Doctor Who_ Fallen Gods Part 10

With the last of his strength, he shakes his head. There are salt tears running down his face. -I had the same question for you.

They dry out in a heap together, shivering, holding on to each other for warmth. She rests her head, against his; her sodden braids fall across his bare back like a scourge. His arm reaches round her shoulders, his hand nestling in her hair. She's so cold now, that even his cool skin feels warm against her, through the thin briny silk soaking straight through to her bones.

-I thought you'd be able to fly so high, he whispers to no-one. -But not this high. Not so high that you froze on your way to the sun.

She shakes her head, fuzzily. -I didn't fly. You fell. You were above me and now you're standing down there next to Rhadamanthys. Why?

-You really believe every last one of you deserves death?

-Everyone deserves death. That's why everyone dies.

-Except for the ones who have cheated it.She can feel the weariness in his voice, the understanding. Finally she pulls herself to him, enfolding him as best she can, whispering to him. -And the ones whom angels spared.

They huddle on the rocks, watching the waves crash against the foot of the volcano just below them, the spray mocking their attempts to escape the water. Perhaps those tears she glimpsed were an illusion, she thinks. Just more salt water rolling off of his face as he gasped. But right now, she'd rather dismiss the thought.

After a while, he asks her: -Why do I deserve to be spared? Another small mercy?

She has being trying to understand it herself. -You need to learn, she tells him. -You're the only one who has any chance of it.He shakes his head. -Not the only one.-Every one of us ate of Athens, down to the lowest slave. Whatever else you've done, I can spare you from this.

She feels him turn his head, trying to catch her eye. When she doesn't move, instead she feels his chin against her cheek, his voice breathing in her ear. -So let me spare you.

And for a moment, it's that same feeling of promise that lifted her before.

But the truth drowns it out, fills her voice with ice. -You'd spare Rhadamanthys Rhadamanthys. So how much does your mercy mean?

He freezes, his body tensed, and for a moment, she thinks he's going to pull away. But he turns it into an exhausted shrug, a shake of his head. -How long has it been since you've eaten, or slept? If nothing else, let me spare you from that.

And she relents, and lets him stand. She sees him looking down at her, his expression bruised but gentle.-After all, you shouldn't destroy the world on an empty stomach.

He leaves her to gather a few branches while he disappears into the woods, a pale streak in the moonlight among the trees. When he returns, he's carrying a pair of flints for a spark, and cradling a pigeon, its neck twisted.-I did it because I had to, he says.

He makes the fire dance to life, and they settle close together on the rocks, just far enough back from the spray, listening. The sea drowns out the crackle of the fire.

-I know, it feels like your heart's broken, he begins, but then he tilts his head sideways, eyes wandering up to the sky. -I really should have a word with whoever came up with that metaphor, he murmurs. -That's just not the way it works. Stones Stones break. Ice breaks. Hearts are elastic. break. Ice breaks. Hearts are elastic.

His eyes have fixed on hers again. But if he's saying that her heart will recover, she can't believe it. The only feeling in her body comes from well below her heart, a suddenly insatiable stomach. Yes, the G.o.ds may have put the ideas into her head, but the need that drives her is below both heart and mind. A growling hollow that must be filled.

He removes the charring pigeon from the fire and offers it to her. She lunges for it, nearly falls over, then forces herself to breathe deep and chew slowly. But as the first mouthful slithers down her throat, she gags, her whole body convulsing and rebelling. He ends up holding her as she retches, an awkward tangle of shoulders and thighs around her side.

He's still holding her, as she sits back, shivering. The fire is too tiny to warm her.-We swallowed their bones, she gasps.-I know, he murmurs. -I know. Then, gently: -How can you look upon that and want to kill even more?

What comes out now is a choking laugh. -How can you look on that and not?

-If you want death, there's plenty to come. I know what's going to happen to the empire. I've seen it.

His voice settles down as well, his hand soothing its way through her hair. He's her father telling her a bedtime story, one that's been turned inside out, a quiet murmur that says that the only happy ending is an unhappy one.

-The empire will be struck down, destroyed so thoroughly that no-one even remembers its name. Only legends of the greedy island, which the G.o.ds themselves punished for its arrogance and sent crashing beneath the waves. The stories of their wickedness will live for thousands of years, long after their lives are washed away.

