Doctor Who_ The Scarlet Empress Part 15

'We're travelling under a cloud, Sam. We're bringing the curse of the Scarlet Empress with us.'

'Don't be so melodramatic. Curse of the Scarlet Empress. Sounds like a B movie.'

'A what?'

'Oh.' She stopped. Right in the path she could have sworn should lead outside, there stood the trunk of a gnarled tree, wider than she could stretch her arms.'We've lost our way.'

Iris was freed like a magician's a.s.sistant who steps from the glossy, lacquered cabinet all in one miraculous piece.

'It's just like old times, Doctor,' she said ruefully. 'Remember Venice and those awful fish people, and Wilde and -'

'Oh, come on,' he said irritably, glancing around before he jumped off the platform. The whole ensemble shuddered with the thunder.'You're lucky you weren't struck by lightning, sitting in that...' He struggled for a word.

'Egg-slicer thing,' she supplied, and heaved herself off the stage. She glanced up at the hydra, which was still attacking the palace, sending rubble crumbling to the wet ground.'How on earth did you summon up that thing?'

He started to run for the bus.'Would you believe black magic?'

'No,' she panted, struggling through the black, b.l.o.o.d.y mud.

'Neither would I,' he said, and stopped. 'Ah.'

Behind them the Executioner had reappeared, this time wielding the remote-control device from his belt. He had nipped back to fetch it and now he was powering the thing up with a furious expression. The air between Iris, the Doctor and the waiting bus was s.h.i.+mmering and warping as something else started to take form.

Iris said, "That's his machine for deluding people.'

The Doctor stared.'I thought it must be.'

Before them, standing taller than the roofs around them, coalesced the stout and snarling figure of a gryphon. Its lion's body was coiled to pounce, its eagle's head clashed a voracious beak.

'It's an illusion,' said the Doctor hopefully.

'I don't think so,' said his.

To check, the Doctor went running towards it.

The gryphon beat its vast, all-too-corporeal wings twice and reached out one golden paw.

Too late, the Doctor skidded to a halt. He brushed the hair from his eyes with both hands. 'It's real!' Then he was s.n.a.t.c.hed up and lifted high into the stormy air.

'Doctor!' bawled Iris.

Behind her the Executioner cackled and made some final adjustments.

The Doctor came eye to eye with the gryphon. The claws dug into his sides.'Are you real?' he asked aloud, staring into eyes as wide and round as cartwheels.

Iris swore again. Her turn to rescue him, this time.

While the gryphon was preoccupied, she scurried off towards the bus, grimacing at the pain in her arms. She kept her nerve and shot under the creature's legs, gagging at its musty stench.

The bus. There it was, untouched, waiting for her as ever.You're either on the bus or off the bus, she'd told her last companion when he left.

The pa.s.sengers on her bus had to be loyal to each other.When they got into tight corners, they did everything they could for each other. As she felt inside her many pockets for the key, she stole a glance back at the square and her eyes widened. This was the tightest corner she had been in for a while.

The hydraulic doors swished open and all the lights popped on. She needed to think fast.

Outside, the hydra had at last lost interest in demolis.h.i.+ng the palace. It wheeled around in the air, blasting flames and fumes to orientate itself.

All three heads fixed their burning gazes on the gryphon and saw in it a suitable rival. The hydra plunged down headlong into the square, stretching its wings to their fullest.

The Executioner was shrill with delight. He cackled merrily at the Doctor's plight. He was laughing when the hydra's breath touched him and, in one crackling discharge, burnt him to a crisp.

This caught the gryphon's attention.

The Doctor cursed and cried out as he was squeezed even tighter. He craned his neck to see the hydra shuffling, advancing across the ground on clawed, elephantine legs.

'Why don't you just put me down first?' he yelled.'And then you boys can get on with it?' But the gryphon had forgotten all about the tiny being in its grasp. With its free paw it clawed the ground, as if about to charge.

'I hate monsters,' the Doctor yelled.'Why is it always me?'

Then the hydra lunged. Its three heads struck at once, attacking from all angles. The confused gryphon reared and felt one of those fanged heads bite into its pelt, bringing up a furious welter of blood. It dropped the Doctor to the ground and grasped the middle neck of the lizard and held on for all it was worth. The Doctor crash-landed in mud, in a clatter of confused, scrabbling limbs, the wind knocked out of him.

