Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [93]
‘Give me your strength.’
‘What good is it to you?’
‘You must give me your strength if you want to go down.’
‘Then take it.’
The Doctor lay on the stony path. He knew he wasn’t mutilated. He knew he wasn’t bleeding. He knew he wasn’t getting colder. Except in the sense that he was.
A hand pressed against his chest.
‘Give me your heart.’
‘But I’ll have nothing left,’ he cried, small and cold and terrified.
‘You must give me your heart if you want to go down.’
So the Doctor said, ‘Take it,’ and went down.
* * *
‘Living animal, you profane this place!’
The Doctor was no more than a wisp, a breath, an echo. Yet everything hadn’t been taken from him after all. He could hear, and he could feel on the back of his neck the dank breath of the being that had spoken.
‘I apologise. I’ll go when I have what I came for.’
‘Why should I grant you a favour who have nothing left to give?’
‘Of your great generosity, Majesty.’
She laughed. Had the Doctor been in his mortal body, the sound would have shattered his bones.
‘I only take. But I am not yet ready to take you. Go away.’
‘No.’
‘Go away, stinking meat, or I will tear you to shreds, and each shred will live. You will writhe like a tangle of worms.’
‘You can’t really harm me. I’m still outside your power.’
‘How have you done this trick? Ssh!’ He felt a palm against his chest. Had it been his mortal body she touched, his skin would have peeled and melted. ‘Ah, you have hidden your heart in another.’
‘Not willingly, Majesty.’
‘What is that to me? You have come here willingly enough. Now go.’
‘At least hear my request.’
‘Your stench is disgusting. Your presence is an obscenity. I will hear nothing from you.’
‘But your own words prove that I do have something left to give.’
‘Indeed? And what would that be?’
‘My absence.’
The damp whisper caressed his ear. ‘You are a clever creature. But I have known cleverer. You are brave, but I have known braver. You are fair, but I have known fairer. You are good, but I have known better. They all come to me, as you will.’
‘But in the meantime, here I sit. It is not my wish to disturb you, Majesty. I will leave if you grant my request.’
‘All the living want only one thing from me: to take back with them one they loved.’
‘That is not what I want.’
‘No? Why not? Have you never loved anyone who died?’ Again the corrosive touch. ‘I see. There are too many. Who would have thought you had undone so many?’
‘Hear my request.’
‘You are interesting. I see now that you have cheated me many times. Yet you claim you have not come to cheat me again.’
‘I have not.’
‘You intrigue me. Tell me what you have come for.’
‘I wish to talk to someone.’
‘Pah! Is that all? Usually the living call the dead to them.’
‘That is difficult.’
‘More difficult than coming here? You are stranger and stranger.’
‘Others have come.’
‘Buying their way in with blood. You have no more blood to offer.’
‘Respectfully, Majesty, you are mistaken. The blood is for the dead, to give them enough substance to appear to the living.’
‘I am never mistaken.’
‘As you say. But I am insubstantial now myself, and can talk to the dead as an equal.’
‘I am never mistaken and I never lie.’
‘Truth is the will o’ the wisp of the living, Majesty, and therefore only we lie.’
‘A subtle answer, warm thing. And a courteous one. If you were in fact able to talk to one here, who would it be?’
‘Sebastian Chiltern.’
‘Hmm. There are so many...’
‘He came only recently.’
‘That word has no meaning for me.’
‘He is incomplete, Majesty.’
‘Incomplete?’
‘Only a piece of his... of the spirit... was lodged in his body. The rest is –’
‘You talk nonsense.’
‘I assure you, I do not. He –’
‘There is no soul here like that you describe. It is true that – and it may be that this was in a time that you might call recent – two came who had one soul and many bodies. But the other, no.’
‘As you say, Majesty. His name in life was Sebastian Chiltern. That is all I know.’
‘What information do you want from him?’
‘A location.’
‘That is a very short answer for such a long journey.