The Adept (32 page)

“Sounds like it’s up to us, then,” McLeod replied, retrieving his tea. “Actually, I’m amazed you got through at all. The radio certainly wasn’t much use. The storm’s blanked out everything east of Loch Cluanie.”

“And the road?” asked Adam.

McLeod gulped down the rest of his tea and shook his head, “Nobody has a clue. We’ll just have to take our chances.”

On that dismal note, he handed his empty cup back to Peregrine and started the car, hooking up his seat belt and switching on windscreen wipers and headlights again and letting the engine warm for a few seconds, for the rain had gone much colder, even in the short time he had been gone. Peregrine eyed the sandwiches wistfully as he put the thermos flask and cups away, but all thought of food quickly fled at McLeod set the big car in motion. A heavy gust hit them broadside as they emerged from the shelter of the garage, strong enough to rock the Volvo on its tires and make Peregrine grab for an armrest and the back of Adam’s seat.

“Damned good thing we’re not driving a Mini,” McLeod muttered, and took a firmer grip on the steering wheel.

Creeping among the emergency vehicles still ranged around the pier area, they slowly made then way out of the village and started heading east. The storm whirled round them, howling like a wolf. Off to their right, the waters of Lochalsh threatened to burst the boundaries of the shore. The wind hurled scuds of sea froth across then path as they battled their way down the coast toward the village of Dornie.

The causeway just before Dornie was all but under water. Foam flew like shrapnel as white-capped breakers crashed against the raised levee that carried the road. At the end of the causeway, they could not even see the grey hulk of Eilean Donan, which should have been looming only a few hundred yards off to the right.

“Another hour and we’d have found ourselves cut off,” McLeod remarked grimly. “I wonder how much worse this is going to get.”

The weather notwithstanding, they made good time along the five-mile stretch beside Loch Duich, even though the darkness was now complete. Skirting the end of the loch, however, the rain got worse. Glen Shiel opened before them, a black wind tunnel running east and west through the mountains of Kintail, and the rain grew even heavier, pelting onto the windscreen almost faster than the wipers could strike it away. The headlights pierced the storm no more than a car-length or two ahead. McLeod’s jaw was clenched tight as he manhandled the Volvo around a series of zigzag, curves, slowing more with each change of direction.

“It’s no use—I can hardly see past the bonnet,” he told Adam, as they crept along a straight stretch at no more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. “If we’re to carry on, I’m going to need some assistance.”

Adam nodded wordlessly, clipping his penlight onto the edge of the map to free his hands. The road ahead was barely visible through the sheeting downpour.

Squaring himself in the seat, feet braced wide against the Volvo’s firewall, Adam cupped his left hand over the sapphire “on his right, bowing his head and drawing a deep breath as he closed his eyes. As he exhaled, centering to his intent, he murmured a silent invocation to the Author of Lights:

Domine noster,

Lumen semper ardens,

Ubi sunt tenebrae,

Fiat lux!

He could feel the Light suffuse him in answer to his prayer, radiating from the stone that was its focus and spreading all along his nerve-paths until his every fiber tingled with its’ presence. The warmth spread inward, touching heart and mind, and upward, to fill his mind and surround him.

That moment of inner illumination brought with it the power to see the outer world by the light of his own internal vision, not so much changing what he saw, but enhancing his ability to sort out the information coming to him by other senses besides the mere visual. Lifting his head to look at the road ahead, he now found himself better able to interpret the grey subtleties of pavement and curve, to filter out the blustering chaos of wind and rain.

It was no objective difference that he could quantify with instruments or even by describing with words, but it was nonetheless real. Where before the road had been obscured by the darkness and driving rain, now his vision extended as it might have done, had the rain not been there; and potential hazards, hidden only moments before, were now at least vaguely visible.

McLeod had slowed to a snail’s pace while Adam prepared, keeping his eyes straight ahead and intent on the road, trying to maintain what headway he could. Now, as Adam raised his head, McLeod glanced at him briefly.

“Ready?” Adam asked.

“Aye.”