'Doctor!'

He looked up to see the bus, all its lights blazing, dwarfed in the shadow of the behemoths.

'Get yourself away from them!'

Iris was hastily a.s.sembling what looked for all the world like a First World War bazooka on a tripod, a little distance from her s.h.i.+p. She looked manic, forcing in the gunpowder, her hair standing wildly on end. Then she slipped the mortar in and went scuttling round the back.

'Get down!' she screamed.

He pelted for cover.

A huge, over-optimistic blast rent the air.

The tussling creatures were hit full blast. For an instant they were lit up orange and black. There was a shower of filth and blood and hanks of fresh meat.

'Run!' shouted Iris and, through the dense smoke, the Doctor, skidding, sliding, deafened, ran.

She caught him. 'Here! I've got you.' She grasped his arms and with surprising force hustled him aboard the bus.

As the doors clashed shut he was lying breathless in the gangway. Iris threw herself into the driver's seat and revved the engine. 'We're off!' she said, and the bus rolled with unseemly haste out of the town square.

The Doctor dragged himself to his feet to see the gryphon and the hydra, both hideously injured, blackened and hanging together by threads, still raking and pulling at each other.

Then the bus turned a corner and went splas.h.i.+ng through the dark, deserted streets of Hyspero.

The Doctor pa.s.sed out.

Iris drove like a mad thing, determined to leave the whole place far behind. She kept her sensible shoe down hard on the accelerator and got them both out of Fortalice. Above, the storm was reaching its terrible height.

Chapter Fifteen.

Hands of the d.u.c.h.ess

They could have been Babes in the Wood, fallen asleep under a mantle of leaves, except that one of them was covered in scales and the other one wore a Blur T-s.h.i.+rt. They might have been the spellbound lovers of A Midsummer Night's Dream , apart from the fact that they got on each other's nerves all the time. And this wood was indoors, rank and dripping and filled with unearthly, almost sentient plant life.

Before Sam and Gila gave up on finding a way out tonight, the alligator man said wearily, 'You know, I think this place is bigger on the inside than out.' This and Sam's laughter was their last exchange before they both fell asleep, quite apart, on the driest gra.s.s they could find.

Sam was drawn into her most vivid dream for months. Something in the fecund, fetid atmosphere of the temple jungle seemed to work on her imagination. She was back in the equally baffling yet homely, cathedral-like inner s.p.a.ce of the Doctor's TARDIS. She longed to be there, and conjured up all its familiar Victoriana, its ludicrous Jules Vernisms, the ranks of various clock faces, the potted palms, the rich carpets and dubious antiques. Even the bats squealing in the tallest recesses of the almost invisible ceiling. The lambent blue of the time rotor was a baleful, but rea.s.suring glow. She thought of the s.h.i.+p as home. In her mind she could wander around, from the library, to the door behind through which there was a whole gra.s.sy hillside, swarming with millions of b.u.t.terflies. In her dream she was looking for the Doctor, unpanicked as yet, because he often vanished deep inside the s.h.i.+p and was never seen for days. On those days she suspected he was off having adventures of his own, and neglecting to tell her. That was what she used to think in the early days especially, when her younger self (she now felt) clung to him in a way she would never do now. She had learned to let him go his own way somewhat. Possessive with the Doctor was one thing you could never be.

Then, she saw that the vast console room was full of life. The scaled, silvery forms of slumbering Skarasen lay everywhere on the bare stone, on the Persian carpets, even on the Volkswagen Beetle parked in one recess. The Skarasen - almost two hundred of them - breathed in slumberous, fluting whispers, oddly peaceful now they were aboard the s.h.i.+p and she and the Doctor were taking them away from Earth, where they had been used as murderous tools by their Zygon masters, to a planet where they could frolic harmlessly. She stared out at the silvered, dinosaur-like creatures and their many rows of deadly fangs and marvelled at her own calm. Then she was aware of the Doctor at her side, working busily at the controls, tapping in his commands with his usual air of deliberation and pot luck. This had all been some time ago.

Years, in fact, for Sam.

The Doctor looked up at her and grinned. 'You look as if you're in a trance.'

She smiled at him weakly. 'Maybe I am.' This was all very lucid, for a dream. Usually her dreams slipped about chaotically, as her sleeping mind attempted to come to rapid terms with her confusing waking life.

