Suddenly, where the woman had stood, there was only clean snow. Lars-Goren and Bishop Brask stood staring, their blue lips parted. Then, without speaking, they turned back to their horses. When they were mounted again, and moving northward into the blinding light, Bishop Brask said: “Very well, we’ve learned this much. The Devil is mere stench and black air, and the evil is life itself”
Lars-Goren said nothing, staring straight ahead into the whiteness. “Yes,” he thought, “my wife was right as usual. It was rage that made me tremble; fear that the chaos is in myself, as in everything around me.”
Abruptly, he stopped his horse and stared blankly into the light. Bishop Brask stopped a step or two later and waited. Lars-Goren said, “I ordered her to judgment — ordered her there with my ironclad fist raised, prepared to strike.”
The bishop nodded.
“The strange thing is,” Lars-Goren said, “that she vanished. Where did she go?”
“No doubt we’ll find out when we’re dead,” said Bishop Brask.
“No doubt?” Lars-Goren echoed. “No doubt, Bishop?”
“Don’t make too much of it,” said the bishop, “it was merely an expression.”
Lars-Goren said nothing, but started up again, bending his head against the wind.
“It was merely one of those things people say,” Bishop Brask insisted, “mere habitual language. That’s the chief source of our illusions, surely. Habitual language. What we have words for, we imagine exists. We walk all our lives through a mad dream constructed of language. We invent the word love, and from then on we moan and sigh over love. Who knows if it exists or has the slightest significance in nature?” He winced, a pain worse than most shooting up in him. “We invent the word pain” he said, smiling grimly. Lars-Goren rode lost in thought. The bishop grew more testy.
He shook his head, riding cocked sidewards against the pain shooting through him like needles of ice. “Ah yes,” said the bishop, as if speaking to himself or some invisible observer, “his lordship does not choose to speak with us. And why should he, of course? He knows better than his peasants and commands them, even when they’re dead, as he would order little children around — only for their good. Why not the same with a bishop? There’s no authority in the world but the wisdom of a man’s own heart — that’s the ultimate wisdom, these days. ‘I make you your own priest,’ as Virgil tells that foul, cranky Lutheran Dante. Have no fear, Hans Brask! Lars-Goren will take care of you! It is the great modern Christian mystery: each man is the ultimate judge of the world, and it’s the duty of all other men to bow humbly and accept each man’s judgment or pay through the nose. Confusing? When were the holy mysteries not confusing?”
Abruptly, severely compressing his lips, Bishop Brask reined up his horse and stopped. Lars-Goren stopped too and looked at him, grimly waiting. “As you see,” Bishop Brask said crossly, bowing to Lars-Goren, “I’ve stopped. I go no further. This is the place I choose for turning myself to an equestrian statue made of ice.” Mockingly, angrily, he struck a noble pose.
“Don’t be a fool,” Lars-Goren said. “Keep me company. We’ll ride on a ways and freeze together.”
“No,” said Bishop Brask. He knew well enough that he was behaving like a petulant child. For a man accustomed to respect it was a queer situation, and if he could have thought of a way to seize the mastery he would have done so. Then he’d have ridden on. But he could think of no way, and he was willing to put up with the indignity, since he seemed to have no choice. As a matter of fact, it was pleasant, in a way, to play a role more or less new to him. “Old peasant women dead or alive, you rule by force,” he said. “Me you try to rule by charm.” He mimicked Lars-Goren’s tone: “‘We’ll freeze together.’ Well, no, that’s my answer. I’ll freeze when and where I choose.”
“Ah, Brask, what a difficult man you are,” Lars-Goren said, softly yet bitterly. “Shall I reason with you, now that I have your attention? Is that what you want?”
In spite of himself, Hans Brask opened his mouth in mock dismay and put the spurs to his horse. Grimly, Lars-Goren laughed.
In the whiteness all around them there were now vague shapes. At first they seemed swirls of dark snow, perhaps trees. As they circled nearer, he made out that they were Lapps and reindeer.
8.
IN HIS TENT OF SKINS, the magician sat tapping on the drum with the tips of his fingers. There was no one else in the tent except the child, kneeling beside the drum, black-eyed and beaver-faced, like the magician, watching intently as the three stones danced on the drumhead. One stone was black, the second stone was white, the third was gray. All three had been formed in a reindeer’s stomach. Lokk, lokk, lokk, sang the magician. His voice made hardly any sound. On the drumhead there were lines, most noticeably one running from east to west, painted in reindeer blood. Two stones, the black and the gray, were on the west side; the white was on the east. In the silence of Lappland, far north of Jokkmokk, the gentle tapping of the magician’s fingers was like thunder.
In Stockholm, King Gustav sat writing at his desk. He was ordering the execution of his enemies, real and imagined. He wrote with his tongue between his teeth, his eyes full of light. Whereas I, King Gustav, took this throne to make peace and bring harmony to my people …
Lars-Goren and Hans Brask lay asleep in a house made of reindeer skin and bone. There were shelves, chairs, tables, all of reindeer parts. Sometimes one of the Lapps came in, moving in perfect silence, with black, wide eyes. Sometimes a reindeer paused outside the door, listening with lifted ears, dark eyes empty. Lars-Goren, sleeping, dreamed that the Devil came and seized his shoulder, shaking him awake.
“Lars-Goren,” the Devil said, “I know what your mission is, and I’ve come to reason with you.” The Devil’s eyes were wide with alarm.
“Very well,” Lars-Goren said, holding his breath.
The Devil opened his hands like a man pleading innocence. “You want to kill me,” he said. “I ask you, what justice is there in that? What harm do I do? Do I exist at all, in fact? The old woman you killed: was that my doing? She was a witch, people say, and so she herself admits. Did I make her a witch? Did I make the people turn against her? Perhaps you will say, ‘Ah ha! Not directly! But you murdered her children!’ Come, come, I answer. Is the Devil bad luck then? Is that what you think? Have you come to destroy bad luck? What makes people strong? What makes horses strong, or trees? Destroy bad luck and you’ll turn the whole world to fat! Oh, it’s true, it’s true, we’d all like bad luck in gentle measure — just enough bad luck to make children brave and strong, never enough to kill them. But what nonsense, my lord! Imagine a world without death in it, without serious pain. A world of mild toothaches. Who’d need a castle in a world like that? Or a church or a museum — even a family. What’s good, with no evil to judge it against? What’s order without chaos? What’s the beauty of a rose in a field of bright red? Bad luck and good, that’s the principle of life itself! I exist insofar as life exists. Rid the world of me and the world will be a barren stone rumbling without purpose through space. It’s the mission of an idiot, this mission you’re on. Not that I blame you. It was Gustav’s idea. He’s a madman, as surely you understand. He began with the best of intentions, of course; but bad luck has overwhelmed him. It’s the usual situation: he failed to get his way — as we all do, we all do! So now he turns on the dearest of his friends like a maniac. Kill him, that’s my advice. You could do it, you know. You could be king yourself. Dalarna will support you. I don’t say it to tempt you — nothing of the kind. I’m slandered on every side: it’s life itself that does the tempting — life and reason. What good is Sweden in the hands of a maniac? I don’t say kill him to advance yourself. Kill him for the sake of justice, and pray for the best — for yourself, I mean: pray that you prove luckier than he was. It’s only a suggestion, you understand. To me it’s a matter of complete indifference, I assure you. The fit will survive; that’s the world’s only law. The fit—” He broke off, his eyes grown suddenly vague, as if he’d lost his train of thought. Lars-Goren raised his head from the pillow of skins, struggling to see deeper into the Devil’s mind, and by moving wakened himself. The Devil disappeared. The house was cold and silent.