by Jacqueline Rayner, Mike Tucker, Paul Magrs, et al (retail) (epub)
‘Hark, mothers!’ mocked the one called Lilith. ‘It wishes to speak!’
As her elders cackled nastily, Lilith held out a gnarled hand to display the object Mother Bloodtide had passed her. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I think not, human!’
Her bony fingers were clasped round a crudely made doll. A lock of brown hair was attached to its wooden head. Sarah Jane recalled the sharp, painful tug at her scalp. Her blood ran cold as she saw that the doll’s mouth was gagged with a strip of filthy cloth.
Lilith advanced. Sarah Jane tried to raise her arms to fend her off, but they also seemed invisibly bound. The hag brought her hook-nosed face close to Sarah Jane’s.
‘We shall let you utter no words,’ she rasped, eyes full of malice. Her fetid breath made Sarah Jane’s stomach turn. ‘For we, more than any, know the power they hold!’
Harry staggered as the floor lurched beneath his feet. ‘I say, Doctor – what was that?’
The Doctor shooed him back from the control console, scowling. Harry had grabbed hold of its edge to steady himself. There wasn’t much else to grab in the clinical white console room. Apart from the out-of-place antique hatstand on which the Doctor’s battered brown fedora and absurdly long scarf hung, it was all smooth, gleaming surfaces.
‘Nothing of consequence,’ rumbled the Doctor. ‘Just a little temporal turbulence.’ He gave Harry a sarcastic smile. ‘You didn’t expect riding the Time Vortex to be smooth sailing the entire while, did you?’
Harry wasn’t sure what to expect any more. Since meeting the Doctor, expectations had quickly come to seem pointless. In the Time Lord’s company, it appeared, anything was possible. Harry’s mind was still reeling from his previous TARDIS trip – also his first. It hadn’t gone terribly well. His accidental interference with something called a ‘helmic regulator’ had resulted in a drastic change to their course. This explained the Doctor’s eagerness to keep him clear of the controls, Harry supposed.
‘I expect we crossed a particularly tempestuous time node,’ said the Doctor, as much to himself as to Harry. ‘An intersection of multiple galactic wars or some such. Unless another TARDIS passed close enough for us to catch a little backwash.’
‘I see,’ said Harry, which was something of an exaggeration. ‘Not to worry,’ he continued gamely. ‘I’m sure I’ll find my sea legs soon.’
An instant later he went reeling sideways into the nearest wall, as the TARDIS lurched again with considerably more violence.
This time it was the Doctor who clung to the console for support.
‘Now that,’ he growled, ‘was rather more interesting.’ He hastily studied the console’s complex instrumentation. ‘Fascinating, in fact. Analysis of the deflection data suggests a definite impact.’ He consulted another set of dials. ‘The shield readings, too. A collision. Possibly an assault by an active agent.’
Harry rubbed his bruised shoulder. ‘What sort of agent?’
‘Difficult to say. Whatever it was, it’s knocked us way off course. I’ll have to recalculate the space–time vectors to get us back on track.’ The Doctor threw Harry a wry smile. ‘It wouldn’t do to keep the brigadier waiting now, would it?’
Judging by the Doctor’s tetchy mood since their departure from the Nerva Beacon space station, Harry had the distinct sense that the Time Lord didn’t appreciate being at the brigadier’s beck and call. It had been the Doctor’s own idea to provide the UNIT commander back on Earth with a means to contact him in an emergency: a dedicated Space–Time Telegraph. He seemed less than delighted, however, that the brigadier had seen fit to use it quite so soon.
Another sudden pitch in the TARDIS’s flight drove thoughts of the brigadier from Harry’s mind. ‘Doctor? What’s going on?’
As the Doctor pored over the console, his expression darkened. ‘Perhaps if you could manage to keep quiet for a moment …’ He brooded over the read-outs for several seconds. ‘Ah-haa!’ His shining eyes grew wide. ‘We have company, Harry Sullivan!’ he declared. ‘Reapers. Several of them, by the looks of it.’
‘Reapers?’
‘One of the few lifeforms native to the Vortex.’
‘And … they’re mobbing us?’
The floor lurched violently again.