-Then why are you trying to stop it?-Because this isn't it. it.And nothing makes sense any more. She turns to him, looking for meaning, but his face is as unreadable as the rock they sit on.

-The eruption I know about is several centuries from now. Their crimes will catch up with them. But not for hundreds of years yet.

-Not until everyone involved in the crime is long dead, says Alcestis quietly. -And that's all the justice you can offer?

He doesn't answer, just rests his head, forlornly on hers. She traces her other hand along his back, trying to memorise the shape of his shoulder blade.

She says: -I know, how weak I am. They expect me to be strong. against the bulls, for them. And if I'm supposed to be their greatest strength, and I'm still so weak ... then there's no hope of anyone even trying for justice. Unless just once ... just long enough to serve the G.o.ds ... I can be strong. And end it.

And once again, she lets him go. She stands, and it's like she's seeing him from far away now, distant and still. He tries to keep reaching her, but none of his words can drown out the lingering taste of flesh in her throat.

He tries one last time, on the rocks as the waves crash, shouting to make his voice heard over the noise of the world. His face spray-soaked again. They can't escape the water or the icy wind, or the stone.

-Please, he tells her, his eloquence exhausted. -I've burned so many for the best of reasons but that doesn't end fire. Just don't go down that road.

And he stands, there, reaching out his hand. But now, she sees what it is he wants from her a cleansing, one more chance to outrun the uncountable number that he must have burned with his touch. Oh, she will teach him otherwise. She lunges for the offered hand, yanking it up in front of his face; with her other hand she grabs his chin, forcing him to look at what he'd offered her. Her words. .h.i.t him with all the force of the cold ocean.

-This won't save you, she tells him. -No more than it could save me. For what you've done, no G.o.d, would forgive you.

And she holds him there, staring deep into his quiet, wounded face, her, hand gentle now, on his cheek.

And whispers -But I'm not enough of a G.o.d.

Slowly she lets him go, turns half away to gather herself. -Find a ship, she says. -Fly from here. Be gone before the blessing ceremony tomorrow. I want you to live, and to learn.

A moment's embrace gently, formally and she disappears into the sky.

Sometime before dawn, the Doctor, in the palace forge. He isn't going to make it.

He cradles in his hands a tangled web of thin strands of steel and bronze, each insulated from the other with tiny twists of fabric. A labyrinth of charges and wire, a cage for a tiny piece of fire.

The nagging fear mounts as sunrise finds him still bending wires into place. He'd been working on the a.s.sumption that he'd have days at least before the next demon attack, based on the currents. He hadn't thought of the blessing ceremony.

He gingerly puts down the device. It's so elegant, such a clever little concoction of anachronistic technology and simple magic ... not magic. Not G.o.ds. Life forms evolved at a bizarre angle, the same thing on a hundred worlds, with their technology-less science of time.

They would never need the last tool that he's forged from his last bit of steel. Time's run out, and he may have no other choice but to use it.

Stay here. Don't put yourself in the path of choices.

His hand curls around the last tool. No.

It's going to be a perfect hot day on Kamenai: the smell of the whiterippled sea and the volcano's hearth, the cloudless sky cupping the sun's red-orange eye.

Deucalion sits in the window of his palace room, dangling his feet outside, watching the sky lighten as the sun's chariot nears the horizon. Perdix warned him warned them both not to look directly at the sun's disk. So he just glances at it now, and again, tracing its rising arc.Behind him, a manservant breathlessly announces that his father is here to see him. For a moment, Deucalion contemplates staying in the window, his back to it all. But you don't do that to the King. He pulls himself down and straightens his tunic.

Perdix follows his father into the room. Rhadamanthys sits down on a stool and waves wearily for Perdix to sit as well. The teacher ends up hunched on the end of Deucalion's bed.

The King, says: -You will not attend the blessing ceremony this morning.

Deucalion opens his mouth to protest, but Father silences him. He looks more shaken and unsure than he's ever seen him, but his voice is certain. -You are the heir to everything I hold dear. We need to keep you safely away.

-Something bad's going to happen today, says Perdix gently.

-Well, if it's so bad, why are you going? going?

Deucalion looks from one to the other, panic scorching his scalp. The King, says: -The people need their blessings. They need to see me leading them. If I am seen to falter, we become an empire built on fear and timidity.Perdix says: - I'm going to try to stop it.Deucalion isn't sure of either of them. Is Perdix going to stop the blessing ceremony itself, or just the bad thing? Does his father really want to lead, or does he just not want to bow his head, even to the G.o.ds?

