Death of an Adept

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"TELL, here's where we part company," Chisholm said, pulling up outside the fence beside the parking apron where the Cessna lay waiting. "Dr. Sinclair, do you really think that dream journal might help us find McFarlane?"

"It's possible," Adam allowed. "It may at least give me some insight into his psychology, suggest the kinds of things he might have been involved in, that would make someone want to kidnap him."

Which was only partially true, but it seemed to satisfy Chisholm.

"Fair enough," he said. "Thanks again for coming. You'll let me know, won't you, if anything useful turns up?"

"You can count on it," McLeod said, speaking for all of them.

As Chisholm drove off and Harry began his pre-flight inspection of the plane, the rest of them got in, Adam taking the co-pilot's seat that McLeod had occupied on the incoming flight.

"I figured you might be waiting for me," Harry said with a grin, as he got in beside Adam and closed his door.

"I'd like to retrieve those impressions you picked up off McFarlane's medallion," Adam said. "That way, we can discuss the case on the way back."

"You seem pretty sure I got something," Harry said, buckling up his seat harness. "I don't remember a thing."

"You will," Adam said with a smile. "You're really getting rather good at this. Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Harry said, closing his eyes. As he drew breath, Adam touched his wrist in posthypnotic trigger.

"That's right. Take a deep breath in… and out… Settle in. That's right. Peregrine, are you standing by?" he added, with a glance over his shoulder at the artist.

Peregrine nodded, sketchbook and pencil already in hand.

"Ready whenever you two are," he announced softly.

"Good." Adam returned his attention to his subject. "All right, Harry, remember that time capsule you've been carrying around with you for the last hour? I want you to take it out and open it up, and tell me what comes to mind."

There was a momentary pause, then Harry began to narrate. "Reading… in the sitting room… I hear a noise from the kitchen… I get up and go to the door, but three men in black burst in - "

Harry broke off, his breathing becoming more rapid, his voice going hoarse.

"Backing off, shouting for help… trying to escape, but I'm caught and pinned. No! Let me go! One's got my medallion, choking me! Frantic to get away, but I can't! Something wet clapped over my face - can't breathe! Chemical smell - cloying… dizzy… falling…"

"That's enough, Harry," Adam ordered, his hand tightening on the counselor's wrist. "That part is pretty clear. Let go of it now, and backtrack for me. Run the film in reverse and freeze-frame on the men in black. Do you have them?"

Slowly Harry's head nodded.

"Good. Now look at them carefully, and tell me everything you can about them."

Slowly, haltingly, Harry complied, now able to render a more dispassionate description of the images fixed before his inner vision. Adam and McLeod watched silently as three faces emerged from under Peregrine's pencil, shaped by Harry's narrative; but when McLeod opened his mouth to comment, Adam shook his head and held up a restraining hand.

Not until he had brought both Harry and Peregrine back to normal waking consciousness did he take the sketchbook and turn to the second of Peregrine's sketch portraits: that of a hard-faced man with Nordic features and a crewcut. It was a visage that all of them recognized, though Harry had seen only sketches.

"Him again," McLeod muttered. "Whoever he is, Raeburn's got him working overtime."

Harry ran the back of his hand across the lower half of his face, still looking a little haggard.

"I wouldn't know about that," he said, "but it was chloroform they used to nail him with. I recognized the smell."

"That would be in character," Adam said, nodding. "It's a favorite M.O. with the Lodge of the Lynx."

"Aye," McLeod agreed. "What I can't figure out is what Raeburn would want with somebody like McFarlane. The boy's sincere enough in his higher aspirations, but he's not had enough experience to count for much, either as a threat or as an offering. So what makes him worth Raeburn's trouble?"

"I've been wondering the same thing," Adam said. "Harry, let's get us in the air. I want to get back home and do some further research. For all we know, the answer might be right under our noses."

It was well after dark by the time Adam and Peregrine arrived back at Strathmourne. Ximena was working the evening shift, and Christopher had gone on a pastoral call, but Philippa and Julia were on hand to inquire about their progress. Fortunately, lolo McFarlane's dream diary was evidence of a sort that could be discussed in Julia's presence.

