To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [204]
‘And nails?’ said Paúel Benecke. ‘Is that how you did the trick with the nails? A magician, forsooth.’
Nicholas could think of nothing to say. There was blood in his hair and his face stung, but he hardly felt it. His head felt swimmingly empty and his chest, by contrast, unpleasantly tight. He said, ‘If we leave it, it will be too late.’ He spoke directly to Glímu-Sveinn, with a sort of irritated anger which increased as he found the man was looking away. Then he saw, to the right, a mounted figure approaching them: a white-bearded man who was hailing them in Icelandic. Glímu-Sveinn called back, and turned.
‘My father’s brother, come to tell me to hurry. This is what you will do. You and he will look for this person. I will take the rest to my house and return. If you have not found him, you leave. Hekla is smoking.’
‘It isn’t Hekla,’ Nicholas said. He felt he had said it before, and was annoyed at having to repeat it.
Benecke made a remark. ‘You said the danger was in the south, as we were coming here. Isn’t that Hekla?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘Further south. I think it is Katla.’
‘I hope not,’ Benecke said, after a pause. ‘One would have to think of our ships.’
‘I am thinking of them,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am not going with you. After we get out this man, I go south.’
‘Without a guide?’ Benecke said.
‘I shall find one. You see,’ Nicholas said, ‘they are expecting the explosion from Hekla. They will have to be warned.’
‘And if you are wrong?’
‘Then that will be best of all,’ Nicholas said.
They must have gone, after that, for he found himself alone in the snow with Glímu-Sveinn’s uncle, who immediately launched into angry abuse. Then the old man crawled about hawking and spitting, and complaining at everything Nicholas did. But like his nephew, he was a master of locomotion over treacherous ground, and accepted directions, although he cackled with temper when the directions proved wrong, as they often did. Then suddenly the sense of Sigfús came flooding in, as had never happened before with someone he didn’t know, and the pendulum span higher and higher, and Nicholas pointed and spoke.
The old man got there before him, but even when both of them dug, there was nothing to see, and he had to keep urging the old man to continue. Then his numbed fingers stubbed against something that could have been a rock or a board or a box, but proved to be a sleeping man’s head, with a half-melted cavity around it. From the drinker’s nose, Nicholas would have guessed it was Sigfús, even without the old man’s surprised croak. They pummelled him like a piece of blue steak all the time they were digging him out, and wrapped him in everything they could find, and started a fire with a door and a section of table. And all the time the old man was perfectly silent, although he still spat now and then.
When they heard the hooves coming back, there was only one hour left of the day, and the brown smoke of Hekla had merged into the violet-blue of the night. Nicholas had expected Glímu-Sveinn. With him were Kathi and Benecke.
Glímu-Sveinn said, ‘You found him.’
The uncle, roused, launched into a mucilaginous monologue. Nicholas let him rant. He felt physically beaten, as might be expected after his recent experience. He felt the sickening lethargy that came with the pendulum. It had almost felled him in Venice, when he had used this power to hunt down his son. This jealous power.
He knew, beyond doubt, that he had been right about Katla. And his ship was there, a few miles off shore, unaware and waiting for him. A pony tossed its head with a chime of its bridle and he received the image, at once, of a bowl, and a carob seed tapping and tapping. Nostradamus had also been right.
Glímu-Sveinn was speaking. Glímu-Sveinn was saying, ‘The junfrú has said this has happened before. You are a sorcerer.’
Nicholas got to his feet. It was an effort. He said, ‘My magic is white. My ship carries a priest.’
There was a silence. Then Glímu-Sveinn said, ‘Your