‘So it appears!’ The Doctor had begun hastily punching buttons and throwing levers – taking evasive action, Harry assumed.
‘Judging by the intensity of their attack, I’d say they’re trying to force us into an emergency landing.’ The Doctor darted round to an adjacent side of the hexagonal console. ‘They can’t board us while we’re in flight. But if the old girl rematerialises, they’ll be able to enter at will.’
Harry narrowly managed to keep his feet as another tremor struck. ‘What for? What are they after?’
‘There’s only one thing guaranteed to bring Reapers flocking: a time paradox. Or even the scent of one – an anachronism with the potential to create a significant history shift.’
‘An anachronism?’
‘A temporal anomaly. A thing-out-of-its-time,’ snapped the Doctor impatiently. ‘Hovercraft in the Middle Ages. Einstein in the Mesozoic. An anachronism, man!’
Another jolt shook the TARDIS.
‘At the first sniff of temporal corruption, Reapers swarm to its source, like white blood cells to an infection. They materialise in normal space to devour the offending anachronism – and all resulting anomalies. Their action heals any timelines that may have been corrupted.’
‘They sort of put history back on track, you mean?’ As a medical man, Harry felt a certain empathy with the Reapers’ corrective role. ‘They sound rather a decent sort.’
Another violent shudder seemed to contradict him. The Doctor made more frantic adjustments to the flight controls.
‘Decency has nothing to do with it,’ he growled. ‘Reapers have no moral or ethical goal. Only an insatiable hunger for temporal anomalies.’ He glanced up to give Harry a dark look. ‘Such as two twentieth-century humans existing outside their own timeframe.’
Harry processed this, as another Reaper strike hit. ‘You think they’ve come for Sarah Jane and me?’
‘No, my dear fellow. I doubt that either of you are significant enough to draw their full attention.’
Harry couldn’t help wondering how the feisty Sarah Jane would like being deemed insignificant. It was perhaps a good thing she was off elsewhere, exploring the TARDIS’s attic.
‘No …’ mused the Doctor, frowning. ‘They must be seeking something we’ve taken on board – though the what, the how and the when elude me at present.’ He gave Harry another grave look. ‘Nonetheless, you will be in mortal danger if we’re forced to rematerialise. We could land anywhere and anywhen. Whatever has attracted them, the Reapers are all too likely to carry out a clean sweep.’
A flashing alert called the Doctor’s full attention back to the controls.
‘Can’t you stop us from landing?’ asked Harry.
‘For a short while, perhaps. If I’m allowed to concentrate,’ replied the Doctor testily. ‘Why don’t you run along and inform Sarah Jane we have guests?’
The Doctor was right, of course, Harry knew. He should find Sarah Jane. If the Reapers were to get in, she shouldn’t face them alone.
Harry hurried for the corridor. As another tremor sent him staggering, he heard the Doctor’s booming voice call after him.
‘And don’t touch anything!’
Sarah Jane was already facing deadly creatures alone, and with the horrid doll still in the bony grip of the hag called Lilith she was powerless to resist them.
All three hags had pressed in around her. Mother Doomfinger had the palm of one warty hand spread against Sarah Jane’s forehead. Her touch was ice-cold. Doomfinger’s eyes were closed, and she was muttering to herself – strange rhythmic words that Sarah Jane could not understand.
‘Well, sister? Does it know it?’ demanded Mother Bloodtide. ‘The Time Lord’s true name?’
Lilith’s eyes, too, burned
with evil anticipation. ‘You will yield it to us!’ she rasped in Sarah Jane’s face. ‘He must be named – and die! Were it not for him, our kind would be free of the Eternals’ curse!’
‘It is because of his meddling that our Carrionite sisters still languish in the Deep Darkness!’ croaked Bloodtide. She turned and took a few hobbling steps, until her path was barred by an arching wall of clouded crystal – part of the smooth, spherical shell that encapsulated the hags’ entire tiny domain. She dragged her foul fingernails across it, creating an ear-splitting screech. ‘It is he who confined us to this loathsome dimension!’
Sarah Jane tried to make sense of the strange, crystal-bordered space. An image flashed across her mind’s eye: the orb of dark crystal, clasped in a macabre metal mounting, that had drawn her attention back in the TARDIS’s attic. The last thing she remembered before her near-drowning was reaching for this crystal ball, to take a closer look.
