Eight
The sun blinked, and its orange light began to mellow, shifting into the red end of the spectrum like a bloodshot, wounded eye. Shadows shifted across the island as the ground cooled and the still air began to shift. The background noise from insects and other creatures rose as the sky turned slowly pink and the ground-hugging mists began to rise, joining thin, high clouds that cast dark shadows over the landscape, as if some spectral hand was reaching across the sky.
As the light shifted, a warm red glow filled Pengallia's tomb, and Teyamat started. The phase of the sun had shifted far too quickly, as if time itself were accelerated. Across the room, a new light source appeared, cutting into the blood orange glow like a lighthouse beacon through thick fog. It was Romana's TARDIS. The strange lamp fitted to the top of the blue box had come to life, and the inner glow of the ship's power was clearly visible through its frosted windows, and the air around it was becoming charged. The old crone could smell the ozone.
"Romana?" Teyamat extended her mind. The Time Lord remained stationary, her eyes closed as the memories of her past life continued to form inside her hippocampus. Through the briefest of contact she was reassured that Pengallia's first experiences as a Time Lord Cardinal were imprinting themselves into Romana's long term memory.
Turning her attention towards the TARDIS, Teyamat reached out to shut down its systems. As her mind made contact, she was unprepared for the wave of psychic feedback it triggered.
Teyamat collapsed into unconsciousness.
Moments later, the charge building around the TARDIS began to crackle with dark, malevolent energy. Flickers of black lightning danced around the room, each bolt more powerful than the last, their points of impact leaving small smoking holes in the floor and the walls.
Across the chamber, Romana's visions stuttered and stalled. Consciousness returned, and she looked about her. She saw the darkening red shaft of light flooding the room; the heavy door still being subjected to the pounding of Gesar's fists; the shining sarcophagus at the centre of the tomb; Teyamat's prone form beside the altar; and the flashing lights and bolts of energy coming from the TARDIS.
In that instant of realization, Romana felt a wave of energy wash over her as the TARDIS seemed to explode in a ball of black light. She was unconscious before she could feel herself flung across the chamber and smashed into the wall, and before she could see that the ball of energy was a great bolt of black lightning which lanced upwards through the point of least resistance. Like a javelin the black lightning traveled along the light-shaft, heading straight towards the heart of K'thellid's artificial sun.
High above Mount Madronal, twin arcs of black lightning streaked across the sky. The first came from within the Oculus itself, shooting downwards like a javelin to a point somewhere deep within the forest below. The second flashed upwards from somewhere deep within the mountain, striking at the very heart of the Oculus, the precise point from which the first bolt had been projected. The twin arcs hung in the sky, forming an unholy triangle between sun, mountain, and forest.
As Gesar continued to hammer on the door to Pengallia's tomb, the scattered light of the Oculus flickered and dimmed. Already filled with dread at the shift from orange to red, the abbot was certain that the reason lay in the chamber beyond. Romana had somehow betrayed them.
They are both unconscious, thought G'thon beside him, releasing a phosphorescent aura of his own to replace the fading light until the torches set into the corridor walls could be ignited.
"Do you know what happened? What's happening?"
No. But I sensed no malice in the Lady Romana in the moments before she passed out. There was an explosion of some kind.
Gesar paled. "An explosion? I heard nothing. What about the K'thellid?"
G'thon extended his mind to touch those of his kin at the foot of the mountain, and to those who served the Protector in the undercity's council-chambers, desperate to understand what was going on.
Gesar, meanwhile, renewed his efforts to open the door with his shoulder.
Thundercracks echoed across K'thellid as the fingers of black lightning continued to flicker downwards, cutting through the clouds and boring into the ground.
The darkening Oculus, looking more and more like a closing eye than a burning sun, turned opaque. Beneath it the clouds turned grey, then black. In just a few seconds, the world was plunged into darkness. Almost instantly, the sound of the insects ceased, and in the city of the fallen only the rattle of thunder and the gentle sound of the first raindrops in living memory, could be heard.
On his knees, the Doctor screamed in agony, his eyes burning with a dark and uncontrollable fire as dark clouds formed far overhead. Like G'thon, the mounted K'thellid adjusted the pallor of their skin to accommodate the encroaching darkness, emitting an eerie glow which scattered through the trees.
Still some distance away from the Doctor, Nard's view of the kneeling Doctor was enhanced by the flickering beams of phosphorescent light which surrounded him. But no amount of light could dim the black fire burning in the stranger's eyes. Somewhere up ahead, behind the Doctor, Nard could also see the black lightning that fell from the sky, burning into the ground over by the old marker stone he had stumbled across when he first came down from the mountain. There was no doubt in Nard's mind that the lighting and the fire in the Doctor's eyes were one and the same.