Smoothly Adam reached across and set his right hand on the steering wheel just below McLeod’s left, making sure then hands touched. McLeod drew a long, deep breath, shrugging the tension out of his shoulders, then gave his attention back fully to the road, hands steady on the wheel, craggy face composed. Peregrine looked on in owl-eyed silence, wondering what his two companions could possibly be up to.

“We’re clear ahead,” Adam murmured, “and you’ve got a comfortable margin of space on either hand. Fortunately, we’re most unlikely to meet oncoming traffic. Guide on the center line and start accelerating. I’ll tell you when to ease off.”

With Adam’s hand on the wheel with McLeod’s, the Volvo began picking up speed. The needle on the speedometer edged up from twenty to thirty, then to thirty-five.

“That’s fine . . . that’s good enough for now,” Adam continued, in the same low, level voice. “Take her ten degrees to the left . . . now back to twelve o’clock . . . now fifteen degrees right . . . now steady on . . .”

Under Adam’s direction, McLeod brought the Volvo’s speed gradually up to fifty. They held to that speed for the next twenty minutes, while Adam continued to read the road ahead for bumps, curves, and obstacles. Like a pilot flying blind on instrumentation, McLeod accepted Adam’s instructions with confident assurance, his hands responding to the minuscule promptings of Adam’s. Watching from the backseat, Peregrine began to suspect that this was not the first time his two companions had worked together to pull off such an extraordinary feat of teamwork.

They left Glen Shiel and began to skirt Loch Cluanie. The banks of the loch were full to overflowing, and the road was flooded in places. Twice they were forced off the tarmac to creep along higher ground on the left-hand shoulders. Each time, Adam was able to guide them safely back onto the highway, with only a few precious minutes lost.

When the loch was safely behind them, Adam passed the map back to Peregrine, never taking his eyes from the road.

“Check the map, Peregrine,” he said softly. “We should have a junction coming up, and I don’t want to miss it in the dark.”

Briefly Peregrine used the penlight to confirm their route.

“You want the left-hand fork,” he said, looking up. “It should be marked A887 or Inverness—if the signs are still up.”

Even as his eyes strained to penetrate the rain and darkness, Peregrine caught a sudden, blurred glimpse of a road sign as they flashed past it in the storm.

“Any time now,” Peregrine warned. “Actually, it’s more of a bearing left than an actual turn.”

“We’re coming up on it,” Adam told McLeod. “Slow down and get ready to bear left with I give the word. Easy . . . now—and straighten out. Well done, both of you.”

Those words of praise gave Peregrine welcome comfort after simply rattling along as a passenger for so many miles, beginning to wonder why they had even brought him along. He consulted the map again, but there was only one more turn to be made, just as they actually got to Loch Ness and headed north. Still, he kept track of the few tiny villages through which they passed; it gave him reassurance that he was a part, however small, of what was going on.

Thunder rumbled low on the horizon ahead and to the left, and lightning lit the sky increasingly as they continued north and east, along the swollen torrent of the River Moriston. Road work along the route necessitated several slight detours onto unpaved stretches, slowing their progress, and a few miles past the village of Dundreggan, they came around a sharp bend in the road to find their way blocked by a flock of wet, bedraggled sheep.

McLeod braked even as Adam’s mouth was opening in warning, bringing them to a halt mere inches from the nearest animals.

“Bloody stupid beasts!” McLeod muttered. “If we’d hit one, our trip might well have ended right here. Let’s see if I can shift them.”

He tapped the horn without result, then eased the Volvo forward. Rain-sodden and bewildered by the headlights, the sheep edged nervously aside from the car’s long bonnet. One wall-eyed ewe stood rooted to the spot, only shying away when the bumper nudged her shoulder. The rest blundered toward the verges, finally leaving the car a narrow space to pass through.

With the sheep safely behind them, McLeod gradually picked up speed again. Very soon they passed the wind- twisted remains of a signpost. The route sign itself was lying face down at the side of the road several yards away.

“This must be Invermoriston,” Peregrine said, peering between the front seats as they slowed through the village. “We should have a junction with the A82, any time now. You’ll want to bear le—”

“Flares ahead!” Adam suddenly said. “Look out!”

Hissing under his breath, McLeod braked to a crawl, slowly approaching a man in oilskins who was putting out more flares. Behind him, an articulated lorry lay on its side, the trailer and cab still connected. A car was stopped beside it, emergency flashers adding a yellow glare to the red of the flares.

