Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [78]
It was as if the land heard him. The room heaved, sending men, furniture, possessions flying. The Doctor and Harry threw themselves on the bed, preventing Godric from rolling off. The farmer nearest the window yelled in shock, calling out that it was an earthquake, that the roof was going to fall in.
„It‟s started,‟ said the Doctor to Harry. „Hester has begun to cast her spell.‟
„What can we do?‟ asked Harry, as the Doctor‟s glass vial rolled off the table and he was splattered with brown goo. All their plans had gone horribly wrong.
The Doctor was staring at the Grail. „We need this,‟ he said.
„But we need it now. We can‟t wait for Godric. And you‟re hurt -‟ He ignored Harry‟s protests. „I‟ll have to take it myself.‟
He reached out a hand for the Grail.
The farmer who had touched the Grail before had jumped as if it had bitten him. He was probably not a bad man, Harry thought, not a really bad man anyway, just a man who through prejudice and fear had shouted insults at a foreign girl, and tried to kill a werewolf. Not pure enough in thought or deed to touch this cup, be it holy relic or no.
So what must the Doctor have done? What thoughts had the Doctor thought and what deeds had he done for the Grail to treat him so? Harry, who had thought the Doctor a good man, a man as noble as his own Doctor, could not even begin to comprehend what there must be in the Doctor‟s past to account for this.
As the Doctor touched the Grail, there was a flash of what Harry had to call light because he didn‟t know any other words for it, but this „light‟ was pitch black, much darker than the moonlit night outside. The Doctor‟s eyes filled with pain and his mouth opened wide, but no sound emerged. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The Doctor‟s back bowed and his arms flew out, and suddenly he was lying on the floor. His eyes were still wide open, but he didn‟t move.
Harry thought he was dead. Finally he managed to detect breathing, so faint it was barely there. There was no injury that he could see, but there was no doubt that however much the staring eyes indicated otherwise, the Doctor was no longer conscious. „Coma,‟ muttered Harry. Who knew if he would ever regain consciousness again? Harry could not wait for his advice.
The floor shook again, and Harry thought of the end of the world. He looked around the room. The locals who had helped to bring Godric were already running, down the stairs, out of the front door, scared of what was going on around, scared of what had happened to the Doctor. And even if any one of them, part of a murderous mob as they had been, could touch the Grail, how could Harry ask them to take on that burden?
Harry tried to be a good man. He had become a doctor to help people, to save lives. He only hoped that would be enough. Even knowing he had touched the Grail before - but then, he hadn‟t known what he knew now, hadn‟t seen what he‟d now seen - it was with much trepidation that he held out a hand to the simple blue cup.
A tingle up his arm, nothing more.
He looked again around the room, at the pale form of Godric on the bed, at the once trustworthy Doctor on the floor. He spared a thought for his Doctor, and for Sarah, and hoped that he would see them again some day. Or if, as seemed increasingly likely, he never saw them again, he hoped they would remember him with fondness.
Now he, Harry Sullivan, would have to take the Grail and face the sorceress alone.
Chapter Fourteen
A Bargain of Necessity
Harry hurried through the church yard, to the edge of the wood. And stopped. There were the trees and bushes wound together just as densely as before. How had the Doctor intended to get through this? He must have had a plan.
Harry knew he‟d had a plan. But what it was, he just could not remember. They‟d driven all the way round the village this afternoon, hadn‟t they, and not found a single spot where the foliage was anything