Doctor Who_ Foreign Devils - Andrew Cartmel [52]
'What do we do now, Doctor?' said Zoe.
'Try and stay out of its clutches. When I say run . . . ' He didn't need to complete the sentence.
The dragon stirred its glittering red bulk. Its lantern eyes focused on them again. It took a step forward, its taloned feet shuffling through the snow. It seemed in no hurry, and it had no need to be. One step had brought it towering over them again. Zoe thought she could smell it now. It smelled like garlic and ginger and gunpowder.
'We need some kind of weapon,' said Jamie staring up at the enormous lacquered red armour of the dragon's breast. 'We might have one,' said the Doctor, smiling. Zoe turned to see that Carnacki was running up, accompanied by Celandine. They were carrying a long leather bag. It took a moment for Zoe to remember what it was. 'The lance!'
Carnacki skidded to a stop in the snow beside them. 'That's right!' he cried defiantly. 'We'll use it to slay this thing!' Celandine was fumbling with the straps of the carrying case. Carnacki bent to assist her and together they threw it open. Inside was the dull lethal length of the medieval jousting lance. 'Help them, Jamie!' snapped the Doctor. 'Now that's a proper weapon,' cried Jamie, helping Carnacki draw out the lance and aim it upwards. The dragon watched their efforts with monumental patience and what might have been detached amusement over the ambitions of these puny creatures. What could
they do to harm it?
'Brace the lance against the ground,' commanded the Doctor. 'Point it upwards so that when the dragon strikes it will impale –' The rest of his words were lost as a shrill whistling scream spiralled through the air above them and suddenly the sky was alive with fireworks. Explosions and flashes of red and green light. Golden star bursts. 'Good old Elder-Main!' shouted the Doctor. Zoe stared across the grounds towards the spirit gate. She watched the conflagration begin. First the air was filled with spinning golden flame, green streamers and red and blue cascades, climbing into the night and reflecting their colours off the snow. Then a more definitive explosion echoed towards them, bouncing off the stone face of the house, as the casks of black powder detonated. Smoke and glowing cinders rose up in clouds, revealing a broad patch of melted snow, and the crumbling ruins of what had been the spirit gate.
'So much for the source of your power,' said the Doctor, smiling up at the dragon. The fire seemed to have died in the apparition's eyes, and its great bulk seemed somehow to have lost substance. The glow had vanished from its red lacquered armour. It writhed strangely, not like a living thing, but like an inanimate object moved by the wind. And as it writhed, its scales lost their sheen and turned into coloured flakes of paper.
'It's not a real dragon at all,' said Celandine in a wondering voice. 'It's made of paper.' As they watched the dragon blew up in the air like a kite, lifted by a gust of wind until it floated in the dark sky where the sparks from the fireworks hovered like fireflies. The drifting hot cinders ignited the paper wings of the great red dragon and in a moment it was burning. The flames spread across its carcass, consuming it hungrily until all that was left was a shrivelled weightless cinder, a wraith. It blew up in the air and dispersed into dust that gradually settled, dirtying the snow.
The Doctor stirred the speckled snow with the toe of his shoe. 'The residue of the cremation of Roderick Upcott,' he said.
'Ugh, Doctor!' Zoe hastily brushed the ash off her hair and shoulders. 'Anyway, he's finally got that monkey off his back,' said the Doc
tor, smiling.
The smell of gunpowder was everywhere. Smoke drifted up into the dark sky and away to the edge of their truncated horizon, hanging there like heavy curtains of mist. Above them the smoke formed a dense barrier. The stars were blotted out. But as Zoe stared she could see an odd glow forming beyond the smoke, like the glow of distant banked fires. The smoke took on a faint pink hue and suddenly, with the