What can he do about it?

His shoulders slump. -All right. If you want me to stay here, I'll stay.

Rhadamanthys gets up and hugs Deucalion. A sudden grasping clutch father clinging to him for life. His voice shakes.

-My son, my empire.

Dawn over the volcano. Today the vast red sun sits directly across the caldera from the open sanctuary wall, its fire blurred through the heathaze at their feet. The air is heavy with sulphur and shining dust.

Rhadamanthys stands, arms spread high, his back to the G.o.ds and his face to the people. Through the sanctuary door, on the mountaintop outside, the cream of the n.o.bility stand arrayed before him, paying witness to his transmission of the blessings to his people. His shadowstretches far in front of him.

To his left, in the wide mouth of the temple where it faces the fire, the musicians hold one sustained note on sh.e.l.l trumpet or forminx willing the audience to lose themselves in the sound, a single endless moment of divine glory, the empire's glory. Slowly, fragments of rhythm begin to pick themselves out of the primeval chord: slow, emphasised, growing in speed and strength. To his right, the circle of priestesses begin the slow crescendo of their dance, building up to the release. Led by Polyxena a last-minute stand-in for the recently ascendant Britomartis they find their first shaky footsteps settling into rhythm, guided by the G.o.ddess.

Behind the musicians stands, the Doctor, alone out of all of them watching the sky.

The rhythm accelerates, the priestess's chant swells to name the t.i.tans: child-eating Cronus; Ocea.n.u.s, the eldest; Hyperion; Iapetus; Astraeus, father of wind and stars; Phoebe; Crius. The King feels their strength unfolding within him. He feels their light flooding the sanctum.He feels their heat searing his back.

And the Doctor, is the first to cry out as the stampede of fiery bulls rises to block the sun.

Their hooves shake the earth where they land. One has bounded over the sanctuary to crash upon the path: blocking the way down the mountain, forcing the fleeing n.o.bles and their families back to where the other bulls close in. Guards, drilled in distraction, find themselves too outnumbered to control them. The air's thick with roars and screaming voices and the smell of scorched meat.

Nauplius, at the edge of the cliff, flings himself over to try to reach the switchback of the path below. He reaches it face-first and lies there, his neck c.o.c.ked at an impossible angle. Above him, his wife and two sons stare frozen as a bull thunders through them. A child's charring skeleton hangs from a horn for one second, then another, before the ashes scatter on the wind.***

In the temple, the light is too bright to bear. Even in front of the sun, the two bulls are hotter, yellow-white scorches overwhelming the redorange surrounding them. Their light floods every corner of the building, ripping away darkness and mystery to lay the plaster bare. Every flaw, every weakness is exposed. The crystals flare so bright the plaster smokes in sympathy. Polyxena cowers in a heap with the priestesses, like ants under a magnifying gla.s.s, while the bulls scatter the musicians. No matter which way she looks, or how tightly she screws her eyes shut, the light sears straight through her.

A merciful shadow falls across them. Polyxena looks up, cringing in awe. It's Alcestis immaculate, poised, light shining through her, billowing silk. Hanging with divine stillness in the chaotic air.She tells them: -Keep dancing.

The Doctor, bullfighting for his life. Before ascending the mountain, he tucked as many shiny objects as he could find though in this light everything's a s everything's a shiny object inside his ceremonial robe. Now, one after the other he's waving them, tossing them aside, distracting the bulls long enough for the musicians to flee. (Into the gauntlet of the other bulls outside, but there's only so much he can do at one time.) He's moving faster than he can think, reduced to nothing but a ceaseless impulse to act. He jabs the nearest bull with a discarded lyre, finds himself holding a crumbling stick.

No sign of Rhadamanthys. But he hasn't pa.s.sed him, so he hasn't made it to the door. No sign of the G.o.ds either; he imagines them sitting back in chilly satisfaction as their emissaries do their work.

Across the haze. Alcestis. Whirling circles round the other bull, teasing it away from the priestesses as they clamber to their feet. A streak of white, horizontal against the ground.

He dives out of the path of his bull, skitters across the floor to land almost beneath her. He hesitates only a moment, watching her hover, weighing her expression.-I've got a plan, he says. -Follow my lead.