"I won't know until I've gone through it, whether it's going to be of any help," Adam told them, over a supper of steak and kidney pie which Humphrey served up in the morning room. "I should think I've got a full evening's reading ahead of me. It's probably a good thing Ximena's working."

"And we'd better get back to the gate lodge," Peregrine said, drawing his wife to her feet. "We have a cat to feed, and I need to work on a project I'm behind on. Being away today didn't help the backlog."

Adam shrugged and smiled, the only one of them unaware that Peregrine was referring to the wedding portrait of Ximena.

"Sorry to have taken you from your work," he said. "I hope you have an understanding client."

"Oh, I don't think he'll mind," Peregrine replied. "Talk to you tomorrow. Good night, Philippa."

When they had gone, Philippa retired upstairs for a hot bath, and Adam took the journal into the library, where he lit a fire and settled into his favorite fireside chair to read. To help align himself with McFarlane's frame of mind, he had tossed a stick of incense on the fire, and he let its aroma help him focus as he bent to his work.

He had skimmed through the bulk of the entries on the flight home. The impressions he had gathered in that earlier, cursory examination were borne out by this more detailed study. The Callanish incident did indeed signal a marked change in tone and imagery from the entries which preceded it.

Fetching a pad and pencil from his desk, Adam noted down the key images to be found in each of these later entries. He very soon saw that they formed a recurrent pattern.

In each dream, the landscape was dominated by a high hill crowned with a ragged diadem of stones. The sky was invariably dark and stormy, the clouds shot through with branched lightnings.

I'm afraid of the storm, but feel compelled to climb the hill, McFarlane had written. As I start making my way to the top, I see a figure coming down the hill to meet me.

Initially, Adam noted, this figure appeared as a mere blur. But with each successive dream, the figure drew closer, becoming more distinct, until at last McFarlane was able to provide a description.

I can see now that it's a knight of some kind, wearing a shirt of mail under a white surcoat. He's armed with a sword and wears a cross-shaped medallion around his neck. Urgently, he beckons and shouts, but I can't understand the words. I shake my head. He repeats the message, but it's drowned out in a sudden roar of thunder, so loud that it wakes me up.

McFarlane's own frustration was evident from his closing remarks. I'm sure this knight is trying to tell me something important, he had written. I have the oddest notion that if I could only make out what he's saying, I would know who's been defacing our ancient shrines.

The only entry after that was the scrawl of letters. He was staring at the letters, trying to make some connection take shape, when Philippa joined him with two mugs of hot chocolate.

"Getting anywhere?" she asked.

"Not really," he said, "though some of the images are interesting." He tossed the journal on the table beside his yellow notepad. "Have a look for yourself. Maybe something will occur to you that I've missed."

Philippa read through the journal entries, then Adam's notes, while he rested his eyes and both of them sipped companion-ably at their hot chocolate.

"The symbolism is remarkably consistent," she commented, when she finally put the notes aside. "Too consistent to be mere coincidence. I find the figure of the knight particularly interesting. Is he merely some submerged aspect of McFarlane's own personality, I wonder, or is he an autonomous emissary from the Inner Planes?"

"A good question," Adam replied. "My next move is to start checking into McFarlane's background."

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, and Philippa clucked her tongue reprovingly.

"I hope you aren't thinking to start in on that tonight, dear. You've already put in more than your share of work today, and you should know better than anyone how fatigue can hamper performance. Ximena will be home very soon. My advice to you is to put this problem on the shelf for the time being, and go get some R and R. God knows you've earned it."

Adam caught himself stifling a yawn, and let it turn into a weary smile.

"Yes, Mother. I'm going to bed now, Mother." He set down his empty mug. "I'll defer the rest of this inquiry until tomorrow," he conceded.

The following day was packed with activities. After putting in a full morning at the clinic, Adam spent the afternoon junketing around Edinburgh on wedding business. He managed to get home to Strathmourne with half an hour to spare before Ximena was due to leave for her evening shift in the casualty department.

