Dagger Magic

"Are you objecting to my lack of humility? I've always rather fancied that was one of my more useful qualities," Raeburn said.

"Perhaps you should consider discarding that illusion," the abbot said coldly. "Certainly your handling of that affair in the Cairngorms was nothing to boast about."

Raeburn levelled a reproachful look at his accuser. "Am I to be blamed for the mistakes of my betters, Rinpoche! You know yourself that the Head-Master had become the very soul of obstinacy, drunk with his own visions of power. If his authority exceeded his judgement, surely that is no fault of mine. On the contrary, perhaps if I had been accorded a greater degree of autonomy - "

"Enough!" The abbot cut him short with a curt, chopping motion of the hand. "I did not summon you here to bandy words. We are prepared to overlook the failure in question, provided that you perform for us a service for which you have been selected, and for which you should prove adequately qualified."

Raeburn's pale eyes showed a new glint of wariness.

"This is all rather sudden, after thirty years. What sort of service did you have in mind?"

Chapter Twenty-Two

BACK on Holy Island, Lama Jigme listened without comment, his tea long grown cold, while Adam unfolded the mysterious and troubling circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Scanlan. Having produced Peregrine's photographs and the Nazi flag, he then allowed McLeod to describe and to review the forensic findings from Scanlan's post-mortem and to review what Somerville had researched concerning U-636. Finally, Peregrine presented his various sketches, including the green-washed study based on his dream of the night before, and reiterated what he had described to Adam on the ferry earlier.

The three of them waited in silence while Jigme examined each of the items in turn, absently fingering an edge of the flag while he studied Peregrine's photos and drawings. A silence settled over the room, broken only by a faint clatter of domestic noises from other parts of the house. The monk's dark eyes were troubled as he set the flag aside and raised his gaze to his visitors.

"You were very right to come here, gentlemen," he announced gravely. "Apart from this flag - whose connection I must confess escapes me - all the other evidence you have shown me points to a debased and evil offshoot of that branch of Tibetan spiritual practice sometimes labelled 'dagger magic.' Some say it is pre-Buddhist in its origins - and in the wrong hands, even anti-Buddhist."

He indicated Peregrine's drawing of the falling Scanlan and the detail of the triple-edged blade piercing his back.

"Central to Tibetan dagger magic is the Phurba itself," the lama continued, "a blade endowed with mystical properties. The name can mean 'flyer' or 'rocket.' Amongst legitimate adherents to our doctrines, such daggers are relatively common as objects of devotion. Allow me to show you one."

Rising nimbly to his feet, he went to the Buddha figure in the corner and removed from behind it a bundle wrapped in soft folds of maroon silk brocade. This he unwrapped as he came back to sink down again before them, handling it through the silk as he displayed it for their scrutiny.

Like the dagger Peregrine had sketched, this one had a heavy, tapering blade of three edges. The hilt was likewise adorned with an assortment of grotesque demon-faces all around, whose ferocity sent a shiver up Peregrine's spine.

Their host did not offer the Phurba for hands-on inspection. Instead, still grasping the hilt through the silk, he gave the blade a light fillip with a fingernail. The response was a bright metallic chime. Jigme's expression as he laid the blade in his lap was slightly abstracted, as if he were listening for some distant echo.

"It is said that a blade possessing true power rings true to the music of the cosmos," he murmured softly, "and that the resonances that it makes are songs in praise of the Adibuddha."

"The Adibuddha?" Adam repeated softly in question.

"It is what we call the supreme source of all knowledge and truth, common to all Buddhist sects." Jigme smiled wistfully. "A Westerner might liken the blade's song to 'the music of the spheres.'"

"Ah," Adam breathed with a nod, though Peregrine found himself squirming uneasily.

"But the faces on the hilt are so - grotesque," the artist murmured.

"And aptly so," Jigme replied, "for they are meant to symbolize the wrathful destruction of delusion and evil. The blades themselves, of course, are morally neutral to start with, being creations of human beings. Their subsequent affinity for either good or evil comes about as the result of the interaction that takes place between the mind of the meditator and the intent toward which the practice is addressed."

"You speak of a tool, then," Adam said, "neutral in itself but usable in a variety of contexts."