Doctor Who_ Castrovalva Part 11

'Well, sir?' Shardovan enquired, unmoved by the Doctor's obvious pain and embarra.s.sment.

'I know it, I know it...' The Doctor was beating his forehead with his fist, willing himself to remember. 'It's on the tip of my mind... The books are old... five hundred years old at the very least. But...' He reeled with the effort of concentration, and had to clutch at Shardovan for support.

He looked into Shardovan's eyes, as if seeking help there.

Shardovan leant him back against one of the pillars.

This stranger from the world outside had so closely penetrated the secret of Castrovalva. He knew-almost.

Shardovan had only to help him the last step of the way.

'The books are old,' the Librarian said quietly. 'They have been on my shelves, as you say, for half a millennium.

But they chronicle the rise of Castrovalva... up to the present day!'

Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud the Doctor's mind cleared. Shardovan saw the light in his eyes, and rejoiced in the understanding that pa.s.sed between them. For the first time in his life Shardovan now managed to convey to a fellow being this haunting perception of a dreadful hollowness at the heart of the world.

This was done in surprisingly few words as they walked back quickly through the maze of hedges. For his part the Doctor had time to tell him of his suspicion of the cause of it all, and to explain a little about the nature of Occlusions.

Shardovan's understanding of it was only shadowy. He shared with Mergrave and Ruther their blinkered view of the geography of Castrovalva-but unlike them he was at times aware of the blinkers, and aware, faintly, of a world beyond them.

They came to the garden of white flowers the procession had pa.s.sed through, and Shardovan paused, as if to smell their heavy scent on the air.

'Don't tell me you're lost too?' the Doctor asked.

Shardovan shook his head. 'No, as you've guessed, Doctor, we people of Castrovalva are too much part of this thing you call the Occlusion.'

'But you do see it? The spatial anomaly?'

'With my eyes, no. But in my philosophy...' He pointed to a small archway cut into the hedge. 'This way. I know a back way in.'

By this time the procession had arrived at the Portreeve's house. He greeted them in the big half-timbered room, and here the Cabinet was set down on the floor. At a sign from the Portreeve, the women and followers withdrew, leaving only Mergrave, Ruther and the two girls to share the Portreeve's sadness at the fate of his friend.

Mergrave was the first to break the silence. 'Portreeve, the visitor's strange illness has progressed beyond my powers to heal.'

'We have come for your help.' Ruther matched his friend's quiet, formal tone.

The Portreeve spread wide his hands in a gesture of humility. 'Please-not my help. This is a matter for the tapestry.' Automatically they raised their eyes to where the great drapery hung, dominating the end wall. It was showing a confused abstract pattern, but as they watched a picture slowly formed: half landscape, half map, a depiction of the dwellings of Castrovalva and the surrounding countryside. The Portreeve's voice continued, low and even. 'The Doctor has journeyed dangerously to honour us in Castrovalva. But look at the outcome.'

The Portreeve paused. After a moment Mergrave said, with a faint hint of impatience: 'Portreeve, should we not begin.'

'Everything is in hand,' said the wise old man soothingly. 'With this tapestry, and with patience, there is nothing one cannot achieve.' He moved slowly towards the Zero Cabinet and addressed it directly. 'Nothing, Doctor, in this world or any other. The tapestry has the power to build and hold in s.p.a.ce whole worlds of matter. But I have contented myself with one small simple town, lying in ambush for five hundred years, waiting for this moment...'

The note of steel that had crept into his voice made Tegan stare hard at the Portreeve. There was something about the glitter in those eyes that gazed with infinite possessiveness down at the Zero Cabinet. The ruddy amiable face of the old man seemed to dissolve as she watched, to be replaced by an all too familiar dark countenance. Tegan caught her breath in horror as the Portreeve straightened up.

'Waiting for this moment...' repeated the voice, swelling with triumph. 'The final meeting of the Doctor... and myself!'

Tegan's throat was too dry to utter a sound, but beside her she heard Nyssa gasp the name she dreaded: 'The Master!'

12.

The Web is Broken Streamers of ivy hung from the trellis over their heads, and grew so thickly in places that the greasy dark green leaves blotted out the sky. The Doctor found himself following Shardovan through sombre tunnels of foliage, until they came at last to a narrow alleyway that ran along the back of a high wall. At the end of it Shardovan held up a hand, but the command to stop was hardly necessary, for the wall now enfolded them on three sides, and there was nowhere to go except back.

Or so the Doctor thought at first. But following Shardovan's gaze led his eye towards a large circular window set high up in the wall. As he turned to look up at it, the giddiness returned, and the wall and its flounces of ivy seemed to tilt towards him, sending him reeling.

Shardovan caught him and steadied him. 'Sorry,' said the Doctor, in something like his normal voice. 'We're very close to whatever he's using to power all this. I presume this is the Portreeve's house?' Shardovan nodded. 'Then we'll have to hurry. Come on, you're a good tall chap.'

