The Adept (6 page)

When Peregrine offered no response, Adam tried another tack.

“Is death the only thing that you see?”

Peregrine gave a quick shake of his head.

“What else do you see?” Adam prompted.

Peregrine lifted his head, making a gallant attempt to get his emotions under control again.

“Well, it’s—hard to describe,” he said hesitantly. “I see—the sorts of things I seem to remember seeing when I was very young. Sometimes it’s only the background that changes—and then it’s as if I’m looking into some other time or some other place. Sometimes the face itself changes when I look at it from another angle, or in another light. It’s still the same person—but different somehow.”

Adam nodded. “Can you give me an example?”

Peregrine bit his lip. “Well, take you, for instance. Even as I sit here, I can’t be entirely sure what you look like. Something about your aspect keeps changing. I see you differently now than I did only a minute ago.”

Adam was listening intently. “Is it my death that you see?”

Peregrine flinched at the question, then recovered him self. “No. Not your death . . .” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head at several different angles, as though trying to stabilize his vision.

“It’s no use,” he said after a labored pause. “I can’t tell you what it is I see.”

Adam sat silent for a moment, weighing his next words very carefully.

“I think we ought to see if there isn’t some way to remedy that,” he said at last, setting aside his untouched glass. “There are ways to separate and clarify one’s perceptions. If you’re willing, I propose carrying out a simple experiment.”

“An experiment?” A wild, almost cornered look flitted briefly behind Peregrine’s eyes, but then he took an impulsive gulp of whiskey.

“Why not?” he said, suddenly reckless. “I certainly can’t go on the way I have been. If this experiment of yours offers any hope at all, I’m willing to give it a try.”

Chapter Four

“GOOD LAD,”
said Adam approvingly. “Now all we need are a few simple props.”

He left his seat and shifted a small rosewood side table away from the end of the adjoining settee and into the space directly in front of Peregrine’s chair. Then he returned to the drinks cabinet to rummage in a bottom drawer. When he rejoined Peregrine a moment later, he was carrying a fisherman’s float made of transparent, pale green glass. He handed it to Peregrine, who set aside his tumbler to take it.

“A crystal ball?” the artist said, with more than a trace of skepticism in his tone.

“If you wish,” Adam replied, smiling, “I’ll explain everything in a moment. You can decide then if you want to carry this any further.”

From the mantelpiece he took one of the pair of silver candlesticks flanking an oil of a hunting scene, bending to light the stub of a long fireplace match from the fire and then using that to light the candle in the silver candlestick. This he brought, to Peregrine’s table, setting it carefully in the center. Peregrine watched all these preparations with mingled fascination and uncertainty. By the flickering candlelight, the intricate inlay pattern in the top of the rosewood table seemed almost to glow.

“Now,” Adam said, as he resumed his seat opposite Peregrine. “As you probably already know, the keys to most upheavals of the psyche generally lie buried in the individual’s unconscious mind. Before we can get at those keys, we need to set the conscious mind at rest. There are chemical ways of doing this, of course, but they all have their side effects. Besides, you’ve already told me that drugs just make your problem worse.

“What I propose, then—and what I prefer anyway—is that we use one of several meditational techniques I’ve found useful in the past. One of the ways the unconscious guards its secrets is by projecting fear into the conscious. So I’d like to direct you in a simple relaxation exercise, to see if we can’t bypass that fear and get down to what’s really troubling you.”

“I
know
what’s troubling me,” Peregrine muttered. “I keep
seeing
things I
shouldn’t.”

“Why don’t you humor me by pretending that I do know what I’m doing?” Adam said mildly. “I know you’re a bundle of nerves—and I understand why—but it isn’t going to get any better if you won’t let me help you.”

Brought up short by this gentle rebuke, Peregrine blinked owlishly at Adam from behind his spectacles, then drew a determined breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said, subdued. “What do you want me to do?”

“First of all,” Adam said easily, “I want you to take the float between your two hands and hold it so that you can see the flame of the candle through the glass.”

“All right.” Peregrine turned the glass globe around experimentally, peering, through it from several different angles. “Should I take off my glasses first?” he asked.

“You may, if it will make you feel more comfortable. How well do you see without them?”

