Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [3]
Besides, he was bored, achingly bored, with manipulation and power. He longed to be away, free of schemes and other people's ambitions, and, more than that, free of himself. He could cast off this dark, brooding persona more easily than a serpent sloughs its skin. But if he did go, there would be no way back. And Rassilon would be left with absolute control. No checks, no balances.
In frustration, he took off a shoe and threw it at the box. The Hand of Omega dodged so fast that his shoe seemed to travel straight through it. He stood with one stockinged foot out over the drop.
'Well? What wil you do, eh, if I step off?'
Pointless to ask real y. The box would be there under his foot. Ready to catch him.
So much for suicide.
'Selfish brute!' he complained.
Below, he could see figures skulking in the shadows around the Memorial. No rebels these, but agents of Rassilon sent to arrest him. He supposed he should feel flattered. Too good to lose, apparently.
In the air he caught the scent of burning flesh. A decision had been made for him, but there was much to prepare and a difficult farewell to make.
Ignoring the box, he lowered himself down the stone curve of the Omega symbol and dropped to the ground. The shadows came at him fast out of the dark. He was surprised by their knives.
They were surprised by the bolts of energy that flung them like dolls out of his path. The box whirred in beside him with that unnerving knack of seeming to move faster than its own shadow. He drew a cut bloom out of his cloak.
The rose's milky scent reminded him of children and the lost future. He laid it at the foot of the monument and bowed his head. The box, taking an uncharacteristic moment to decide its course, settled down beside the flower.
He knew it was watching as he hunted for his shoe in the gloom. Unable to find it, he threw away the other shoe and walked barefoot down into the burning city.
***
'I am the Doctor. I am. I am. I am!'
Chris Cwej lies slumped against the wooden wall, watching the room reel around him. Dizzying. Pale tree trunks frame the walls, reaching up to a black ceiling that eases out of their branching curvature like a natural growth. It flickers orange in the lantern light.
He closes his eyes - all the better to see.
His heart, trying to beat enough for two.
His fingers touching and clutching things that were not there.
His mind remembering things, gargantuan things that he has never known before. He wants them to leave him alone. To cruk off out of his head. He pulls off his boot and throws it.
The room swims around him. Only metres away the women sit huddled over something. The foot of their victim emerges from the circle. It is encased in a brown and cream lace-up shoe.
The new memories trickling into his head are getting paler. Ebbing away.
6
Eighth man bound
Make no sound
The shroud covers all
The Long and the Short
And the Old and the Loud
And the Young and the Dark
And the Tall
The women hold hands. The President and the Tearaway and the Cousin and the Warrior. They mutter incantations that lay his thoughts bare to them. His mind is an écorché: flayed sinews, stripped naked of the skin of consciousness.
'Why did you leave?'
'Where have you been?'
'Who are you? Who the hell do you think you are?'
Chris wants to let go, but a thread holds him, spinning slowly over the abyss.
I am! I am! I am!
They are tearing into his mind with carrion beaks.
'Vultures!' shouts the victim lying in their circle. His voice has a Scottish burr.
'Can't catch me,' it whispers in Chris's throat.
As the women start to feed on his dreams, it all goes dark.
***
The House is full of sunlight. Shadows are banished to skulk in corners. The panelled walls, polished with wax from the sugar-ant hives on the estate, gleam darkly between the white trunk columns and arches. Now and then, there is a lazy creak from the floorboards or the tiles on the gabled carapace of the rooves. Sometimes a chair shuffles slightly to avoid the passage of a Cousin on the galleries. Momentarily, a deep sigh