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fire obeyed; the flames dimmed, as if shrinking inward upon themselves.
    Embries stood, rising from the rock as if he were an angry god about to blast an irksome mortal with a thunderbolt. He shook back his tattered cloak, and James could have sworn he heard the ruffled clap of raven’s wings. The old man stepped nearer and seemed to grow taller with each step; his narrowed eyes took on a cold, forbidding aspect.
    It seemed to James that the years, which had clung so tightly to the old fellow’s frame, simply fell away and that he was staring into the face of a man who, while not exactly young, could not be called elderly. Despite the white hair, the eyes that held his were sharp as blades, undimmed by age or time —
beyond
both age and time — wary, worldly, and wise. What is more, they had become an unnatural shade of gold, like a wolf’s eyes or those of a hawk.
    Raising the crook in his hand, Embries made a swirling gesture in the air. The wind answered the motion with a gust which fluttered the flames and sent smoke billowing over them both. James smelled it — and was once more a soldier, standing on a hilltop with smoke in his nostrils and a weapon clutched tightly in his hand.
    “I will not be mocked!” Embries spat.
    James stared in dread fascination at the transformed visage before him. In it, he saw the same primitive wildness he had seen once or twice in the faces of the Afghan rebels he had captured and interrogated. Whatever else he was, the man before him was as much a zealot as any of them, James thought, and probably just as deranged.
    “Think me a fool. Think me mad. Think what you will, but never mock me.”
    “I’m sorry,” James blurted. The apology was genuine. “But you have to admit this is more than a little crazy. I mean” — he flapped a hand vaguely at their surroundings — “all this.”
    “If
all this
troubles you, when next we meet it will be in more conventional surroundings,” Embries assured him tartly. His voice had lost none of its bitter edge. “Good night, Captain Stuart.”
    Embries turned and began walking away down the hill, leaving James staring after him.
    “Look, let’s walk back to the road together,” James called. “You can’t go wandering around out here at night — it’s dangerous. You could fall and break your neck or something, and —”
    He closed his mouth. He was talking to himself. Embries had already disappeared.
    James legged it back to the highway and found his vehicle as he had left it. The plum-colored Range Rover was gone, however, and there were no lights to be seen on the road in either direction. He looked back at the hilltop. The beacon fire had dwindled to a mere ruddy glow of embers, and even that was quickly fading.
    It started to rain as James climbed into his car. He flipped the key in the ignition, gunned the engine to life, and switched on the headlights and windscreen wipers. As he did so, he noticed a small white card stuck under the blade on the driver’s side. He opened the door, reached around, and retrieved the card. It read simply M. EMBRIES, and gave a London telephone number.
    Shoving the card into his jacket pocket, he executed a two-point turn in the middle of the road and rattled off into the night. All the way home he could not help thinking,
What if the old bird is right? Impossible as it seems, what if Blair Morven really does belong to me
?
     

Three
     
    What a night
, James thought wearily as his vehicle rolled to a stop on the gravel drive behind Glen Slugain Lodge. The old gillie’s cottage — which he was desperately trying to keep from being swallowed up along with the rest of the late Duke’s much-disputed estate — was his home. As he got out of the vehicle, his eye fell on the cardboard box containing his all-but-forgotten night’s work.
    “No rest for the weary,” he sighed, then retrieved the box and entered the back door of the cottage, passing through the short entryway and into the kitchen.