Death of an Adept

Chapter Four

EASTWARD across a continent and an ocean, on the northernmost island of the Outer Hebrides, less angelic forces were gathering to enact far darker drama than a play to celebrate the birth of a God of Light. Francis Raeburn had set the night's agenda, and took particular satisfaction in the knowledge that one of the more troublesome champions of that Light, Adam Sinclair, was at least temporarily occupied many thousand miles away.

The ancient site selected by Raeburn's associate, Taliere, was well suited to the night's work. Sprawled across a wind-scoured flatland beside a sea loch thrusting deep into the western coast of the Isle of Lewis, the standing stones of Callanish loomed stark and ever mysterious under a frosty, moonless sky, in grandeur second only to Stonehenge in all the British Isles.

The heart of Callanish centered on a ring of thirteen rough-hewn stones, almost all of which were taller than a man. At the foot of a slender, even taller stone in the center of the circle, the remains of a small chambered tomb-cairn lay half-hidden under a frost-scorched mound of peaty grass and a light powdering of snow.

A broadening avenue of lesser stones stretched northward from the circle for nearly a hundred yards, with shorter single lines of stones radiating east, west, and south. The overall pattern greatly resembled a slightly skewed Celtic cross, though its unknown builders had laid it out nearly three thousand years before the coming of the Child whose birth was about to be celebrated in Christian lands, and whose adherents had appropriated cruciform shapes to symbolize a new faith.

The stones themselves were known by more than one name amongst the Gaelic-speaking people of the island. Some called the stones an Fir-Bhreige Chalanois - "The Deceitful Men" - recalling obscure legends of a band of forsworn outlaws changed into stone by an enchanter. Indeed, in Victorian times, clearance of encroaching peat from a height of four to five feet around the bases of the stones had left a bleached effect on the lower halves that inspired one illustrator to depict the color difference as the clothing of the "deceitful men," with a skeleton emerging from the newly uncovered tomb-cairn and winged spirit-forms cavorting in the air above the stones.

That Callanish had long possessed associations with the supernatural was undoubted. Another name for the site was Tur-sachen, betokening a place of pilgrimage and mourning where, in bygone days, it had been customary for courting couples to come and make their marriage vows. Some few would recall how this local tradition was rooted in a far more distant past, when other seekers had come to Callanish to bind themselves with darker oaths in the brooding presence of powers ancient even when the stones themselves were new.

The folk who lived within sight of the Callanish Ring had long ago come to terms with its presence. By day, especially in sumfner, when the tourists had retreated to accommodations in the island's main town of Stornoway, some fifteen miles to the east and north, it was not uncommon to find local children playing among the stones. By night, however, all and sundry tended to keep well clear, content to leave the ancient ring to guard its own secrets. This was especially true in the dead of winter, when the northern darkness closed in early and the bone-numbing chill of the near-Arctic dusk drove people indoors by mid-afternoon, there to huddle gratefully around the warmth of their own hearths as the cold winds blew, with no desire to venture out again.

On the twenty-first of December, the ice-blue clarity of the lowering twilight promised a night of bitter cold. By five o'clock, the temperature had plummeted past the freezing point. By suppertime, the open ground between the houses was aglitter with traces of gathering frost. Shortly after ten, the last of the village lights winked out.

Not long thereafter, a small black Mini Cooper bearing four men ghosted quietly through Callanish Village from the north, dousing its lights as it entered the unpaved car park far at the south end of the village. Beyond the wire fence at the edge of the car park, the distant stones of Callanish glistened under crystalline starlight bright enough to cast shadows.

At that same moment, a compact recreational vehicle was backing into a construction site behind the rocky outcropping known as Cnoc an Tursa, several hundred yards to the other side of the stones, where work had been suspended for the winter on what was scheduled to become a National Trust visitor center for the site. The RV's weathered paint and air of gentle decrepitude suggested nothing of any dark intent on the part of its occupants as its driver doused the headlights and killed the engine.

In the car park, silent under the winter stars, the passenger door of the Mini Cooper opened to disgorge two male figures kitted out in snow-camouflage coveralls, ski masks, and infrared night-goggles. Though their brief was to prevent any untoward interruption of what their employer had planned, hopefully by ensuring that no one became aware of anything amiss, both carried long-barrelled pistols loaded with anaesthetic darts - and both were prepared to use the silenced Lu-gers they wore bolstered as backup, if lesser force failed.

As the second man quietly pressed the car door closed and the Mini Cooper moved off silently along a single-track road, quickly disappearing from sight, his partner was already melting into the shadows near the end of the thatched cottage fronting the car park. With a glance in that direction to mark the location, the second man vaulted a closed gate in the fence and positioned himself behind one of the larger stones marking the northern avenue. When he had settled, he whispered briefly into the slender curve of a miniature microphone close beside his mouth.