They held a brief tete-a-tete in the bedroom while Ximena finished getting dressed, after which Adam walked her down to the front door, where Humphrey was waiting beside the Bentley. Philippa was sitting composedly in the back seat.

"I didn't know you were planning to go out this evening," Adam said.

"Neither did I, until an hour ago," said his mother. "Victoria phoned to say she's needed to sit with one of the women in the parish whose husband died in hospital this afternoon.

Christopher is with her. None of us liked the idea of Julian being left on her own, so I volunteered to play the role of genteel companion. I'll spend the night in Edinburgh, and you can collect me tomorrow afternoon, on your way home."

"Ximena and I are running wedding errands tomorrow, and picking up our rings," Adam said, slipping an arm around his wife's waist. "I can't guarantee what time we'll be able to pick you up."

"Then maybe I'll spend a second night with Julian," Philippa said lightly. "Don't worry about me. Humphrey can come and collect me, if it comes to that. Shoo, now. You've got work to do."

"I can see I'm going to be in for a rather dull evening," Adam said with a smile, as he handed his wife into the car.

"Somehow I doubt that," Ximena quipped. "If I know you, you'll be back in the library before we're out of sight. Just try not to work too hard while I'm gone. Mrs. Gilchrist has left you a snack in the kitchen, when you're ready for it."

As he watched the Bentley pull away, Adam reflected that there was more than a grain of truth in his wife's droll prediction. With the significance of McFarlane's dream journal still unresolved, he had already decided to devote the next several hours to extending his research on the astral. Returning to the warmth of the main house, he locked up and went for a shower, a fresh change of clothes, and a brief rest before embarking upon the night's work.

The grandfather clock in the hall was chiming nine by the time he made his way back down to the library. Though he was alone in the house, he secured the library door behind him and took the additional precaution of warding the room before fetching McFarlane's journal from his briefcase. He was already wearing his Adept ring. Slipped inside the front cover of the journal was a fax photo of McFarlane himself, borrowed from McLeod's case file. He took a long look at it before moving back to his chair by the fireside.

The fire Humphrey had lit before leaving needed only a careful stoking to stir it back to active life. Taking a pinch of incense from a box on the mantelpiece, Adam cast it into the flames with a whispered prayer for guidance and protection, then settled down in his chair and made his usual preparations for entering into trance, the journal now in his lap.

The outside world faded from view, screened behind an aromatic haze of incense smoke. When Adam had reached the working level appropriate to what he had in mind, he transferred his now-undivided attention to the photo, commending the man he hoped was still alive to the awareness of the celestial Guardians of the Inner Planes. Closing his eyes on that thought, he framed his intent in an unspoken petition.

This man McFarlane has fallen into the hands of those who serve the Patrons of Shadow, he prayed silently. For his own sake, and the welfare of many innocent others, I earnestly desire to discover his whereabouts in the outer world, together with the reason why the Shadow desires him.

An answering glow enveloped him, his inner vision steadying into focus as he found himself weightlessly suspended in the celestial firmament of the Inner Planes. McFarlane's journal floated before him, against a shimmering backdrop of stars. As he gazed at it, he became aware that there were in fact two books, the second surfacing through the first like sunlight breaking through a cloud.

For a brief moment longer, they glimmered like hyacinthine reflections of one another, before a subtle attraction of light drew them together and made them one. In that selfsame instant, in a dizzying shift of imagery, Adam found himself standing in a marble-walled chamber somewhere deep within the infinitely convoluted halls of the Akashic Records.

Before him on a lectern of silver lay the chronicle of lolo McFarlane's existence. The slenderness of the volume confirmed what Adam had surmised earlier - that the young Druid was a very new soul, with no past beyond the span of his present lifetime. A survey of the book's contents revealed that lolo had only just begun to grow into those talents which would blossom later in the course of his maturity, perhaps not even until another lifetime. Beyond this, Adam could find nothing in the young man's record to explain Raeburn's unwelcome interest.

