The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (24 page)

“Aye,” said McLeod. “We don’t want any errant partygoers wandering in here by mistake, looking for the gents’ toilet.”

The comment got a thin smile out of Peregrine, who had been looking very solemn after the preceding ritual, and he duly set his back to the door and pulled a sketchbook and a pencil out of his art satchel. Adam, meanwhile, moved over to the chair in the window bay and sat down in it, facing into the room toward the chest of drawers. Taking the Dundee ring out of his pocket, he handed it to McLeod, then likewise pulled Dundee’s Templar cross out from under his sweater, touching the ancient artifact lightly to his lips before settling it on his breast.

“Ready whenever you are,” he murmured, glancing up at McLeod as he settled back in the chair.

Pulling out his lighter, McLeod lit one of the pair of candles on the mantel ledge above the fireplace, then came back to Adam, setting both hands on his chair arms as he bent briefly to speak to him. Peregrine had never had opportunity to see the inspector work in this capacity before; but as soon as he began, crouching now at the left of Adam’s chair, it became evident that he was well versed and confident in the techniques of hypnotic regression. Peregrine could not quite make out what he was saying to Adam, whose gaze was now fixed on the burning candle; but as he watched, he saw Adam close his eyes and tilt his head against the high chair back, apparently going deeply into trance. McLeod’s touch on his forehead seemed to send him deeper yet, his head lolling slightly to one side as he went deeper, deeper . . .

Utterly compliant to McLeod’s quietly worded direction, Adam turned his back on the present moment and began his retreat into the past. At first a part of him remained dimly aware of his surroundings, of the glow of the lamp and candle behind closed eyelids; but then a moment of not unpleasant vertigo gave way to a vision of a doorway marking the backward boundary of his present lifetime. Passing through it, he found himself in a wilderness of mirrors surrounded by astral reflections of himself, increasingly buffeted by a rising wind.

Tossed back and forth from mirror to mirror, the reflections showed him glimpses of his spirit clothed in many different guises, some familiar, some less so—an Egyptian priest-king, a Greek matron, a Templar knight in chain mail and white mantle—but he could not seem to fasten on any of them. Simultaneously, from far, far away, he was vaguely aware of someone touching his left hand, lifting it, slipping a ring onto the third finger, shoving it home with a word of command.

At that touch, as the time frames whirled and danced around him, he found himself all at once face-to-face with an image of a dark-haired young woman in the sweeping gown of a Jacobite lady. The image drew him forward, and as he reached out the hand with the ring, the mirror swung inward like a door, inviting him to enter . . .

Looking on anxiously from his post by the door, Peregrine all at once became aware of a dull shimmer in the center of the room. McLeod seemed to see it too, and drew back warily in the window bay where he crouched beside Adam, for there was no place farther to retreat without first going closer to the shimmer. As Peregrine stared, the shimmer brightened and quickened, exploding into a ghostly jumble of violent resonances. Determined to bring them to focus, Peregrine opened his inner sight to deeper perception, and gradually began to resolve three figures out of the initial visual chaos. Two of the figures were big men in the coarse garments of common soldiers, but the third—

Peregrine gasped and flinched, for the figure slumped heavily in the grasp of the two soldiers was a slender young woman with long dark hair, her green gown torn and bloodied. They had bound her wrists behind her, and the bare soles of her feet were burned and blistered. Her half-averted face was so battered, as she raised her head, that it took a moment to recognize her as the same woman he had seen in his earlier vision sparked by the Dundee ring.

Grizel Seton.

Even as the name registered in the back of his mind, the ornaments on the ledge above the fireplace gave a sudden rattle, the unlit candlestick toppling off the mantelpiece onto the floor. In the same instant, an icy blast of foul air rushed through the room, extinguishing the remaining candle and striking Peregrine full in the face like a heavy backhand slap. The force of it dashed his spectacles off his nose and slammed his back hard against the closed door. Flailing to keep his balance, he lost his grip on his sketchbook and almost fell, barely remaining upright on one knee. The paintings on the walls began to jutter violently on their hooks. McLeod had shrunk back hard against the side of the window bay, his gaze raking the room.

“Jesus, what’s happening?” he rasped.

