The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (20 page)

There was a flat pause.

“Wonderful,” McLeod said sourly. “We’re dealing with demons that it took the wisdom of Solomon to subdue—and whoever stole Nathan Fiennes’ Seal can release them on the world.”

“We’ve got to stop him,” Peregrine said. “But how?”

Sir John glanced aside at Adam, his hazel eyes agleam beneath his level brows. “I think Adam already knows
his
mandate in that regard.”

“Aye, it does seem inescapable,” Adam replied. “It appears we’re meant to go to Fyvie tomorrow, and ask my ‘sister,’ the Green Lady, to help us recover the Crown from its hiding place.”

“Do we really want to do that?” Peregrine asked, looking dubious. “I mean, if the Crown is safe where it is, wouldn’t it be better to leave it hidden?”

“It would be,” said Sir John, “were it not for the fact that the thief who stole the Seal is certainly after the casket, probably under the mistaken impression that it contains a treasure rather than a danger. If he knew what the Seal represented, beyond its value as an object of antiquity, he almost certainly has the skill to use it as a psychic link to help him locate the casket. Whether or not he’ll have picked up on the need for the other two hallows, I couldn’t say. But if you can get to the Crown before he does, Adam, you ought to be able to use it to locate both the Sceptre and the casket—hopefully, before he gets to the casket with the Seal.”

“Good Lord, you don’t
really
think he’d be stupid enough to just open the casket, do you?” Peregrine asked, wide-eyed.

“People who do these kind of things are stupid enough to try almost anything, laddie,” McLeod rumbled, running a knotty fingertip around the rim of his cup. “He doesn’t know it, but he’s in mortal danger. If we don’t get there first, he’s apt to end up dead or mad—and God knows who else will suffer.”

“That’s why
we
must be prepared,” Adam said. “And that means that we acquire the Crown and the Sceptre before we set foot near the casket. Dundee told us that the Crown confers essential wisdom on the wearer—presumably of how to wield the power that the Sceptre focuses—and also protects the wearer from the madness of evil. So our task not only is to attempt to stop the thief from releasing the demons; we have to be certain that if he succeeds in doing that before we can stop him, we must be able to undo what he’s done: put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. We have to assume that the demons can’t be destroyed by means of the Seal and Crown and Sceptre, or Solomon would have done so. But merely reimprisoning the demons may be sufficient—so long as we can avoid becoming demon fodder in the process . . .”

Chapter Nineteen

AFTER ANOTHER
hour of discussion there in the library, they all retired. Adam felt his fatigue washing over him in waves as he climbed the stairs with McLeod and Peregrine, almost as if it lay waiting for him on the floor above, wrapping him more closely with each upward step he took. He readied for bed with a mechanical preoccupation that skirted but did not address the vast bulk of information he had taken in earlier—certain indicator that his work was not yet finished for the night; his unconscious was dutifully assimilating what he had learned, beginning to formulate their next strategy. He fell deeply and heavily asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.

Initially, his profound need for physical restoration took him deep below the threshold of dreaming. But as his body started to recover its spent energies, his spirit-self began to stir, spiraling slowly upward out of the limbo of deep sleep toward levels of visionary awareness. For a time, this psychic aspect of his being merely drifted without apparent purpose through galleries of recent memory, like a traveller on holiday making a leisurely tour of a picture gallery. Scene by scene passed him by until at last he came upon a sumptuous painting encompassed by an antique gold frame.

Dominating the canvas was a bearded figure seated on a royal throne, whom Adam recognized at once as King Solomon. The great King of Israel was arrayed as Adam had seen him in his earlier dream, in flowing robes of scarlet embroidered with Qabalistic symbols, but this time he wore the Seal hung about his neck on a heavy golden chain. His flowing silver hair was confined by a golden diadem in the shape of a star with six upturned points, and he held in his right hand the Sceptre of his authority, aglow with latent power. At his feet lay a golden casket, perhaps half the size of a man, its lid ornately surmounted by four winged figures that recalled to Adam the apocalyptic visions of Ezekiel and descriptions of the Ark of the Covenant.

As he gazed in wonder at the painting, the scene itself seemed suddenly to come to life, expanding to draw Adam into the midst of it. Suddenly he was standing before the great King’s throne, garbed in the sapphire blue of his usual working attire as he bent his head in respect. But as he straightened, a gust of sulphurous wind darkened the air above them, and the ground beneath his feet was rocked with a sudden crack of thunder.

