The Adept (13 page)

When the earl shortly departed to look after his other guests, Peregrine went wandering in search of Adam. He found him by one of the windows in the drawing room, engaged in absorbed conversation with a lissome, laughing-eyed blond whom Peregrine recognized as Lady Alyson MacBaird, the elder daughter of the Earl of Kilrevan. He had painted her several years before. Unwilling to interrupt what was obviously a pleasurable encounter for both parties, Peregrine was about to withdraw, when the scene before him underwent a sudden disturbing change.

A shadow seemed to pass over the brightly-lit room, like a storm cloud passing over the sun. The darkness gathered over Adam’s corner of the hall, spiraling around him like smoke.

Peregrine gave a gasp and blinked his eyes hard, but the darkness remained, hovering queasily in the air like a screen of poisonous gas. Throwing discretion to the winds, Peregrine called out sharply and started forward.

“Adam!”

The older man turned his head, his expression one of question. Halfway to the middle of the room, Peregrine fetched up short as the darkness abruptly vanished before his eyes. He stumbled to a halt, feeling foolish and confused.

“What is it, Peregrine?” Adam inquired mildly.

Peregrine shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, aware of Lady Alyson’s amused blue gaze.

“I beg your pardon,” he told her. “I was looking for Sir Adam, but it can wait . . .”

Later on, however, when he and Adam were in the car driving back to Strathmourne, he-related what he had seen.

“I haven’t a clue what it was,” he confessed. “It wasn’t like any of
the
other things I’ve been seeing. A—almost an intelligent presence, perhaps some kind of elemental force—like the energy buildup before a tornado or a hurricane. It was definitely menacing. And you were at the center of it.”

Adam assimilated this without speaking. When the silence lengthened, Peregrine finally asked, “Adam, are you in some kind of danger?”

Adam’s mouth was thin and unsmiling. “If I am, it has yet to assume a particular shape and form.”

“Have you any enemies that you know of?” Peregrine persisted.

“Yes. Who hasn’t?” Adam stated shortly. Then his expression softened. “Look, I don’t doubt for an instant that you’ve caught intimations of some form of trouble to come.

But I make it a rule never to worry, until I have something specific to worry about. Sufficient unto the day,” he finished dryly, “is the evil thereof.”

“All right,” said Peregrine on a heavy note. “At least you’ve been warned.” He added mentally,
And I’ll do anything I can to help, if that will serve .
. .

Chapter Eight

ON SATURDAY,
the twenty-seventh, with the sinking of the sun, a cold, dank fog drifted down off the three hills of Eildon into the narrow streets of the Scottish border town of Melrose. As the night darkened, the mist grew steadily thicker, reducing street- and window-lights to ghostly smears in the gathering gloom. Before very long, the fog was so dense that it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. On the east side of the town, the famous ruins of Melrose Abbey became all but invisible, drowned in a sea of cloud, Shortly after eight o’clock, a white patrol car bearing the markings of the Lothian and Borders Police rumbled downhill along the crooked length of Abbey Street and slowed to a halt outside the entrance to the abbey’s grounds. The officer at the wheel cut the engine, then rolled down his window to listen while his partner stepped out of the car to shine a torch into the mist beyond the gates. The fog diffused the beam without illuminating anything, but the stillness was reassuring. Satisfied that all was in order, the officer returned to the warmth of the car, and the pair continued on their way.

The tail lights of the patrol car vanished into the mist. As the drone of its engine receded into the distance, five dark-clad figures emerged from the shadows flanking the enclosed garden of St. Mary’s School, across the street from the abbey. Silent as wraiths, they darted across the road and ducked into Cloisters Road, a single-track lane running along the north side of the abbey compound. Once inside the lane, the leader switched on a shielded electric torch and led the way to an iron gate in the churchyard wall.

The gate was locked, but one of the party made short work of it with a deftly wielded lock pick. Swiftly the little procession filed through the open gate and set out across the fog-bound lawn toward the vaulted ruin of the abbey church, skirting the eastern side of the cloister ruins and slipping through what once had been the processional door from the cloister into the church. Three of the five shouldered bundles containing an assortment of workmen’s tools; a fourth carried a pair of battery-powered lanterns. The leader bore a bulky leather satchel and a narrow canvas case, the latter long and thin like a fencer’s kit-bag.

