The riders galloped through the heavy rain in silence, the hooves of their panic-stricken steeds splashing through the mud as the purple sky slowly gave way to the darkness. It wasn't just their mounts that were afraid, because the dark cycle had come three shifts early. Passing through the city gate, they carried their prisoner through the market square, where panicked citizens and doomsayers barely ducked aside. They had their own problems, preparing for what might be the end of the world.
Riding pillion to Sergeant Malthus, the Doctor looked at the scene with sad eyes. The darkness had come too soon for the market to properly close, and the fallen seemed uncertain of what to do. Some just looked to the sky while others milled uncertainly. Some stalls had been abandoned as their owners chose to return to their homes. Torrents of rain filled the square, a rare experience in a world where the clouds tended to lie on the ground rather than hang in the sky.
For a second time, the Doctor found himself at the steps of the Constabulary. He looked away from Malthus as the Sergeant helped him to the ground, and he flinched as they ushered him indoors.
"Well?"
Romana paced the room while the old woman sat, cross-legged, in quiet contemplation. Teyamat opened her eyes, and looked at Romana questioningly.
"What's this ordeal, then?" Romana asked.
"Just a test," Teyamat smiled. "Nothing to worry about."
"It's the Doctor I'm worried about, Teyamat. We have to get out of here."
"I agree," the old woman said, uncrossing her legs and standing up, "but there are more important things to worry about."
"Such as?"
The old crone crossed to the shuttered cloister window, opening it to reveal the darkness outside.
"The dark cycle has come early. Ever since your TARDIS released that charge it would seem that time, or at least our perception of it, has been accelerated."
Romana shook her head, moving to look outside. "It's the Doctor's TARDIS, actually. Although she seems quite independent of his control most of the time. As for the temporal velocity, it hasn't changed, so it must be the sun. It's artificial isn't it?"
"The Oculus? Yes, it is."
Romana noted that the window was roughly hewn into the slope of the mountain, and that what at first appeared to be stone seemed to have a more porous, organic quality. There were signs of vegetation and brush growing on the hillside. She strained her neck to see if she could see the sun, but it was at too steep an angle for her.
"So," Teyamat continued to explain, "when the TARDIS attacked us, it must have been damaged as well."
Romana disagreed. "I've never heard of a TARDIS damaging a sun before."
"Well, it's not really a sun. It's more of a converter. It absorbs excess heat from the planet's atmosphere and converts some of it into light."
"Ah," Romana was beginning to understand. "Like a refrigeration laser? So where does all the other heat go?"
"Forgive me, Romana," said Teyamat, shrugging. "I'm not a scientist."
"No, but I am. This whole planet is inside a natural sun, and it receives its light from an artificial one. Without venting off most of the heat this planet would be a cinder. It has to go somewhere."
Teyamat closed the shutter again. Awkwardly.
"What? What is it you're not telling me?"
Returning to her bed, Teyamat settled down again, looking up at Romana.
"How far did you go?" She asked. "How much of the Queen's life did you see?"
"Enough to know that she didn't deserve her reputation as a power-hungry despot."
"Reputation? So the Time Lords didn't erase her from history?"
"Far from it," said Romana, casting her mind back to her childhood. "Her name may have been lost to history, but the House of Dvora was known as the House of Mad Presidents thanks to the legends of the Silver Queen and Morbius. In the modern era she's remembered for seizing the Presidency and wasting resources building a Presidential TARDIS the size of a small moon. The Pythia herself was said to have risen from the grave to banish her and end the Time Wars she'd perpetuated."
"The Pythia, eh?" Teyamat smiled. "That's a spin I hadn't heard. No, she seized the Presidency under very different circumstances. It's a good job I smuggled this in with me."
Reaching into the folds of her robes again, Teyamat withdrew the Royal Crown they had used in Pengallia's tomb. She held it out to Romana.
"Do you still want to see out what happened?"
Romana took the crown, and turned it in her hands. It was dented slightly, but otherwise looked the same as it had before. Lifting it to her head, she closed her eyes and prepared herself for a new vision.
After a moment, her mind's eye opened, and images began to appear. But they weren't images of Pengallia. This time, it seemed, she was looking through a familiar pair of eyes. Her own.
