Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

Ásgrímsson’s voice was firm.
    ‘We’ll pay well. Very well,’ said Isildur.
    ‘Listen to me,’ said Ásgrímsson, his eyes burning. ‘A man has died because of that stupid saga. Two men, if you include my father. My family kept it a secret for centuries for a reason, a good reason as it turns out. It should still be a secret, and it would have been if I had had my way. But the reason it isn’t is you – your nosing around, your flashing dollars everywhere.’
    He took a step closer to Isildur. ‘You’ve seen what the result is. Professor Agnar Haraldsson is dead! Don’t you feel guilty about that? Don’t you think you should just get the hell out of Iceland and fuck off back to America?’
    ‘Mr Ásgrímsson—’
    ‘Out!’ Pétur was shouting now, his finger pointing to the exit. ‘I said, get out!’
    The pastor was sweating in the unseasonably warm sun. It was a glorious day and he had already walked about seven kilometres. He was in a high valley, uninhabited even by sheep this early in the year. A brook ran down from the snow-covered heath at the head of the valley. All around him snow was melting, trickling, dribbling, seeping over the stones and into the earth. Most of the grass that had been revealed in the last few days was yellow, but by the side of the brook there was a patch of rich green shoots. Spring. New nourishment for this barren land.
    All around birds chirped and warbled in the sunshine.
    He took a deep breath. He remembered when he had first come to this valley, as the newly arrived pastor of Hruni, how he had felt that this is where God lived.
    And at that moment, he believed it again.
    Over to the left, along the side of the valley, were some rocky crags. He turned off the path, what little there was of it, and squelched through the yellow grass towards them. He took out his notebook.
    He needed to find a good hiding place.
    Tómas’s arrest as a suspect for the murder of Agnar Haraldsson had been on the lunch time news on the radio. Top story, hardly surprising, given Tómas’s celebrity. The moment he heard it the pastor knew he had to find a new place to hide the ring.
    He paused and examined it on the fourth finger of his right hand. It didn’t look a thousand years old. That was the thing with gold – it didn’t matter how old it was, if you polished it carefully it looked new. Or newer.
    There were scratches and scuffs. But the inscription in runes engraved on the inside was still legible, just.
    He remembered when he and Ásgrímur had found it in that cave. Well, it was hardly a cave, more like a hole in the rock. It was the greatest, the most profound moment of his life. And of Ásgrímur’s of course. Even if it was just about his last.
    It was miraculous that the hole had not been submerged in any of the volcanic eruptions of the previous millennium, especially the big one that had smothered Gaukur’s farm. But then the ring dealt in miracles.
    He had worn it on and off now for nearly twenty years. He loved it, he worshipped it. Sometimes he would just sit and stare at it, the music of Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple swirling around him, wondering at its history, its mystery, its power. Andvari, Odin, Hreidmar, Fafnir, Sigurd, Brynhild, Gunnar, Ulf Leg Lopper, Trandill, Ísildur and Gaukur, they had all owned it. And now it was his. The pastor of Hruni.
    Extraordinary.
    But although it gave him a tremendous feeling of exhilaration, of power, every time he put it on, over time his disappointment had grown. The pastor thought of himself as a pretty extraordinary man, and he had assumed that the ring had chosen him because of his knowledge of the devil and of Saemundur. But although he had thrown himself into his studies, nothing had happened. Nothing had been revealed to him. The way to power and domination had not appeared.
    But how could it, when he locked himself up in the hills at Hruni? He had assumed that it was his duty to keep the ring in the shadows of Mount Hekla, which was after all only forty kilometres away as the raven flew. But keep it for whom? He had always assumed that his son was worthless, far too lightweight and superficial to make any use of the ring. But perhaps he might make something of his life after all. He was already a celebrity in Iceland. It was unlikely that an Icelander could go out into the wider world and make a name for himself, but perhaps Tómas could.
    With the help of the ring.
    The pastor scrabbled around in the rocks