Dagger Magic

Her voice lulled and urged calm and detachment, a silvery net of sound inexorably drawing Adam out of himself and into profound trance. He could feel his body relaxing visibly, eyelids drooping, yet his soul was still tinglingly aware of that other Presence waiting beyond any physical dimension, entreating his attention. Only vaguely was he conscious of Julian's touch, gently drawing his hands down, bidding him lay the Terma on the table, letting his fingertips still rest lightly upon it.

His respiration slowed, growing more and more shallow until he seemed scarcely to be breathing at all, though still he stared at and through the point of light. After a moment, her own expression one of complete absorption, Lady Julian leaned over and touched him lightly on the heart, throat, and forehead, letting her fingertips linger just above the bridge of his nose, between his eyebrows. Each touch seemed to release a faint chime of distant temple bells deep at the core of his being, rousing distant memories almost to conscious levels.

"Answer me this now, Adam." Julian's voice was at once a caress and an anchor to the here and now. "Where is the physical seat of your consciousness?''

His chest rose on a slow intake of breath, and his answer only barely whispered past his lips.

"In the head, behind the eyes?"

"Then you must move it to a new locus of perception," she said. "Be aware of your left arm - the arm that bears the mala. Imagine how it would be to see through the tips of those ringers, to hear with the palm of that hand. Let what you see draw your mind to another location."

Adam's physical gaze was still focused on the jewel of fire tipping the incense-stick. Sunk deep in trance, he had bade his own volition recede into drifting quiescence, malleable to Julian's direction. He drew a deep breath, imagining that he and the fire were being drawn together in a single unified point localized just between his eyebrows. The fusion was sensible as a tingling feeling in his forehead, anchored by the feather-touch of Julian's fingertips. With it came the fleeting recollection that Tseten also had touched him thus.

As Julian took her hand away, the tingling sensation began to spread toward the back of Adam's head, creeping down his neck and out along the length of his left arm toward the center of his left hand. It seemed to intensify as it passed through the coils of black beads wound around his wrist. A companion image rose up from the Terma beneath his hands, spiralling up like a whirlwind and resolving into the clearly discernible shape of an elderly Tibetan ascetic with a refined face and graceful, expressive hands, who might have been Jigme in old age.

The figure beckoned with grave urgency. Joyfully Adam's spirit rose up to meet him. His arm with the mala lifted in entreaty, the hand snapping shut as if attempting to grasp something not easy to hold.

"A pen," Adam murmured breathlessly. "I need a pen and paper…."

Peregrine was already delving into his sketchbox, turning one of his sketch pads to a blank page, pushing it across the table to Adam and then rummaging for a pencil. Before he could find one, Christopher produced a ballpoint from an inner pocket and set it in Adam's left hand. Adam blinked once, deeply, then set the pen to the blank page in front of him and began to write, his gaze never wavering from the glowing point of light atip the incense-stick, his pupils now gone wide and dilated.

Allowing for the difference of writing implement, the characters that appeared beneath Adam's pen might have been inscribed by the same hand that had penned the Terma beneath his other hand, centuries before. Gradually the Tibetan characters filled most of a page. Adam's hand was shaking by the time he finished, and the pen slid from his relaxing fingers as he subsided back into the stillness of deep trance.

"Adam, rest now," Julian murmured, "but remain in trance, and hear and remember everything that's said. There may be further work for you."

Quietly she took the sketch pad from under his hands, bidding McLeod switch the lamp back on as she tilted the page for the others' inspection.

"Can you read that?" McLeod asked Julian, a grizzled brow raising in question.

Julian shook her head. "Not really. Perhaps a word here and there. Like Nyima's Terma, this is written in a variant of Lantsa, which I've also seen in old stone carvings. But this dialect is antique - as different from modern Tibetan as Old English is from modern English."

Clearing his throat, Christopher reached across to take the sketch pad.