MacFarlane took the card, fingering it thoughtfully. "I'll do that," he promised.
"Thank you," McLeod said, and then turned to Chisholm. "Now I'd like a look at where you said you think the vehicles parked."
Meanwhile, Peregrine had set about his own work, preparing to settle in while McLeod and Chisholm inspected the stones and then moved off to find lolo MacFarlane. Before he could even begin to draw, his initial task was to isolate the impressions of immediate relevance from the surging background sea of historical images. At such an ancient site, it would not be easy.
Moving outside the circle of stones, Peregrine withdrew along the western arm of the cross until he could find an angle that gave him an overall view of the central circle. Taking shelter in the lee of one of the stones, he pulled off his right glove and opened his sketch box long enough to remove a sketch pad and pencil, then gave the box into Harry's keeping while he turned his attention to the circle stretched before him.
A slowly drawn breath eased him into trance with a smoothness born of practice as he set himself to filter out all the other resonances, layer by layer, until he at last was left focused on a stratum of dark images from the immediate past. Under cover of blowing on his fingers to warm them, he set the stone of his Adept ring briefly to his lips, commending himself to the guidance and protection of the Light, then set pencil to paper and let the dark images channel through his drawing hand. Wholly absorbed in his work, Peregrine soon ceased to be aware of anything else.
He worked thus for perhaps half an hour, changing location several times, filling half a dozen pages of his sketchbook with impressions. Harry observed the process with interest at first, but Peregrine's concentration clearly did not invite comment or conversation. Growing fidgety after a while, Harry circulated around the site on his own, making his own observations, increasingly restless but always drawn back to the young artist's side to see what was taking shape beneath his flying pencil, especially when Peregrine changed locations.
Peregrine had moved into the center of the circle to sketch, now sitting on his sketch box, which he'd retrieved from Harry. He was deep in a study of the dark stain where the bull had lain when Harry again returned to his side. This time, as he peered over Peregrine's shoulder, he found the other man's pencil strokes blurring in front of him like the ghost-image of a spinning propeller-blade, almost drawing him into the sketch.
Removing his sunglasses, Harry knuckled at his eyes and turned away. As he did so, his gaze lighted upon a blackened curl of something that looked like a small black snake lying on the ground beside the central monolith, just inside the blood-traced circle.
Curious, he moved closer to crouch in the lee of the monolith, prodding whatever it was with one earpiece of the glasses and then lifting it for a closer look. It was not a snake. He was just considering whether the object might be a narrow strip of bull's hide when it slid down the earpiece and onto his hand. Its touch triggered a startling and overwhelming cascade of alien images that set him reeling back to sit hard in the snow.
Harry's strangled exclamation jolted Peregrine from his sketching trance. Looking up sharply, he saw the barrister crumpling dazedly against the central monolith, eyes unseeing and fists clenched hard against his chest. Jamming his pencil through the spiral binding at the top of the sketch pad, Peregrine thrust the pad under his arm and sprang to Harry's aid.
"Harry!" he whispered urgently, seizing the man's arm and at the same time trying to block him from view by anyone who might be watching. "Harry, what's the matter?"
Both the scrap of hide and Harry's sunglasses had fallen from his fingers as he sat, and he shook his head in dazed bewilderment as he regained awareness of his surroundings - and his wet posterior.
"Christ!" he murmured under his breath, bracing himself against Peregrine and scrambling back to a crouch, brushing vainly at the seat of his trousers.
"What happened?" Peregrine demanded, giving Harry's arm a shake when he did not immediately respond. "Harry, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I - I'm fine." Harry groped automatically for his sunglasses, folding them clumsily into a breast pocket of his flying jacket, then stiffened as he saw the curled scrap he had dropped. His finger began trembling as he pointed it out to Peregrine.
"Do you see that?" he whispered.
"Yes."
"The damned thing - bit me!" he said, for want of a better descriptor - though Peregrine had a sudden inkling of what he meant. "Fetch McLeod, would you?"
McLeod was out in the long avenue that led back to the car park, conferring with the two police constables as they gestured around the location and the nearest cottages, apparently discussing who might or might not have been able to see anything. Chisholm was back in the police car, talking on the radio. Heading partway back to McLeod and the two constables, Peregrine raised his sketch pad to catch McLeod's eye.
"Inspector, can I see you a minute?"
McLeod excused himself immediately and came to join the young artist, his brow furrowing at the look on Peregrine's face.
"What is it?"
"I dunno. Something just happened to Harry. He seems to be all right now, but he said that something 'bit' him. I think he meant psychically. It looked like a fragment of bull hide."
"Did he touch it?"
"I think so."
McLeod nodded and headed in Harry's direction.
"That's one of the reasons I brought him along. I expected that something like this might happen, if I just gave him time and opportunity. I do believe our Harry may have made a personal breakthrough."
Harry had struggled to his feet during Peregrine's brief absence, and was leaning heavily against the central monolith on the side away from the others, folding something into a pocket handkerchief.
"I didn't touch it a second time," he said in a low voice, as McLeod came close beside him. "Didn't mean to touch it the first time, but it sort of slid onto my hand when I was trying to scoop it up with one of the stems of my sunglasses. It's in here," he added, handing the folded handkerchief to McLeod and immediately wiping his hands against the legs of his trousers, as if to divest himself of something unpleasant.
Very carefully McLeod opened the handkerchief enough to see what was inside, nodding as he glanced back at Harry.
"Care to tell us about what happened, Counsellor?"
Harry swallowed audibly and managed a sickly grin. "Tell me this, first. Would there have been a reason to sew somebody inside the skin of that bull?"
McLeod nodded carefully.
"And some kind of binding in addition to that?" Harry persisted. "Some kind of ligatures around the wrists, the upper arms, the ankles?''
Again McLeod nodded, refolding the handkerchief over its contents and slipping the bundle into an inner coat pocket.
"Restricting the movement of a subject is a form of sensory deprivation," the inspector explained. "It can enhance states of altered consciousness. And the ligatures would restrict blood flow to the limbs - and hence concentrate blood flow to the brain - also enhancing psychic activity. Psychotropic drugs are sometimes given for the same reason. What did you see, Harry?"
Harry glanced at the remnants of the circle outlined in blood, hugging his arms across his chest to suppress a shiver.
"Something really dark," he whispered. "And for just a few seconds, I seemed to be part of it."
"Tell me," McLeod said quietly.
Harry swallowed and nodded. "I was lying in the center of that circle of blood. I was sewn tight into that damned bull hide with my arms strapped to my sides, stark naked inside. I couldn't move, I could hardly breathe; my feet and hands were numb."
"Go on."
"There were - a couple of men were bending over me," Harry continued, blue eyes going unfocused as he remembered. "One of them was old, with white hair and some kind of crown on his head - I'd know him if I saw him again. The crown wasn't metal, or even leaves. It had wings like a bird, but - close to the head. Not Viking or anything like that."