Death of an Adept

"I'll give it my best shot," Harry murmured. "I don't see how it could possibly be worse than working with that god-dammed Hand."

"Probably not," Adam agreed, glancing back at McLeod, who had re-engaged Chisholm and Rhiannon in conversation. "Do try not to react too dramatically."

Nodding, his back to the others, Harry braced himself against the window frame and held out his hand, drawing a deep breath as he did so. Adam tapped him lightly on the wrist in posthypnotic cue, and Harry's eyes closed, even as his hand closed on the lunula which Adam laid in his palm.

After a delay of no more than a heartbeat, Harry stiffened and then began to twitch. His respiration changed, becoming shallow and gasping as he swayed slightly forward, almost dropping the lunula.

Adam and Peregrine braced him before he could stumble.

"Steady," Adam cautioned in a calm undertone. "You're in no real danger. Just relax and let these impressions wash over you as if they were no more than a breath of air."

Harry recovered his balance. Satisfied that the counsellor was back in control, Adam dropped his voice still lower.

"Think of this moment as a time capsule," he instructed. "Put these impressions you've just experienced into the capsule and shut the lid. That's where they're going to stay for the time being. When you decide to open the capsule again, you'll find these impressions are as fresh and detailed as they were when you first captured them."

Harry signified his understanding with a nod. Satisfied that the counsellor would be able to reserve his impressions for retrieval at a more convenient moment, Adam guided him back from trance, taking the lunula and passing it to Peregrine to return to Rhiannon.

"This is very handsome workmanship," Peregrine said with a smile, as he handed it back to the girl. "Thank you for letting us look at it. Did lolo make it himself?"

Rhiannon nodded, wiping away a fresh surge of tears, scarcely heeding the compliment.

"He knew something like this was going to happen," she said brokenly. "He's been having bad dreams ever since the start of the year - nightmares, even. He had a terrible one the night before he - " She had to stop and swallow before adding, in a shaky voice, "When he woke up, he was white as a sheet."

This disclosure made Adam prick up his ears. Coming over to join them, he said quietly, "Tell me more about the nightmare, if you can. Do you know what it was about?"

Snuffling noisily, Rhiannon shook her head.

"No. He wouldn't tell me. He might have written it down in his dream journal, though."

"lolo kept a dream journal?"

Nodding, Rhiannon paused to pull a tissue from her pocket and blow her nose. "We Druids believe that dreams are messages sent to us by the spirit world. The shaman always takes them seriously."

Adam hardly needed such an explanation, but Rhiannon was not to know that.

"I see," he said. "Do you think we might take a look at this journal?"

Rhiannon frowned dubiously. "I don't know. It's very personal, lolo never even let me read it."

"I can appreciate that," Adam said, "and normally I wouldn't make such a request. But what's in that journal might help us find out who kidnapped him and why. It's possible that he met someone or saw something that has a bearing on his kidnapping, and found its way into his dreams. They might contain clues that will help us."

Rhiannon stared at him for a long moment, deliberating, then said, "All right. I'll go and fetch it."

She left the room and came back a moment later with a small black-marbled hard-backed notebook. This she presented solemnly to Adam.

Crossing over to the settee, he sat down and placed the book carefully in front of him on the coffee table. The others gathered round, watching over his shoulder as he opened the book and began paging through its contents.

The earliest entries went several months back into the previous year. It required only the briefest of scans to determine that the dreams which followed the Callanish incident were conspicuously different from those which had preceded it. The imagery at that point became suddenly turbulent and strange, dominated by motifs of storm and darkness. The final entry was even more striking: a blank page with a string of letters scrawled across the middle of it in untidy block capitals.

Adam turned to McLeod, lifting the open page in his direction and indicating the inscription.

"What do you make of that?" he asked.

McLeod adjusted his aviator spectacles and leaned down.

"S-O-U-L-something-S - is that a G? - S-T-R-I-G," he read aloud.

"That one fuzzy character between the L and the S doesn't come all the way down to the line," Harry chipped in. "Could it maybe be an apostrophe?''

Peregrine frowned. "Soul's gstrig," he pronounced. "Assuming that's right, what's it supposed to mean?"