It was mid-wainstide. Romana was walking down an empty corridor in the school wing of the House. Most of the other Cousins in her looming had either gone back to the dorm or were attending brain-buffing sessions.
Romana had never needed brain-buffing. Learning was her greatest joy in life. She had no more classes today, but there were the Middle History tests tomorrow, and she wanted to improve on her last score. So now she walked aimlessly through the corridors, playing back the day's lessons in her dreams.
"Hey, Romy," a cheerful voice exclaimed, "so here's where you've been hiding!"
"Aunt Baba! What are you doing here?"
Baba was a tall woman who showed few signs of her true age. Her long dark hair was only lightly peppered with flecks of grey, and she proudly boasted that her single heart was a strong as that of an ox, despite the rumours that she was in her final incarnation. Nobody knew for sure how old she was, since she, like Romana herself, had been adopted from one of the orphan houses many years ago. It was a common bond that had drawn them together the very first time they met.
Her features were strong and attractive, with full lips and high cheekbones. Her other physical attributes were equally impressive, which was why she tended to wear a heavy, shapeless red habit. Baba's most prominent feature, faded over time, was the imprint of a red pentacle on her forehead, which she dismissed as a leftover from her wild, misspent youth. Despite this, Romana always thought of Baba as being old and dusty. Aunt Baba had always been more like a mother to her, even more so than she was to her own surrogate, Cousin Mornitude.
"I came to collect Mornie, but she's being buffed. Domini Sertimis has been trying to teach her institutional dynamics today, and you know how much she hates politics."
"Where have you been, Baba?" Romana ran up to her and gave her a big hug. " I haven't seen you for ages."
"I'm the House Pendectarian now, Romy. I've been busy re-indexing the old library. Still, it looks like I have an hour to kill, so maybe I can use it to catch up with my favourite neice."
"I can't wait until I'm old enough to use the library," said Romana. "I much prefer books to lessons."
Baba laughed. "Who says you're not old enough! I'm the Keeper of the Keys to the Green Room, and I decide who can and cannot visit the House library!" She looked at Romana, and with a twinkle in her blue eyes, she said, "Do you want to take a look?"
The young girl's face lit up at the prospect, but quickly fell when she remembered that she needed to do some prep work. "Er… I have to study Middle History for tomorrow, Baba."
"And where better to study history than in a library?" Baba tousled Romana's hair affectionately, reaching deep into her pockets. "Here, let's take a short cut."
Baba withdrew a small silver sphere from her robes, which Romana recognised as the old lady's TARDIS. Stooping, she rolled the sphere gently along the corridor, where it slowly grew in size until its sides touched those of the corridor. Taking Romana's hand, Aunt Baba walked her towards the silver sphere as a circular door appeared, allowing them to step inside.
The shelves of the House library heaved with literature. It was dusty and crowded and seemed to promise the answers to all the questions of the universe. There were more books here, tightly packed into every nook and cranny, than Romana had seen in her entire life. Most of them were either very old and brittle, about to fall apart, or else they were yellowed by centuries of exposure to pipeweed-smoking scholars.
Aunt Baba had disappeared into an annex to conjure up some herbal tea, while Romana ran her fingers across the spines of the many old and weathered volumes resting in the section labelled 'Folklore'. On one shelf alone she found the abridged Maze of a Thousand Frames, The Book of Kaster, The Celaeano Transcripts, The Fables of Wayland, The House of Many Colours. On the next she found The Legend of Rassilon's Cat, The Legend of Zagreus, Mutter's Odyssey, Parlour Games for Time Tots, and several volumes of Prydonian Nights, which included an original version of her favourite bedtime story, the Technomage and the Tafelshrew.
She took down a volume at random, sniffing at the spine and taking in the strong smell of bookwax before she settled down at the reading table before peeking inside. She paused to admire the richly coloured illustrations, flipped to the index, and looked for a tale which might take her fancy. Then she settled down and started to read…
"Prydonian Nights, eh, Romy?" Romana looked up. Aunt Baba set down a steaming mug of hot herbal tea and a plate of lushberry muffins. "I thought you were looking for history books, not fairy tales."
Romana smiled. "Sorry, Baba."
Aunt Baba slid the book across to see what story little Romy had been reading. "The Silver Queen and the Court of K'thannid, eh? I should warn you that these are the original stories, filled with vengeful gods and unrelenting monsters, not the modern versions. They'll give you nightmares."
