Dagger Magic
Kathenne Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris.
Ace mass-market edition / February 1996
ISBN: 0-441-00304-4
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors offer grateful acknowledgment to the following people, who have greatly enriched the background authenticity of this novel by their generous contributions of time and information:
The Reverend W.C.H. Seal, for background on Phurbas and Tibetan black magic, as well as orthodox Tibetan Buddhism, and for checking the final manuscript for accuracy; any errors that have crept in are ours, not his;
Mr. Thorn McCarthy, administrator for the Holy Island Project, Samye Ling Tibetan Centre in Scotland, for his warm welcome and reams of information at Samye Ling, and for helping arrange our visit to Holy Island;
Mr. Harry Lloyd, Northern Fisheries Board, Ballyshannon, who allowed us to inspect and photograph inflatable patrol craft and survival gear used by Fisheries officers; also, Mr. Ronan Flynn, Central Fisheries Board, and Mr. Bryan Murphy, of OceanTech, Dun Laoghaire, for more specific information on the Avon inflatable boats used by the Irish Department of the Marine;
P.C. Stephen Stewart (Alexandria), Detective Sergeant Alasdair Barnett (Campbeltown), and P.C. David White, Strathclyde Police, for guidance on police procedure;
Mrs. Elaine Ennis, Scottish Department of Social Work, for insights on rehabilitation procedures for spinal injury patients;
Chief Engineer Gordon W. Whitehead, for invaluable technical expertise regarding submarine operation;
Mr. Simon Martin, for sharing his practical knowledge of marine salvage work;
Dr. Richard Oram, our resident authority on Scottish history, who was able to paint us a graphic picture of seventeenth-century Hawick;
Mr. Ken Fraser of the St. Andrews University Library, for being ever ready to find all manner of obscure books on demand.
Prologue
"THE weather in the far north of Ireland will continue unsettled for at least the next twenty-four hours," came the crackly voice of the radio weatherman. "… occasional outbreaks of rain and northeasterly winds gusting up to forty knots…"
The rest of the marine forecast dissolved in a hiss of static that was lost in the roar of twin Yamaha outboards and the slap of water against black and orange sponsons as the big inflatable boat punched through the waves off the north coast of Donegal. Irish Fisheries Officer Mick Scanlan grimaced as he scanned ahead with a pair of powerful marine binoculars, one arm looped through the boat's A-frame to brace himself. Amidships, sitting astride the pillion seat behind the control console, his partner, Lorcan O'Haverty, throttled back slightly to compensate for the wave chop.
The sky overhead was a dirty shade of grey, looking more like February than early May, and the two officers were dressed for weather. With their bright orange crash helmets and regulation life-vests, both men wore the distinctive orange-and-black survival suits called Polar Bears that could keep a man alive for several days in these waters, whose winter temperature often dipped to near-Arctic levels. Even in May, though the water had begun to warm, hail and sleet might accompany the squalls and storms so prevalent in this area. To be caught out unprepared could be fatal.
Not that today was too bad, as days went in early May. The wind was brisk, but the sun looked poised to break through the cloud cover for at least a little while. A hundred yards off to port, the outbound tide was peeling back on itself lethargically from the sheer base of a long line of sea-cliffs, leaving the exposed rock-faces festooned with streamers of stranded kelp.
Scanlan shifted his weight and continued to scan. Off to the seaward side, shadowed and uncertain under the receding tidewash, the dark lurk of submarine rocks posed a threat to conventional craft venturing in this close, but the rigid inflatable boats used by the Irish Department of the Marine drew only inches of water, and had proven highly effective for this kind of patrol. Weighing hardly more than a ton, a six-meter boat like this one could be trailered where needed and launched within minutes - a godsend for men like Scan-Ian and O'Haverty, charged with protecting the coastal fishing rights of a country heavily dependent upon its maritime industries. While much of their routine work was done ashore - either shuffling reports in the local fisheries office or else conducting routine inspections on the docksides of fishing ports from Inishfree to Malin Head - field investigations were not at all uncommon.
This morning they had launched from Downies to check a report of illegal fixed nets in the area. Their backup boat had developed engine trouble and would try to catch up later, but their land-based backup would be shadowing them from the shore in a Land Rover, also linked by radio. Scanlan had spotted him as they passed Dunfanaghy, and expected to pick him up again after they rounded Horn Head.
The radio chatter ebbed and flowed against the background bluster of wind and waves, and Scanlan automatically scanned the shoreline as O'Haverty skipped their nimble craft past a succession of small inlets gouged out of the coastline by the action of the North Atlantic tides. But as O'Haverty brought the boat around the point of the headland, a sudden and unexpected stretch of calm water stretched before them along a narrow crescent of sandy beach adjacent to the rock cliffs. Taking closer notice now, Scanlan saw that the outbound swells were coated with the greasy rainbow film of spilled oil.
"Uh-oh," O'Haverty said, glancing back at him.
"Yeah, I see it." Scanlan swung his binoculars along the sweep of shoreline and adjusted the focus. "We'd better have a closer look."
As O'Haverty nosed the boat toward the beach, the slick became visible as a V-shaped stain fanning out across the flattened waves, apparently coming from a waterline cleft in the base of the cliffs that marked the western end of the beach.
"Looks like it's coming from those rocks up ahead," O'Haverty said.
"Yeah." Scanlan lowered his binoculars for a few seconds to peer with unassisted sight, then resumed his study. "I don't see any signs of a wreck, though. Maybe an oil barrel's gotten washed against the rocks and broke open. Let's go in, and I'll check it out."
Without comment, O'Haverty brought the boat around with a spin of the wheel and gave a brief rev to the engines to propel them in toward the shore while Scanlan shed his binoculars and helmet and moved into the bow, ruffling a hand through sandy hair. As soon as the boat's snub nose nudged sandy bottom, Scanlan threw a leg over the side and stepped onto the sand and shingle, grabbing an anchor and coil of line. Sea water washed and tugged at the legs of his survival suit until he won free of the retreating surf and bent to set the anchor behind a cluster of rocks a few yards higher on the beach. Behind him, O'Haverty pulled up the slack and snubbed it off.
"We'd better make this quick," O'Haverty called, shouting to make himself heard above the boom of the surf. "Tide'11 be turning soon."
Grinning, Scanlan gave his partner a thumbs-up sign and turned to begin trudging toward the promontory. The tide-lines to his left suggested that the strip of beach was only exposed to view at low tide - which explained why he did not remember having seen it before, even though he and O'Haverty had passed this headland many times on routine patrol. He was halfway to the base of the cliffs, heading for the area from which the oil seemed to have come, when a flicker of color and movement drew his gaze upward.
About halfway up the cliff-face, a small flurry of sea gulls exploded into flight from the mouth of a jagged fissure in the rocks. That alone was hardly surprising, but as the birds wheeled away screeching, a slight, shaven-headed figure in flowing orange robes suddenly appeared from behind them.