Dagger Magic

As soon as the landing skids grounded, the door on the passenger side of the cabin swung open. First to alight was Francis Raeburn, his elegantly cut navy suit only slightly creased after two days of travel, his fine, fair hair riffling in the wash of the slowing rotor. Behind him, the men who had become his keepers disembarked in a more leisurely fashion, impassive as a pair of bronze statues.

Leaving Barclay to shut down the engine and secure the chopper, Raeburn drew a deep lungful of the cold, pure air and looked around him, using this brief respite to get his bearings as he compared the citadel of the present day with his memories of thirty years before.

Designedly remote, the place had always been impressive, as much a fortress as a spiritual retreat. The concentric complex of buildings was perched on the brink of a precipice, alien to this part of the world yet somehow at one with the soaring vastness of such heights.

As a former inmate of the establishment's inner circle, Raeburn was in a position to appreciate how seamlessly the dual nature of the monastery had been integrated in outward appearance, with the casual visitor never the wiser. The outer bailey, with its communal residence halls, meditation cells, library, and reading and tutorial rooms, provided a scholarly environment in which innocent seekers from the outside world could acquaint themselves with the language and religious teachings of Tibet.

But beyond the shared opulence of the great temple, where anyone might sample Tolung Tserphug's public teachings, lay the guarded precincts of the inner court, adytums of sorcery where the darker, more seductive mysteries of black Tibetan magic were fostered on a far smaller number of carefully chosen initiates.

That much would not have changed since Raeburn's day, though technology had left its mark. Privileged to view the whole of the compound from the air as they came in, he had been interested to note an array of highly sophisticated telecommunications equipment on the roof of the abbot's residence, discreetly masked behind parapets and towers. The residence itself had been significantly enlarged since Raeburn's last visit, and embellished as well with a gilded roof to rival that of the temple.

Which did not surprise Francis Raeburn. Siegfried Hasselkuss had always cherished an inordinately high regard for his own importance.

A sonorous horn-call jarred Raeburn from his reflections, heralding a stirring of motion beneath the groined and shadowed arch of the monastery's entrance. Impelled by invisible hands, the heavy iron gate swung ponderously open on a small contingent of orange-clad monks, who emerged on the alpine meadow and began heading toward the helicopter with purpose. They arrived just as Barclay was lifting down the bags from the chopper's cockpit, one of them wordlessly taking the bags from him and two more setting their hands beneath his elbows to begin chivvying him toward the monastery entrance. The remaining two exchanged bows and a few murmured words in Tibetan with Raeburn's escorts.

"Stop a moment," Raeburn said sharply, catching the alarmed look Barclay cast back at him. ' 'Where are you taking my pilot?"

"You need not be alarmed," said the eldest of the newly arrived monks, though a hand was on the Phurba thrust through the front of his belt. "Your servant will be taken along to the dining hall and offered refreshment after his labors. Thereafter he may sleep, if he desires. He will be returned to you in due course, once Dorje Rinpoche has spoken with you."

"I see." Raeburn did not bother to hide his irritation. "And when might that be?"

"Rinpoche will see you at once," said the second new monk, who also bore a Phurba, but on a cord across his breast, so that it hung beneath his left arm almost like a shoulder holster. "If you will please accompany us, we will take you to him."

Though the request was civil enough, it was not an invitation but a command. Seeing little choice but to comply, Raeburn allowed himself to be escorted inside the compound between Nagpo and Kurkar, old resentments fanned by the new presumption of the past twenty-four hours.

Beyond the gate lay an open courtyard paved with cobblestones, dominated by the temple with its golden pagoda roof. In keeping with Tibetan architectural design, the angles of all the buildings fronting the courtyard were trapezoidal rather than square, with stone walls sloping inward from a broad base. The effect was both exotic and benign, designed to foster the illusion that in entering Tolung Tserphug, the beholder was effectively turning his back on the fleeting present in favor of an ageless past.