‘Gargh!’ snarled Doomfinger, snatching her hand away from Sarah Jane’s brow. ‘The creature’s mind swims with words, but our foe’s true name is not among them!’
‘The Darkness take her!’ spat Lilith. ‘No matter. There are other ways to end him.’
There was a sudden cracking, splintering sound.
Bloodtide let out a triumphant shriek. ‘It begins! Behold!’ Her shining eyes were fixed on a thin fracture that had appeared in the wall of crystal before her. ‘Our words do their work!’ she crowed.
‘Words we learned from the Doctor’s own lips!’ Lilith told Sarah Jane gloatingly.
Doomfinger leered at her. ‘We have waited three cycles of his life …’
‘Listened to three slippery shades of him …’ hissed Lilith.
‘It was his knowledge that revealed the words of power we craved.’
‘So many shining words – of time, and space, and matter.’
‘It was his fathomless grief upon which we drew to wield them!’
There was another cracking sound and a second hairline fracture appeared in the crystal shell.
‘By translating our prison dimension from the Doctor’s time-vessel to its own past shadow as the two crossed in the Vortex, we have rendered it unstable,’ Lilith explained gleefully. ‘Its boundary has already weakened enough for us to draw you across, pretty one! Soon it will fail entirely!’
‘And once we are free,’ sneered Doomfinger, ‘a mere finger-touch will serve to stop your precious Doctor’s heart!’
‘Two touches, mother, remember?’ corrected Lilith. ‘To still two Time Lord hearts.’
‘Yesss, yesss.’
At the sound of more cracks forming, the three hags could barely contain their evil delight.
‘When this Doctor of the past is slain, his future selves will turn to dust!’
‘No longer to oppose us at the Hour of Woven Words!’
‘Our Carrionite kin will be released from the Darkness …’
‘And the universe will once again know rule by blood and magic!’
Lilith looked to her mothers, rubbing her bony hands together. ‘We need wait only a little longer for our freedom – and our vengeance!’ She turned her gaze back to Sarah Jane. ‘And, while we do, we shall not go hungry.’
Bending, she scooped a handful of tiny bones from the ground. She crushed them, letting their powder run through her gnarled fingers. ‘We have fed on dead things fished from the Void for long enough.’
‘Eurgh!’ spat Bloodtide. ‘Cold, lifeless, bloodless things!’
‘Since your mind contains no words to aid us …’ hissed Lilith.
All three hags began to shuffle closer, hunger in their eyes.
‘Your flesh will nourish us instead!’
Sarah Jane had never been more desperate to cry out for help, but she had no voice to scream with.
This has to be the place, thought Harry, as the door sliced shut behind him.
‘Keep going straight until you cross a bridge,’ Sarah Jane had told him, ‘then it’s the second room on the left. Just in case you need me.’
Harry was glad the directions had been so simple. Even his brief trek through the TARDIS’s interior had left his mind aching. Getting hopelessly lost in its logic-defying space would be all too easy. The bridge, and the deep canyon it spanned, had been quite something. A canyon inside a police box, thought Harry, shaking his head. He had seen his share of remarkable technology during his time with UNIT, but the Doctor’s dimensionally transcendental craft was off the scale.
Harry cast his gaze around the attic.
‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ Sarah Jane had said. ‘It’s packed with weird and wonderful junk.’
She hadn’t been exaggerating. Harry had never seen such a collection. There were some identifiable items among the muddle: a golf caddy crammed with hockey sticks; a section of brightly painted totem pole; a penny-farthing fitted with stabilisers. A nearby crate appeared to be full of assorted toasters. The greater proportion of the hoard, however, was distinctly alien-looking.
A sudden violent lurch made Harry stagger, and brought his mind back to the reason he’d come: the Reapers. He must warn Sarah Jane. Unfortunately, Sarah Jane seemed to be one of the few things the attic did not contain. There was no sign of her.
‘Sarah Jane?’
No reply. It occurred to Harry that the fierce turbulence might already have prompted her to return to the console room. But surely he would have run into her? Was there another route back, perhaps?
