Read Online The Adept by Katherine Kurtz, Deborah Turner Harris - Free Book Online

to relax, his breathing came more easily, with the shallow regularity of someone just on the verge of sleep. Adam fell silent for a few seconds, to see if he would rouse himself, but Peregrine only gave a little sigh and seemed to settle even more.
    “That’s very good,” Adam said softly. “Can you hear me clearly?”
    “Yes.” The answer was almost inaudible.
    “Excellent.” Adam kept his tone quiet and reassuring. “At the moment, you’re perfectly aware of what’s going on around you; it’s simply too much bother to pay attention to other things. You’re relaxed and safe and perfectly at peace. Now, I’m going to fetch something from across the room. When I return, I shall ask you to perform a simple task for me-—one that is perfectly within your ability. Will that be all right?”
    “Yes.”
    Satisfied, Adam went to the desk at the far end of the room, returning with a pencil and a blank pad of paper. Peregrine was sitting as he had left him—relaxed and motionless, eyes closed.
    “You’re doing just fine,” Adam reassured him, in the same quiet tone he had used throughout. “We’re finished with the float for now, so I’m going to take it out of your hands,” he said, suiting action to words. “I’m giving you a pencil and some paper instead. I want you to take a few more deep breaths, to: let go of any remaining tension or anxiety that might still be with you. Then, when you’re ready, I want you to open your eyes and look at me, with all your inner intuition as well as your physical eyes, and draw what you see. Do you understand?”
    Peregrine nodded his assent, his closed eyelids fluttering as he drew a slow, deep breath. Quietly Adam retreated to his chair, sitting back casually to watch, legs crossed. When the artist looked up, a few seconds later, the dull, hazel eyes had taken on an inner luminance, like lamps newly kindled.
    Adam neither moved nor spoke, only watching his subject’s minute nuances of expression, feeling Peregrine’s eyes on his face. After a moment’s searching scrutiny, the artist brought pencil and paper together and began to sketch rapidly, his gaze rarely leaving his subject. After a moment he frowned and scribbled vigorously over what he had drawn, and began on another.” When he scribbled out the second sketch and started again, looking more and more confused, Adam quietly rose and came to set one hand on his shoulder in gentle restraint, the other pressing lightly to his forehead.
    “Close your eyes and relax, Peregrine,” he murmured. “Relax and let yourself drift. It seems I’ve set you a more difficult task than I realized. Just relax and rest easy for a few minutes, while I see what you’ve drawn.”
    Peregrine surrendered the pad and pencil without resistance, eyes closing and hands fluttering to his lap with a relieved sigh. Adam watched him for a few seconds, absently sticking the pencil through the spiral binding at the top of the pad, then turned his attention to what Peregrine had drawn.
    Fortunately, the scribbling had not entirely obliterated the work. The sketch at the top showed a lean, bearded face with deep eyes and a patrician nose set above a stern, passionate mouth. A chain mail coif surrounded the face, surmounted by a conical helmet in the style of the late thirteenth century. The device delicately shaded on the left shoulder of the mantle was the distinctive, eight-pointed Maltese cross of, among others, the Knights Templar.
    Adam pursed his lips, nodding as he realized what Peregrine had glimpsed—echoes of a past life whose details were only accessible to Adam himself when in a deeply altered trance state, and mostly elusive during ordinary consciousness. As a psychiatrist, he preferred to believe that his “far memories” were psychological constructs—tricks that the mind played, in order to deal with material more acceptably couched in the fantasy of a past existence than in the cold, stark terms of reality. The mystical