Death of an Adept

While they gentled the bull, its snorting breath pluming in the cold, Taliere fetched a crown woven of holly and mistletoe from the RV. This he fastened around the bull's horns, attaching it with two twists of wire and then blowing softly into the bull's nostrils as he crooned a low-voiced charm. The animal immediately became docile.

"You know the path to the stones," Taliere said to his men, ignoring Raeburn's expression of bemusement. "Await our coming, outside the circle."

As Taliere withdrew to the RV to finish robing, Raeburn signalled Mallory to accompany the men with the bull, himself returning to the RV to fetch the casket containing the Pictish dagger. This he tucked possessively under one arm while he turned to watch Taliere complete his preparations by the light of a single candle.

"That was a rather impressive trick with the bull," he said mildly, as Taliere fastened on a silver necklet incised with ogham figures. The old Druid had already bound a cincture of braided horsehair around his waist, from which hung a tooled-leather bottle and a small sickle of burnished bronze, its blade edge honed to no less a sharpness than the gaze he turned to Raeburn's darkling reflection in the mirror.

"It was no trick," he said in a low voice. "And you had better have no trick in mind when we enter the sacred circle. I hope you realize what you are doing."

Raeburn lifted an innocent eyebrow. "Doing? Why, my objective is entirely straightforward, dear Taliere: I wish to renew my alliance with the lord Taranis."

"I do not question your aim," Taliere replied, sullenly shouldering a cope-like mantle woven with many-colored feathers. "I do have grave reservations about your methods."

"So you have told me, repeatedly," Raeburn coolly acknowledged. "Nevertheless, we shall proceed according to my instructions."

Snuffling disapproval, the old Druid donned a feathered headdress in the form of a speckled bird with volant wings, scowling at his reflection as he adjusted it to his liking.

"If you persist in departing from the old ways, you are inviting trouble," he warned. "The rituals I have specified were instituted long ago, when men hearkened more closely to the dictates of nature. To permit - even encourage - interference from modern science is to commit a breach of faith. And by doing so, you risk compromising the results."

"It is a risk I am prepared to take," Raeburn said softly.

"Would that the risk were yours alone!" Taliere retorted, turning to take up a stout staff of peeled ash wood, its height trimmed to match his own. "The diligence with which a suppliant is prepared to execute his charge reflects the purity of his intentions. As your mediator in this transaction, I am less than eager to see myself implicated in what might well be perceived as a violation of respect."

"You take too much upon yourself," Raeburn said. "In the final analysis, it will be for the lord Taranis to decide whether or not the bargain I offer him is acceptable - and it is I who offer it, not you! Come. We have important work to do."

With these words he blew out the candle and stepped outside, the dagger casket still cradled under one arm. Taliere alighted after him, his back stiff with disapproval, but made no further argument, though he moved as if his limbs were weighted with lead as the two of them trudged along the trail that led to the stones of Callanish.

They saw the stones as they crested Cnoc an Tursa, stretched before them in the windswept moonlight like an inverted cross, with the sleeping village of Callanish silent in the distance. As they drew nearer, a faint shadow as of ground fog seemed to obscure their view of the central circle of the stones.

The black bulk of the bull waiting just outside the circle was all but invisible behind the white robes of those attending it. Barclay had robed after arriving at the circle, though his weathered face was set and uncharacteristically pale in the starlight. Mallory had his medical bag tucked under one arm. Richter stood between two of the stones with a wand of birch wood in one hand, surmounted by a fragment of rock crystal.

"Lynxmeister, I give you charge of the circle," he said in a low voice, offering the wand to Raeburn with a brisk dip of his chin. "Taoiseach, the nemeton is prepared."

Bowing, Raeburn handed off the casket to Barclay, then took the wand from Richter and stepped aside, back pressed against one of the stones. He could feel familiar power stirring in his hand as he held the birch wand aloft and the others fell into processional order behind Taliere: first the two assistants flanking the still docile bull, then Barclay and Mallory, and finally Richter, bringing up the rear. When all were in position, Taliere thrice struck the ground between the two stones with the butt of his staff, then lifted his eyes toward the icy stars as he clasped the staff with both hands.