‘Sarah Jane?’ He tried a little louder, picking his way through the junk as he moved further into the room. ‘Where are you, old girl?’
Sarah Jane was in an evil place, in evil company. Thanks to Harry, however, she was no longer in imminent danger of becoming hag-food. His cries had carried into the crystal-walled space of the Carrionites’ prison dimension. On hearing his voice calling for her, Sarah Jane’s captors had – to her great relief – swiftly turned their malevolent attention to him.
The three repulsive hags stooped over their mud-sculpted cauldron, scowling at Harry’s image in the dark surface of the foul-smelling pool.
‘Another meddling human!’ croaked Lilith, flexing her gnarled fingers in agitation. ‘He must not discover us! The Doctor must not learn of our presence before we are free!’
‘Shall I name the wretch?’ suggested Mother Bloodtide.
Lilith shook her wrinkled brow. ‘A naming may not end him. He is out of his own time. Remember the Dark Lady, mothers. The human Martha Jones.’ She spoke the name with loathing.
‘What, then?’ croaked Doomfinger. ‘How shall we silence him?’
Lilith’s eyes flashed. Baring her frightful teeth in a wicked grin, she fixed her gaze on Sarah Jane. ‘The pretty one can deliver his doom!’
Lilith reached beneath her filthy cloak, and drew out a long, curving dagger. Its hilt was black, its blade a cruel hook of razor-edged bone. She then raised the gagged doll in her other hand, dangling it by its lock of human hair. With a slash of the dagger, she sliced through the hair. As the doll fell to the ground, Sarah Jane felt her invisible bonds release. She found she could open her mouth.
‘You’re mad!’ she told Lilith defiantly, backing away. Her eyes darted around for something with which to defend herself. ‘Why would I hurt Harry?’ It was such a relief to be able to speak, to move. ‘There’s nothing you can say or do that would make me!’
Lilith cackled nastily. She had produced something else from under her cloak. It was a primitive string puppet. An ugly marionette.
‘Oh, but there is!’
With a twist of her bony fingers, Lilith attached the lock of hair to the puppet’s head, muttering as she did so. Then, leering at Sarah Jane, she let the puppet dangle by its strings. She tugged on the string attached to its right hand.
To her horror, Sarah Jane felt her own right hand jerk upwards.
Lilith jiggled the puppet’s strings again – and Sarah Jane found herself walking, against her will, straight towards the caul
dron. The jerky movements of her limbs were awkward and clumsy.
‘What are you doing? Stop it!’ she shrieked at Lilith.
Lilith only pressed the hilt of the bone dagger into Sarah Jane’s unresisting grip.
Bloodtide and Doomfinger were watching with wicked delight.
‘A few words, I think, before we send her back,’ croaked Bloodtide. ‘Dark deeds are best accomplished under cover of darkness!’ Turning to the cauldron, she extended a hand over it and began to chant.
‘By fourteen sister-worlds aligned …’
As Lilith’s puppetry made her stagger to the cauldron’s edge, Sarah Jane tried desperately to resist.
‘I won’t do it! I’ll … I’ll tell him to run!’
Mother Doomfinger descended upon her, holding a tiny glass vial from which wisps of green vapour were rising. With a puff of stinking breath, Doomfinger blew a cloud of the vapour straight into Sarah Jane’s face.
‘You will tell nothing!’ she sneered.
The potion took immediate effect. The last thing Sarah Jane heard, before her eyes rolled back and her mind slipped into oblivion, was Mother Bloodtide’s continuing incantation.
‘We quench the light, our prey to blind!’
‘Terrific!’ muttered Harry bitterly. ‘Not what the doctor ordered.’
A black-out was the last thing he needed. As yet another tremor shook the TARDIS, he staggered awkwardly in the gloom.
Thankfully, the sudden failure of the lighting had not plunged the attic into total darkness. As Harry’s eyes adjusted, he realised that a faint greenish glow was coming from something luminescent somewhere among the Doctor’s muddle of memorabilia. The eerie green light enabled him to get his bearings. He shuffled cautiously back towards the sealed door, hoping that when it opened he would find the corridor beyond still fully lit. The Reaper onslaught had presumably caused the black-out. If it was more widespread, finding his way back to the console room would be tricky.