And he indicated that Shardovan help him climb up to the window. There was no time for argument about who was stronger and fitter. He was the Doctor, and the Master was his particular business.

Even Nyssa's acute mind found the idea hard to grasp. So Castrovalva was a trap, set by the Master. 'But there is a real Castrovalva-it's mentioned in the TARDIS data bank.'

The Master chuckled. 'The boy Adric entered it there at my command.'

'Adric!' Nyssa gasped, and Tegan ran forward. 'Where is he? What have you done with him?' 'The boy is nothing,'

said the Master, and began to advance toward the Zero Cabinet. 'I want the Doctor. One last long look before I destroy him utterly.'

For a moment the hideous note of triumph in his voice made Tegan forget that the Doctor was not actually inside the Cabinet that the Master was so feverishly trying to open. She was about to try to stop him, when Nyssa caught her arm, and with her eyes indicated the tapestry.

Tegan looked up. The view of Castrovalva was dissolving, and a huge circular shape was forming in its place. At first it was just a pattern of light and shade, and then the centre of the circle began to coalesce into a face...

a face whose features were becoming clearer second by second.

The Master was still struggling with the lid of the Cabinet, but he only had to lift his eyes to see the likeness of the Doctor emblazoned across the threads of the tapestry. It was clear now that the circular shape was a window, seen from inside, set low against the floor. The Doctor was pushing against the gla.s.s in an attempt to open it, and the tapestry was trying to warn the Master.

A sudden flash drew their eyes back to the Cabinet. The Master was standing over it with what they took to be a weapon, a dark square about the size of an exercise book that was sending down a cone of orange light onto its target. The Cabinet glowed, threw off a few smoking particles of surface dust, then sank back to its dull silver colour.

The Master appeared disappointed. He tried to open the lid again, kneeling to the job this time. 'He won't get anywhere,' whispered Nyssa. 'The interface is too strong.'

But Tegan was watching Mergrave and Ruther. They had not yet noticed the tapestry, but they appeared ill at ease and restless, and might turn to look at it any minute. She ran over to them.

'You've got to stop him. He's the Master.' The two Castrovalvans that turned to look at her were not the Mergrave and the Ruther she had known. Their eyes seemed quite empty of intelligence, as if they were in a trance. Behind them the tapestry showed the Doctor about to smash the circular window with his elbow.

At the sound of breaking gla.s.s the Master paused in his labour of destruction. By some miracle he failed to glance at the tapestry; the distraction from upstairs was no more than a minor irritation, and his whole mind was on the Zero Cabinet. He flicked his fingers at Ruther and Mergrave. 'What was that? Go on! Find out!' The two men moved like automaton towards the stairs that led up to the gallery.

Shardovan had found tenuous footholds in the ivy outside.

The Doctor reached down for the outstretched hand and pulled him in through the open jaws of the jagged-edged window. When Shardovan had clambered in over the litter of broken gla.s.s on the floor he turned to his companion.

'And now, Doctor?'

The Doctor raised his finger to his lips and stood stock still. His consciousness buzzed with the proximity of whatever evil thing served to source the Occlusion, but listening for danger was second nature to him, and through the mental static he heard the approaching footfalls in time to pull Shardovan back against the wall. A moment later Mergrave and Ruther arrived at the top of the stairs.

But there was nowhere to hide. The two Castrovalvans saw the broken window and turned their faces towards the shadows where the Doctor and Shardovan waited for the inevitable confrontation.

In the fleeting seconds before they found him there was time to make a few preliminary guesses about their changed behaviour. Clearly some compelling force outside themselves was controlling their movements and their minds. But the Doctor guessed-or rather hoped-that some autonomy of thought remained.

It seemed he was right, for when he deliberately stepped forward into the light the contradiction of his presence before them brought confusion to their faces. 'The Doctor!'

exclaimed Mergrave in a stifled voice. As a Castrovalvan it was not the fact of a man being at the same time up here on the gallery and down in the small Cabinet below that troubled him. But, as the Doctor had been bold enough to a.s.sume, there was some memory of the bond of friendship between them. Their hesitation did not last long, but it bought precious time to think.

'Wait!' Shardovan strode out from the shadows, seized his two fellow Castrovalvans by the arms, and whispered into their ears with a pa.s.sion that was quite unlike himself.

'You must not betray the Doctor!'

'Betrayal, you say,' returned Ruther in a hollow voice.

'No, Shardovan. It is he who has betrayed the Portreeve.'

Shardovan's grip on them tightened and he drew them conspiratorially close. 'My dear fellow creatures. It is we who are betrayed.'

From the chamber below an enfuriated banging sound arose, but the Doctor had no time to investigate this new development. He closed with Mergrave and Ruther, determined with powerful positive thoughts of his own to oust whatever hypnotic suggestion entraced them. 'Listen carefully. This man you know as the Portreeve is the most evil force in the universe. You've got to help me defeat him. Got to, do you understand?'