Swiftly Solomon rose from his throne, glancing upward. Following his gaze, Adam saw roiling clouds of sickly yellow converging on the dais, charged with venomous flickers of greenish flame. To his horror and dismay, the clouds resolved into two monstrous humanoid shapes with writhing, tentacular limbs, each limb ending in a blind mouth gaping with fangs. The creatures bore down on the great King as if to rend him to pieces, spitting and shrieking their defiance.

Dark eyes flashing, Solomon raised the Sceptre and pointed it in an imperious gesture of command. Purifying lightning blazed skyward from the Sceptre’s tip, flaring outward in a web of radiant energy to catch the two demon-things in midair, trapping them in a constricting lacework of fiery threads. Transfixed, they fetched up short, howling with pain and brute fury.

Still holding the Sceptre aloft, Solomon half knelt to raise the casket lid on its hinges with his free hand. Drawing himself up again to his full height, he spoke a Word of royal authority and pointed with the Sceptre toward the open casket at his feet. Instantly the two demon-things began to shrink within the compass of the net that held them, drawn irresistibly downward and forced into the casket.

Deaf to their howls, his bearded face set like iron, Solomon leaned over and shut the lid with a slam that reverberated in the air around him. A touch of the Sceptre’s tip laid a lozenge of liquid gold across the gap where the lid met the base, like a hot iron set to solder. Doffing the chain about his neck, the great King then took the Seal itself in hand and pressed it firmly into the molten metal. When he took the Seal away again, its imprint was clearly visible before Adam’s astonished eyes, as if lined in fire—a six-pointed star of interlocking triangles, surrounded by a scroll of Qabalistic symbols, each one fraught with power to capture and bind.

The symbol flared out with sudden, brilliant intensity. Dazzled, Adam flung up an arm before his face and reeled back. As he stumbled to his knees, he seemed to hear a deep voice speaking, the words ringing in his ears like a prophecy.

Ashrei adam matsah chokmah.

Eits chaim hi la’machazikim.

Bah ve tomchehah meooshar . . .

A sense of urgency dragged him partway to consciousness—just aware enough to recognize the impetus, edging on compulsion, that drew him upright in his bed and guided him to grope for the pocket notebook and pen he had left on the bedside table before retiring. The moonlight still streaming through the window was just sufficient to orient pen to paper, and his hand began to move of its own volition as he hovered in that twilight state between waking and sleeping that often gave access to inner wisdom.

He did not try to make out what his hand was writing, for to analyze the process was possibly to interrupt it. He kept the image of Solomon before him until his hand had spent its energy, pen and notebook falling away unheeded then as consciousness again receded to the inner realms. As he crumpled back on his pillow, haunting visions of a golden casket and a fiery Seal accompanied him as he spiralled downward into sleep again . . .

* * *

The Seal seemed to grow even brighter as Henri Gerard fixed his gaze upon it where it lay cradled between his two outstretched hands. A few inches farther away from where he knelt, a fist-sized ball of rock crystal glowed against a square of black velvet spread on the floor of his Edinburgh bed-and-breakfast room, whose rather tawdry furnishings had all been pushed back and covered with new white sheets. By candlelight, he could imagine that it was a proper temple in which he worked. In any case, it was serving its purpose.

Gerard had fasted and prepared himself for three days before making this venture; now his efforts were being rewarded. Rainbow lights began to dance like wildfire around the room’s four walls, refracted from the sphere’s interior. When Gerard at last diverted his gaze to the heart of the sphere, a hazy image began to form in the crystal depths.

Gradually the image sharpened to show him a close-up view of a six-pointed star imprinted in pure gold, wreathed in scrollwork executed in Hebrew characters—the mirror image of the Seal he held in his hands.

Scarcely daring to breathe, Gerard willed his focus to broaden—for without a reference point, the mere vision of the Seal’s imprint was useless. He could feel the drain on his energy, but the effort yielded results. Before his rapt gaze, the image slowly began to recede, at the same time revealing the Seal’s placement on the side of a large, ark-like casket made of gold, its lid surmounted by four winged golden creatures.

Gerard’s eyes widened in almost feverish avarice as the scene in the sphere continued to expand, torchlight flickering on the golden figures so that they almost seemed endowed with life. The casket was being borne forward by four white-mantled Templar knights who supported its weight on a pair of long wooden poles, carrying it toward a rounded stone gate arch. Two more knights, also mantled, followed close behind the casket, their faces set like iron in the glow of the torches they carried.

As Gerard watched, the Templars carried the casket through the arch and down a massive flight of stone steps. Another stone passageway opened up at the foot of the stair, off to the right, and the knightly procession carried on along the passageway to its end. Here two stonemasons in dusty aprons presided over a pile of building stones heaped around a partially walled-up doorway in the left-hand wall.

