Dagger Magic

A red glow materialized ahead, growing brighter as he approached. Claire's racing figure showed up as a black silhouette against the glare. The light intensified, volcanic in its jewelled radiance. Like a meteor drawn toward the sun, Claire abruptly vanished into the midst of it.

Fearing he might lose her in this labyrinth of dreams, Adam plunged on after her. A rift opened up before him, a scarlet slash in the surrounding rock. Waves of hot air hissed and roared through the rift like the sulphurous fumes from a lava pit. Shielding his face with his right arm, Adam pressed forward as far as the opening, then stopped short at the sight that met his eyes.

He was standing at the cavernous edge of a lake of fire. Out on the lake, wild torrents of flame leapt and seethed like magma in a cauldron, around an island ringed with blazing whirlpools. Standing alone on the island was Claire Crawford.

Fire roared around her like a cyclone. On a lectern before her lay an open book, its pages alight with tongues of dancing flame. The sight of it told Adam where he was - back in the hall of Akashic Records, catapulted thither by the spontaneous rapport he had formed with Claire Crawford, translated past her mind's inner defenses into the raging core of her heart-of-hearts.

That psychic link was represented here as a slender bridge of stone overarching the fiery lake. Clinging fast to the lectern, Claire gave a wild, despairing cry - the cry of a soul in torment. Hearing it, Adam reached out to her - and began gingerly moving out onto the bridge.

Fire rose to meet him, raging round him with hurricane force. The blistering furnace of the flames erased all distinctions between body, mind, and spirit, leaving only pure agony, but he clung to his purpose and struggled on. Halfway across the bridge, he felt its fabric shudder under him. He tried to quicken his pace, flinching at each fresh explosion, but he was forced to a standstill only a few paces from the shore, choking on fire.

His whole being felt blasted and flayed. Beaten to his knees, for a moment he could go no further. The excoriating heat conjured up a tortured memory out of his own past. In as agonizing wrench of perspective, he was suddenly a fourteenth-century Templar knight, reliving fiery martyrdom at the instigation of the French king, Philip le Bel….

His chains held him fast to the stake as the flames licked hungrily up his legs, surrounding him with pain. Assailed by the stench of his own burning flesh, he flung himself against his bonds, hearing his own voice moaning in mortal -

"NO!"

With a supreme effort of will, Adam wrenched himself back to his present purpose, pressing his ring to his lips as he forced himself to remember who he was and what he was doing here. With a puissant lunge, he broke free of the chains and burst from the flames, at last gaining the refuge of the shore.

Claire was slumped over the lectern. Once more in command, Adam made his way to her side. No time now to wonder how he had been drawn so completely into her visualization - though a part of him knew it betokened contact with a far older soul than he first had thought. Could it be that Claire Crawford, like Peregrine when Adam first had met him, was a damaged fledgling?

He caught hold of her arm, intending to lift her clear and bring her back to her senses. But before he could invoke the necessary controls, his senses wrenched again and the scene around them blurred and vanished in an accompanying pang of dizziness. When Adam's vision cleared, he discovered that he had been cast into yet another scene conjured up from the well of Claire's personal unconscious.

Chapter Eleven

THIS one, at least, was more tranquil. Adam was standing alone on a gravelled path in the midst of a broad churchyard. On either side of him, the lush grass of early summer was broken up by grave slabs, with here and there a raised table-tomb to indicate the resting place of someone of more substantial means. In front of him the ground sloped away downhill toward the junction of two rivers, one broad and smooth, the other narrow and swift-running. At the lower end of the burial green, within the shelter of the yard's freestone wall, half a dozen ewes were placidly grazing while their lambs frolicked about in the sun.

The attendant church was large, stone-built in the cruciform plan of the late medieval period, with a high tower at its western end. The columns and friezes flanking the west door showed a gothic wealth of carving. Beyond the church, past the meeting of the waters, the noonday sun glanced off the crowstepped gables and grey slates of a modest-sized town. Between church and town, an L-plan tower-house jutted against the sky, encircled by a bawn wall of moldering stones.