Something inserted into the Sigma Field with a shock that jarred Tenzin Geshe out of the group trance. Briefly he sat stunned, then looked around. One of the Circle lay unconscious, another was on his knees, retching. The rest appeared shaken, as he was himself.
He didn’t need to enter a trance again to know that what had entered the fabric of the Tao was not the wolf elemental. It was something far more powerful. Something depraved. And his immediate fear was that they could not get it out.
Tentatively he felt for it, and psychically touched it. Just now it seemed inert, as if it too had been shocked by what had happened. A demon, he thought. The emperor has asked for demons. Now it seems we have one. Though how it had happened . . .
However it had happened, they had a demon in a position of power, or potential power, beyond any that anyone, man or demon, had even approached before, it seemed to Tenzin. A position that he had given it.
He would not tell the emperor until he’d had time to probe the situation and learn more about it. He felt a deep foreboding. It seemed to him that he had brought about a terrible misfortune, a calamity for more than himself, for more than the emperor. A calamity for mankind.
How long, he wondered, might it take to work off the karma he’d earned this night?