Death of an Adept

But Adam was not a medium - and even if he had been, mediums only rarely retained any trace of memory of what was said through their lips while overshadowed by a spirit guest. McLeod could have circumvented the problem without hesitation; but McLeod was at home in Edinburgh.

"I'm truly sorry. I haven't the ability to do what you ask," Adam told Kerr. "Can you show me what this is all about?"

After cocking his head wistfully, Kerr swept one hand toward the book. As Adam shifted his gaze to look, the pages seemed to fall open like a window in time, revealing a dark hillside under a sky tattered by gathering storm. Lightning flashed blue-white through the pall of clouds, and in the after-flash, he caught sight of what seemed to be a funeral procession toiling up the rocky slope.

Kerr was leading the party with a drawn sword in his hand, cloaked and braced against a howling wind. Behind him came six more men in mail and surcoats like his own, carrying a rude bed of planks upon which lay a supine body laden down with iron chains. The grimness of their faces and the ragged haste of their progress suggested a fearful urgency of purpose. Slipping and stumbling, they pressed on toward the crest of the hill, where three more figures labored to pile more fuel on an already-blazing bonfire that lay within a circle of standing stones. A large cauldron was set within the flames.

The party gained the height and stumbled to a halt. The body was taken nastily down off the bier and bundled into the heavy folds of a waiting shroud of sheet lead. In that same instant, a ghastly shape suddenly manifested over the body, black as smoke from a burning abattoir. Eyes blazing red in the lightning's glare, the apparition swooped down on the body, as if to claim it for its own.

Kerr darted to interpose. A clear blue light flashed from the ring on his finger and the blade in his hand as he slashed at the intruder. The apparition reeled aside, snarling and slavering, clearly no mere illusion. While Kerr continued to hold it at bay, the other members of his party picked up the body and heaved it into the cauldron.

The entity went wild with spitting rage, diving down amongst Kerr's men with bared fangs and raking claws. Two defenders fell, gashed and bleeding, before Kerr drove it back again with scything sweeps of his sword. Before the evil spirit could recover itself, he raised the blade high over his head and shouted into the rising wind.

His utterance took the form of a sonorous incantation. One of the men still on his feet darted to Kerr's side and added his voice to the ritual spell. As the pair continued to chant, there appeared in the sky overhead a sudden rift, blacker and denser than any storm cloud.

The rift widened. As it did so, the light that blazed from Kerr's ring took on the force of a mighty gale. Roaring like a hurricane, it seized the apparition and hurled it into the maw of the Void. The rift snapped shut as Kerr abruptly lowered his sword, leaving the survivors raggedly silhouetted against the flare of the bonfire.

A fresh gust of wind caused the fire to billow up. The silhouettes vanished, eclipsed by the hungry intensity of the blaze. When the flames died back again, the picture seemed subtly altered. As more details became discernible, Adam realized that the party now gathered round the bonfire was not the same one which Kerr had led to its hard-won victory.

The newcomers were clad not in chain mail and surcoats but in long, cowled robes of black wool. At least one of them was a woman, hood flung back to reveal a cruelly voluptuous profile, oddly familiar. Dark blood inscribed a restraining triangle on the ground around the fire. Where the flames burned hottest, a new cauldron seethed and bubbled.

Above the cauldron hovered a shadowy apparition with eyes of ruby flame - without doubt, Kerr's ancient spiritual adversary, conjured back from the Void. The leader of the robed cultists advanced to the edge of the triangle, brandishing an ancient dagger in his right hand with controlling intent. And when the firelight fell full upon his face, Adam recognized the sneering, patrician features of Francis Raeburn.

The shock of this discovery made him instinctively recoil, breaking his concentration. When he looked again, the images had disappeared, leaving him staring at blank space. Wrenching his gaze away, he found that the chamber of record was now empty apart from himself. Kerr's manifest presence had vanished, leaving Adam alone with a clamoring host of speculations.

Instinct warned that there was nothing more he could hope to accomplish here tonight. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and willed himself to rejoin his body. There came the familiar, rushing sensation of soul-flight, followed by an equally familiar jolt of vertigo as his spirit came to rest. When he opened his eyes again, it was to find himself safely anchored in the solid physical haven of his own library.