Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [29]
As a child delights in playing with fire, so Mordred played with natural energies, the science of magic. The flames of Creation were summoned and focused between the two orbs. Bound to his will, the forces coalesced and ripped a hole in the fabric of existence. A burning wind blew into his face. He clung to the hilt of his sword and stared into the gaping abyss between realities. Lit by the harsh glare of his power. he began to laugh with elation.
His summons was a hand that reached in need from one world to another. As light calls to darkness, as hunger calls to greed, and as a boy calls to his mother.
‘Who’s She?’ said Ace.
Thunder, or worse than thunder, rumbled outside the hotel. The Doctor fingered the trembling scabbard as he listened to Ancelyn’s words.
‘She holds the thirteen worlds under her yoke. Twelve centuries has she held them to her avail. It’s true the lands are fruitful. The fields and champaigns spill with grain and fruit, but by dread is that earned. For she won the crown by her black arts and by those arts she has secured her power. Her worlds are built on the pretence of plenty, but they are stacked upon a foundation of darkness and evil.
‘And those she rules, she milks through tributes and tailles. Her subjects, for all their wealth and righteousness, lived in that same dread. They are slaves to their queen.
‘She is Morgaine, the immortal one. She who brought ruin to Arthur the High King. It is she whom Merlin opposes. And it is his summons through Excalibur that I answer.’
The Doctor touched the scabbard again; it was icy cold.
‘But now Morgaine follows you, Ancelyn,’ he said. ‘For she fears that Merlin will fulfil the final prophesy. And then the High King will rise again and cast her into the abyss forever.’
‘Yes, Merlin,’ said Ancelyn.
‘I thought so. She must be desperate.’ The Doctor tried to focus down the length of the scabbard. He felt the strands of time beginning to fray under the assult of mighty power. ‘Which way does this wall face?’ he said.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ exclaimed Pat Rowlinson. ‘What’s happening?’
‘It faces north,’ said Elizabeth quietly. ‘Towards the lake.’ The hotel shuddered under a fresh onslaught of elemental fury. Above it all carne a great rending sound, a tearing asunder of the veil of Eternity, the clamorous opening of the gates of hell.
The Doctor, pale as a corpse, fell forward to the floor in a swoon.
Alone in Doctor Warmsley’s cottage, the wolfhound Cerberus trembled and yelped beneath the security of his master’s bed.
Deep in the cavernous halls of the ship, the sword changed the notes of its signal. Beside it, the armoured figure that lay on the bier remained unmoving.
In the comfort of the warm helicopter, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart woke from his nap with a start. The lights of London moved below him and an inky pall of night spread across the dusky sky from the west. He felt a sudden chill of anxiety and shuddered.
Mordred saw a shape moving in the white depths of the rent between existences. It took on human form as it grew larger. The Prince bowed his head as the female figure stood silhouetted against the light.
‘Immortal Morgaine. Ageless and Deathless.’
She stepped through the rent on to the stone of Avallion. Crowned and armoured with gold, she raised her head and drank in the air. Behind her, a dozen men-at-arms emerged from the light and took up positions of honour to their Queen.
Morgaine lifted her crown away with slender fingers and shook out her long red-gold hair, the mark of the seer.
‘Mordred,’ she said, her voice charged with ice. He lifted his head. ‘Mother. Merlin is here.’
‘Yes, I can feel his presence.’ She maintained the calm that always unnerved him. It meant that she was angry.
‘And he has a new countenance.’
Morgaine smiled. ‘Oh, he has worn many faces.’ She stared up into the dark air beyond the bones of the roof. He had issued his challenge to her, so she must respond.
Merlin, she thought. Hear me