The marker stone was, in fact, the lightning's target. Its vevers began to glow a brilliant red as the dark energy enveloping it was absorbed into the rock. As their brilliance increased in the real world, so too did the vevers burn more brightly inside the Doctor's head. He knelt before the array, and felt the power bursting outwards from inside his mind. As the power levels rose the voices of the k'thellid, desperate for peaceful contact, faded from his consciousness.
It's alright Doctor, we mean you no harm.
The explosion of black light from the Doctor's eyes forced Nard to look away, the white silhouette of three menks burned into his memory the instant before he closed his eyes. That instant had been their moment of death as their bodies turned to ash.
It's alright Doctor, we mean you no harm.
The voice of the three k'thellid that G'thon had contacted was instantly replaced by a wall of psychic energy which overwhelmed him. Synaptic responses triggered and muscles started to tense and relax, but G'thon's head exploded in a cloud of phosphorescent light before his reflexes could kick in. The corridor was sprayed with a fine sparkling dust and a heavier, inky mist. Similarly, beneath his habit, the k'thellid's body erupted, throwing out a cloud of dark dust as his robes collapsed to the floor.
It's alright Doctor, we mean you no harm.
The voice of the k'thellid, relayed into the Doctor's mind through K9's own exitonic circuits, was followed by a psychotronic blast which, according to the robot's visual sensors, was capable of delivering deadly force into the minds of his hosts. Even as the k'thellid counsellor who had been communicating the Protector's thoughts was consumed by the destructive power of the dark energy, K9 fused his exitonic circuit board, breaking his link with the Doctor.
As the fine dust created by the exploding counsellor settled, the silence which had settled upon the chamber was replaced by unholy screams of fear and the wholesale quivering of terrified tentacles.
Carnifex!
The thoughts of Protector K'thellid, itself recoiling with shock and fear, echoed throughout the undercity: the Time Lords have returned; the day of judgement has arrived.
"G'thon!"
Gesar's efforts to enter the shrine were cut short by the sudden and unexpected demise of the abbot's most trusted associate. As the last motes of phosphorescent ash settled to the floor, the corridor became pitch black. With his worst fears coming to pass, Gesar crouched down beside his fallen friend, feeling for the empty robe which lay on the ground. Finding it, he raised it to his face, and wept.
Beyond the mountain, the Oculus was squinting. Its pale violet light glowed behind grey clouds, and a black storm raged overhead.
The pain inside the Doctor's head was fading, and his struggle to resist the power of the vevers was easing. There were no more voices, and no more energies were being unleashed. Instead he could feel the reservoirs of his time brain filling up with latent power.
Slowly, his vision cleared, and the Doctor found himself staring at the carnage he had wrought. He was surrounded by a circle of charred ground, within which he could clearly see three calcified mounds, each of which formed the vague shape of a m'n'ch'k and its riders.
Eyes wide, the Doctor raised his hands to his face.
Nard stepped forwards through the purple twilight, moving to the Doctor's side.
"Doctor?"
The Doctor's eyes were staring vacantly into the distance, unaware of the young man's presence. The Demosian waved his hands across the stranger's face.
"Doctor? What happened?"
The kneeling Time Lord blinked twice, then turned to look up at Nard.
"Oh," he said neutrally. "It's you."
"Doctor…you killed them. You killed them all. What did you do?"
"As you say", the Doctor said, "I killed them."
"But…how?"
The Doctor hung his head, withdrawing into a moment of grief. A few seconds later, he turned, wild-eyed, and stared straight into the boy's soul.
"I'm a killing machine, Nard. A carnifex." He spat the word out.
"What's a carnifex?"
"A living weapon. My mind has just become a living battery, and it's fully charged."
Nard carefully backed away from the Doctor, whose haunted expression pleaded for compassion and understanding. Despite his hatred of the menks, Nard wasn't sure that he would be able to give either.
"It's alright," said the Doctor, "you're quite safe. The programming's very specific."
"Specific?"
"Yes," the Doctor explained, gesturing towards the forest. "There's a marker stone back there, and it was left here by the Time Lords. It programmed me to destroy every k'thellid my mind comes into contact with."
"Just k'thellid?" Nard's relief was visible, and he moved back towards the Doctor, offering his hand to help the stranger pull himself to his feet.
As their hands touched, the Doctor recoiled.
"Doctor?"