Back at the construction site, inside the darkened RV, Klaus Richter pressed a headset to his ear, nodding as he whispered a brief reply, then turned to his employer, who was sitting in the front passenger seat beside Barclay. Like the men he had just spoken to, all of them wore snow-camouflage.

"Erich and Gunther are in position at the upper car park," he said quietly. ' The Mini is taking up position at the bottom of the road to meet the horse-box when it arrives. Otto will drive it in."

"Excellent," Raeburn replied. "Then we'll begin securing the site. Barclay, why don't you give him a hand?"

As Barclay headed aft between the two front seats and Rich-ter opened the RV's side door, Derek Mallory swivelled his chair and moved his medical bag aside to let Richter pull out two zippered duffel bags, one of which he handed to Barclay before the two of them disappeared up a path leading around the dark outcropping that was Cnoc an Tursa.

Behind Mallory, the white-robed Taliere was seated on the long couch that stretched across the back of the RV, head bowed in the shelter of the robe's hood. He did not stir as Raeburn donned a headset and then came aft to pull on a similar white robe over his heavy winter clothing. When Raeburn had returned to his seat, silently gazing out at the road where the horse-box was expected, Mallory also drew on a white robe, settling less patiently into the growing chill to wait.

After perhaps five minutes of this, when Taliere stirred enough to smother a slight cough, Mallory glanced at his watch, then back at the old Druid.

"It's getting late," he murmured. "If those rustic colleagues of yours have gotten lost…"

Taliere's expression could not be read in the darkness, but his voice was sharp with disdain.

"They know the island," he muttered. "They will be here."

Before Mallory could frame a reply, Raeburn held up a hand and hissed for silence, listening intently to his headset.

"The horse-box is on its way up," he whispered, laying the headset aside. "We'd best be ready to greet our honored guest."

He and Taliere were waiting in front of the RV as a battered white Land Rover towing a horse-box slowed and stopped a few yards past the entrance to the construction area, followed by the Mini. After a slight pause, the Rover reversed the dark bulk of the horse-box neatly into the space to the left of the RV, with the noses of the two vehicles lined up. One of Rich-ter's men was at the wheel, and alighted from the driver's side as soon as he had killed the engine and set the brake.

As the Mini tucked in neatly ahead of him, also disgorging its driver, the Rover's two other occupants disembarked rather more tentatively, though they let themselves be guided to the rear of the horse-box by the Mini's driver. They were brawny specimens, already attired in the capacious white woollen robes deemed proper for the night's work, and looked palpably relieved when Taliere appeared from between the two vehicles. Inside, the hotse-hox, something large and heavy shifted restlessly in the confinement of the narrow space, churning straw underfoot.

"Let us waste no time," Taliere whispered, touching each man's arm in reassurance. "You know what to do."

He stood aside to watch as they folded down the tailgate of the horse-box, bidding one of Richter's henchmen assist in spreading a quilted rug on the ramp to muffle the sound of hooves. The animal attached to the hooves was a fine black Angus bull, its eyes rolling white in the surrounding darkness as its handlers entered the compartment and backed it down the ramp, clinging to its halter and a ring through its nose.

While they gentled the bull, its snorting breath pluming in the cold, Taliere fetched a crown woven of holly and mistletoe from the RV. This he fastened around the bull's horns, attaching it with two twists of wire and then blowing softly into the bull's nostrils as he crooned a low-voiced charm. The animal immediately became docile.

"You know the path to the stones," Taliere said to his men, ignoring Raeburn's expression of bemusement. "Await our coming, outside the circle."

As Taliere withdrew to the RV to finish robing, Raeburn signalled Mallory to accompany the men with the bull, himself returning to the RV to fetch the casket containing the Pictish dagger. This he tucked possessively under one arm while he turned to watch Taliere complete his preparations by the light of a single candle.

"That was a rather impressive trick with the bull," he said mildly, as Taliere fastened on a silver necklet incised with ogham figures. The old Druid had already bound a cincture of braided horsehair around his waist, from which hung a tooled-leather bottle and a small sickle of burnished bronze, its blade edge honed to no less a sharpness than the gaze he turned to Raeburn's darkling reflection in the mirror.

"It was no trick," he said in a low voice. "And you had better have no trick in mind when we enter the sacred circle. I hope you realize what you are doing."

Raeburn lifted an innocent eyebrow. "Doing? Why, my objective is entirely straightforward, dear Taliere: I wish to renew my alliance with the lord Taranis."

