selling it to you.’
Asgrimsson was aggressive, but Isildur stood up to him. He was used to people trying to push him around, people who underestimated the programmer whose talents they needed to make their business work.
‘That’s a topic for a later day. We want to speak with you about a ring. Isildur’s ring, or perhaps you prefer Gaukur’s ring.’
‘Get out of my club now!’ Asgrimsson’s voice was firm.
‘We’ll pay well. Very well,’ said Isildur.
‘Listen to me,’ said Asgrimsson, 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 Asgrimsson-’
‘Out!’ Petur 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.
Tomas’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 Tomas’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 Asgrimur 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 Asgrimur’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, Isildur 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 Tomas could.
With the help of the ring.
The pastor scrabbled around in the rocks looking for a niche similar to the one in which he had originally found the ring seventeen years before. He would have to be very careful to make clear notes of where he had hidden it, or else it might be lost for another ten centuries.
But maybe he shouldn’t conceal it? The ring had not revealed itself to him and Dr Asgrimur merely to be removed from the world again. It was making an entrance into the affairs of men.
It wanted to be discovered.
The hiding place in the altar at Hruni church wasn’t the best. A determined police team, or anyone else for that matter, could find it there. But it was the right place.
The pastor took off the ring and grasped it in his hand. He closed his eyes and tried to feel what the ring was telling him.
It was the right place.
He turned on his heel and began walking back towards Hruni at a brisk pace. He checked his watch. He would be lucky to be home by nightfall.
Ingileif’s house, or rather her family’s house, was on a bank over-looking the river that ran through Fludir. Fludir itself was a prosperous village with a convenience store, an hotel, two schools, some municipal buildings and a number of geothermally powered greenhouses – Ingileif said it had the best farming in Iceland. But no church: the parish church was at Hruni, three kilometres away.
Although the village itself wasn’t up to much, the view was spectacular. To the west was the valley of the glacial River Hvita, with its ancient settlement at Skalholt, the site of Iceland’s first cathedral, and to the north were the glaciers themselves, thick slabs of white running a dead-straight horizon between mountain peaks.
Hekla was out of sight, behind the hills to the south-east.
The house was a single-storey affair, cosy, but large enough for a family of five. Magnus and Ingileif spread out the contents of several cardboard boxes on the floor of Ingileif’s mother’s bedroom. There were indeed a dozen letters from Tolkien to Hogni, Ingileif’s grandfather, which had only come into her father’s possession after Hogni’s death. Ingileif showed Magnus a first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. Magnus recognized the handwriting of the inscription inside: To Hogni Isildarson, one good story deserves another, with thanks and all good wishes, J.R.R. Tolkien, September 1954.
They studied a folder of notes and maps, most of which were in Dr Asgrimur’s handwriting, which showed guesses of where the ring might be hidden. There were also notes and letters from Hakon, the pastor. They dealt with various folk tales he had researched. There were several pages on the story of Gissur and the troll sisters of Burfell, which was a mountain close to Gaukur’s farm at Stong. There was also a mention of a story about a shep- herd girl named Thorgerd who ran off with an elf.
‘Do you have elves in America?’ Ingileif asked.
‘Not as such,’ said Magnus. ‘We got drug dealers, we got pimps, we got mobsters, we got crooked lawyers, we got investment bankers. No elves. But if we ever do have any problems with elves in the South End, I know right where to come for help. We could do an exchange with the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police.’
‘So you didn’t hear any stories about them when you were a kid?’
‘Oh, yes, especially when I was living with my grandparents in Iceland. My dad was more into sagas than elves and trolls. But I do remember asking him about them.’ Magnus smiled at the memory. ‘I guess I was fourteen. We were hiking in the Adirondacks. That was my favourite thing, hiking with my dad. My brother wouldn’t come, so it was just me and him. We spoke nothing but Icelandic to each other for a whole week. We talked about
