‘Are you coming back?’ There was something a little hesitant in the way she asked the question.
‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. ‘At first I was dead set against it. But the Commissioner has asked me to stay. I’m thinking about it.’
And he was thinking about it, seriously. Partly he felt a sense of obligation – gratitude for what the Commissioner and Arni had done for him. But also the seed of suspicion that had planted itself in his mind on the road up the Thjorsardalur three days before was nagging at him. The suspicion that the answers to his father’s murder might lie in Iceland rather than the streets of Boston.
As he had anticipated, the seed had taken root. It was growing. It wasn’t going to die away now.
‘If it makes any difference,’ Ingileif said. ‘I’d like you to.’
She looked at him, smiling shyly. Magnus felt himself grinning back. He noticed the nick on her eyebrow, already so familiar. It was strange how he felt that he knew her so well, as though it was much longer than ten days since he had first interviewed her in her gallery.
‘Yes. That makes a difference.’
She moved closer to him, reached up and kissed him, long and deep.
Then she broke away. ‘Come on, we’ve still got a long way to go.’
As they ascended, the mountain became stranger. There was no single neat round cone at the top of Mount Hekla. Rather, a series of old craters from previous eruptions dotted the ridge. Sulphurous steam rose out of fissures, narrow cracks in the mountain. The snow became thinner, the bare patches more common. As Magnus put his hand on the bare black lava, he realized why. It was warm. Underneath, and not very far underneath, the volcano was bubbling away.
When they reached the top, the view was extraordinary, as Iceland stretched all around them: broad rivers, craggy mountains, slow, powerful glaciers.
‘It’s amazing to think of the three brothers climbing this a thousand years ago,’ Magnus said. ‘You know, Isildur, Gaukur and Asgrimur.’
‘Yes.’
Magnus looked around. ‘I wonder where the crater they were trying to throw the ring into was then?’
‘Who knows?’ Ingileif replied. ‘My father used to fret about that. Needless to say, I first came up here with him. The mountain has rearranged itself many times since their day.’
‘What are you going to do with the saga now? Are you going to sell it?’
Ingileif shook her head. ‘We’re going to give it to the Arni Magnusson Institute. But before then, I’m going to let Lawrence Feldman have it for a year in return for enough money to bail out the gallery. Birna will get her share, of course.’
‘That’s a neat idea.’
‘Yes. It was Lawrence’s, but it looks like everyone can live with that. I think he feels guilty.’
‘As he should.’ Magnus thought about all that had happened over the previous two weeks. He wondered whether they would ever find the ring. Petur’s body had not turned up yet, apparently it could be days or weeks before it would be spat out by the water-fall. He rather hoped that somehow the ring would stay there, at the bottom of Gullfoss.
But he couldn’t say any of this to Ingileif. That was her brother down there, after all.
‘Let’s go,’ Ingileif said. She set off down the mountain to the left of the path they had used on the way up. The snow was thin or non-existent, the ground was so warm. She skirted an old crater and stopped by a small spiral of steam, coming out of a crack in the ground.
‘Careful!’ Magnus said. The snow and lava on which she was standing looked precarious. There was a strong smell of sulphur in the air.
Ingileif pulled something out of her pocket.
‘What’s that?’ asked Magnus.
‘The ring.’
‘The ring? I thought Petur had it!’
‘He gave it to me. I think he hoped it would change my mind.’
‘But you didn’t tell anyone that!’
‘I know.’
Magnus was only a few feet from Ingileif. He longed to examine the ring, the cause of so much pain and anguish over the last couple of weeks. What did he mean, couple of weeks? The last millennium. ‘What are you going to with it?’
‘What do you think?’ said Ingileif. ‘I’m going to toss it into the mouth of hell, just like Tolkien suggested my grandfather do. Just like Isildur wanted to do.’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Magnus.
‘Why not? It’s the right thing to do.’
‘Why not? Because it’s one of the most significant archaeological discoveries this country has ever seen. I mean, is it real? Haven’t you wondered that all along? How old is it? Did Hogni or someone hide it eighty years ago? Or is it really centuries old? Or even older, perhaps it really did come from the Rhine at the time of Attila the Hun. Don’t you see? These are fascinating questions, even without the Tolkien connection. And they can all be answered by archaeologists.’
‘Oh yes, they are fascinating questions,’ Ingileif said. ‘I can tell you, it’s made of gold. There is an inscription in runes scratched on the inside, although I haven’t tried to decipher it. But whatever it is, it’s evil. It has caused enough damage to my family. I’m getting rid of it.’
‘No, Ingileif, wait.’ Magnus felt an overwhelming urge to grab the ring from her.
Ingileif smiled. ‘I wanted you to come up here with me to make sure I had the strength to do this. But now look at you.’
Magnus could see the ring between Ingileif’s thumb and fore-finger. He didn’t know what it was exactly, whether it was ten years old or a thousand. But he knew she was right.
He nodded.
Ingileif bent down and tossed the ring into the fissure.
There was no thunder. No lightning. The sun shone out of the pale blue Icelandic sky.
Ingileif climbed back up to Magnus and kissed him quickly on the lips.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get going. If you’re flying back to Boston tomorrow, we’ve got things to do and not much time to do them.’
Grinning broadly, Magnus followed her down the mountain.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A reader putting down a book such as this might well ask how much of it is real and how much is invented. This question deserves an answer.
There really was a Gaukur. He lived at Stong, a prosperous farm which was obliterated in the eruption of Hekla in 1104. Both the remains of the original building and the reconstruction a few miles away on the main Thjorsardalur Road are well worth seeing. His death at the hand of his foster-brother Asgrimur is mentioned in Njals Saga . Gaukur had his own saga which is referred to in the fourteenth century Modruvallabok, but it was never transcribed. The story that saga told remains unknown.
J.R.R. Tolkien taught Middle English at Leeds University from 1920 to 1925, where he instituted the ‘Viking Club’ with its beer and its Icelandic drinking songs. His letters show that after writing the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings at the end of 1937 he agonized for several months over how to continue the story and link it in with his earlier novel, The Hobbit. Where the Shadows Lie speculates upon a solution.
Iceland is a small country where everyone seems to know everyone else. It is quite possible that some of the characters in this book resemble real people. If so, such resemblance is completely coincidental.
I am thankful to the late Olafur Ragnarsson and Petur Mar Olafsson for first introducing me to Iceland. It was after this visit that I became determined to write a book set in the country – an ambition that took me fifteen years to achieve. I should also like to thank Sveinn H. Gudmarsson, Sigridur Gudmarsdottir, Superintendent Karl Steinar