Peregrine, cringing against the door, found himself without the breath to answer. All at once, the soldiers disappeared and the tormented image of Grizel Seton shattered before him like a pane of glass, a haggard female shape rising up out of the glitter of flying shards with streaming hair and blazing eyes. Pages of Peregrine’s sketchbook went flying into the air, whirling around like a storm of confetti. The second candlestick clattered and fell, and a brass bowl full of dried flower heads and potpourri tipped off the drop-leaf desk and spilled across the Persian carpets. With a piercing banshee moan, the ghost of Grizel Seton rocketed up off the floor, her burning eyes now turning toward Peregrine as she lunged for his face.

He ducked low, flinging up both arms to ward her off. Light flashed blue from the ring on his hand, deflecting a raking gash that glanced off the door behind him. The backlash buffeted him sideways, jarring the table with the lamp and setting it teetering. As he scrambled to keep his balance and also save the lamp from falling, a voice cried out sharply,
“Grizel! Stop!”

The voice, was a woman’s, high and clear and imperative. At the sound of it, the angry presence in the room faltered and fell back. As Peregrine peered cautiously out from behind his crossed arms, he saw the hag-shape turn toward Adam, who had risen to his feet. But now, to Peregrine’s wondering gaze, Adam’s physical form seemed overcast by a transparent projection of that surprising past persona that had manifested itself at Oakwood: Lady Jean Seton.

Confronted by this image of her sister, the shade of Grizel Seton lost her fierce and bloody aspect. Her burning eyes softened, their fire quenched in sudden uncertainty. Before Peregrine’s very gaze, she shrank and subsided. Even as he blinked, she was as he first remembered—a slender, dark-haired woman with the quiet beauty of a fallow doe.

A hush seemed suddenly to envelop the room. Then Grizel spoke, her voice tremulous with incredulity.

Who are you? I charge you to tell me truly!

“Truly I am your sister, Jean Seton,” came Adam’s whispered response, “reborn in the flesh as the man you see before you.”

How do I know that you are not some foul shade sent to deceive me?

Adam lifted his hand to display the Dundee ring. “By this token,” said the voice of Jean Seton, “given to me by our father after we fled to France. You knew it when he wore it unadorned. Now it contains a relic of my Lord Dundee, taken before our father helped lay him in his grave.”

Boldly Adam extended his hand. Grizel Seton reached out to touch the ring with fingers translucent as seashell, her presence trembling like a candle flame in the wind.

Yes. I know you now for my own Bonnie Jean,
she murmured softly. And all at once, tears seemed to glitter in her eyes.
Ah, sweet sister, when we parted so long ago in the Forest of Mar—and from him as well,
she continued wonderingly.
I never looked for us to meet again. What brings you back to me now, in this strange fashion, after so many years gone by?

“The needs of this present day and time.” Jean’s voice was grave. “The charge of the Knights Templar has been violated. The Seal that was lost has come to light, stolen from its keeper by a thief in the night, and we have reason to fear that even now he is seeking the casket. If he should succeed in finding it, nothing less than Solomon’s own wisdom will suffice to avert disaster. That being so, I have come to implore you to hand over to me the Crown which our Bonnie Dundee entrusted to your care.”

Solomon’s Crown?
Grizel’ s voice registered troubled surprise.
This is a weighty request you make of me, dearest Jean. You were there beside me when our Dark John of the Battles enjoined me never to surrender it, even at the cost of my own life. My presence here is proof that I have never yet broken faith with him.

“And so I told him when we met again just two days past, “ said Jean.

There was a wondering pause.
You have spoken with his lordship?
Grizel asked eagerly.

“Yes, even as I am speaking to you here,” came the response from Jean. “These two worthies with me will bear witness that he lives on in spirit, even as we.”

How fares he, then?

“Less happy than he might, for knowing of the manner of your death,” Jean answered. “Likewise, it gives him great sorrow that you should have been detained here so long, in exile from the Light. I am to convey to you his thanks and his blessing. I am also to tell you that, in the person of this latter self, I have his authority to take the Crown into my custody, to avert the present danger and to give you your liberty. He bade me show you this cross, which he wore that last time we saw him in the flesh, as earnest of his most urgent entreaty. You have only to show me where the Crown lies hidden.”