Once inside the shell of the nave, the five made their way purposefully toward a small chapel set into the corner between the north transept and the presbytery, shielded from outside view by thick outer walls on two sides and the bulk of the abbey on the others. One man scurried across to the south transept to peer searchingly through a doorway in the south wall, then came back to post watch down the gravel-paved nave. Two of the others directed the dim, blue-filtered beams of the electric lanterns low against the chapel floor, while the fourth produced a whisk broom and with it swept the gravel off an oblong section of flagstone paving beneath the narrow east window. When his work was finished, the leader came forward and went down on his knees, taking off his gloves to run bare hands over the stones just exposed, A signet ring on the third finger of his right hand flashed blood-dark in the blue light.

Whatever he was looking for, he found. Getting to his feet, he gave his subordinates a nod by way of confirmation and backed off a few paces to sit on a piece of foundation stone by the chapel doorway and rummage in his satchel, One of the men came to crouch beside him, while the other two began unpacking the shovels and crowbars and pickaxes they had brought with them for excavation.

“I still think we could have done this part ahead of time, Mr. Geddes,” the crouching man whispered, as the leader drew first a leaden bowl and then a length of leather thong out of the satchel.
The lead made a dull thunk as the leader set the bowl beside his boot, but he only glared at his companion before shrugging out of the left sleeve of his leather jacket and pushing up the sleeve of the black polo shirt underneath, “You know better than to use real names,” he replied, also whispering, but with an undertone that brooked no argument. “And you also know that the ritual requires that the blood be as fresh as possible. Do it! There’s no time to waste.”

He handed the thong to the other man and held out his left arm, at the same time shifting the leaden bowl into his lap and leaning back against the stump of a Romanesque column. His assistant offered no further comment, merely applying the leather thong as a tourniquet and then delving into his jacket pocket to produce several small items sealed in plastic packets.

From the first came a sterile wipe, pungent with alcohol.

The leader straightened his arm, impassively clenching and unclenching his fist to pump up the vein as his assistant scrubbed the skin over the inner elbow, rolling the vein under his fingertips to be sure of the location in the dim light. A second packet produced a coil of clear plastic tubing, with a clamp midway along its length and a connector for attaching it to the sterile needle unit the man withdrew from the third.

“Keep your arm straight now,” he murmured, swabbing over the vein a final time and then pulling off the needle’s protective cap with his teeth.

His subject displayed no flicker of reaction as the needle went in. Briefly releasing the clamp in the center of the tubing allowed a dark line of blood to race into the near end, confirming accurate placement of the needle. Satisfied, the man pulled the tabs from a butterfly bandage and used it to stabilize the needle against the leader’s inner arm, then ran his hand lightly down the length of the plastic tubing until he found the free end, which he set in the leaden bowl for the leader to hold in place.

“You’re all set,” the man whispered, loosening the tourniquet. “Shall I leave you alone for a few minutes, after I start it?” At the leader’s taut nod, his assistant thumbed the clamp, watching for a moment until blood had begun to pool in the leaden bowl, then got to his feet and backed off a few paces.

The leader leaned back his head with eyes closed and began to murmur something under his breath, hugging the leaden bowl to his chest. With a slight shudder, the assistant turned away to assist his colleagues, who were uprooting the paving stones and leaning them against the chapel wall.

A few minutes later he returned. The bowl was more than half full, containing perhaps a cupful of blood. Kneeling, the man pulled a roll of adhesive tape and a pair of blunt bandage scissors from his pocket, along with a packet containing a ball of sterile cotton. He drew off a short length of tape from the roll and cut it, sticking one end lightly to the side of his thigh while he opened the packet with the cotton. The faint sound caused the leader to stir, opening eyes that, just for an instant, seemed to glow in the bluish light, almost forbidding the hand that came to close the clamp and stop the flow of his blood.

But then the moment was past, and he was handing over the leaden bowl, holding up the doubled end of the tubing so it would not drip, extending his arm for removal of the needle. When it was done, and cotton and tape in place over his wound, he eased his sleeve back down his arm and put his jacket back on while, his assistant gathered the debris from their work into a plastic bag, which he stashed in the leather satchel. From that satchel he then removed an aspergillum of black horsehair, which he handed to the leader before getting to his feet, also picking up the leaden bowl of blood.

“Careful when you stand up,” he warned, though he made no move to assist. “You may be a little light-headed.”

The leader staggered a little on his feet as he came full upright, pausing to catch his balance on the column while he drew a few deep breaths, but then he held out his hand for the bowl.

“Give it to me,” he commanded, at the same time snapping his fingers at the two men finishing up on the floor slabs. The pair immediately abandoned their activities to
move to the center of the area, also joined by the man who had been assisting the leader.