Which suggested an alternative possibility - that whatever had recommended him to Raeburn must lie buried not within the limited scope of lolo's own experience, but elsewhere, among the history of his antecedents. The names of McFarlane's parents were included in the current record. Adam decided to take up the inquiry with them.

His quest took him backward in time, through the labyrinthine tangles of McFarlane's physical genealogy. The process was laborious, but out of these tangles of kinship an array of shining threads began to emerge, like fibers of gold mingled amongst the warp and weft of a greater tapestry, lost at a distance but visible at close range. As Adam pursued these threads back through the centuries, they gathered themselves together to form weightier filaments, strand joining up with strand until all at once they met and merged in a single skein of Orient splendor.

The brightness of this life-line hinted at an illustrious soul, of more than ordinary abilities. Following this golden clue, Adam arrived at the threshold of a new chamber of record. The chronicle enshrined in the chamber beyond was a dense compendium of many chapters, each one relating to a different incarnation. When Adam stepped into the room, the book fell open of its own accord to the chapter detailing events in the life of one Sir Andrew Kerr, McFarlane's physical ancestor from the fourteenth century.

Before Adam could commence to read, a sudden brightness suffused the chamber. The source of this radiance was a pillar of light that materialized before him as if out of thin air. Even as Adam instinctively warded his eyes from the brightness, the pillar coalesced into human form. Fully manifest, it took the shape of the knightly figure described in McFarlane's dreams.

And not just any knight. Sir Andrew Kerr was a Knight of the Order of the Temple.

The formal dissolution of the Order early in the fourteenth century had made it necessary for the survivors to modify their traditional livery, but there was no mistaking the significance of the medallion that hung around Sir Andrew's neck from a golden chain: a cross formee, of red enamel over gold. Adam had seen and handled a similar cross in the keeping of John Graham, and himself had been a Knight Templar in a previous life.

Taking on the semblance of that other lifetime, in the full panoply of his knighthood, Adam rendered appropriate salute to his fellow Templar. Even as he did so, his eye was drawn to the ring Kerr bore upon his sword-hand - of burnished gold, and set with a shallow, cabochon sapphire that glowed with an inner fire proclaiming it no ordinary gem. Seeing it, Adam realized that he was in the presence of one like himself, a Master of the Hunt - and one very senior to himself.

"I acknowledge your authority," he told the other man, "and I yield me to your instruction. Tell me what you would have me know."

Kerr's dark eyes sought and held his in wordless yearning. Then he lifted his hands in entreaty, gesturing first to his own lips, then toward Adam's. At once Adam realized what Kerr was trying to convey - that he wished to speak with Adam's voice.

But Adam was not a medium - and even if he had been, mediums only rarely retained any trace of memory of what was said through their lips while overshadowed by a spirit guest. McLeod could have circumvented the problem without hesitation; but McLeod was at home in Edinburgh.

"I'm truly sorry. I haven't the ability to do what you ask," Adam told Kerr. "Can you show me what this is all about?"

After cocking his head wistfully, Kerr swept one hand toward the book. As Adam shifted his gaze to look, the pages seemed to fall open like a window in time, revealing a dark hillside under a sky tattered by gathering storm. Lightning flashed blue-white through the pall of clouds, and in the after-flash, he caught sight of what seemed to be a funeral procession toiling up the rocky slope.

Kerr was leading the party with a drawn sword in his hand, cloaked and braced against a howling wind. Behind him came six more men in mail and surcoats like his own, carrying a rude bed of planks upon which lay a supine body laden down with iron chains. The grimness of their faces and the ragged haste of their progress suggested a fearful urgency of purpose. Slipping and stumbling, they pressed on toward the crest of the hill, where three more figures labored to pile more fuel on an already-blazing bonfire that lay within a circle of standing stones. A large cauldron was set within the flames.

The party gained the height and stumbled to a halt. The body was taken nastily down off the bier and bundled into the heavy folds of a waiting shroud of sheet lead. In that same instant, a ghastly shape suddenly manifested over the body, black as smoke from a burning abattoir. Eyes blazing red in the lightning's glare, the apparition swooped down on the body, as if to claim it for its own.