To be free at last.
Grizel’ s words were a longing sigh as she reached out a hand to lightly touch the cross on Adam’s breast.
Yes, I will show you, dearest Jean. But your companions likewise must pledge to keep sacred this trust that I bequeath to you.

Her gaze turned to Peregrine and McLeod. The inspector had gotten to his feet as Adam and the ghost conversed, and now he made her a slight bow, right hand upon his heart.

“You have my solemn oath, Lady,” he told her. “All of us are sworn to the service of the Light. We will keep faith with the trust you give to us—and with Lord Dundee.”

“I give you my oath as well,” Peregrine said, wide-eyed.

Very well,
said Grizel.
I am satisfied.

She drifted over to the fireplace and stroked across the panelling in the opening with a slender hand the texture of gossamer.

The Crown is there, she declared. Though my captors knew it not, this fireplace has never known a fire, for it has no chimney breast. It houses instead a secret compartment behind a screen of masonry. They thought to bring me here, but they did not think to look far enough. All I had to do was hold my tongue . . .

Chapter Twenty-Three

THE GHOST
of Grizel Seton shuddered slightly, as if at the memory of old pain. Peregrine stooped to retrieve his spectacles, then edged closer to McLeod.

“That panelling looks jolly solid,” he muttered, “not to mention any depth of masonry beyond. How the devil are we going to get the Crown out of there without making a mess of the whole wall?”

“Damned if I know,” McLeod replied. “But we’re going to have to figure out a way.”

Even as he spoke, Grizel Seton drifted closer to Adam.

Give me your hands,
she instructed quietly.

She ducked beneath his shoulder as he raised his hands, rising again within the compass of his arms, her hands outstretched to overlay and merge with his. The shared contact gave Adam a cool butterfly sensation in his palms and fingertips. At the same time, he understood that she required control of his body. Confident that she would do him no harm, he relaxed and closed his eyes, allowing her the freedom to guide him.

The cool butterfly tingle in Adam’s hands spread up his arms and down his legs. Yielding passively to Grizel’ s gentle influence, he allowed himself to be propelled forward three steps in the direction of the fireplace. Still responsive to her touch, he crouched and reached out. Just before he touched the panelling, his extended hands encountered an elastic area of resistance, as if he were pushing his fingers through a stiff block of gelatin . . .

Grizel’s guiding presence was investing the whole of Adam’s body with a soft shimmer. As his and Grizel’s superimposed hands reached
through
the panelling that covered the fireplace, McLeod breathed an incredulous “Good God!” Peregrine could only nod by way of acknowledgement, watching in dumbstruck astonishment.

Adam himself appeared oblivious to what was happening, eyes closed, face serenely intent. Shifting easily onto both knees, he leaned farther forward, his arms disappearing almost to the shoulders as, for a breathless moment, he seemed to feel around for something beyond. When he moved to withdraw, still guided by Grizel, Peregrine could tell by the set of his shoulders that Adam now was carrying something. His eyes opened abruptly as his hands emerged from the panelling, and widened in wonder as light from the lamp by the door touched off a warm glint of precious metal between his fingers.

As soon as they were clear of the panelling, Grizel separated and drew back. Adam drew a deep breath, then gathered himself to his feet and turned to show Peregrine and McLeod the golden star diadem of six upturned points that he now held.

Peregrine could not repress a gasp. McLeod looked a little pale. Adam smiled, his own expression rapt with half-dreaming wonder as he turned the Crown over in his hands. Beside him, the filmy presence of Grizel Seton resolved once more into womanly shape.

This is the Crown once guarded for the Temple by John Grahame of Claverhouse,
she told them.
Legend has it that Solomon the King invested it with his wisdom long ago.

Her words seemed to call Adam back to himself. Looking up, he said quietly, in his own voice, “Thank you, Grizel. Be sure I will guard this with my very life.”

If you fail in your mission,
she replied,
you imperil not only your life but your soul as well. As keeper of the Crown, you have the great King’s leave to use it. But I am bound to warn you that to do so, unless in the presence of both the Seal and the Sceptre, is to court gravest danger to yourself.

