Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [5]
'Unfortunately, the house was much altered during the last century and is of no historical interest.'
'Are we going to meet Ms Lavender?' said the Doctor.
'Regrettably, Miss Lavender is no longer with us. It is thanks to her generous bequest that this museum exists.' Thales pulled open the shutters flanking the fireplace, and long bars of light fell across the oriental carpet and on to the polished wood of the cases. The Doctor peered into one.
'An Enochian cipher ball!'
'One of only three in existence,' said Thales, 'and the only one not in England.' He watched with wary pride as the Doctor went from case to case with small exclamations of recognition and admiration:
'This is quite wonderful,' he said. 'Is there a catalogue of the collection?'
'Not yet,' Thales admitted. 'I keep making organisational notes toward one, but I've never actually sat down and pulled everything together.'
Rust, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, said,
'And this widget you wanted to buy from Chic would have made a nice addition?'
"That widget, as you call it, is a rare - very rare -summoning charm.'
'What does it summon?' said the Doctor. He was still making a tour of the cases, his eyes bright with interest.
Thales hesitated. He seemed nervous, but enthusiasm for his subject got the upper hand. 'Purportedly, it was designed to endow the summoner with power over an elemental, in this case a water spirit.'
'A naiad?'
'Nereid, naiad, undine.' Thales waved a hand. "The beings that are supposed to embody the secrets of the watery element of the universe.'
'And what's so rare about it? Surely there exist a great many charms meant to control elementals. Is this a Dürer?'
The Doctor sounded so impressed that Rust came and looked over his shoulder. He saw a finely detailed woodcut of a man in a medieval robe, crouched or crumpled on the ground, one hand thrust out in a gesture of either command or pleading. The man's face was not visible, but the artist's supple depiction of the twist of his shoulders and spine conveyed despair and terror. He was ordering away or warding off what at first glance looked like not much more than an enormous dark cloud, so skilfully rendered that it seemed to be seeping into the picture from out of the frame, like a fog.
The cloud was composed of hundreds of curls and hatchings, each as thin as a hair, and if examined closely, the shadowings seemed to form something like malevolent features.
'Nasty,' said Rust.
'Yes, isn't it?' the Doctor agreed. 'Superbly done, though.'
'As far as we know, it's not a Durer,' said Thales, 'though it's from the same period.'
'Yes, Dürer was a sane sort of fellow,' said the Doctor thoughtfully. 'There's something quite vivid about this, isn't there, as though it were drawn from experience rather than fancy? It doesn't change, does it? I read a story about something like that once.'
'Change?' said Thales bewilderedly. 'No.'
'Well, of course, the picture in the story was a mezzotint, not a woodcut,1
said the Doctor, as if that settled the matter. He looked up. 'You don't have a picture of this charm, do you? Something Chic might have sent you?'
The photograph was a three-by-five-inch black-and-white print of a small, cylindrical, ivory-coloured object, its surface incised with scratchy runes.
Rust stood by the window, examining it, the Doctor beside him. Thales had sat down in a spindly cane-backed chair, staring glumly at his well-polished, uncreased shoes. 'Bone?' Rust said to him. 'Supposedly human bone.'
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'That's what makes it unique?' "That and the fact that the would-be magician probably carved it from his own body'
Both Rust and the Doctor stared at him. Rust said, 'What?' "The most powerful