin dancing the dance of death. And she cried from despair. But there was nothing she could do.

The beautiful pale men were much worse than any village elder. They were potent erotic creatures themselves, that much she understood. And now they were excited to the point of bursting and couldn’t move from where they were standing. They did nasty things right before her eyes, so she was forced to look in all other directions. But they were practically standing in a circle around her and the dance was whirling her round and round, so she had to close her eyes to escape the sight.

Tan-ghil’s eyes glowed with triumph as they observed her fixedly. But there was more than just triumph in them. Tiili was disgusted by their expression, which seemed worse to her than the most atrocious form of loathing. She shut her eyes tightly but it was hard because the ground was uneven and she kept falling over small mounds. She had to keep her eyes open to see where she was stepping.

Naturally, she began to get tired. After the hard climb up the mountain it felt inhumane to have to dance ceaselessly in this way – merciless.

Let me go, she thought quietly to herself. But she didn’t dare say it out loud.

The tempo grew increasingly wild, and the shamans’ song grew to a shout. The pale men were practically howling with excitement, but Tan-ghil merely commanded her, “Faster, faster!”

She knew she was going to die. This was the sacrificial dance. She didn’t know why or what gods would be involved, but this was her fateful hour, there was no doubt about that.

Kill me! she thought. Have pity on me! Kill me!

But when had Tan-ghil ever taken pity on anyone?

Semi-conscious, she sensed her clothes being torn off her.

“No!” she whispered pleadingly.

No one heard her prayer of despair.

Suddenly a great boom could be heard. Tiili opened her eyes and saw an opening appearing in the cliff wall.

I’m the one causing that, she realized with surprise. The drums, the singing, the dancing ... It is a magical ritual that is taking place right now.

So perhaps ... I won’t die after all? If this is the result, what do they need my death for?

A small hope had awakened within her. But she was too tired to hope much more.

To die would be acceptable, she thought. It would be better than ending up in the hands of these horrible men. The pale men and worst of all, Tan-ghil. I don’t know what they intend to do, but they won’t be allowed to touch me, they won’t! I’d much rather die!

Her lungs couldn’t take much more. Her steps had long ago grown unsure and wavering. Her heart was pounding much too heavily.

They tore off the rest of her clothes.

They screamed and writhed to be released and get to her. But Tan-ghil held them back.

She was his prey.

Her dizziness got the better of her. She couldn’t breathe anymore. Couldn’t move. Her legs gave way under her just as the opening of the door into the mountain was accomplished.

Tiili collapsed with a whimper. Her very last, deeply unhappy thought was of her mother.