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By Root 2148 0

inconvenience these days, when there were so few men about every steading to keep up with the work. There had been a time when the Thing lasted seven days, or more, with all the laws and all the cases, but now it seemed as though as soon as a man had put up his booth, it was time to take it down again, and so folk talked about this all fall and all winter, and no move was made, by Sira Eindridi or anyone else, to replace the lawspeaker. Though no one knew all of the laws, did not everyone know, in a general way, what was to be expected of one another? And if they did not, then Sira Eindridi might be consulted, since folk had to go to Gardar anyway. And now some of the older folk remembered the time of the bishop and of Sira Jon, when hardly anyone had gone to the Thing at all. Such times come and go, they said. Men will always find a way to govern themselves. And so the winter passed, and the spring came on, and with it the spring seal hunt, and nothing was decided, except that when the Thing should be held again, it should not be held at Brattahlid, but at Gardar, as it had been, but no Thing was held in this year, though a few men showed up at Gardar during the regular Thing time, and spoke to Sira Eindridi Andresson about their concerns, and he advised them, and also consulted with Larus the Prophet, who had cast off Ashild and little Tota, and lived celibately at Gardar in the chamber that Sira Audun had once had for himself.

And so for most of the Greenlanders in the year after the great battle at the Brattahlid Thing, a sort of peace descended, for the hunts were prosperous enough, the winter snowy and cold enough for easy travel, the summer warm and moist enough for a good crop of hay in almost every homefield. The sheep went from upper pasture to lower pasture, and the cows from field to byre, and the folk from table to bedcloset to field, from steading to storehouse, from loom to dairy, from snaring ptarmigan to slaughtering sheep, and things had not changed with the burning of Kollgrim Gunnarsson or the killing of Bjorn Bollason.

Only it seemed to Larus the Prophet that they had changed, and changed for the better, if one seeks a way to rid the world of evil, and prepare folk for their imminent meeting with the Lord. It happened that on the feast day of St. Nikolaus, Larus was standing in the cathedral, thinking of little except that his feet were beginning to grow cold on the stone floor. And just as this feeling came to him, he felt the cold of the stones rise through his feet and calves and thighs and trunk, and he knew that behind him there was such a presence as only he was capable of welcoming among the Greenlanders, and he fell to shivering where he stood, but still he could not turn around until he was commanded to do so. Now the cold ran all through him, and he looked up at the riven crucifix and said with his lips, “Lord, let me not run away from Thee,” as he always said in such moments, and then he fell upon the stones of the floor, which was also his habit.

Now a humble man approached him closely, whose robe was of a dark, roughly woven wadmal, and whose face was shaded, so that Larus could not make out his countenance, and the man said, “It is I, Lazarus, who was raised from the dead, who comes before you in this spot, and I come to bring you not light, but darkness, for indeed, Larus, such darkness spreads over this land as no man has ever known in the deepest winter night, even among the cows in the walled-up byre. That darkness is as a blinding light to the darkness I bring to you.” And this Lazarus put his finger upon Larus’ forehead, and a stream of blackness seemed to flow into him, filling every corner of his being.

It was just after the morning meat that these things came to Larus, and after them he lay on the floor of the cathedral, insensible, for most of the day, until two servingmen, who were looking for him, found him there and came near to see what had struck him down. As they approached, he roused himself, and sat up. He put his hands to his face, and his flesh felt doughy and bloodless.