This was almost as if she had slipped back in time to this moment several years ago, when they had just left Victorian London, with a lethal, sleeping freight of sea monsters aboard, and the Doctor was still patting his own back for doing a fine job as Pied Piper.

Pied Piper, she thought. That's what he is for all of us. Iris included.

There was that tell-tale tingle in her fingers that meant she'd travelled in time. She always got that. And a slight nausea, in the first moments. She asked him,'Are you still on Hyspero, Doctor?'

He looked at her blankly.'Hyspero? I haven't been there in years. How do you know about Hyspero?'

'I don't know,' she said slowly.'I think that's where I am.'

'Ah.' He looked concerned, thoughtful. He peered into her eyes. 'You're in some kind of telepathic trance. Perhaps your future self trying to contact me through your current self.'

Her eyes widened. 'Can I do that?' And Sam grinned to herself, to hear herself so young-sounding and trusting. All that will change, she thought grimly.

Perhaps the Doctor is right, then, and I really am sending myself back to contact him. She made herself say, 'You've gone missing, Doctor. We've been split up in the town of Fortalice. Gila and I can't leave the temple.You and Iris are -'

The Doctor shook his head crossly.'You're making no sense.' His face seemed to darken. 'Stop babbling at me. I've work to do.' He turned abruptly to the console and pored over its wooden, blinking panels.

'Besides, I haven't seen Iris Wildthyme in decades.' He whirled around, realising. 'You really are telepathically linked, aren't you?'

'I don't know,' said Sam with a shrug.

The snores all around them went up in pitch for a moment and one of the nearest glistening beasts rolled over, its paws oddly vulnerable-looking as it slept.

'Let me see...' mumbled the Doctor. 'We need to put our heads together...'And he gave an uncharacteristic giggle. Then he bounded over the bra.s.s rail that ran around the console and hurried across the floor, clambering where necessary over the creatures' supine forms.

Sam followed and the short trip seemed to take hours.

By the library there was a door she had never noticed before. 'Open sesame,' grinned the Doctor and it sprang open. It was dark within and she didn't want to go in. Suddenly she didn't trust him.'Think of it,' he said.'as the Citizens'Advice Bureau.We're going to get some advice.'And he ushered her into a dimly lit, cavernous room.

She was in a circle lit by. guttering candle flames described by thirteen stakes, struck into the brick floor like a clock face. On seven of the pointed stakes were jammed seven gorily severed heads. Almost all of them were older than the Doctor she was used to. Their eyes were dead, the faces l.u.s.treless and chilled blue. The Doctor examined them with a certain amount of pride.

'h.e.l.lo, everyone. Sam here has a question.'

She wanted to get out of there.

He went on,'She wants to know if it's possible to consult and ask for help from your former selves. Speak up, Sam. Tell the nice Doctors.'

All seven heads started talking at once.

'Really, Doctor, this is hardly -' ,..

'You see, my dear, it's very simple...'

'I'm not exactly breaking the Laws of Time but - 'There were once three sisters, and they lived at the bottom of a treacle well...'

'Only in the direst of emergencies can you -'

'Nice? Nice?'

'I saw this coming.'

Their separate voices fought for her attention. They grew louder and louder, into a cacophonous din. The Doctor beside her was laughing as she covered up her ears. He said,'I'm even giving myself a headache!'

Sam jammed her eyes shut until the collective voices stopped.

And she was in silence.

Silence except for the moist crepitation, the insidious rustling of the lush forest. And something else: a delicate c.h.i.n.king noise, as of the most intricate, well-oiled clockwork.

She was back on the forest floor. Her heart refused to slow down. She really hoped that had been a dream.

When she rolled and turned and brushed off her face and body the wet, leathery leaves that had dropped on to her while she slept, she saw Gila apparently in deep conversation with somebody she couldn't make out.

She kept still and peered into the murky distance between them.

Gila sat on his haunches and he was sitting still, in silent communion with what looked for all the world like a pale silver bird. From this came a tinny, mechanical sound, as the wings beat and it hovered. Then Sam saw that it wasn't a bird at all, but two electronic hands joined at the thumbs in mid-air. These disembodied prostheses hovered effortlessly in the dark and stared back at Gila. Stared back, she noted, via the ten electronic eyeb.a.l.l.s that had been appended to each silver digit. The handwings flapped and the ten eyes glared at Gila, and now Sam.