Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [71]
The girl’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I…’
‘Do not think of yourself, wretched creature,’ warned Yong. ‘Do you not realize how depraved you are?’
The girl looked down at her bruised body in its ragged clothes. ‘No,’ she mumbled.
Yong’s face hardened. ‘Then you shall, child. You shall.’
Without warning, he punched her in the face, sending her screaming back into the crowd of prisoners. Yong looked up to the roof, his face filled with insane fervour. ‘All! All shall know the wrath of our Patron!’
He nodded towards a Chapterman who vanished behind a curtain into a recessed alcove. There was a queer, oily, grinding sound and almost at once the two great circular panels in the floor and ceiling began to glide open.
Yong stepped back until he was once again before his throne. ‘All shall know the sweet and glorious pain of Saint Anthony’s Fire!’
The room exploded with crimson light. A vast shimmering column of flame stretched between the two panels like a fork of blood‐red lightning trapped forever between heavens and earth.
As the woman shielded her face in awe and terror, she could make out a roaring, boiling energy twisting in spirals within the column.
The assembled fell back in abject terror. Only Yong stood straight and still, his face glowing in the incredible fiery display.
‘Do not despair!’ he cried. ‘For your hour of glory is at hand. This day, your dies profesti, you shall join Saint Anthony in eternity!’
The prisoners began to scramble around in absolute panic. Immediately, the Chaptermen herded them towards the column of fire with their spears.
‘Rejoice!’ yelled Yong. ‘Rejoice and be purged!’
The Chaptermen closed in on the prisoners and slowly, inexorably, pushed them towards the roaring shaft of fountaining light.
The small girl whom Yong had struck made a bolt for freedom but Chapterman Jones casually ran her through with his spear. For a moment, she stood stock‐still, her mouth gaping in silent agony. Then Jones hoisted her up and tossed her into the fire.
The woman turned from the window, closed her eyes and sobbed.
The child was hurled around inside the column as though in a whirlwind. Her anguished face stared out at her horrified friends for an agonizing minute, then her features began to trickle outwards as though liquefying. In an instant she was gone and only her screams remained, reverberating through the fevered atmosphere of the cathedral.
At once, the Chaptermen began to herd the rest of the prisoners into the flames.
The woman opened her eyes and stood up, cracking her head off the low ceiling. This could not be allowed. It had to be stopped. The Chapter of Saint Anthony had lied to her. Everything she had been taught had been a terrible, vile lie.
Barging out of the little room, she pelted down the corridor. She knew her way around this section of the seminary, even at night. Finding the far door at the opposite end of the cathedral, she hauled it open and ran inside.
‘Stop!’ she screamed. ‘You must stop this slaughter!’
There was an awed silence as she ran up the aisle. The Chaptermen did indeed stop and the column roared in the silence as they gawped at the new arrival’s audacity.
‘You must stop this!’ spat the woman in a hoarse, desperate whisper.
Yong’s mouth hung open in amazement. Before he could say anything, the double doors opened and, of all people, the Doctor tumbled inside. He sprawled at the woman’s feet. Behind him stood De Hooch, a knife clutched in his sweaty little hands.
‘An intruder, Magna. He was brought in with the last of the rock samples. I found him wandering in the lower levels.’
Yong turned surprised and oddly delighted eyes to the Chapterman in the alcove and flapped his arm. The column of fire abruptly cut off.
The Doctor raised exhausted eyes to the woman who stood above him. The shaven head was a bizarre touch, to be sure, and there was a disquieting fever behind her wide eyes but she was still unmistakable.
‘Ace!’
The woman’s mouth began to tremble and she stumbled to her knees. The dam‐burst she had been seeking