Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [28]
‘What should we worry about then?’ asked Shou Yuing.
‘Sorcery,’ said the Doctor and hurried into the hotel.
Night slipped across the surface of the sky like a film of oily darkness. It spread not from the east, but from an apex directly over the decaying priory close to the Tarchester road. Above the broken timbers of the roof, the stars were stifled.
In a pool of their own unnatural glare stood two orbs on tripods of ancient iron. Mordred set his sword between them and knelt on the stone flags. He felt the source of his own power grow closer and spoke its words in the stillness.
‘Here is the convocation. This is the place of meeting.
The point between two worlds, two universes, two realities.’ Like a traced line of gunpowder, an octogrammaton burned its pattern across the floor before him. The air turned sickly and sulphurous.
He grasped his sword and slowly raised it above his head. ‘By this sword, brother to Excalibur, I part the curtain of night.’
‘Nobody is to go outside,’ said the Doctor. He stood by the hotel bar and lectured his astonished audience.
Elizabeth Rowlinson sat stock-still on the settee gripping her husband’s hand. ‘I heard gunshots,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ said the Doctor.
Pat Rowlinson was not a demonstrative man, but there were limits and his hotel was full of mad people. He wanted to close up early. ‘What is this, Doctor? You can’t just walk in here and impose siege conditions... ’
The Doctor tutted at him irritably. ‘Did you see how quickly darkness fell? There are things out there in the night that you don’t want to meet.’
‘What things?’ scoffed Peter Warmsly. He was not paying tonight and was already on his third pint.
The garden door banged shut. Ancelyn, his hands cuffed in front of him, was pushed into the room by Winifred Bambera. She held up her UNIT ID and announced her rank.
The Doctor looked in surprise at Ancelyn. ‘What happened to you?’
The knight slumped down into a chair and cheerfully showed off his bonds. ‘She vanquished me, and I threw myself on her mercy!’
Distant thunder rolled and Elizabeth tensed.
Bambera ignored Ancelyn’s grin and went on with her routine. The situation made it doubly important. ‘As of now I am in charge here. Everyone remain calm and we’ll soon have everything under control.’
‘I doubt it,’ said the Doctor. ‘It all depends on what Mordred has in mind.’
Peter had been staring in astonishment at Ancelyn.
‘Mordred?’ he said in total disbelief. As an archaeologist, he restricted his fantasies to dreams. He had never considered his reaction should they walk up to him in a hotel bar.
He was suddenly aware that no one was speaking.
Everyone was staring across the room at the ancient scabbard. It rattled in its mounting above the fireplace, apparently trying to tear itself in a frenzy away from the wall.
There was a flash of lightning not necessarily outside the room. The scabbard flung itself off the wall in a shower of plaster. It travelled across the room like a spear and embedded itself in the panelled wall inches from Peter’s head.
Thunder boomed and the glasses on shelves behind the bar began to launch themselves over the edge like lemmings.
Peter’s tankard dribbled beer as it cracked and finall shattered in his hand.
The walls of the hotel shuddered. Ace and Shou Yuing burst in from the hallway yelling.
‘What’s happening?’ shouted Bambera.
They all looked at the Doctor. The Doctor looked at Ancelyn.
‘She is coming,’ said the knight.
‘Across the abyss, life calls to life, biomass to biomass, energ to energy. To Avallion I summon thee from beyond the confine, of this universe.’
Plumes of energy spiralled like snakes along the blade of Mordred’s raised sword. Lightning played among the bare timbers of the priory roof. It cracked between the two light rippled orbs.
The prince yelled and plunged the steel blade into the flagstones with a shower of sparks. The grinding mechanics of two cosmoses in spiralling collision began to grate out