Death of an Adept

"Vilest of ingrates! Betrayers of Taranis! May his lightnings scourge the flesh from your bones! May the fury of his storms consume your very souls! May your spirits be raked across the plains of desolation on the talons of the wind! May you never more know rest or resolution!"

With these words, the voice broke off with another anguished howl. A violent convulsion racked Barclay's bound form from head to foot. For a moment it seemed as if he must surely either burst his bonds or break his limbs. Then all at once the paroxysm ceased and he went limp.

The silence that suddenly descended was almost physical. Raeburn was the first to recover. Scrambling closer on hands and knees, he set one hand on Barclay's forehead and thrust the other hard against the side of his neck, searching for a pulse as Mallory also dashed to their patient's side and thumped to his knees, himself checking Barclay's pulse and then frantically rummaging in his medical bag for another preloaded syringe. Barclay was still breathing, but his face was ashen and his heartbeat erratic.

"Let's get him out of this!" Raeburn barked, tearing at the sleeping bag's zipper and at the same time summoning Richter, who was already on his way.

"It can't have been the drug," Mallory protested, as he found what he was looking for and injected Barclay in the neck again.

Richter produced a Swiss Army knife and began cutting Barclay free of his bull bindings, and once the ancient dagger had been freed, Raeburn used it to assist Richter. Meanwhile, Mallory jammed his stethoscope into his ears and thrust its bell into the growing opening over Barclay's chest, relaxing a little at what he heard; and Taliere at last bestirred himself to take up the sickle at his belt and use its sharpened blade to cut the ligatures binding Barclay's arms and ankles. By the time they had the pilot completely freed, both Mallory and his patient had begun to breathe more easily.

"I thought for a minute we were going to lose him," Mallory murmured, as he and Richter lifted Barclay's limp and blood-smeared body free of the remnants of the bull hide and laid it on the white robe Raeburn had stripped off and spread beside it. "If we don't get him warm pretty quick, we may yet lose him."

As they wrapped Barclay in the robe and Mallory stood long enough to strip off his own, adding it to the first, Richter ran to fetch the robe Barclay had discarded earlier. This, too, was bundled around the hapless pilot. As Mallory wound his blood pressure cuff around Barclay's slack arm and pumped it up, Richter lifted a corner of the bloody sleeping bag.

"Do you want this, too?" he asked.

"No, it'll be clammy from all the blood," Raeburn replied. He snapped his fingers at Taliere's two assistants, who had scrambled apprehensively to their feet during the crisis. "You men, give him your robes. Derek, how's he doing?"

Nodding, the physician released the pressure on the cuff and bent briefly to peer under one of his patient's eyelids, then slipped his stethoscope from his ears and breathed out a cautious sigh.

"He's still shocky, but I think we're past the worst of it. We need to get him back to the RV. I want to put him on oxygen."

"Right," Raeburn said, getting to his feet. "You men, help carry him," he said to Taliere's assistants. "Richter, open the circle and go with them, and recall your men. Taliere and I will finish up here and join you shortly."

Richter nodded acknowledgement, his pale eyes unreadable in the lantern-glare as he retrieved the birch wand and cut a doorway between the two nearest stones. Before stepping outside, he laid the wand on the grass beside the closest lantern, pointing at the opening.

Taliere's assistants meanwhile had folded the discarded sleeping bag with the bloodiest surface inside and zipped it shut, forming a narrow, makeshift stretcher onto which they shifted the unconscious Barclay before lifting it by both ends. As they carried him carefully after Richter, Mallory closed his medical bag and followed along at his patient's side.

Taliere watched in stony silence as the party receded against the darker mass of Cnoc an Tursa, turning only when Raeburn brushed past him, the dagger in one hand and Taliere's staff in the other, to lay the staff beside the open gateway that Richter had left. The old Druid said nothing as he watched the younger man replace the dagger in its casket, which he then slipped into one of the duffel bags lying there.

"When you proposed sending this servant of yours to seek audience with the lord Taranis," Taliere said softly, as Raeburn bent to pick up the nearest lantern, "why did you neglect to mention that another - an adversary, moreover - would be there ahead of us to dispute the way?"

Raeburn had been anticipating a question along those lines, and decided that truth would serve as an answer for now.