“How so?” Adam asked.

Solomon divided his potency among the three hallows, intending them to be used together,
Grizel informed him.
If one or the other of these hallows is missing, the user himself must compensate for the ensuing imbalance in power. Should you contemplate donning the Crown, for whatever reason, I urge you first to examine your own mind and conscience and see that you find yourself in no way lacking. To those already strong and wise, the Crown brings even greater wisdom. But to those who are, not, it brings madness.

This warning shed further light on the dream Adam had had at Oakwood. It seemed that Caitlin had been right in her supposition that the Crown by itself might not be enough to see him through whatever perils lay ahead.

“You are not the first to warn me that the hallows are dangerous,” he said to Grizel. “Two nights ago, I had a dream urging me to recover the Sceptre as well as the Crown. Do you know where it is?”

Grizel’s response was a regretful shake of her head.
If my Lord of Claverhouse knew, he did not share that knowledge with me. I am sorry.

Greatly daring, McLeod edged forward. “What about the casket, Lady? Can you tell us where it lies?”

Griezel shook her head again.
That knowledge was lost to
the Masters of the Templar Order long before my time.

“Then we must proceed armed only with the knowledge that we—”

Adam stopped short as a sudden idea occurred to him. McLeod was quick to catch the arrested expression on his face.

“You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”

“Perhaps,” Adam said. “A stratagem worth trying, anyway.”

As McLeod and Peregrine came closer, Adam went on to explain.

“From what Lady Grizel tells us, the three hallows are integrally related to one another. That being so, it may be possible to scry out the current location of the Sceptre by using the Crown as a focus. Obviously, our chances of success would be doubled if we were in possession of the Seal as well, but we have something almost as good—the imprint of it, Noel?”

Nodding, McLeod took from his pocket the silk-wrapped bundle that was the Seal’s imprint and passed it to Adam without comment. Peregrine looked mystified, but Adam proceeded to explain as he knelt to deposit the Crown on the floor in the center of the room and began unwrapping the wax.

“This piece of sealing wax carries not only the physical impression of Solomon’s Seal but also the psychic impression of its potency,” he informed his companions. “Since we haven’t got the Seal itself, its imprint may be the next best thing. But it’s still going to cost us considerable effort to make a scrying attempt. That being so, I hope Lady Grizel may be persuaded to assist us with her support.”

He directed a questioning look to the ghostly presence of the woman who had been his sister in another lifetime, and she gravely nodded her consent.

I am ready to do whatever you require,
she told him.

“Thank you,” Adam said. “Your support will be most welcome. All that remains is for me to make the necessary preparations. “

He set the wax impression of the Seal carefully within the compass of the Crown, then folded himself to sit cross-legged before the sigil so arranged, directing his colleagues to sit as well. As Peregrine settled to his right and McLeod across from him, Grizel Seton drifted across the floor to take up her station in the remaining quadrant of the circle, just to Adam’s left.

“All right, support me in this, as best you can,” he said. “I expect I may have to go quite deep.”

So saying, he spread his hands over the Crown and what it encircled, curling his fingers over the six upturned points and letting his thumbs rest on the wax imprint of the Seal. As he began pushing himself down into trance and his awareness of the room receded, he became correspondingly more conscious of the supporting presences of McLeod, Peregrine, and Grizel Seton. Closing his eyes, he sank ever deeper, centering his attention on what lay beneath his hands. In his mind’s eye, the Crown gradually began to glow with the hidden power of its own internal radiance.

The glow coalesced into a whirling spindle of golden flame. The spinning flame gave rise to a skein of light like a thin golden thread stretching away from Adam into a labyrinthine mist. Aware of Grizel Seton’s presence with him on the Astral and the others anchoring the silver cord of his own soul, he rose out of himself and set off to follow the golden thread back to its source.

Twisting and turning, the burning thread became a flying dart. Racing after it, Adam was catapulted suddenly out of the mists into a darkness full of moonlight and rushing winds. A shadowy landscape of hills and glens unfolded beneath him with frightening speed. Hurtling forward, he saw a panorama of lights spread out before him like a galaxy of stars.