“Oh, well enough, this close,” Peregrine replied. “They’re really for distance. Will it make any difference with the experiment?”

“Not really.”

“In that case, I’ll leave them on.” He glanced doubtfully at Adam, “Are you going to hypnotize me?”

“So, you know my tricks already,” Adam said, leaning back in his chair with a look of faint amusement. “You needn’t worry. It won’t be like Svengali or Count Dracula, robbing his victim of all power of will. I promise you, you’ll remain in control of the situation at all times.”

The assurance produced the desired smile, if still a bit strained. Subsiding, Peregrine bent his gaze to the float and the light of the candle. Seen through the slight distortion of the hand-blown glass, the flame seemed to take on a life of its own, expanding and contracting in a succession of bright dancing forms.

By degrees, as Adam’s low voice began urging relaxation and a centering on the image of the flame, Peregrine felt himself drawn closer to the warm, lively glow, bathing in its brightness as it filled his field of vision. A growing lightness seemed to permeate his limbs, as though his body were shedding its weight. Far from being strange, the sensation was oddly familiar, even comforting.

Peregrine closed his eyes, trying to recall when and where he might have felt this way before. At the same time, he heard Adam Sinclair’s deep, resonant voice speaking to him in words that were clear but remote, as though carried over a great distance.

“That’s right . . . Go ahead and close your eyes. Relax and float. There’s nothing to fear now. You’re perfectly safe. Just relax. Relax . . .”

Gradually the remaining tension drained away from the young artist’s face. As he began to relax, his breathing came more easily, with the shallow regularity of someone just on the verge of sleep. Adam fell silent for a few seconds, to see if he would rouse himself, but Peregrine only gave a little sigh and seemed to settle even more.

“That’s very good,” Adam said softly. “Can you hear me clearly?”

“Yes.” The answer was almost inaudible.

“Excellent.” Adam kept his tone quiet and reassuring. “At the moment, you’re perfectly aware of what’s going on around you; it’s simply too much bother to pay attention to other things. You’re relaxed and safe and perfectly at peace. Now, I’m going to fetch something from across the room. When
I
return, I shall ask you to perform a simple task for me-—one that is perfectly within your ability. Will that be all right?”

“Yes.”

Satisfied, Adam went to the desk at the far end of the room, returning with a pencil and a blank pad of paper. Peregrine was sitting as he had left him—relaxed and motionless, eyes closed.

“You’re doing just fine,” Adam reassured him, in the same quiet tone he had used throughout. “We’re finished with the float for now, so I’m going to take it out of your hands,” he said, suiting action to words. “I’m giving you a pencil and some paper instead. I want you to take a few more deep breaths, to: let go of any remaining tension or anxiety that might still be with you. Then, when you’re ready, I want you to open your eyes and look at me, with all your inner intuition as well as your physical eyes, and draw what you see. Do you understand?”

Peregrine nodded his assent, his closed eyelids fluttering as he drew a slow, deep breath. Quietly Adam retreated to his chair, sitting back casually to watch, legs crossed. When the artist looked up, a few seconds later, the dull, hazel eyes had taken on an inner luminance, like lamps newly kindled.

Adam neither moved nor spoke, only watching his subject’s minute nuances of expression, feeling Peregrine’s eyes on his face. After a moment’s searching scrutiny, the artist brought pencil and paper together and began to sketch rapidly, his gaze rarely leaving his subject. After a moment he frowned and scribbled vigorously over what he had drawn, and began on another.” When he scribbled out the second sketch and started again, looking more and more confused, Adam quietly rose and came to set one hand on his shoulder in gentle restraint, the other pressing lightly to his forehead.

“Close your eyes and relax, Peregrine,” he murmured. “Relax and let yourself drift. It seems I’ve set you a more difficult task than I realized. Just relax and rest easy for a few minutes, while I see what you’ve drawn.”

Peregrine surrendered the pad and pencil without resistance, eyes closing and hands fluttering to his lap with a relieved sigh. Adam watched him for a few seconds, absently sticking the pencil through the spiral binding at the top of the pad, then turned his attention to what Peregrine had drawn.

