Doctor Who_ Silver Nemesis - Kevin Clarke [5]
There was a pause, during which Richard’s fears abated.
Suddenly the arrow in Lady Peinforte’s hand began to glow more strongly. It intensified more and more, until the strange silver light seemed to fill the room. Richard was dazzled.
‘My lady... what is happening?’
Despite the increasing brightness, Lady Peinforte’s eyes were even more visible. They now seemed to Richard to have become the only recognizable points in a blinding universe. Around them the colours of the room were spinning and mixing. Richard felt himself hurtling down an endless dark tunnel filled with voices, all passing much too fast to make sense... and yet she was still there beside him, staring through him, crushing his meagre will with her own. Somewhere at the centre of the heavens through which they now seemed to be rushing at unimaginable speed, the arrow was shining with a brightness that Richard had never thought possible. Yet throughout, very dimly, he was aware of the door that led to the world outside, to the streets of Windsor where he had spent all his life, to everyone he knew. If he could only reach the door they would all be there as usual, waiting...
With more effort than he had ever made before at anything, Richard screamed: ‘Noooo...’ He broke free and stepped out of the circle, desperately reaching for the door.
Lady Peinforte howled at him above the thousands of voices rushing though his brain. ‘Come back, you fool, you will break the aura.’
Richard fell to his knees, panic-stricken. Now he knew how madmen felt, whom he with the rest had paid to watch and prod. Oh, never, never again. ‘I can’t,’ he pleaded.
‘Please, my lady. I must stay.’
‘It’s too late.’ Reaching out, she dragged him back into the pentacle. Richard whimpered with terror. Suddenly he was no longer separate from the insanity of sound and light around him but part of it. He no longer existed as a being separate from anything else. He was a fraction of everything; everything that ever had been, or was, or would be and all of it rushing madly forward to its oblivion.
Slowly, stillness returned; the blur of sight and sound was restored little by little to reality. Lady Peinforte looked around in approval. Richard, by contrast, was extremely nervous. A sudden passing roar outside shook him badly.
‘Where... where are we my lady?’ he whispered.
Lady Peinforte replied at her usual bold volume. ‘The very place we left, of course. My house in Windsor. Much improved too.
Richard looked doubtfully at the sign he was unable to read in the window, which advertised the premises as the Princess of Wales Burger Bar. ‘What’s happened to it?’ he asked.
‘History, Richard,’ said Lady Peinforte, briskly.
‘Progress. It is the year of our Lord nineteen eighty-eight.’
Further explanation was prevented as the room filled, once again, with dazzling silver light. The prospect of another journey through time filled Richard with immediate terror. ‘Gracious heaven, my lady. What’s that?’
Lady Peinforte was already at the window, an expression of dreamy wonder suffusing her hard features.
‘The mathematician was right,’ she answered distantly.
‘She is returning. Look!’
Outside, the streetlit gloom of Windsor High Street was bathed in silver luminescence.
Only a few hundred yards away, yet unseen by anyone, the TARDIS materialized. The windowless vaults in which it appeared were dimly lit at night, and at first Ace was uncertain that she was seeing a large number of glass cases containing treasures of many kinds. The Doctor had already rushed ahead: he examined each case quickly, then hurried on to the next.
‘Wow!’ said Ace. ‘Look at all this stuff.’
‘That’s exactly what we’ve got to do,’ replied the Doctor.
‘You start over there.’
Ace was mystified. ‘What’s it all for?’
‘They’re presents.’ The Doctor paused briefly in front of a Maori tribal head-dress and bustled on.
‘Nobody gets this many presents.’
The Doctor paused momentarily. ‘If you were a lady