Part 17 (1/2)

'Fire? Is this...' he searched for a word that would not seem too trivial. 'Relevant?'

'Oh yes. Believe me, yes. Fire killed Gaddis. A creature of fire killed the housekeeper at the Grange. Some sort of molten lava moulded into the flames killed Dobbs.' His voice was like ice. 'It is very relevant.'

They both stared into the flames of the fire in the grate, watched them lick orange, yellow and blue round the coal that Betty had thrown on. Watched the sparks and the smoke rise and twist up the chimney and out of sight.

'It is only fairly recently that fire has been a.s.sociated with h.e.l.l,' s...o...b..ld said. It seemed as good a place to begin as any. 'Dante, you will recall, saw h.e.l.l saw his Inferno as a cold place. The lack of heat, lack of warmth was a part of the suffering engendered there.'

'Easy to see how fire became a more potent symbol of suffering,' the Doctor said. 'It has been a.s.sociated with power ever since it was discovered. The power of Thor sending his lightning bolts down from the heavens; the breath of that most powerful of mythical creatures, the dragon.'

'But also of rebirth,' s...o...b..ld said. 'The phoenix rises from the flames, is born out of them.'

'But it rises from the ashes of its own destruction wrought by that very fire,' the Doctor pointed out. 'Is that what he's doing?' His voice drifted, became quieter and more distant. 'Is he out to destroy or to recreate in another image? Is he an alchemist, using the fire to bind his essential elements together? But if so, into what form?'

'Who?' s...o...b..ld asked.

'Nepath.'

'Not Lord Urton?'

The Doctor stared at him. 'Lord Urton is dead,' he said, his tone almost gentle, sad. 'Lady Urton is dead. Do you begin to understand now? The foreman at the mine is dead. We must destroy what they have become, what Nepath has made them.'

'Destroy them?' s...o...b..ld shook his head, this was becoming ever more difficult to comprehend. 'And these fire creatures of which you spoke?'

The Doctor stood up. One hand waved in the air dismissively. A flame shot up within the fire, echoing his action. The coal hissed and crackled as he spoke. 'I don't know,' he said, sounding tired and impatient for the first time. 'It's to do with the mine. Something Nepath found there. The stuff that Dobbs and I saw. Bubbling, liquid fire. Magma or lava or somesuch. And Nepath has a way of controlling it. He can make these objects with it, objects that can refas.h.i.+on themselves.'

'Through some mystic process, you said.'

'There's nothing mystic about it,' the Doctor snapped. 'That's just sales talk. The material he uses does it. That is what it does.' He had been pacing up and down in front of the fire. Now he stopped and snapped his fingers a rifle crack of sudden sound. One of the lumps of coal split in two, one half rolling down to the bra.s.s fire surround. 'Or is it using him?' he wondered aloud. 'What is Nepath after? What has it promised him?'

'You talk as if...' s...o...b..ld's throat was suddenly dry, and he swallowed. 'As if this material, this magma, were a living thing.'

'Yes,' the Doctor said quietly, his expression blank, as if he were just realising the same thing. 'Yes, so I do.'

As he stood motionless in thought, the flames seemed almost to freeze over the glowing coals.

A good fire was laid in the grate. The flames seemed almost to freeze over the burning logs.

Roger Nepath leaned forwards to watch the fire more closely. Behind the chair, Lord Urton stood stiff and still and silent. The flames moved again, tracing the movements they conveyed. The logs crackled and spat. The effect was a staccato, halting approximation of the speech it relayed.

'Some sort of liquid creature? Liquid fire? Molten rock? A single ent.i.ty. Is that possible?' The tall, yellow flames that approximated the form of a man resumed their dance back and forth across the grate.

'You tell me,' crackled a lower orange flame as it licked round a log. If you screwed up your eyes, Nepath thought, if you squinted at the patterns you could believe that you really were looking not at the fire but at a figure seated in a chair. The tip of the flames twisted, as if the figure's head were moving to watch the yellow flames' flickering progress.

'Not there yet, are you, Doctor,' Nepath said quietly. 'Nearly. But not quite.' He leaned back in the chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. 'And by the time you are, it will be too late. Far, far too late.'

Behind him he heard the door to the drawing room open. He did not need to turn to see who it was, he already knew.

'Come in, my dear.'

Lady Urton led the visitor over to stand beside Nepath's chair. They all stood, looking into the flames, watching the Doctor and s...o...b..ld as they continued their discussions.

'What is Nepath after?' a semblance of the Doctor's voice crackled. 'What does he value more than anything else in the world?' Again, the flame*Doctor stopped his pacing, seemed to turn to speak directly to the four people in the room watching. 'More than the world itself, perhaps?'

The Doctor was looking directly into the fire, as if searching for an answer to his question within the heat and the flames.

s...o...b..ld himself had no answer to offer. He stood up, stretching. The evening was drawing on. He went to the window and tugged aside the curtain. peering out into the dark. A smattering of water splashed against the other side of the gla.s.s. He could hear the rain outside now, could see a line of puddles forming amongst the slush of melting snow. Almost like a line of footprints, filling with water.

'It's raining,' he said.

'Temperature must be rising,' the Doctor replied absently.

'It is. The snow seems to be melting.' s...o...b..ld let the curtain fall and turned back to the Doctor. 'Is this significant, do you think? This rise in temperature?'

'Well,' the Doctor said slowly as he turned away from the fire. Behind him a yellow flame twisted across the coals. 'It isn't what usually happens after dark in winter.'

'I suppose not. So what does it mean?'

'What does anything mean?' The Doctor sounded sulky, as if annoyed that the answers were still evading him. 'You're the theologian.'

'That may be.' s...o...b..ld tried to keep his own tone light, hoping to lift the Doctor from his sudden gloom. 'But I think what we are missing is a meteorologist.'

'We're missing something, certainly.' He tapped his forefinger against his chin. 'Something obvious.'

'About Nepath? Some secret?'

'There is something about him, I'm sure. Some explanation, some clue. A key that will unlock the mystery for us.'

This seemed optimistic to s...o...b..ld. He doubted that any one piece of information, however pertinent, could explain everything that was going on. So much had happened, so much that was extraordinary, and in so short a time. 'Perhaps,' he hazarded, 'when we receive a reply to your telegram...'

'Yes,' the Doctor said quietly. 'Perhaps...'

Nepath gave a snort of laughter at this and clapped his hands together. 'Perhaps not, I think,' he declared. Shaking his head in good humour he turned to the two women standing beside his chair.

Lady Urton took a step back respectfully as Nepath smiled at Betty s...o...b..ld. She gave no indication that she was aware of him. She continued to stare fixedly into the fire. Her hand was at her neck, clutching the small pendant, the statuette of Agni the fire G.o.d. He could see it glowing faintly through the narrow gaps between her fingers, tiny flames licking the surface from within.

He reached out his hand towards her. 'May I?'

Now she did turn, did look at him, noted his outstretched hand. He beckoned with his fingers, encouraging. Her blank expression still fixed in place, Betty reached out with her free hand and gave him the screwed up paper.

The paper was rolled into a ball. She had clutched it so tightly and for so long that it was difficult to uncurl. Nepath carefully teased at the edges, unpicking the paper until he could smooth it out over his knee and read the immaculate handwriting.

Shaking his head, he read it again. 'Such presumption, Doctor,' he murmured. Then he looked up at Betty and smiled. 'Thank you, my dear. You have done so well, so very well. We are grateful.' He turned back to the fire. 'I am sorry that my sister cannot be with us. She would want to express her own grat.i.tude I am sure.'