"No," the Time Lord staggered backwards, "not again". His eyes flared up with dark light once more.
A moment later Nard's calcified ashes lay at the Doctor's feet.
Romana's vision cleared as her return to consciousness revealed the abbot and Teyamat learning over her. She was propped against the chamber wall, and could feel a nasty egg-shaped lump on the back of her head.
"What happened?"
On closer inspection, Romana could see the abbot's face was tear-streaked, and that Teyamat looked even older and more weathered than before, if such a thing were possible. The chamber was darker than she remembered, filled with a dull violet glow, and flaming torches was been set into niches around the room.
"That's what I'd like to know," said Gesar, "and I expect you to tell me everything."
"She knows nothing," insisted Teyamat. "Would a spy plan to be smashed into a wall like that?"
Gesar sneered. "That's rich coming from you," he said, turning on the old woman. "You betrayed my trust, Teyamat."
"Rubbish. My loyalty, like yours, is to Our Lady. It's your judgement that has become clouded over the years."
"My judgement? Let me remind you, old mother, that it was you who brought Romana and her carnifex companion here, and that it was that TARDIS which attacked the Oculus. This planet is kept in a finely tuned state of equilibrium, and their presence is the greatest threat it's ever faced. Brother G'thon lies dead, the sky is dark, and the temperature outside is starting to rise."
"Wait," said Romana, uncertain of what the abbot was suggesting. "The TARDIS attacked your sun? How is that possible?"
Gesar turned back to Romana, a puzzled expression on his face. "You continue to plead ignorance, even now?"
"You mentioned a word," Romana continued. "Carnifex. It's from an old Gallifreyan rhyme."
"The carnifex stands with black fire in his eyes; the smiter of monsters and render of lies. When you are sleeping, he stands at your side, and fends off your nightmares before you arise"
"Yes, very nice, I'm sure. But the carnifex is more than a fairy story. If you were unconscious when G'thon was killed, then I can only assume that your friend the Doctor has the power."
"The Doctor is a man of peace, Gesar. Even if he had such a power he wouldn't use it."
Gesar shook his head, pityingly. "Whatever your motives," he paused, "and I believe you have no knowledge of what is going on, you are a deception. An attempt to expose our existence so that the Doctor can track us down and destroy us."
At the foot of the vast k'thellid Protector, K9 attempted to attract its attention. The wails which echoed around the chamber had been joined by psychic ululations which the small robot was unable to decipher. The quivering of the great kraken's mountainous torso eased after a period of three point three seven minutes, and K9 took the opportunity to interject.
"The Doctor was not responsible for your loss," he began. In support of the claim, K9 projected a cone of red light into the air before him. It coalesced into a monochrome schematic which showed the tychomnemonic array in three dimensions.
What is this? The Protector asked, suspending grief as its great milky irises contracted to focus upon the image.
"It is a tychomnemonic array. A fixed psycholinguistic positioning and transmission system used designed to transfer navigational, geographical, socio-economic, cultural and anthropological data directly into the mind of any Time Lord who encounters it. The array achieves this through mimetic programming, rewriting the memories and biodata of the affected Time Lord. Arrays were prone to abuse during the Time Wars, after they were used to turn Gallifreyans into genocidal agents."
I had no knowledge of this array. It must have been placed on K'thellid when the Time Lords imprisoned us.
"Query," said K9, shutting off the hologram. "What are your intentions towards the Doctor?"
I am familiar with the technology you describe, and accept your case that the Doctor was not responsible for his actions. The Protector paused. However, he must be stopped. At all costs.
The Doctor stood in a daze. Unmoving, he wore a blank expression which failed to acknowledge the circle of destruction which surrounded him. Alone in a pocket universe with no TARDIS, with K9 lost, and with the deaths of both k'thellid and fallen on his hands, he was helpless and alone. There was, he realised, no monster to find here on K'thellid. None but himself. And with the power of the carnifex buried deep inside him, he realised that there was one other thing that was missing.
Options.
As he stood there, the Doctor was oblivious to the faint sound of hoofbeats that were getting closer by the second. He neither turned to face the horsemen as they arrived, nor react as they surrounded him with weapons drawn.
Sheriff Aldus surveyed the scene. Someone, or something, had killed three menks and a human, whom he presumed had been Nard.
Turning the ash beneath his feet, Aldus found a pendant he had once seen the boy wear, confirming his suspicions. Whatever did this had been standing at the very centre of the charred circle, where the Doctor stood.
"Doctor?" Aldus looked into the Time Lord's vacant face. "Did you do this?"