“I hope no one’s hurt,” Adam murmured, as they crept closer. “As a physician, I’m bound to offer aid.”

As they crept even with the man laying the flares, Adam took his hand off the wheel and McLeod cranked down his window.

“Anyone hurt?” McLeod called.

The man grimaced, holding a newly-lit flare out and away from his body.

“Only my pride,” he said. “And it didn’t do me rig any good. I was trying to make it down to Fort Augustus, but the winds got so bad, I thought I’d better stop. Should’ve stayed on the main road. A gust caught me, coming around this curve, and blew me right over.”

McLeod nodded sympathetically. “I doubt you’ll get a recovery vehicle out tonight,” he said. “What’s the road like, heading north?”

The man shook his head. “I wouldn’t advise trying it. The road’s clear, but the wind is really bad, and visibility is minimal. There was some thunder and lightning, too, a bit farther north. And the loch’s really choppy.”

“I’ll watch myself,” McLeod said, raising a hand in thanks. “Good luck to you.”

“Aye, and to you.”

As they crept on around the overturned lorry, making the transition onto the main road, Adam put his hand back on the wheel beneath McLeod’s. The inspector glanced at him, then returned his attention straight ahead as he crept their speed up once more.

“How are you holding up?”

Adam’s face was showing signs of strain, but he smiled slightly, not taking his eyes from the road.

“It can’t be much more than fifteen miles from here to Point Urquhart. I’ll manage.”

The car shuddered as if struck by a giant’s hand as they came onto the edge of Loch Ness, heading north in the direction of Inverness. The wind, funneled by the long, narrow confines of the loch, could sweep for more than twenty miles without resistance, to batter the edges of the loch with the full fury of the storm.

More heavily traveled than the route through Glen Shiel, the highway here was dotted with stranded vehicles of all shapes and sizes, their drivers forced to the shoulder by the blinding fury of the tempest. Some had not been totally in control when they did so, and rested with one or more wheels in a ditch or with a front fender crumpled against a stone wall.

With Adam still guiding him, McLeod threaded the Volvo swiftly in and out along a ten-mile obstacle course of stalled cars and minor road accidents. Off to their right, the black water of Loch Ness raged along the shore below, gnashing at the rocks like a live thing possessed.

But the focus of the fury lay ahead of them. As they drew nearer to Glen Urquhart, even Peregrine became aware of a ghostly, blue-white glow flickering in and out of phase on the fringes of his vision. It was different from the lightning that also lit the sky periodically—a lambent luminance sensed more with inner perceptions than with physical sight.

He could see that it worried Adam and McLeod, too. The inspector kept glancing off at it, even though Adam seemed still to be focused on the road ahead. Far ahead, at the level of the loch, streamers almost like the aurora borealis thrust ghostly fingers upward to unite with the powers of earth and sky. Thus entwined, they formed a centrifugal whirl of elemental energies, brooding ever more threatening above the highland hills.

The significance of the manifest shape was not lost on Adam, even though his focus seemed directed elsewhere. He knew it for what it was, and what it meant: The denizens of the realm of Faerie were raising up a cone of power in their righteous wrath, investing it with all the unbridled fury of the elements. Unless the fairy anger could be appeased, its force would fall indiscriminately on everyone and everything caught within range of its influence. And the only way to appease the offended fairies was to compel their offenders to answer the harsh, uncompromising balance of High Justice.

Adam glanced ahead at the sky again. In the same instant, as they came into a torn, something large and dark broke out of the darkness on the left and bolted across the road in front of the car.

McLeod uttered a startled exclamation and veered sharply to the left. He missed whatever it was, but the Volvo went into a skid and left the road, bouncing over the remains of a low freestone wall and coming to a rest with a sudden, thick-sounding splash, partway down a sloping embankment. One headlight went dark, but the remaining one showed a water-filled ditch just beyond their front wheels.

For a heartbeat or two, the only sound was the pelting of the rain on the car’s roof and bonnet and the low putt of the engine. Then McLeod drew a deep breath and eased his grip on the steering wheel.