The Lodge of the Lynx by Katherine Kurtz & Deborah Turner Harris

Author:Katherine Kurtz & Deborah Turner Harris [Kurtz, Katherine & Harris, Deborah Turner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: deryni
ISBN: 9780441003440
Google: hku3-3v7KxcC
Goodreads: 285182
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1992-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

chapter twenty-three

THAT same night, in the cellar level of a house near Stirling called Nether Leckie, Francis Raeburn and a select handful of his subordinates gathered to pursue their interest in Gillian Talbot. Present were the three who had done Raeburn’s bidding in preparing an origami lynx, hardly a week before - Napier, Fitzgerald, and Wemyss - and the wiry, dark-haired man named Barclay, whose assorted talents ran far beyond the piloting of helicopters. All five had donned the hooded black robes that were their working uniform, and each bore the silver medallion and carnelian-set ring that were the badges of full membership in the Lodge of the Lynx.

Page 149

Their working place was warded and ready, with fire guttering in black iron cressets on three of the whitewashed walls. The fourth wall presented a dark, brooding fresco of a faceless, vaguely humanoid form shrouded in shadow and roiling clouds, with an aureole of lightning bolts set about the area where the head should be, picked out in hammered iron. Facing this wall, and a rack of candles set between it and him, the pilot Barclay sat quietly in a high-backed wooden armchair, head tilted back, eyes closed in trance. At his right hand, a black iron brazier on a three-foot tripod sent a thin thread of incense smoke curling lazily upward. A small table beside it held other accoutrements necessary for this night’s work: more incense, a shallow glass vessel like a petri dish, an egg-sized tangle of golden hair, and a 10 cc hypodermic syringe filled with dark blood. Raeburn himself presided over this array, with the hard-eyed Angela Fitzgerald to assist him. On the other side of Barclay, Napier had pushed back the pilot’s left sleeve and was tightening a length of rubber tubing around his upper arm while Wemyss loaded another syringe from a small vial of opalescent pinkish fluid.

“You’re aware that he won’t be able to fly for twenty-four hours,” Wemyss said, withdrawing the needle and handing off the vial to Napier, holding the syringe to the candlelight and expelling a few air bubbles.

“I don’t need him to fly until Saturday,” Raeburn murmured, watching as Wemyss tore open an alcohol swab and scrubbed over Barclay’s bulging vein. “This ‘flight’ is far more important just now. If, as I suspect, our young Gillian Talbot is the current incarnation of Michael Scot, then this night’s work may well point the way to recovering access to what was lost at Loch Ness. Barclay was present when the late lamented Geddes summoned Scot back to his body at Melrose; he will know if the perception is true. Please proceed.” Without further demur, Wemyss slipped the needle into Barclay’s vein and loosed the tourniquet, slowly injecting about half the contents of the syringe and then pausing to peer under one of his subject’s eyelids. Napier had shifted to steady Barclay by the shoulders, so was prepared when, after Wemyss had injected more of the drug, Barclay gave a shudder and a moan.

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