Death of an Adept

"Obviously he doesn't know the difference between courage and foolhardiness," Austen said with a laugh. "But never mind, Adam: The experience may one day stand you in good stead."

Chapter Four

EASTWARD across a continent and an ocean, on the northernmost island of the Outer Hebrides, less angelic forces were gathering to enact far darker drama than a play to celebrate the birth of a God of Light. Francis Raeburn had set the night's agenda, and took particular satisfaction in the knowledge that one of the more troublesome champions of that Light, Adam Sinclair, was at least temporarily occupied many thousand miles away.

The ancient site selected by Raeburn's associate, Taliere, was well suited to the night's work. Sprawled across a wind-scoured flatland beside a sea loch thrusting deep into the western coast of the Isle of Lewis, the standing stones of Callanish loomed stark and ever mysterious under a frosty, moonless sky, in grandeur second only to Stonehenge in all the British Isles.

The heart of Callanish centered on a ring of thirteen rough-hewn stones, almost all of which were taller than a man. At the foot of a slender, even taller stone in the center of the circle, the remains of a small chambered tomb-cairn lay half-hidden under a frost-scorched mound of peaty grass and a light powdering of snow.

A broadening avenue of lesser stones stretched northward from the circle for nearly a hundred yards, with shorter single lines of stones radiating east, west, and south. The overall pattern greatly resembled a slightly skewed Celtic cross, though its unknown builders had laid it out nearly three thousand years before the coming of the Child whose birth was about to be celebrated in Christian lands, and whose adherents had appropriated cruciform shapes to symbolize a new faith.

The stones themselves were known by more than one name amongst the Gaelic-speaking people of the island. Some called the stones an Fir-Bhreige Chalanois - "The Deceitful Men" - recalling obscure legends of a band of forsworn outlaws changed into stone by an enchanter. Indeed, in Victorian times, clearance of encroaching peat from a height of four to five feet around the bases of the stones had left a bleached effect on the lower halves that inspired one illustrator to depict the color difference as the clothing of the "deceitful men," with a skeleton emerging from the newly uncovered tomb-cairn and winged spirit-forms cavorting in the air above the stones.

That Callanish had long possessed associations with the supernatural was undoubted. Another name for the site was Tur-sachen, betokening a place of pilgrimage and mourning where, in bygone days, it had been customary for courting couples to come and make their marriage vows. Some few would recall how this local tradition was rooted in a far more distant past, when other seekers had come to Callanish to bind themselves with darker oaths in the brooding presence of powers ancient even when the stones themselves were new.

The folk who lived within sight of the Callanish Ring had long ago come to terms with its presence. By day, especially in sumfner, when the tourists had retreated to accommodations in the island's main town of Stornoway, some fifteen miles to the east and north, it was not uncommon to find local children playing among the stones. By night, however, all and sundry tended to keep well clear, content to leave the ancient ring to guard its own secrets. This was especially true in the dead of winter, when the northern darkness closed in early and the bone-numbing chill of the near-Arctic dusk drove people indoors by mid-afternoon, there to huddle gratefully around the warmth of their own hearths as the cold winds blew, with no desire to venture out again.

On the twenty-first of December, the ice-blue clarity of the lowering twilight promised a night of bitter cold. By five o'clock, the temperature had plummeted past the freezing point. By suppertime, the open ground between the houses was aglitter with traces of gathering frost. Shortly after ten, the last of the village lights winked out.

Not long thereafter, a small black Mini Cooper bearing four men ghosted quietly through Callanish Village from the north, dousing its lights as it entered the unpaved car park far at the south end of the village. Beyond the wire fence at the edge of the car park, the distant stones of Callanish glistened under crystalline starlight bright enough to cast shadows.

At that same moment, a compact recreational vehicle was backing into a construction site behind the rocky outcropping known as Cnoc an Tursa, several hundred yards to the other side of the stones, where work had been suspended for the winter on what was scheduled to become a National Trust visitor center for the site. The RV's weathered paint and air of gentle decrepitude suggested nothing of any dark intent on the part of its occupants as its driver doused the headlights and killed the engine.