Fortunately, the scribbling had not entirely obliterated the
work. The sketch at the top showed a lean, bearded face with deep eyes and a patrician nose set above a stern, passionate mouth. A chain mail coif surrounded the face, surmounted by a conical helmet in the style of the late thirteenth century. The device delicately shaded on the left shoulder of the mantle was the distinctive, eight-pointed Maltese cross of, among others, the Knights Templar.

Adam pursed his lips, nodding as he realized what Peregrine had glimpsed—echoes of a past life whose details were only accessible to Adam himself when in a deeply altered trance state, and mostly elusive during ordinary consciousness. As a psychiatrist, he preferred to believe that his “far memories” were psychological constructs—tricks that the mind played, in order to deal with material more acceptably couched in the fantasy of a past existence than in the cold, stark terms of reality. The mystical part of him preferred to believe that it all was literally true in some way he could not begin to explain.

As a compromise, he permitted himself to function
as if
it were true, simply accepting and using the insights he ‘sometimes received from his “previous selves,” because they usually worked—even if the methods he employed often did not square with his medical, training or blunt logic, much less his affiliation with the religious establishment to which he gave generous support.

Meanwhile, more tangible proofs confirmed that Sir Adam Sinclair, Baronet, did have ancestral ties, at least, to the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem. The tower house awaiting restoration in the north field had been in the Sinclair family for at least five hundred years—a former Templar site, as, indeed, were most places in Scotland with “temple” in the name. It was Templemor, not Strathmourne, from which the Sinclair family took their baronial title. And it was said that Templar blood ran in the Sinclair line as well, from the dark times after the Order had been suppressed nearly everywhere except Scotland.

At this remove, some of the historical “proofs” Were hazy, of course—not that it really mattered. Some truths simply
were.
And the ultimate truth about the Templars, which even history books: tended to substantiate—and
which Adam’s heart had never doubted—was that the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem had pursued a course of single-minded devotion to the defense of hallowed ground and the guardianship of secret truths, many suffering burning martyrdom rather than betray what the Order held sacred. And though a fourteenth-century King of France had set out to destroy the Order, hoping to gain possession of their legendary wealth, he was never to know that the greatest, treasure of the Templars lay not in gold, but in knowledge . . .

Knowledge. Peregrine Lovat seemed to have it—though it was clear that he did not know what he had. Thoughtful, Adam returned his attention to the young man’s work. Behind the scribbling, the second sketch showed the same strength of determination as the first, but the face was clean-shaved and hawk-visaged, framed in lappets of boldly striped linen. The tall headpiece Peregrine had sketched above the linen was the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, incorporating a solar disk set between tall ostrich plumes—the adornment of an Egyptian high priest.

No longer really seeing the sketch, Adam turned slightly to gaze into the fire, The second drawing was far more startling than the Templar Knight had been, for it depicted the most vivid of Adam’s far memories. He wondered, briefly, what other faces Peregrine might have sketched, had Adam not stopped him.

The boy had the gift, though. There was no doubting that. The question was, who was Peregrine Lovat, that he should possess the ability to penetrate beyond the mask of matter and
see
another’s soul, especially that of one trained as Adam had been trained? The answer to that question might well have far-reaching consequences, not only for Peregrine, but for Adam and his associates as well.

He turned to regard the young artist for a long moment, reaching deep inside himself for guidance on how to proceed. Peregrine was sitting quietly, hands lying gently cupped in his lap, the eyes closed behind the wire-rimmed spectacles, but Adam had some doubt that the level of trance was deep enough for what he had in mind to do next.
Setting the pad on the mantel, he decided to find out how good a hypnotic subject Peregrine was.

“Peregrine,” he said quietly, “I’d like to take this a step further, if I may. Will you trust that what I ask is only for your well being?”

At the younger man’s drowsy affirmative, Adam reached down and gently removed the glasses, so he could monitor better by watching the eyelids.

“Just keep your eyes closed now,” Adam directed, “I’ve taken off your glasses so you can be more comfortable. You don’t need to see for a while anyway. I want you to take a deep breath and concentrate on your heartbeat. I’m going to count your pulse, and I want you to count with me.” He pressed his fingertips against Peregrine’s wrist and felt the pulse, strong and steady.