Downtime - Marc Platt [20]
She nodded sullenly. ‘I understand.’
He rose and started to grope for the door.
‘Shall I fetch you your staff?’ she asked.
‘No! Not that!’ he snapped. For a moment he glowered and then his courtesy returned. ‘You are kind. When we have moments of lucidity, we must seek to find our own way...
without guidance.’ He bowed his head in her direction. ‘Sleep soundly,’ he said and disappeared into the darkness outside.
She lay in the dark still fully dressed, unable to sleep, expecting at any moment to rise weightless out of her body and begin her nightly journey.
Somewhere the monks were chanting a mantra, a deep pulsing chant that seemed to well up from subterranean depths like shadows echoing endlessly in the black throat of the night.
The Abbot Thonmi was nurturing forbidden secrets. The sad old man had admitted as much. But what did he mean by his ‘moments of lucidity’? Or, by implication, his moments of darkness too? As a blind man he must know all about that.
Det-sen seemed to be in the grip of some new terror. She was determined to help rid the monastery of its curse. Surely that was what the Doctor would have done.
‘ Victoria! Where are you? ’
The voice again. It filled her with relief and fear. Yet this time it was distant, not close by her ear and she was still wide awake.
‘ Are you listening, Victoria? I know you can hear me. ’
It was real. It was calling from somewhere in the very depths of the monastery. So much for the abbot’s sermon. She slid off the bed and opened the door slowly. The chanting had stopped. The hall was deserted.
She moved silently out and darted through the shadows.
The flagstones were cold on her bare feet. In the courtyard, a huge statue of Buddha lay where it had been thrown down by the rampaging Yeti robots over half a century ago. Another smaller Buddha had been set up in the place where it had stood. The past was accepted here and could not be changed.
‘ Why do you neglect me when you are so near? ’
His voice was raging on and it occurred to Victoria, not for the first time, that he must be much changed from the kind and gentle father she had known and loved so much as a child.
She moved along the torchlit corridors, past the halls and kitchens, trying to remember the way, constantly frustrated by the walls and doors that she could pass directly through in her dreamstate.
Finally, at the end of a passage, she saw the great doors that she knew led to the Inner Sanctum. These were barred by a heavy bolt of wood the size of a plank and she could not simply push through.
‘ Well? How much longer must I wait? ’
‘Where are you?’ she called aloud.
‘ Here. Alone in the darkness. ’
The voice came from beyond the doors. She set her hands to the wooden bolt and started to push it laboriously away. Her hands were soon full of splinters, but slowly the barrier was yielding. With a final effort, she yanked the bolt free and started to push the doors inwards.
Inside, the chamber was exactly as she had seen it, with an overturned chair, a torn veil and moonlight that cut in through the broken ceiling like a blade.
She leant against the door in despair. ‘Now what do I do?’
she complained aloud.
‘ I am here in the darkness. Find me! ’
‘Where?’ She walked slowly into the Sanctum.
‘ Here! ’
A gentle voice at her shoulder startled her.
‘Turn back now, Victoria.’
The Abbot Thonmi had been waiting in the shadows inside the door. His crested hat caught the moonlight like the beak of a huge bird of prey. He carried an ornately carved ceremonial staff. Either there was another way into the Sanctum, or the monks had locked him in for his vigil.
‘ Victoria... ’ echoed the voice.
‘I have to find out,’ she protested. ‘My father died far away. On another world.’
The old lama’s head turned towards her voice. He edged slowly towards her using the staff as a guide.
‘There are many