"I do not question your aim," Taliere replied, sullenly shouldering a cope-like mantle woven with many-colored feathers. "I do have grave reservations about your methods."

"So you have told me, repeatedly," Raeburn coolly acknowledged. "Nevertheless, we shall proceed according to my instructions."

Snuffling disapproval, the old Druid donned a feathered headdress in the form of a speckled bird with volant wings, scowling at his reflection as he adjusted it to his liking.

"If you persist in departing from the old ways, you are inviting trouble," he warned. "The rituals I have specified were instituted long ago, when men hearkened more closely to the dictates of nature. To permit - even encourage - interference from modern science is to commit a breach of faith. And by doing so, you risk compromising the results."

"It is a risk I am prepared to take," Raeburn said softly.

"Would that the risk were yours alone!" Taliere retorted, turning to take up a stout staff of peeled ash wood, its height trimmed to match his own. "The diligence with which a suppliant is prepared to execute his charge reflects the purity of his intentions. As your mediator in this transaction, I am less than eager to see myself implicated in what might well be perceived as a violation of respect."

"You take too much upon yourself," Raeburn said. "In the final analysis, it will be for the lord Taranis to decide whether or not the bargain I offer him is acceptable - and it is I who offer it, not you! Come. We have important work to do."

With these words he blew out the candle and stepped outside, the dagger casket still cradled under one arm. Taliere alighted after him, his back stiff with disapproval, but made no further argument, though he moved as if his limbs were weighted with lead as the two of them trudged along the trail that led to the stones of Callanish.

They saw the stones as they crested Cnoc an Tursa, stretched before them in the windswept moonlight like an inverted cross, with the sleeping village of Callanish silent in the distance. As they drew nearer, a faint shadow as of ground fog seemed to obscure their view of the central circle of the stones.

The black bulk of the bull waiting just outside the circle was all but invisible behind the white robes of those attending it. Barclay had robed after arriving at the circle, though his weathered face was set and uncharacteristically pale in the starlight. Mallory had his medical bag tucked under one arm. Richter stood between two of the stones with a wand of birch wood in one hand, surmounted by a fragment of rock crystal.

"Lynxmeister, I give you charge of the circle," he said in a low voice, offering the wand to Raeburn with a brisk dip of his chin. "Taoiseach, the nemeton is prepared."

Bowing, Raeburn handed off the casket to Barclay, then took the wand from Richter and stepped aside, back pressed against one of the stones. He could feel familiar power stirring in his hand as he held the birch wand aloft and the others fell into processional order behind Taliere: first the two assistants flanking the still docile bull, then Barclay and Mallory, and finally Richter, bringing up the rear. When all were in position, Taliere thrice struck the ground between the two stones with the butt of his staff, then lifted his eyes toward the icy stars as he clasped the staff with both hands.

"This is the hour appointed," he whispered, in a tone both hushed and resonant, "the hour of darkness that belongs neither to the sun nor to the moon. This is the hour of blood and prophecy. Let all who hunger come forth from the darkness and be present at the feast!"

The light wind seemed to die, giving way to an expectant hush. The winter stars shone out with sudden, fierce brightness, as if the intervening air had been thinned and rarefied by an abrupt shift in altitude. As the hush lengthened, Taliere drew himself up and stepped through the gap into the compass of the ring.

Those behind him followed, the bull snuffling in mild protest, for where the air outside the circle had been dark and clear, here within the perimeter it was luridly brightened by the glare of oil lamps set at the four quarters. Once all the members of the procession had passed within, Raeburn stepped inside the circle and scribed his wand three times across the gap between the two stones, then laid it across the threshold in final sealing. Content for the moment to let Taliere take center stage, Raeburn positioned himself beside Barclay, standing with his back to one of the stones, and nodded his readiness for Taliere to continue.

The old Druid moved to the center stone, between it and the darker depression of the ruined cairn, and halted to bend at the waist in profound obeisance. For a moment he remained thus, silent and with head bowed, gnarled hands knotted together around the neck of his staff. Then slowly he straightened and solemnly began to chant.

The language he used was not Scots Gaelic, but an ancient Celtic dialect called up out of the distant past. Soft at first, his voice accumulated pitch and force, sending dissonant echoes ricocheting eerily around the circle from stone to stone, though Raeburn knew that the sound could no more pass outside than the light of the lanterns could. The chant peaked to a crescendo, then ceased. In the heavy silence that followed, as Taliere turned to regard his fellow celebrants, his gaze took on an otherworldly sharpness, as did his voice.

"Know ye that this is the place of oath-fasting, sacred to the Lords Elemental. Know that these stones were erected to honor Them; nor will They abandon this site for so long as the stones themselves retain their memory.