Kerr darted to interpose. A clear blue light flashed from the ring on his finger and the blade in his hand as he slashed at the intruder. The apparition reeled aside, snarling and slavering, clearly no mere illusion. While Kerr continued to hold it at bay, the other members of his party picked up the body and heaved it into the cauldron.

The entity went wild with spitting rage, diving down amongst Kerr's men with bared fangs and raking claws. Two defenders fell, gashed and bleeding, before Kerr drove it back again with scything sweeps of his sword. Before the evil spirit could recover itself, he raised the blade high over his head and shouted into the rising wind.

His utterance took the form of a sonorous incantation. One of the men still on his feet darted to Kerr's side and added his voice to the ritual spell. As the pair continued to chant, there appeared in the sky overhead a sudden rift, blacker and denser than any storm cloud.

The rift widened. As it did so, the light that blazed from Kerr's ring took on the force of a mighty gale. Roaring like a hurricane, it seized the apparition and hurled it into the maw of the Void. The rift snapped shut as Kerr abruptly lowered his sword, leaving the survivors raggedly silhouetted against the flare of the bonfire.

A fresh gust of wind caused the fire to billow up. The silhouettes vanished, eclipsed by the hungry intensity of the blaze. When the flames died back again, the picture seemed subtly altered. As more details became discernible, Adam realized that the party now gathered round the bonfire was not the same one which Kerr had led to its hard-won victory.

The newcomers were clad not in chain mail and surcoats but in long, cowled robes of black wool. At least one of them was a woman, hood flung back to reveal a cruelly voluptuous profile, oddly familiar. Dark blood inscribed a restraining triangle on the ground around the fire. Where the flames burned hottest, a new cauldron seethed and bubbled.

Above the cauldron hovered a shadowy apparition with eyes of ruby flame - without doubt, Kerr's ancient spiritual adversary, conjured back from the Void. The leader of the robed cultists advanced to the edge of the triangle, brandishing an ancient dagger in his right hand with controlling intent. And when the firelight fell full upon his face, Adam recognized the sneering, patrician features of Francis Raeburn.

The shock of this discovery made him instinctively recoil, breaking his concentration. When he looked again, the images had disappeared, leaving him staring at blank space. Wrenching his gaze away, he found that the chamber of record was now empty apart from himself. Kerr's manifest presence had vanished, leaving Adam alone with a clamoring host of speculations.

Instinct warned that there was nothing more he could hope to accomplish here tonight. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and willed himself to rejoin his body. There came the familiar, rushing sensation of soul-flight, followed by an equally familiar jolt of vertigo as his spirit came to rest. When he opened his eyes again, it was to find himself safely anchored in the solid physical haven of his own library.

He shivered as he moved forward instinctively to stir the fire. The clock was chiming half past ten, though it seemed it should be later. Rising, he set McFarlane's journal aside and went out to the kitchen, turning on lights in his wake, for faint reverberations of what he had seen continued to chill the edges of his soul. As Adam poured himself a glass of milk and sat down with the plate of sandwiches left by Mrs. Gilchrist, he set his mind to considering the images Kerr had given him.

It was a bit like trying to assemble a jigsaw without knowing what the finished picture was meant to look like. But by the time he had finished his second sandwich, he had succeeded in putting together a working hypothesis. Many of the details were still hazy, and would remain so until he could get Noel to establish a better link with Kerr. Elsewhere, however, the information supplied by Kerr added up to a disturbing prospect.

Raeburn, it appeared, was out to secure an alliance with the evil spirit of Kerr's former adversary. Adam was aware that the binding of such a spirit would require an appropriate blood-sacrifice - which explained only too well the reason behind lolo McFarlane's kidnapping. As Kerr's lineal descendant, the young Druid would make a pleasing oblation to his forefather's vanquished foe. A quick glance at the calendar on the kitchen wall pegged Imbolc Eve as the most likely immediate date for such a working - Imbolc Eve, the first of February, four days hence - scant margin for finding and stopping Raeburn, but at least Adam now knew what they must try to stop.

