Doctor Who_ Cats Cradle_ Witch Mark - Andrew Hunt [49]
'Whatever gave you the idea that I planned to do that, Ace?'
'Well, all this ... ' She mimicked his winking and tapping of his nose.
'Nervous twitch, Ace.'
'But surely we're not going to go out there when there's all these demons around?'
'I think we ought to, Ace. There's something peculiar about all of this. A Celtic culture on another world with a highly technological matter transmission device disguised as a stone circle? Unicorns and centaurs? And then this business of a sun vanishing? I fully intend to investigate.'
'But they're savages!' Ace protested, thinking back to the burnings she had seen.
'I've seen worse atrocities committed on Earth. This is a world in turmoil. Something needs to be done for it. Now go back to your room, get some sleep and we'll discuss it in the morning.'
'But, Professor!'
'Night, Ace,' he dismissed her.
Ace turned, slammed the door shut and stalked off down the corridor. She hardly noticed that she wasn't paying attention to where she was going and when she finally came out of her annoyance with the Doctor she was lost. She stamped her foot in anger and wondered which way she'd come. She could trace her footsteps back a few metres but then there was an intersection and try as she might she couldn't be certain which branch she'd come down. She felt fairly sure, however, that she hadn’t descended any stairwells and so she hoped that she would be able to wander around this level until she found the Doctor’s door again. With this purpose in mind, she set off along one of the passages. But the more and more she wandered around hoping to recognize some landmark, the more and more frustrated she became. It seemed as though she had been up this particular passage, for instance, at least three times -
this place was nearly as bad as the TARDIS except that she knew intuitively that it couldn't be as big as the Doctor's time machine.
As she proceeded along another identical corridor she suddenly heard footsteps coming towards her.
Her first reaction was to leap into hiding, but then she decided that it would be better merely to ask for some directions. With this in mind she poked her head out of her concealment, but something about the figure approaching her made her quickly withdraw.
She recognized him from the council room, but she couldn’t remember his name. He had a thick mass of brown hair and a rocky outcrop of a nose. There was something wild about eyes that frightened Ace.
When he was past her, she peeked out into the corridor. He was clad in a chainmail vest and solid wooden sandals held on to his feet by long leather thongs that wound round his legs up to his knees. Ace decided that someone who knew the layout of this place wasn't likely to go up and down the same passage as she had been doing, and so she followed him, staying just out of sight, but within hearing distance of the clop-clop his sandals made against the stone flags. In the end, this strategy made her lose him, and still without finding the Doctor's room. She cursed quietly to herself, but seeing no point in standing around she continued searching.
It came as quite a surprise when she almost fell over the man she had been following. She ducked back into the shadows and watched him. He was standing at a window, gazing through the hole in the wall at who knows what. His lips were moving softly without any speech coming out and his hands clutched the sides of the window tightly. Ace stood and watched him for some time, hardly daring to move lest she reveal her presence, and eventually he sagged and fell back from the window. He stood half crouched for six shuddering breaths and then straightened himself up. He turned to face the corridor and, as he swung about, his eyes for one brief moment seemed to be looking directly at Ace and she saw fires burning there. She gasped in horror, but he did not seem to have noticed her, for he walked away without a backwards glance.
Ace came out of hiding and went to the window. She couldn't recognize the view, but something about the outline of the distant horizon, dark black