Menagerie - Martin Day [53]
He thumped the bunk in frustration, trying to block out the nightmarish reflections. He had to admit it: despite all his adventures with the Doctor, even in this society he was well out of his depth. Whatever had happened to him previous to waking up in the young knight's office — and his memories were no more clear than a watercolour landscape awash with rain — had left him feeling helpless and unsure. Even now he could feel things moving in his mind. It was as if his memories were items of furniture and a huge hand was dragging them experimentally across floorboards and into new positions.
His head began to pound. He pressed his fingers into his temples, groaning.
The banging got worse, followed by a crash that made him wince.
He pushed himself into a sitting position and saw that the door to his cell had been pushed open. The young woman, Kaquaan, stood framed in its light, jangling a large bunch of keys.
'Come on!' she said, handing Jamie a huge sword. 'The jailor will not sleep for ever.'
'My brave wee lassie!' exclaimed Jamie, jumping to his feet and immediately feeling much better. 'I'm forever in your debt.'
'It was easy,' said the girl. 'In most cases the knights haven't been with a woman for years. I don't care how much you pray to the Higher, there are certain . . . services . . . that I can offer that no man can resist.'
Jamie wiped a sudden trickle of sweat from his brow.
'When I was a bairn I was warned about people like you.'
The girl smiled. 'Put your boots on, and let's go.'
'Aye,' whispered Jamie to himself. 'She's a pawky one, and no mistake.'
The Doctor had been in more difficult situations, but for the moment he was hard pushed to think of one. His eyes had become fully accustomed to the dark, and the faint natural luminescence of the cave walls indicated the graphic nature of his predicament. He and the other knights, still comatose from the moth-men's poison, were suspended and entrapped in huge woven cocoons, hung from the ceiling on strands of silk as strong as steel cable. Only the Doctor's head was free, allowing him to breath.
The small cave, therefore, was nothing more than a larder, a grotesque pantry of living things. At least, that's what he hoped the cave was. The only other thing he could imagine — that they were all being stored prior to implantation of eggs — was even more grotesque. It was little wonder that he had always found entomology so faintly disquieting.
The Doctor had noted that one of the knights was missing. How had he managed to escape from such powerful creatures? Perhaps he had been allowed to escape, in which case the moths were simply following orders so as to spread terror. But whose orders? The Doctor gloomily concluded that the one knight at liberty would not be able to save the others from the moth-men. He probably wouldn't even know where his fellow knights and the Doctor had been taken.
The Doctor was aware of a slight scuffling sound behind him. He began to rock gently backwards and forwards against the cocoon, inclining his head slightly. A few moments later he had turned sufficiently to allow him a view of the source of the noise. He could just make out a small pair of legs and a slim body, eyes that twinkled in the dark and a long, twitching nose like that of a shrew. Hands on hips and upside down from the Doctor's point of view, the creature stared at him through the darkness.
It scratched its head and sighed. 'I suppose I'd better get you down from there,' it said.
'To conclude, let me draw together the strands of our learning thus far.
'Firstly, the holy artefacts have meanings and functions beyond that which the Higher has so far revealed to us.
Secondly, the clear implication is that the Kuabris are not uniquely used by him. We are joined in our struggle for truth by countless unseen brothers. Perhaps when we die we will see them face to face for the first time. Thirdly, one of the robes has been taken, and one must in the first instance suspect human rather than Higher intervention.
'In this annotated catalogue of our treasures I