Death of an Adept

Handing off the phone, McLeod scuttled forward to pass the instructions to Harry and Duart. He could feel the chopper picking up speed and slipping slightly to the right as he returned to his seat, where Peregrine was opening a map under a penlight Ximena was holding above it. Cochrane now had the phone to his ear, keeping the line open for further instructions. Behind him, the four men of the hostage rescue team checked and rechecked their equipment.

"What have we got?" McLeod demanded, crowding closer.

Peregrine shook his head, consulting the numbers he had copied onto a notepad.

"Apparently he's on Map 79, somewhere on a line due south from Hawick," he said, running a fingertip down the map and then pulling off his spectacles so he could focus closer in the dim light. "She said to allow about five miles to either side, but if we're looking for something on the scale of Cal-lanish, I don't see much that qualifies. A couple of cairns… some earthworks… here's a wee stone circle out by someplace called Dodd, and something called the Tinlee Stone… the Catrail Earthwork - that's old… a stone circle at someplace called the Nine Stane Rig - probably with nine stones… and something called the Buck Stone, near Hermitage Castle… and - "

"Hold it!" McLeod broke in. "Did you just say Hermitage Castle?"

"Yes."

"Bloody hell," McLeod muttered, leaning back to rummage in Peregrine's art satchel. "Where's that book on Scottish castles?"

"I've got it," Ximena said, plucking it out and opening it. "What am I looking for?"

"Hermitage Castle. And Peregrine - how far is that from here?"

"About - twelve miles south of Hawick," Peregrine said, holding the place on the map with his finger as he looked up at Ximena, who was frantically paging through the book. "Why? What's special about Hermitage?"

"I've found it," Ximena said, as McLeod pulled the map around for a closer look. "Hermitage Castle… built in the thirteenth century by Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith… cause of an invasion by Henry the Third in 1243… had passed to the de Soulis family by 1306, then to the Douglasses in 1320, then the Earls of Angus, who traded it for - "

"Run that by me again?" McLeod interrupted sharply. "Did you say Soulis?"

"De Soulis," Ximena amended. "It says here he was a - "

" - famous Scottish sorcerer," McLeod finished for her, digging in Peregrine's art satchel again to snatch out lolo McFarlane's dream journal. "Now, where's that page with the code or anagram or whatever it was? Here!"

Opening to the page, he thrust it under Ximena's light.

"Just what I thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid! We've been mistaking an i for an apostrophe. It isn't Soul's Gstrig - it's Soulis - and the other word is Gstrig - whatever the hell that is. Peregrine, grab that book on Scottish folklore and look up Soulis. Gstrig," he repeated, brainstorming aloud, as Peregrine grabbed the designated volume and began paging through it. "Maybe Gst Rig. A rig is a ridge or narrow hill."

"Here it is," Peregrine said. "William Lord Soulis of Hermitage Castle, notorious for his wickedness, said to consort with evil spirits, boiled in lead at the stone circle at Nine Stane Rig, a mile or so from the castle."

"That's got it!" McLeod declared, bending closer to lolo's page. "If this first G in Gst Rig is actually the number 9, that makes it 9 St Rig - Nine Stane Rig. And if Raeburn is headed there, to the place of Soulis' death - Dear God, he's going for some kind of pact with Soulis, some dark alliance, and Adam - "

He closed the journal with a snap, his face deadly taut in the red cabin light. "Harry!"

He grabbed Peregrine's folklore book and scrambled forward again. "Harry, I'm taking a big gamble, but it's the only one we've got - the only one Adam's got. How long to get us to the Nine Stane Rig? It's about ten or twelve miles due south of Hawick, near Hermitage Castle."

"We're just coming up on Galashiels," Harry said, walking callipers across his map as Duart and one of the SAS pilots looked on. "Say, five to ten minutes down to Hawick, and maybe another ten to where you want to go. We'll have to follow the road, from Hawick, or we'll never find it in the dark. You think that's where he is?"

"God, God, God," McLeod whispered, "I hope so. Just get us there as fast as you can, Harry. We may be almost out of time!"

Only snatches of Raeburn's further preparations filtered through to Adam in the next little while: Raeburn passing wid-dershins around the inside perimeter of the ruined chapel with a darkly glittering dagger, defining the boundary of this most unsacred space, then tracing that same boundary with one of the bags of Adam's blood, leaving a scarlet line of life marking out the limits of death…

A black-robed acolyte taking up the thurible and setting it alight, charging it with a noisome mixture of sulphur and saltpetre whose fumes lay reeking along the path he trod close behind Raeburn…