The lights resolved into a grid of lines and squares—an aerial view of a large city. Shooting over the housetops like a comet, Adam recognized enough of the layout to realize he was passing over the city of Dundee. His vision impelled him on across the breadth of the Tay and south with dizzying speed over the fields and townships of Fife. Soaring over the turrets of the Forth Bridge, he overshot the sprawling lights of Edinburgh and plummeted earthward toward an architectural blur on the west bank of the River Esk that materialized at close range into an ecclesiastical structure of stone and brick.

Rosslyn Chapel,
whispered a voice he recognized as Grizel’s.

It was a place associated not only with the Templars but also with distant Sinclair relatives—in Midlothian, not far south of Edinburgh. As the chapel’s exterior seemed to melt away before him, Adam found himself drawn past a shining beacon that, in its physical aspects, was known as the Apprentice Pillar, then downward to gaze at a blank area of bricked-up wall. The image brought with it the certain conviction that the Sceptre lay hidden in a vault beyond.

He started forward, hoping to penetrate the vault’s interior. In the same instant, his astral self was violently wrenched loose from Grizel’ s stabilizing rapport. A sickening whirl of vertigo seized him as the world turned end over end and spat him into limbo. Tumbling blindly through space, he crashed through a barrier into the forefront of another living mind.

Henri Gerard!

Gerard’s attention was focused not inward, but outward—on the Sceptre. Gerard was not physically present with the Sceptre, but in that brief instant of psychic contact, Adam realized that Gerard knew its location, and probably that of the casket as well. At the risk of exposing himself, he made an effort to read through the chaos of the other man’s consciousness to grasp the other half of the secret. But in that selfsame heartbeat, Gerard became aware of him and turned savagely to attack the psychic intruder he sensed in his own mind.

A vicious blast of raw power pitched Adam backwards in time. Buffeted by hot breezes, he struggled to break free and discovered that chains bound him hand and foot to a cruel stake. Fire was crackling up around him in winding sheets, licking hungrily at his bare arms and legs. Choking with pain, he looked wildly around and saw through a wreath of rising smoke the bitter, smiling face of an old enemy.

Guillaume de Nogaret, called the Templars’ bane, who had helped trump up the charges that led to the suppression of the Order of the Temple and sent so many Templars to their deaths.

With that part of his mind still rooted in the present, Adam suddenly realized that Gerard and de Nogaret were one and the same individual. In the next instant, his mind-link with Gerard was wiped out in a roar of billowing flames and a wave of pure agony. Adam’s Templar-self cried out in anguish. But as the blaze rose to overwhelm him, strong hands reached out to pluck him from the corrosive grip of the flames.

He grounded with a jolt and lay there panting, too winded for a moment to move or speak. Gradually he became aware that he was lying on the carpeted floor of the Douglas Room, curled onto his side. Responding to urgent hands on his shoulders, he rolled heavily onto his back and opened his eyes to find himself gazing blearily up into the concerned face of McLeod, with Peregrine peering worriedly over his shoulder and Grizel Seton hovering anxiously in the background.

“Are you all right?” McLeod demanded. “Jesus Christ, what happened?”

Peregrine’s face was blanched white. “I could see fire all around you,” he said shakily. “You were . . . burning—”

His voice cracked. Adam gulped air and groped for words of reassurance.

“Those were just images,” he told Peregrine with all the firmness he could muster. “Flashbacks of yet another earlier incarnation that connects with our adversary. The fires you saw might once have injured me, but not in this present lifetime. You can see for yourself, I’ve taken no real harm.”

Gently disentangling himself from McLeod’s supporting grip, he sat up and went on to relay what he had learned from that painful episode of contact.

“Actually, I’ve picked up some valuable information,” he told them. “You remember I wondered whether our Mr. Gerard had a psychic past that could somehow account for his current behavior?”

“Yes, “ McLeod said.

“Well, it seems my suspicions were justified. He was one of Philippe le Bel’s chief advisors. Knowing that, a lot of what’s been happening begins to make sense, that didn’t before.”

McLeod was nodding. “When Gerard learned the truth about your friend Nathan’s Seal, that knowledge must have activated all the latent ambitions of his previous life. Do you know if he knows where the Sceptre is?”