Doctor Who_ Lungbarrow - Marc Platt [63]
'Well, it hasn't brought the cheese and biscuits, that's for certain,' said the Doctor.
Innocet drew them inside and shut the door quickly. 'Owis was meant to warn us. Wait until I find him.'
The door opened itself again and the silent Drudge stared in.
Owis stood on the landing listening to the skinless skulls. The skulls that lived under the House. They were noisy tonight, whispering through the passages and corridors. Always just out of sight. In the shadows. Behind the curtains. When they wanted you, they cal ed your name. Tonight, they were calling Maljamin.
Owis chewed nervously on a dried feathergil . He must tell Glospin about the intruders. He had to know what it meant. He hadn't seen real people since the start of the dark. He'd forgotten what they looked like. And he had to know where they got in.
He headed for the transmat booth in the Hal of the South wing. It was untouched, its control console blackened with centuries-old carbon residue. The door was covered in web. Inside, shimmering slightly, was the intangible ghost, a uniformed figure that had stood there since the dark started.
Owis was sure it should be candleday by now, but the passages stayed resolutely dark. He held out his arm and a fledershrew flittered in and hung on the underside. The little animal squeaked and took a morsel of mushroom.
'Where are the others?' said Owis, stroking its leathery wings.
It flew away.
91
As he hurried to tell Glospin, he was touched by memories that dwelt in every shadow of the House. Places he had watched from; places he had stolen food from; places he had been caught stealing food. He might be seeing all of them for the last time. He wasn't sure how he felt. The fizzing feeling inside might be excitement, or it could be indigestion.
Glospin's stove was empty. The metal door hung open as if the dejected stove had despaired at its loss of prisoner.
Owis ran along the passage to the funguretum. The wall of the fungi pen was broken. Boot marks had trudged mushrooms across the tiles. The crop was slithering its way out of the gap over the floor and up the wal s. The pen was almost empty. Arkhew's body had gone.
Relieved, Owis scooped up some of the fattest fungi and pocketed them. The skinless skulls had gone quiet. The whole House was silent. Unnervingly silent. No creaking or squeaking or shuffling. No one crying.
In the sudden chill, he knew why Innocet had sent him away. It was deliberate. They were al going without him leaving him behind. Innocet and Glospin and Arkhew. The fledershrews. Even the skulls had gone. It was revenge.
They'd al gone without calling him.
***
The Drudge hadn't moved. The wooden sentinel glared through the doorway into Innocet's room, its attention focussed entirely on the Doctor. Chris guessed that it could probably wait for ever.
The semblance of accord in which the Doctor and Innocet slowly took a turn around the huge room, might well have been for the Drudge's benefit. They ignored its the presence at the door. The air, thick enough with silent accusation to carve, told a different story.
Jobiska had fallen asleep in her chair. A tiny bundle of bones in a filthy and ragged doll's dress. Chris wondered how anything so frail could stil be alive. He could see the thin blood moving under her gauze-like skin.
The voices in his head had cut short as soon as Maljamin left the room. But he was certain that Innocet had heard them too. As for the Doctor, well, the Doctor was the Doctor. Impossible to tell what he was thinking - never fewer than three things at once, Chris was sure. And that was when he was asleep.
Chris picked up some old, scratched counters that were scattered over what looked like a mountainous relief map set on a pedestal. There were miniature models of strangely organic houses set on the mountainsides, which were linked by a faded path divided into tiny coloured squares. He found an eight-sided die among the counters and let it tumble across the board.
The clatter made the Doctor and Innocet turn and shush him irritably. On the board, the counters