Doctor Who_ The Blue Angel Part 11

'At least you're reading something,' she said, sounding even more hurt.

'That's Fitz. He found it in the attic among my family's old stuff. I'm not reading it. Honest.'

She flipped through the ancient pages.

'The Aja'ib Aja'ib. Hmm. "Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Seven... In Which Our Hero Knocks Down the Bridges Into the Citadel To Allow The Green Men To Conquer, Little Knowing That The Grey Men Are Not Far Behind.".'

She flicked again. '"There were seventy elderly sisters in that ghastly mountainous realm and they set out with some trepidation one horrid night to destroy the filthy remnants of that man they most despised, the man already dead, whose head was made all of cracked gla.s.s, so that his brains, bruised, dashed, already sent mad, could be seen pulsing within."' Sally looked at me. 'Sounds like rum stuff. "In Which Pale Shadows From Another Land Impersonate Everything Familiar to Our Heroes".'

'Fitz likes that sort of stuff.'

'Hmm. Maybe he'll he'll like my book.' like my book.'

By the time the hostess trolley was loaded and Sally helped me push it through, we found that Compa.s.sion was lighting the candles on the table.

Fitz was drinking.

'Where's Iris?'

'Fitz upset her,' said Compa.s.sion.

'What did he say?' I was furious. The tone was all wrong.

'He said her bus in the street outside was an eyesore.'

'Her bus?'

Sally nodded. 'She drove us here.'

'Where is she now?'

Compa.s.sion rolled her eyes. 'Up in the bathroom. Sobbing her heart out.'

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

Now The Great Beast...

Now the great beast was shackled and slumped in the corner of what had once been his throne room, his stateroom; the gla.s.s cathedral in which once he had sat resplendent, pa.s.sing out his querulous commands, and watching the games that he had demanded for his own h.e.l.lish amus.e.m.e.nt.

Now he sat defeated, hunched over, examining the jagged edge of his broken tusk with his talons.

He seemed almost oblivious to the Ghillighast as they skittered about his city.

Meisha had settled herself on his throne and flung the odd taunting word in his direction, but he didn't respond.

Marn the Gla.s.s Man watched on in horror. Belinda couldn't understand her friend's att.i.tude.

'But you hate Daedalus,' she said. 'You wanted to see him fall. And he has! Without us doing anything. He has just given himself up.'

Marn looked at her gloomily. 'What makes you think the Ghillighast will be any better?'

Belinda shrugged. 'They seem rather decent to me.'

'You know nothing about them. There's no telling what they'll do now that... now that my people are extinct.'

'Not quite extinct, Marn. You're still about.'

'There is only me!' he moaned. 'Daedalus didn't know what he was doing letting the humans fire on the city. He has wiped us out for sure.'

Belinda was kneeling down by his chair, whispering conspiratorially. 'If there's one thing I've learned from travelling with Blandish, it's don't reckon on the ending before you get to it. Anything might happen yet.'

'Don't mention that man's name to me.'

'You blame him for attacking Valcea?'

'Of course I do.'

Belinda shook her head. 'I don't believe Blandish would do such a thing. Honestly, I don't. For one thing, Timon would never let him... and Timon controls the weaponry aboard the Nepotist Nepotist.'

'You don't understand, Belinda,' said Marn wearily. 'Daedalus can make people do what he wants. He has a brain the size of a wheelbarrow. He can control you without you even knowing it. Make you see what he wants you to see, say what he wants you to say. How else do you think he got most of the Gla.s.s Men to do what he wanted?'

Belinda blanched. 'So... even captured like this, tied up, and defeated-looking, he could still try to...'

Savagely Marn nodded. 'Of course he could! Don't let him fool you!'

The pair of them stared across the shattered rink of the floor to the bowed-down, bulky green figure now sitting at Meisha's feet.

Belinda thought she saw the elephant's eyes glinting with something other than abject misery.

'So... he could be messing about with our minds now, and we might not even know it?'

'Exactly,' said Marn firmly. 'We have to be on our guard. Hallucinations, everything.'

Belinda gulped.

Meisha was speaking now, addressing those excitable Ghillighast who weren't already exploring the city and gathering spoils.

'So this is how our history recommences. In glory and victory and the effortless sacking of our enemy's city. Thanks be to Pesst and his delectable bride, the Lady Belinda.'

All of the Ghillighast applauded and chattered at this and, once more, Belinda found herself at the centre of everyone's attention.

But then she saw the elephant's eye burn with a peculiar malevolence and she started to feel herself change.

'Belinda!' Marn was shouting. What's happening to you?'

Belinda was feeling rather hot.

Around her the Ghillighast were gibbering in terror.

They ran about the place, encircling her, heedless of the shrieked commands of their equally startled High Priestess.

Belinda had no idea what was happening to her. She felt too warm, and itchy somehow and, in a way she couldn't quite define, she felt bigger bigger all of a sudden. all of a sudden.