The next question concerned the identity of Kerr's ancient foe. Kerr apparently had tried over and over again to warn his distant kinsman of the impending danger. Though his attempts had failed, Adam reasoned that a further study of McFarlane's dreams might yet suggest a name to put to Raeburn's would-be ally. Returning to the library, he decided to begin with the cryptic brevity of McFarlane's final entry.

The young Druid's hand-lettering was no easier to decipher now than it had been in any of the earlier attempts. Taking Peregrine's rendering, soul's gstrig, as his starting point, Adam began mentally experimenting with alternate readings. Rearranging the letters produced only gibberish.

Going back to the original arrangement yet again, squinting at it in the light, Adam suddenly wondered if the short stroke Harry had previously interpreted as an apostrophe might actually be an ill-formed I.

"Soulis gstrig," he whispered aloud.

Frowning, he read the words aloud. As he did so, he realized with a sudden jolt that Soulis was, in fact a proper name: a name, moreover, with infamous historical associations.

Memory supplied the appellation in full, along with a sickly, sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach: William de Soulis, reputedly the wickedest magician ever to walk abroad on Scottish soil.

Adam's hands balled themselves instinctively into fists as he confronted this discovery, for Soulis figured in the annals of Scottish folklore as a diabolically powerful black Adept, with a hideous catalogue of torture and murder to his credit. Virtually invincible, he had terrorized the countryside for many years before at last being captured and executed - wrapped in chains and lead and boiled in a cauldron of oil, just as Ken-had shown him.

But in reporting the manner of his death, legend spoke only part of the truth. For Adam's vision, facilitated by the spirit of Soulis' nemesis, another Master of the Hunt, had amply demonstrated that the destruction of Soulis' body had been only half the battle. Kerr and his Huntsmen had been charged with carrying out a higher Justice, which decreed that the spirit of William Lord Soulis should be cast into the Void between the Outer and Inner Planes. Only now it seemed that Francis Raeburn intended to commute Soulis' sentence for reasons of his own.

The banishment had required incredible focus and power, and would have entailed the weaving of a complex sequence of spells. To procure Soulis' release, Raeburn would have to pull apart and nullify the protocols involved - and fuel this labor with the blood-sacrifice of lolo McFarlane. In order to forestall both eventualities, Adam realized that he was going to require knowledge as specific as Raeburn's. And the only way he was likely to get it was to speak directly with Kerr.

And seemingly the only way he could hope to speak directly with Kerr was through the agency of a trained and powerful medium such as McLeod.

Adam glanced at his watch. It was approaching midnight, but he realized that the sooner he could speak with his Second, the better. Setting McFarlane's journal aside, he went to the desk and picked up the phone, punching up McLeod's home number. He got the answering machine instead of McLeod himself - which probably meant that the inspector either had been called out or had shut off the phone to get a rare few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

"Noel, it's Adam," he said, quickly framing a message in suitably ambiguous terms, in case Jane picked up his messages. "I expect you've already gone to bed, so I'll make this short. I've just spent the evening going through McFarlane's dream diary, and I've come up with some important leads. I'm confident he's alive, and I don't think anything will go critical for McFarlane himself until after the weekend, but there's a special witness I want to talk to - and I'll need your help to do that.

"I'd like to meet up tomorrow and discuss the case in person. I've got to stop in at the hospital for an hour in the morning, and then I've promised Ximena we'll have lunch, but we have to drive over to Portobello in the afternoon to pick up our rings from the engraver. We'll swing by your office when we're finished, and Humphrey can take Ximena on home. Please ring Humphrey and leave a message if you can't make it. See you then."

When he had cradled the receiver, he mentally reviewed what he had said, hoping it had not sounded too lame or too obscure. He closed McFarlane's journal and put it back into his briefcase before going upstairs to bed, his mind already hard at work continuing to examine what he had learned. He had fallen asleep by the time Ximena came home and snuggled into bed beside him, and he woke several times during the night, disturbed by dreams he could not recall.