Dagger Magic

Leading them inside, he spoke briefly to a ginger-headed man with a beard before continuing up a flight of wooden stairs, beckoning them to follow. He shed his anorak as they climbed, revealing a sleeveless gold jacket over his maroon skirt. Upstairs, passing a closed door bearing a color poster of the Dalai Lama, Adam saw Peregrine do a double take.

"This way, please," Jigme said, ushering them into an alcove off a tidy landing, where a pair of stripped-pine benches flanked another closed door.

Here Jigme paused to hang his anorak on one of several wooden pegs above the benches, courteously inviting his guests to shed hats, coats, and shoes as he sat to remove his yellow Wellies. Before ushering them into the room beyond, he wrapped himself around in a toga-like maroon mantle, which he drew up over one shoulder.

"I hope you don't mind sitting on the floor," he said, switching on an overhead light and bending to hand out flat red cushions from a stack just inside the door.

Entering, Peregrine's first impression was one of orderly simplicity. Pale straw matting covered most of the floor - new, by the fresh smell of it. Everything was scrupulously clean, the walls newly whitewashed where they were not adorned with paintings of various Buddhas. One corner was dominated by the presence of a graceful bronze Buddha seated in an attitude of serene contemplation on a low stand in the form of a blossoming lotus.

On the floor before the statue stood a bronze incense burner, a yellow votive light set on a rectangle of native slate, and a bronze bowl brimming with the purple and yellow of heather and gorse. The room itself carried a subtle fragrance of jasmine and wild honeysuckle. Though Peregrine found many of the images somewhat strange to his Western eyes, the peace prevailing in the room made him feel oddly at home.

Jigme had closed the door behind them, and now moved into the center of the room to plop his cushion down and sit cross-legged, inviting them to do the same. They did, Peregrine and McLeod sinking down to Adam's left and right. Though Peregrine again felt the urge to sketch their host, he merely laid his sketchbox at his left side, ready to produce their evidence to Jigme at the appropriate time. While they waited for their tea, Jigme offered a casual commentary about the room's function as a meditation chamber.

Very shortly, the ginger-haired man from downstairs brought in a wooden tray supporting four mismatched china mugs. The rich aroma of Darjeeling tea wafted upwards as, to an accompanying murmur of thanks, he deposited the tray at Jigme's left elbow and then departed, closing the door behind him.

"Please forgive the informality," Jigme said, as he distributed steaming mugs all around, "but our accommodations here are still a bit primitive. Jasmine tea is the traditional offering to guests, but I thought you might prefer something more substantial. I hope you don't mind it black."

"Not at all," Adam replied. "We're grateful for any consideration."

The gentle reminder of why they were there was acknowledged by a graceful inclination of Jigme's head. Raising his mug slightly in salute, he sipped from it cautiously, then set it on the matting at his feet to cool.

"Very well, Dr. Sinclair," he said quietly. "You indicated yesterday that you desired guidance on a matter of grave concern, and invoked the name of a well-loved student of my master, Tseten Rinpoche. Please acquaint me with this matter, so that I may advise him."

Chapter Twenty-One

SOME eight hundred miles to the southwest, high in the Swiss Alps, dawn had broken bright and clear, the sharply angled rays of the rising sun striking fire off snow-covered peaks that towered up like islands out of a sea of milk. As the light broadened, the pulsing, mechanical drone of a helicopter intruded on the early morning silence, carrying four passengers toward the remote Buddhist monastery of Tolung Tserphug. Come from as far as Grenoble this morning, after overnighting near there, the sleek executive craft lifted up and over a summit pierced by a railway tunnel, then veered eastward to follow a spur off one of the major Euroroutes.

Mid-morning saw the red and white chopper climbing once again, skirting the steel pylons of a modern funicular railway. At the top of the mountain it served lay the clustered roofs and frowning walls of the monastery. Here the chopper circled once, its pilot gauging the updrafts by the flags flying from the compound's many flagstaff's, then settled gently on an expanse of alpine meadow outside the massively wrought outer gateway.