Romana blinked as the memory faded.
"It's not working," she said as she removed the crown. "I had a vision of my own childhood instead."
Teyamat frowned, taking back the object and examining it carefully.
"It must have been damaged by the energy surge."
"It doesn't matter," said Romana. "you can tell me about Pengallia and the Monks of Madronal while we escape."
Teyamat looked to the door of her cloister, beyond which two armoured Madronites were posted, enforcing their 'house arrest'. "How do you propose we do that, Romana?" She asked.
Moving to the window, Romana pulled back the shutter. It was pitch black outside, but earlier she had seen that the mountain sloped gently away from the open hole.
"Are there plenty of these windows cut into the rock?" She asked.
"Of course," said Teyamat, grinning.
"Then we need your bedsheets and a couple of torches. We'll be able to rescue the Doctor in no time at all."
Sheriff Aldus sat across from the Doctor, who maintained his silence, trying hard to focus on the jumble of items emptied from his pockets and scattered across the table at which they sat. Set beside them, untouched and unacknowledged, was a steaming bowl of hot vegetables which completely failed to make the stranger feel at home.
"Well, Doctor, we weren't expecting to see you again under these circumstances. First you're reporting an attack on the k'thellid, and then you're killing them."
The Time Lord stared into empty space, unresponsive to the Sheriff's words.
"Doctor?"
Aldus leaned forwards, snapping his fingers in the stranger's face.
"What?" The Doctor's eyes refocused, and he jerked away from Aldus' hand, "Keep away from me. Don't touch me."
Aldus backed away, while behind him Sergeant Malthus simply shrugged.
The Doctor reached out for one of the items on the table. It was a tooth. Picking it up and examining it, he absently reached for a second item. The metal toothpick he had used as Toulouse's torso.
"Premolar, no sign of infection," he said, inspecting his prize. He began scraping at it with the toothpick.
Aldus sighed. The Doctor was a mystery, to be sure, but the evidence spoke for itself. His dark mood was a complete contrast to his previous manic enthusiasm. Whatever he had done to the menks, it had been traumatic. The calcified remains of Nard and the m'n'ch'ks had been at the epicentre of some kind of energy burst. An energy burst that didn't appear to have come from a concealed weapon.
"All Hyde and no Jekyll," muttered the Doctor incoherently, setting down the tooth and reaching for another object. "No, no. That's not right."
"What do you think, Malthus? Perhaps this Doctor is the reason the k'thellid have been disappearing."
"Midas!" The Doctor used his toothpick to scrape some carbon from the tip of a spent match. "Definitely Midas."
Aldus glanced across the room to Malthus, who simply Sergeant shrugged again. "The Abbot will be happy we've caught him," he said.
The Sheriff pressed on. "Why did you do it, Doctor?"
"I had no choice," the prisoner replied, raising his head and looking at Aldus. More accurately, he looked to the left of Aldus, as if he were trying to avoid eye contact. "I was programmed to kill them. It's in my blood."
Programmed? Aldus wondered who might program someone to do such a thing. It just didn't make sense.
"Look, Doctor, it's against the law to kill k'thellid. It's especially against the law to get caught killing k'thellid."
"I'm not supposed to be the boogeyman, you know."
"I'm sure you're not," the Sheriff reassured him, not entirely sure what a boogeyman was. "I'm going to have to lock you up until the elders decide what to do with you. And I doubt they'd be very lenient."
"Good," muttered the Doctor, whose only interest seemed to be the objects they had taken from his pockets. He replaced the match with another item, his yo-yo, wrapped in a tangle of knotted string.
"What about Nard," asked Malthus, stepping closer. "Did the k'thellid do something to him first? Were you protecting him from an unprovoked attack?"
"No," said the Doctor, shaking his head. Freeing up the yo-yo string, he began to wind the thread back into place. "He just got in the way."
"Look, Doctor," said Aldus through gritted teeth, his patience had been tested to the limit. "I'm going to level with you here. I think there is a way you can get out of this."
"Oh?" The Doctor didn't sound too bothered, instead testing his yo-yo.
Watching the Doctor 'walking the dog', the Sheriff decided that, short of violence, he was going to get nowhere. He decided to try tell the Doctor the truth.