The leader moved to the northern edge of the area they had cleared, dipping the tuft of black horsehair into the bowl. As he raised it, blood dripped onto the stone of the foundations there.

“The blood of life,”
he whispered fiercely.

Turning westward then, he began pacing off a circle to include the entire chapel area, going widdershiins, shaking blood lavishly to mark the outline, his voice pitched barely above a whisper as he chanted the measured verses of a ritual invocation. The men within watched avidly, bowing deeply as their leader paused at each quarter to make a sign and splash an additional measure of blood on the ground and confining stones of the walls. When the circuit was complete, the leader closed the circle with another sign. The leaden bowl was all but empty, and he wrapped it and the aspergillum in a square of fine black cloth and a plastic bag before stashing them in his satchel again.

“The temenos is sealed,” he told his men. “You may now begin.”

His three subordinates hefted their implements and began to dig. Earth and gravel went flying as the excavators quarried their way into the ground. Inside the guarded circle, the air rang loud with the busy tumult of picks and shovels. Outside, where the sentry kept watch along the darkened nave, it was quiet as the grave.

Two hours passed. The men continued to work uninterrupted. By the middle of the third hour, they had uncovered a deep oblong pit the size of a coffin, perhaps three feet below the level of the floor. Shortly thereafter, one of the diggers struck his shovel against something hard that rang out dully like gun metal.

“This should be it,” one of the men murmured.

After that, they worked more carefully. In a quarter hour’s time, their excavations had unearthed a heavy slab of fine-grained silvery granite. The leader sprinkled the face of the slab with salt that had been mixed with sulphur and muttered a word of command.

Spidery lines sprang to life, glistening in the light from the electric lanterns. The lines flowed together to form an intricate spiral of hieroglyphics. The leader smiled thinly at his associates.

“This is indeed his resting place,” he told them. “Let’s raise the marking stone.”

Under the combined efforts of the team, the slab came up with a hollow groan; beneath it lay a plain stone sarcophagus. Two members of the trio heaved aside the sarcophagus lid, exposing a mummified form swathed in the cobwebby remains of a linen shroud.

The senior member of the excavation team explored the spaces on either side of the body with hands that were trembling with eagerness. He carefully shifted the corpse and groped beneath its head, back, and legs, muttering to himself when he discovered nothing there to find. The face he upturned toward his leader was black with disappointment.

“It isn’t here!” he declared bitterly. “Damn it, it isn’t here!”

The leader dismissed the import of this heated announcement with a laconic gesture; “A small setback, nothing more. I came prepared against this eventuality.”

He motioned his men to alight from the pit. When they were clear, he opened his satchel again and produced a handful of scarlet tapers and a stick of black chalk. The former he gave to his men to position at the four quarters of the circle he had circumscribed with blood,’ himself methodically chalking out an equilateral triangle at the north side of the grave slot, its apex pointing toward the body. A clay incense burner was set at the center of the triangle.

After he had completed these preparations, he returned to the satchel for the last time and drew out a carefully folded packet of black silk which, when shaken out, became a short hooded cape. This he slipped around his shoulders, drawing up the hood and carefully arranging the rest so that it fell in smooth folds, just to his elbows. Silver embroidery in the shape of a snarling beast’s head glimmered to the left of the throat clasp. From an inner pocket of his leather
jacket came a final piece of ceremonial regalia: a silver pendant hanging from a heavy silver chain, The three men with him had brought similar hoods, embroidered with the same beast device, but in red. While they were putting these on, the leader lit the tapers and set the incense burning. The smoke was heavy, welling over the edges of the clay incense burner and spreading slowly over the floor, spilling down into the open coffin. As the heavily scented smoke began to obscure what lay inside, the leader unzipped the narrow canvas bag. Damascened gold and silver-work blazed cold in the light of the filtered torches as he drew out a ‘splendid, swept-hilt rapier, fashioned in the ornate style favored by Italian armorers of the late sixteenth century.

Carefully he drew the sword from its gem-studded scabbard. Flanked by his henchmen, behind and to either side, he positioned himself behind the triangle he had drawn on the ground, with his feet all but touching the triangle’s base. Extending the sword at arm’s length, he traced a symbol in the air above the opened grave, then lowered the tip of the blade so that it came to rest precisely on the crowning point of the triangle. For a moment he was silent, marshalling mind, body, and spirit, then, rousing himself, he uttered the opening cantrip of a potent and dangerous incantation.