The Ghillighast stared up at her in horror. Even Marn seized the wheels of his chair and attempted to manoeuvre himself backwards.

To all intents and purposes the Lady Belinda had been transformed into a squid.

Her clothes had dropped off her and her skin had turned tough, rubbery and mauve.

And there was a great deal more of it.

Now she had numerous lithe and densely muscled serpentine legs and they struck out in all directions, terminating in deadly flippers the size of sleds, so that she squashed one or two Ghillighast stone dead on the spot, even before she was aware of the very nature of her transmogrification.

Her two eyes were huge now, almond-shaped and like two rocks of amber; there was a desperate pleading in them and she looked at Daedalus in his chains, to get him to free her, but he was still.

Belinda flailed her new limbs and the remaining columns in the throne room trembled precariously.

'What has become of the Lady Belinda?' shrilled Simaf, clutching hold of his mistress's wings.

She shook him off. 'How am I to know?' She stared in horror. 'It's all the doing of Daedalus! It must be!'

'What do we do, madam?' asked Simaf. 'Shall we kill her?'

'Kill the Bride of Pesst?' screamed Meisha. 'Why, that is blasphemy, Simaf! No... it is Daedalus we must slaughter! And do it now before he causes worse disasters to befall us. We were fools to let the monster live even this long! Guards!' the Bride of Pesst?' screamed Meisha. 'Why, that is blasphemy, Simaf! No... it is Daedalus we must slaughter! And do it now before he causes worse disasters to befall us. We were fools to let the monster live even this long! Guards!'

Meisha regained some measure of composure when her most loyal Ghillighast guards advanced then, bearing their tiny but deadly silver daggers.

They saluted her calmly, as if nothing untoward was even going on around them, and then they advanced on the crouched figure of Daedalus.

'Slaughter him!' Meisha howled. 'Tear him to pieces! The Ghillighast will never live peacefully here on Valcea, or anywhere else, until Daedalus is killed!'

So the Ghillighast rounded on the apparently helpless elephant.

And Belinda, equally helpless, thrashed around her purple limbs.

Hers was a gurgling, oceanic lament, an endlessly salty caterwaul.

Marn tried to calm her and turned, breathless, to watch the killing of the hated Daedalus.

At last, under the manic, shrieked commands of the haggard bat queen; the Chiropteran High Priestess, Daedalus was about to die.

Marn licked his dry glacial lips and watched.

The Ghillighast raised their daggers to strike.

And with a tremendous wheezing groaning sound like the aeolian harp of Hades itself a crimson double-decker bus materialised smartly, stubbornly before them all.

'It's really happening,' said Garrett dully.

The room was now very hot. Blandish leapt up from his desk chair. It was metal and, like the walls around them, starting to scorch.

'We're really destroying the Nepotist Nepotist,' said Garrett. 'After everything. After all our years together. This is it.'

Blandish looked almost jubilant.

'And we've given ourselves a fighting chance. We destroy the commander of the Sahmbekarts, and give the fleet something to think about. We do what we always do we save the day.'

Timon didn't look impressed. 'And kill ourselves in the process.'

The noise was unmistakable now. A keen roar of protest from the engines beneath them. Blandish hardly dared think of what he had committed his beloved s.h.i.+p and crew to.

He knew the engines would already be cracking under the stress and he knew the engineers down below would already have died a terrible death.

But the Sahmbekarts couldn't do anything about this. They were stuck with the s.h.i.+p as it went down.

They might survive the crash-landing, but they stood only the same chance as Blandish and his fellows.

He would show them that he meant business.

The heat and the noise became unbearable. He knew that the bridge crew would have started slipping unconscious to the ground as the lights shorted out and the room began to shake.

Blandish found himself laughing uncontrollably as he himself sank to his knees and the room rocked, and the door slid open abruptly, to reveal the bridge beyond and the chaos out there.

The Sahmbekart commander filled the door frame. Over the tumultuous noise he screamed. 'What have you done?'

And then nothing.

Once more Iris was aloft.

She tried not to look down through the entire voyage. If she looked she would pa.s.s out for sure, and this was one of those times when pa.s.sing out was not a good idea. Instead she looked across at Fitz, in the clutches of his own owl, and he seemed all He was a brave boy, really, she thought. All the owls had come on this flight. They knew the way through the tunnels. Of all the races of the Enclave caught up in the blue Corridors, the owls seemed the most proficient. They seemed to scent, instinctively, the way to go.

She looked backward as they emerged, at last, from the swirling blue of the Corridor, and into the frigid air high above Valcea.

She drew in her breath at the sight of the owls bringing up the rear.

It was an impressive sight. It took twenty of them, or thereabouts, to carry the gleaming green egg between them. Since they were all coming on this a.s.sault on Valcea, they had brought their precious relic with them for safekeeping.