"To quicken that memory, I invoke Earth in the presence of Cailleach, Mother of All," he continued, raising his staff, "and Fire in the person of Gruagach. the Long-haired One. Water I invoke in the presence of Shoney, Lord of the Western Seas. But it is to Taranis, the Thunderer, Lord of the Air, that I stand ready to offer sacrifice. May he be pleased to accept our oblation, and look with favor upon the petitions that we bring!"

On cue. his two assistants led the bull forward into the shadow of the monolith. Barclay accompanied them at Rae-burn's signal, opening the ash-wood box to offer it in oblation.

Laying aside his staff, the old Druid reverently drew out the ancient meteoric dagger, cold and deadly in the starlight. Pivoting to face the standing stone, he elevated the dagger before him in both hands.

"Here is the instrument of sacrifice!" he announced. "Be present, Lord Taranis, in this blade, born of a stone which fell from the sky. Taste and savor the blood we offer in token of our devotion."

With this invocation, Taliere turned again and advanced on the bull. Hitherto docile, the big animal flung up its crowned head in sudden uneasiness, snorting in wall-eyed alarm, and it took the combined strivings of both handlers to steady the animal until Taliere could again work his charm.

But then the bull stood unflinching, hooves planted wide as Taliere moved a step sideways and drew back his arm. And as one of the handlers seized the animal by its nose-ring and wrenched its head upward, a darkling glimmer seemed to shiver along the ancient dagger, lending it life of its own.

"Taranis!" Taliere cried, as a stunning surge of strength drove his arm down and then up in a deadly arc, the blade rending the vulnerable throat and piercing deep into the brain.

With a hoarse bellow, the bull started back, but it was already dying. Nonetheless, the violence of its recoil tore the dagger loose - for Taliere would not relinquish it - widening the wound and sending a dark fountain of blood spraying outward from severed arteries.

But the big animal was already sinking ponderously to its knees, its crowned head weaving. As Taliere stepped clear, his attendants moved in to steady the dying beast. At the same time, the old Druid raised a blood-drenched arm to point the dagger at Mallory in a summons not to be denied.

Mallory was ready, though he had not expected the compulsion that accompanied the gesture. Almost without volition, he found himself scurrying closer to press a large stainless-steel basin under the bull's streaming throat, watching it fill as the animal bled out its life.

He did not remember returning to his place beside Barclay, though the bowl of blood steaming at his feet testified that he had done so. Taliere had shed his feathered mantle and was watching the bull's final agonies, the handlers drawing back as it slowly rolled onto its side and was still.

But Taliere was not finished. Bidding the handlers stand back with another imperious gesture of the ancient dagger, he approached the bull again and, in another display of uncommon strength, bent over the bull's still-twitching carcass to plunge the blade into the belly, ripping open the body cavity with a single stroke.

A tangle of entrails spilled onto the ground in a noisome effusion of blood and digestive juices, steam softly rising above the body opening. Back at Mallory's side, Barclay went a little pale, but Raeburn only moved a half step closer to observe.

Crouching closer beside the bull, Taliere breathed in the reek of blood and bile as he examined the exposed mass of the bull's internal organs, poking at some of them with the tip of the dagger, muttering under his breath as he lightly shook his head. After a moment, Raeburn moved impatiently closer to crouch beside him.

"Well?" he prompted. "What do the signs portend?"

The old Druid rocked back on his haunches, gazing almost stupidly at the dagger in his hand - suddenly only a dagger - then lifted his gaze to Raeburn's, his expression one of consternation.

"I find the auguries less than favorable," he said uncertainly. "This bull you have offered, while outwardly unblemished, possesses a number of hidden imperfections. The heart is slightly enlarged and I have observed a scattering of lesions on the liver.

"Such anomalies may point to unforeseen complications which have not yet manifested themselves. Or they may indicate that your own motives in making this offering are less pure than you profess. Either way, I would not advise that we continue this night's work."

"Why not?"

Raeburn's voice was calm, but contained a hint of underlying menace. Taliere set his jaw.

"To be wholly acceptable as a sacrifice, the animal in question must be completely without flaw," he replied. "Whatever the implications of the signs I have noted, there is a very real possibility that the lord Taranis will spurn the offering as unworthy. If you persist under these circumstances, I cannot be answerable for the consequences."

"I see." Glancing around the circle, Raeburn considered for a moment, then shook his head.

"I am not frightened by your caveats," he said quietly. "I require information - and suspension of our quest for that information is not an option, having committed ourselves thus far. As you yourself pointed out earlier, you are our mediator. If the lord Taranis is disposed to be overly dainty in his requirements, I rely upon you to smooth over any difficulties."