As if their heads were each worked by the same wire, Ruther and Mergrave turned their pale and puzzled faces towards him, making no attempt to shake themselves free from Shardovan's grip. Their silence, emphasised by the now thunderous hammering from the ground floor, seemed to suspend the pa.s.sage of time. But the Doctor knew that time was a commodity in very short supply.

'Well, say something, please,' he suggested, as politely as the urgency of the moment would permit. '"Yes", would be best.'

On the floor below the Master had abandoned technology and was belaying the Zero Cabinet with a huge poker seized from the oversized fireplace. Nyssa and Tegan had dared to step closer to him, hoping by their silent presence to stir him on to greater fury. Anything to buy the Doctor more time.

'Something is protecting the Doctor,' the Master shouted, without pausing in his a.s.sault upon the Cabinet.

'But I will not be deterred.'

'Don't you understand anything about Zero structures?'

Nyssa taunted. 'The internal interfaces are bonded by strong force interaction. The surfaces can only be separated from inside the Cabinet.'

The Master paused with the great poker held high above his head. The Doctor's face had become frozen in close-up across the expanse of the tapestry, yet still the Master failed to see it. Tegan prayed that his obsession with the Zero Cabinet would last a little longer. 'I have the Doctor in my power absolutely. But I will see his face for one last time before I destroy him forever!'

Mergrave and Ruther were returning down the stairs.

The Master brought the poker down again, then, sensing the two Castrovalvans crossing the chamber towards him, said: 'Well? Speak! I gave you tongues.'

Mergrave answered in a tone of great puzzlement, as though he hardly knew what he was saying. 'You are not the Portreeve.'

The Master lowered the poker. With a sudden movement his hand snaked out and he seized the physician by the throat, pulling him close and peering into his eyes.

'Someone has been tampering with your perception threshold.'

But then Ruther spoke. 'You are not the Portreeve.'

The Master wheeled round. 'You too, Ruther? Why?'

'I believe the visitor,' said Ruther with quiet conviction.

And he turned and pointed a firm straight finger towards the tapestry.

The Master froze where he stood, and the great poker slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the flagstones.

And he reached down and picked up the improvised chrysalis that had carried the Doctor all the way to Castrovalva, lifted it with a great inrushing gasp of breath and held it teeteringly high above his head. 'A trick! The Doctor's here, here in the Cabinet!'

From somewhere up in the half-timbered roof came a voice that Tegan and Nyssa recognised instantly. 'Are you sure of that Master?'

The speech was gentle, but as the Master turned to confront the face on the tapestry that seemed in its silence and immobility to be mocking him, the Doctor's voice came again, an echo among the rafters. 'Are you perfectly sure?'

'Enough of your deceptions!' the Master screamed back, and with superhuman strength he hurled the Zero Cabinet across the chamber.

At the end of its arc it caught the surface of the tapestry.

Tegan held her breath, having to remind herself again that wherever the Doctor was, he was not in the Cabinet. She expected the sound of rending cloth, but instead a savage scintillation illuminated the room. The Cabinet seemed suspended in s.p.a.ce for a moment, almost as if it were part of the tapestry's design. And then it slid down and crashed to the floor. With a sound like thunder it shattered, scattering the thirty volumes of the Condensed Chronicle of Condensed Chronicle of Castrovalva Castrovalva across the flagstones. across the flagstones.

The Master looked with loathing at the scorched jumble of books. 'Where are you, Doctor. I can fetch you out, wherever you are.'

Nyssa clutched at Tegan's arm. Veils of dust were slowly cascading from the tapestry, as if the years of its history were being shed. The pattern faded, and the threads themselves seemed to be taking on a faint translucency.

Tegan put a hand to her face, suppressing a cry. Behind the tapestry, visible at first as no more than an outline, was a figure seemingly suspended in the air, its arms and legs stretched out like the spokes of a wheel. Nyssa and Tegan rushed forward, but the Doctor had already run down the sweeping staircase, and now managed to reach the tapestry ahead of them.

Tegan uttered a shrill scream, whether at the sudden shock of seeing the Doctor again, or because of a dawning recognition of the splayed imprisoned figure, she could not have said. The Doctor shouted to her to stay back, and began to pull at the tapestry. Dust fell in cataracts now, and the fabric peeled away in long shreds of rotten material.

Behind it was Adric, impaled in the centre of the glittering web.

Tegan's instinct was to run to the boy, but the Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders. 'Don't touch him, whatever you do! Leave this to me.' There was a high colour in his face, and Tegan guessed that the same bio-chemical reaction that had temporarily restored him during the crisis in the TARDIS was at work in him again. There was no telling how long it would last though. He seemed unsteady on his feet, even as he turned to confront the Master. 'So that's how you're sustaining Castrovalva!'

The Master's laughter rolled out across the chamber.