Dagger Magic

"Patience, youngling. I was about to speak of that. It is certain that Green Gloves will send his dagger priests to secure the false Termas. They will be capable of wielding vast amounts of power, commanding demonic forces beyond your imagination.

"Countering such power is a matter of separating the wielder of the magic from his protectors, so that he is vulnerable to attack by his own demons. The Western magic resident in your chief is equal to the task, dagger to dagger. Dr. Sinclair knows - though he does not know that he knows."

This cryptic observation drew a questioning look from Adam, but instead of speaking, Tseten reached out and took him by the right hand. The old man's touch sent a faint electrical shock tingling up Adam's arm, accompanied by an almost irresistible compulsion to let fall all defenses where the venerable lama was concerned.

"If you will permit it, I can teach you to know what you know," Jigme translated, as Tseten deftly picked up Adam's sapphire ring and slid it back onto his hand. Turning that hand upward, the old man slowly began to trace a decreasing spiral in the palm with the tip of his right index finger.

"You need not fear." Jigme's words were a soothing caress. "Rinpoche says you have the ability to resist his direction, but he prays that you will not, so that he may guide you to a higher level of consciousness."

The old lama's touch and the spiralling circle being traced on his palm were drawing Adam into trance. Almost without his volition, he could feel the tension draining out of his body, as if Tseten somehow had opened a tap. To either side of him, he sensed concern tensing McLeod and Peregrine, but he paid them no mind; he had nothing to fear from the master before whom he sat, and to whom he now yielded up his will.

"Grant me your teaching, Master," he whispered, lifting his gaze squarely to Tseten's. "I give you leave to guide me wherever I must go."

The spiralling on his palm ended with a brief caress. Taking both Adam's hands in his, Tseten gently folded them together, palm to palm, in an attitude of prayer, and held them in his own. As Adam closed his eyes, a sensation of calm expectancy stole over him, a centering and slipping into familiar patterns of quiescent readiness.

The old lama's hands left Adam's as he softly began to chant, Jigme's voice also joining in.

"Om mani peme hum! Om mani peme hum! Om mani peme hum…"

The familiar mantra lulled and reassured, enjoining surrender in the blissful contemplation of the lotus-jewel of compassion, a heady melding of self with the Supreme All-ness that shaped the universe. Reinforced by a faint clicking that Adam dimly identified as Tseten's rosary beads, the quietly reiterating syllables filled the surrounding air with hypnotic resonances.

Breathing deeply, Adam let those resonances wash over him in waves, carrying him out of the phenomenal world and into the interior realm of a profound, free-floating trance. At first that realm was void, and without form. But then, across that interior void, the blended voices of the two holy men moved like an echo of the first syllable of creation.

A spark of pure, unbroken light appeared in the darkness behind Adam's closed eyelids, vital as a newborn sun. As his inner vision yearned toward it, the heart of that sun exploded, flooding the void with a particle-storm of polychrome radiance. Colors of the metaphysical spectrum spiralled round him in a corona of many-colored lights.

With his next indrawn breath, the corona flowed into his body, circulating throughout his entire being. The chain of braided lights penetrated every nerve with vital, tingling energy. In an instant of revelation, he perceived the colors in their true light, manifold expressions of the sixfold classes of sentient beings.

The black strand represented the creatures of the purgatorial realm. The red one stood for the yidag and mi-ma-yin, the lesser spirits; the green for the tudo, the animal world. The realm of men was represented by the yellow strand, that of the hlamayin, or greater spirits, by the blue. Encompassing and crowning them all, as origin and source, was the purity of white, the imperial aura of primordial awareness, subordinating all lesser colors to itself in timeless unity.

The corona flowed out of his body on his exhaled breath, but each successive cycle of respiration renewed the pattern, simultaneously experienced and perceived. As his concentration deepened, Adam became aware that the chain of lights was lengthening. With each successive cast, it seemed to draw him out of himself in ever-expanding reaches of consciousness till at last he became at one with the chain.