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fading into the profound hush that marked the boundary between waking and trance. Turning inward in
spirit, he sought the shimmering jewel that lay at the center of his being, pulsing with the heartbeat of the
cosmos, then cast his senses outward into the world of spirit.
Lifting his gaze, then, to the altar beyond the Stone, lit by votive candles and luminous with a brightness of
spiritual virtue, by reason of the countless Masses celebrated upon it, he could sense the holiness of
Presence imbuing altar and surrounds with sheer holiness. But when he turned his gaze downward to
what lay beneath his hands, the dark Stone lay inert and apparently lifeless.
He spread his fingers and sought deeper, thinking that surely he must be mistaken; but it was as if he knelt
at the brink of a vast, empty hole into nothingness. Only far into infinity could he sense the faintest
glimmer to suggest that what usually was resident within the Stone might yet return to it.
Troubled, he turned his focus inward, seeking clarification, framing a call to those angelic masters whose
counsel he sought in times of need. After a moment, a hint of vision came-but only the image of a rich cup
overturned atop a small, round table of marble the color of the Stone, bloodred wine spilling across the
polished surface. The table was set beneath an airy pavilion whose canopy was like a silver cloud raised
up on twelve pillars of alabaster, these forming a circle of brightness around a standing column of pure
white light. Three marble steps led the way up onto the floor of the pavilion.
Not presuming to mount those steps, Arnault bowed himself in spirit and lifted open hands in a gesture of
appeal. The air grew still brighter around him, as though a number of lamps had been uncovered, and
Arnault dared to frame a wordless plea for insight.
A light gust of wind seemed to stir the pure air of the hallow, prompting him to lift his gaze. The pavilion
itself had vanished, its pillars now become twelve shining, winged beings armored in light, each with the
scarlet cross of the Order burning on its breast. In their midst stood yet another such being, though
vested after the manner of a Grand Master of the Order, with wings and beard and eyes all of flame.
Before Arnault could bend again in wordless, awed salute, the being came to clasp his hands between its
own-acknowledgment of homage due, but also the greeting of a brother warrior of the Light-and bent to
seal the exchange with a fraternal kiss of peace.
The holy and transcendent rapture of that angelic kiss all but made Arnault swoon, igniting remembrance
of the vision granted him in the tower at Cyprus. Though newly reassured that the Stone beneath his
hands was meant to be the cornerstone of a Fifth Temple, there was that about the Stone itself that yet
seemed-wrong. As, in appeal, he turned physical vision to the altar beyond the Stone, he focused his
present need in a scarcely whispered prayer, his inner sight still ensnared by the fiery eyes of the angel,
hands still clasped in prayer between those mighty hands.
"Show me." he breathed, with all the fervor he could summon. "Give me a sign."
For an eternal instant the angel's eyes seemed to draw him into their fire. Then he felt the floor seem to
melt away from under him, leaving him briefly weightless before he began a precipitant downward plunge.
Strong winds rushed past him, like a tempest trapped in a tunnel. Then, all at once, he grounded with a
bone-setting jolt, still on his knees.
Recovering himself with an effort, he tried to force his eyes to focus. He was kneeling once more in the
chapel at Scone Abbey, still confronting the Stone of Destiny, but now he was seeing everything around
him with new eyes. The objects near at hand were visible not as fixed and solid substance, but as fluid
patterns of energy. The altar before him was a tablet of shifting rainbows; the lamps that burned before it
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were silhouettes of variegated fire. But under his hands, the Stone of Destiny lay dark and lifeless as a
tomb slab, its cold sucking the warmth from his hands. Then a wash of red seemed to draw across his
vision like a curtain.
He gasped-and blinked-and all the images blurred and whirled, dissolving away. Once again he felt like
he was falling, his fingers even grabbing at the Stone to steady himself.
Then, abruptly, he was back in his body again, reeling with dizziness. Trying to push himself back up on
his knees-for he had sunk back on his hunkers during the vision-he wobbled and then sat back onto the
floor with a faint clashing of the mail beneath his robe. Luc at once turned to look at him, then sketched a
sign of dismissal in the air before the entrance to the chapel and came to join him, setting a hand on his
shoulder in concern as he crouched beside him.
Arnault took a deep breath and let it out gustily, shaking his head at Luc's look of inquiry and letting the
older man help him to his feet.
"Well, that was an interesting exercise," he murmured. "If my vision was clear, then Torquil and Brother
Mungo were right: Something is seriously wrong with the Stone. I had the sense that it can be made
right-but I have no idea where we begin to find out how."
He swayed and almost stumbled. Not speaking, Luc took him by the arm and guided him to a seat on a
stone bench set against the back wall of the little chapel, where Arnault haltingly described what he had
seen.
"So the Stone is dead-or at least ailing," Arnault concluded, his eyes, like Luc's, fixed on the dark bulk of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]