A final offer, a final temptation.

Rhadamanthys, crying out in the antechamber. He's crammed into the narrow end of the wedge-shaped room, just past a window too small for him. A cl.u.s.ter of guards and n.o.bles outside have tried to pull him through, to no avail. Behind him, a bull wrestles its horns free from the plaster. At this end, the room, is too narrow for its head, and shoulders to reach him, but it seems determined to demolish the wall itself if need be. This close, the King can feel his face beginning to blister and scar already from its heat. Wherever he looks, everything he thought was his to command has turned its strength on him.

-Perdix! he shouts through the fire.

And there's movement beyond the bull, a pale man and a white ghost.

-Perdix! he shouts again. -Free me!

-Then confess, says the Doctor.

Rhadamanthys freezes, incomprehension in his eyes.

-About Athens. About your children.

A shudder goes through the King's rigid frame.

-I'll save your empire, not your throne. You'll face the consequences, but you'll live.The bull snorts sulphur at him, and Rhadamanthys's last control shatters. He shouts to the guards and n.o.bles, to anyone who will listen, about the ma.s.sacres in Athens, about the children he laid on the altar. A warning glance from the Doctor is enough to keep Deucalion's name out of it.

Still, one by one, the meaning dawns on the faces at the window, a further horror drowning out their panic, as they make the link between their King's actions and the bulls surrounding them. He's treated the G.o.ds like slaves. He's slaughtered his own kin.

-I did it in the name of Cronus, cries, Rhadamanthys, his voice breaking. -Time eats his children and so have I.

The faces stand frozen at the window. Then a bull outside circles for another pa.s.s, and the watchers scatter. Not one waits for the King.The Doctor turns to Alcestis, quiet inside the storm. -Justice.

He begins to strip off his red-and-blue ceremonial robe, to wave over the bull's head, and distract it. But Alcestis is already leaping above, the bull, bracing against the ceiling, pulling Rhadamanthys straight up, over its head. He gasps with relief and folds into a ball across her, arms.

-Alcestis... warns the Doctor.

-I know what you want me to do, she a.s.sures him.

But he follows her anyway as she flies through the sanctuary, before the bull can turn and charge after them.

She watches Rhadamanthys whimper as she flies out through the open wall, over the volcano. His face is a ma.s.s of wrinkles and scars, one eye milky and staring, half his beard burnt white. He's got a death-grip on her collar as he looks for the safety of land. She isn't circling round the outside wall of the sanctuary then he notices the other clear s.p.a.ces on the far side of the caldera, outside the horde of bulls encircling the guests. He realises where she is heading, and gradually he begins to relax.

She looks down at him.

She whispers: -Cannibal.

Then she flips heels-over-head and lets him go.

He screams all the way down into the magma. But his scream is lost in the cries of the panicking n.o.bles, and even those are barely a thousandth part of the screams of Athens echoing endlessly in her head.

At any moment, the Doctor's mind is a flock of startled birds. A thousand thoughts, each one circling in its own chaotic direction.

This moment, only one within the flock notices the distant dot of the King falling. The cry that the Doctor lets out isn't for Rhadamanthys. But only a few of the thousand thoughts are able to mourn for Alcestis, even for a moment, because the rest of them are scouring the sanctuary for survivors amidst the burning plaster and crystal-fire. There are only the priestesses, as yet untouched, caught up in their weaving dance as if the force of their belief will save them.

There's still a chance for her, one part of him insists. That may have been the extent of Alcestis's crime of pa.s.sion. And she was dancing with the demons before, playing them for time; if she has finally thrown her lot in with the G.o.ds, why would she fight their bulls?

Bulls. Another of his thoughts touches on the word and spirals off. Only a matter of minutes before they flare out, and the survivors outside will be able to flee. The demon behind him is still extracting itself from the antechamber. The other rounds away from the charred remains of a musician, paws the ground and readies to charge straight at the priestesses.

Only seconds. He gets in its path, waving the red-and-blue robe, leading it to the side away from the oblivious dancers. He spins and tumbles away, holding the instantly tattered remains. But the moment, his eyes can focus, he can see that the bull hasn't changed course, that its horns are still levelled at the priestesses' hearts.Until it veers at the last moment.And the priestesses continue untouched, their fear only honing the dance.