The four carrier knights turned left, bearing their burden past the waiting workmen through the remaining gap. The two escorting knights hung back, stationing themselves to the left and the right of the door. Their air of anticipation drew Gerard’s scrying eyes to the implements they now drew forth from underneath their mantles. One of the implements was easily recognizable as the Seal; the other was a metallic rod tipped with a heavy knob and a hand-sized star made of two interlaced triangles of gold—some sort of sceptre, Gerard decided, of a strange and antique design.

The Sceptre drew Gerard’s gaze like a magnet. As he continued to study it, willing further intelligence concerning the Sceptre, his fingers unconsciously tightened their grip on the Seal. Its latent power set the nerve ends tingling in his fingertips. He drew a deep, hoarse breath and closed his eyes, retreating still deeper into trance as he extended himself, struggling to touch the Sceptre with a questioning finger of the mind.

The effort taxed him to the very limits of his reach. The strain verged on physical pain. Bowing low over the Seal and stretching himself to the utmost, he made a last blind grab and bought himself a precious instant of discernment. Then, like a man teetering perilously on the edge of a precipice, he yanked himself back to palpitating safety.

The blood pounded in his temples, and his ears were ringing. His hands were cramped from their sustained grip on the Seal, and he groaned a little at the pain of returning circulation as he opened them enough to lay the Seal on the black velvet surrounding the crystal sphere. As he shakily straightened back to his kneeling position, sitting on his haunches, he discovered that his efforts had cost him a nosebleed as well, and he clamped a handkerchief to his nose and tilted back his head as he willed himself back to balance, trying not to think of the red stain now marring the white robe he wore. Sick and trembling, he forced himself to sit very still for several minutes while his breathing gradually righted itself and the racing of his heart subsided. Eventually he roused himself enough to draw a slow, deep breath and open his eyes.

For a moment everything around him was a blur. Then his vision stabilized to show him the mundane confines of his room at the guesthouse, ordinary and a little squalid beyond the boundaries of the circle he had laid out in tape on the tatty carpet. Candles burned at the points of the six-pointed star he had outlined inside the circle, and he and his black velvet and crystal and the Seal occupied the center hexagon.

Catching a glimpse of his own blanched reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe door, as he got shakily to his feet, Gerard pulled a pallid grin of triumph. Though he still felt decidedly unwell, the lingering agitation he was feeling was a relatively small price to pay for the knowledge he had just gained by the experience. Still grinning, he pulled folds of black velvet over the Seal and sphere, then set about releasing the safeguards he had erected around himself before beginning his work. When all traces had been obliterated—the candles doused, the tape pulled up, the furniture uncovered and returned to its proper places—only then did he allow himself to collapse on the bed, the Seal once more in hand, to inspect the contents of a plastic carrier bag, purchased several days before.

The stack of Ordnance Survey maps covered most of southern Scotland, but he had guessed, before beginning tonight’s work, that the one he wanted was of the local Mid-Lothian Region. He spent the next few minutes poring avidly across its detailed surface till he found what he was looking for. Then he reached for the telephone on the bedside table.

* * *

Adam roused again shortly after daybreak, feeling mostly restored in body, but restive in mind. Sitting up in bed, his first thought was to grope for the notebook in which he knew he had written
something
during the night. He found it and his pen on the floor beside the bed, and was somewhat startled to discover that he had recorded the lines not in English, but in Hebrew.

He stared down at the alien script, mentally shifting gears. His knowledge of Hebrew was rudimentary at best, but enough came to mind to puzzle out the basic meaning of what he had written, especially having refreshed his memory at Nathan’s funeral a mere week before. Haltingly he jotted down a rough translation on the page opposite, then murmured aloud what he had written.

Happy is the man who finds wisdom.

She is a tree of life to those who grasp her

And those who hold her fast are happy . . .

Even in what surely must be a clumsy translation, the words had the formal ring of verse. More to the point, he was certain he had come across the lines before—most likely in the book of Proverbs, said to be a compendium of King Solomon’s own words. Recalling that there had been several Bibles on the shelves downstairs in Oakwood’s spacious library, Adam decided it would be well worth checking out his hypothesis before breakfast. From what he had learned so far of Sir John Graham, he suspected he might well find Hebrew sources there as well.

Galvanized into action by this prospect, he sprang out of bed and padded swiftly through to the adjoining bathroom for a quick shower and shave, after which he dressed and slipped downstairs. As he had hoped and expected, the library was empty. Closing the door quietly behind him, he switched on an overhead light and went to work.