The Doctor's eyes, leaking a single tear, returned to focus.
"Yes," he said. "I killed them all." He offered his wrists to the Sheriff. "I think you need to lock me up, and throw away the key."
For the second time during her brief visit, Romana found herself being escorted under guard. Unlike her previous visit, however, she had company. On Gesar's instruction, both she and the old mother had been placed under house arrest, to be held securely in the latter's quarters until the abbot's return. Predictably, Teyamat had challenged his authority, but Gesar, his anger barely contained, was unmoved.
Romana noted a further variation to her previous arrest. On that occasion, the monks had been wearing simple robes and mirror-masks. This time, they were dressed in full armour, with gleaming silver breastplates layered over fine purple tunics Each carried a ceremonial stave and a shouldered staser rifle.
"I shouldn't worry yourself, my dear," said Teyamat. "The Madronites were always a martial order, but they haven't fired a gun in two million years."
Entering the same level as Pengallia's room, the escort guided the two women into a side passage, where they passed row upon row of simple cloisters, sparse and with little in the way of home comforts. At the end of the corridor, they came to Teyamat's quarters, where the prisoners were ushered inside.
It was a small, circular room, carved from the rock itself. Like Gesar's office, there was a well-shuttered window, but there the resemblance ended. Teyamat's bed was a simple mattress on the floor, and her only other furnishings were a table and a large ottoman which doubled as a bedside cabinet. The old crone settled onto the mattress, crossing her legs and grinning unnaturally up at her new cloister-mate.
"How can you live in this squalor?" Romana asked.
"It may be small and simple, Romana, but it's clean, and it serves my needs. I suggest you sit down and try to relax."
"Relax?" Romana paced around the room defiantly. "Gesar's suddenly taken up arms and decided to go carnifex hunting. You can hardly expect me to stand by and let the Doctor be killed."
"This Doctor means a lot to you?"
Romana paused. "I suppose."
She'd enjoyed her time with the Doctor, but her plan had always been to return to Gallifrey and to complete her development as a Time Lord. With that option temporarily unavailable… "He's all I have at the moment. Although that's largely his fault."
"So, have you been traveling together long?"
"No, just a couple of years. But it looks like we'll be stuck together for eternity."
"Why do you say that?"
"We double-crossed a… higher power."
"The Black Guardian, you mean?"
Romana started. "How do you know that?"
Teyamat smiled enigmatically. "It's written in the Book of Future Legends."
"It is?" To Romana, the Book of Future Legends was a myth. The book the ancient rulers of Gallifrey used to record their drug-kindled visions of future possibilities. A book that no longer existed.
"Everything is written somewhere," replied Teyamat, tapping a finger against her temple, "but not all books are printed on paper. This Doctor of yours is a renegade?"
"Of sorts," Romana answered.
The old crone's smile broadened, and her eyes twinkled. "Then you will be travelling together for a very long time."
"We will?" Romana found herself shocked at the prospect. "I'm finding him pretty insufferable at the moment, and I'm not sure I could cope with him much longer."
"So you are planning to leave him?"
"Well, I wasn't. But there's a clear job for me to do here, and it's not as if he needs me."
She considered the Doctor's predicament. He'd had human pets before, but he'd always managed to overcome the major obstacles in his life. And he'd spent most of their time together reminding Romana that she was little more than a fashion accessory.
"You need your Queen don't you? It's important that you rebuild your race and negotiate a new peace with the Time Lords."
"Perhaps," replied Teyamat. "But we've managed to survive for more than two million years."
"But now that survival is in danger. You said you were the one looking for me? Why would you do that if I wasn't needed."
"I didn't say you weren't needed. You are the last scion of Pengallia, and only through her return can we be free."
"So I should stay."
"You should do what feels right when the time comes."
"When the Doctor has been stopped, what other choice will she have, Teyamat?"
Gesar stood in the cloister doorway, adjusting the chin-strap to the plumed helmet which formed the last component of the silver battle armour he now wore.
"I've been considering your position, Lady Romana," he said. "Once I have dealt with the carnifex, we're going to challenge the Old Mother's theory. And if you truly are the last scion, then I'll personally oversee your development as a Time Lord."
"My…how can you do that? You're not even from Gallifrey."
Gesar smiled. "You've never heard of the Eightfold Path? They must be keeping new Time Lords in the dark these days. Now," he paused, smoothing out his purple cloak as he turned to leave the room, "I shouldn't be too long. And in the mean time," he turned his attention to Teyamat, "I suggest you prepare her mind for the ordeal."