"It's like this, Doctor. We're dying."
The Doctor caught the yo-yo, his hand closing around it as he looked up, his eyebrows raised. It was the first sign of curiosity that he had really expressed since his capture.
"Dying?"
Aldus nodded. "The number of newborne coming down the mountain is dwindling, and the number of k'thellid out there," he nodded in the general direction of the nearby shanty town, "is growing."
"Ah." The Doctor returned his attention to the yo-yo, which he lifted up near his face. Producing the toothpick again, he used it to loosen some dirt, which he blew away. "So there's no bouncing back for either of us."
"Bouncing back? We're not like your toy. We call ourselves the fallen for a reason, Doctor. When we first came to Rendulix, we came to fight a war. They were our enemies, but when we ended up sharing this…prison… a peace was brokered. A peace it's my duty to enforce. That's why you're here, in my protective custody."
"Protective custody? I'm supposed to be a prisoner, not a valued guest."
"As I said, we're all prisoners here. But you're no more guilty of murder than I am. The k'thellid are alien. Worse than that, they're still our enemy. We came here to wage war on them, and now we're meant to be living in peace with them."
"And what's wrong with that?"
"The law is one-sided, for a start. I am charged only with administering the law for the fallen, while the k'thellid have no legal system at all."
"So?"
"So it means I have to punish people for killing k'thellid, while the k'thellid won't be punished for killing one of us!"
"So how many of you have they killed?"
"None. But that's hardly the point."
"So what is the point?"
"There's a resistance. The Honour Guard. Their mission is to protect us from the k'thellid; to keep them from our shores."
"You applaud that?"
"It's my job as Sheriff to prevent it. However, he paused, I'm also…"
"The High Commander of the Honour Guard? Yes, I know."
"Ah." Aldus was thrown by the fact that the Doctor had guessed the truth. They'd been so careful. "So, you've worked it out. Well, it's an open secret. Once you take the Guard, their families and close friends into consideration, they account for a quarter of the population. And most of the rest are sympathetic to our cause."
"Suicide is hardly a cause," said the Doctor, sullenly. Returning his attention to the object on the table, he selected the small battery-powered electric latte-whisk. Switching it on, he pointed it towards his nose. He stared directly into the mini-whisk as it closed in on his face. Leaning forwards, Malthus snatched it away. Snapping it off, he returned it to the table.
"Look, Doctor," said Aldus, "I'm not your enemy."
Sweeping up his novelty pen-light-cum-laser pointer, the Doctor shone it into his eye, flinching even as Malthus again disarmed him.
"Doctor!" Aldus big fist crashed into the table, scattering the Doctor's bric-a-brac and spilling vegetables across the table. "I can only tolerate so much of your eccentricity. You've killed three of the k'thellid, and possibly Nard. I'm supposed to punish you, but I happen to believe you were sent here for a purpose."
"What purpose?" The Doctor asked, lucidity returning to his features.
"To support out crusade against the menks."
"Crusade? I've seen crusades, Sheriff. What you're proposing is more like the charge of the Light Brigade. Pointless bravado in the face of overwhelming odds. Being told to fight a war is one thing, but this is about fear and loathing. Why do you hate them so?"
"It wasn't because of the war. We won that. Or so we thought. But they won the peace.
Imagine winning a war and then finding yourself marooned on your enemy's homeworld. They were beaten, but they still outnumbered us a thousand, a million, to one. We've been forced into this peace against our will, ordered to respect their ways while they have no respect for ours. For two million years we've lived side by side, watching the fallen get weaker, and the menks get stronger. If we don't use violence to kill them, they'll use peace to annihilate us. We don't have any choice."
"No choice," the Doctor echoed, picking up the well-squeezed tube of gouache, squeezing out the shape of a frowning face onto the table. "Just like me."
"Of course you have a choice, Doctor. Join me and the Honour Guard. Help us to finish finish this and we can help you to adjust. Help me to save my people."
"You're mad," said the Doctor, stabbing the gouache tube repeatedly with the toothpick, as if testing it for sharpness. After cleanly skewering his target three times into succession, he broke out into a wide grin, "stark, staring bonkers. But I do have to thank you for reminding me of my choices."
Before Sheriff Aldus could stop him, the laughing Doctor began plunging the metal spike repeatedly into his own eyes.