Part 14 (1/2)

'I come from no society. No establishment will have me.'

'I can see why.' The Vizier gave him and his dusty clothes a scathing glance. 'You are one of those hateful, self-appointed libertines who go running around and interfering.'

'In a manner of speaking.'

'Lord Vizier,' stammered Gharib. 'What will become of me?'

'Oh, be quiet,' said the gla.s.s Vizier, leaning forward to touch the librarian's knee. There was a rustling noise, as of debris clattering down a rock face, and Gharib, looking stricken, turned suddenly to stone. He was a pale limestone colour, only slightly less healthy than his usual shade.

'Unnecessary!' said the Doctor angrily.

'He is a silly pedant,' purred the Vizier. 'He was giving me a headache.'

'I can see right through your head. There's nothing inside it, let alone an ache.'

'I was cursed,' snarled the Vizier.'By my former mistress.'

'Don't tell me: the Scarlet Empress.'

'That vile harpy. I couldn't bring back the thief that had stolen her most prized possession, not by using any of my enchantments. And so she turned me out of the palace, out of the city, and trapped me here. In the backward society you see before you.' He wafted a gla.s.sy hand to indicate the scene in the square below, of which the Doctor hadn't been taking sufficient notice. He hadn't seen who was being brought before the torch-waving rabble.

'She turned you into gla.s.s.'

'And so I cannot leave this building,' the Vizier spat.'I am too precious.'

'And too fragile.'

'Not as fragile as you may think.'

'Tell me,' said the Doctor thoughtfully, his fingers busy all this while with tackling the knots that held him bound. 'What was the prize possession that you failed to return to the Scarlet Empress?'

The Vizier's eyes glittered red - the only two spots of natural colour in him.'You seriously expect me to tell you that?'

'It was worth a try.'

'It was something stolen ten years ago, by an evil pack of brigands and renegades. The Empress would do anything, give anything, employ anyone to get it back.'

The Doctor looked thoughtful again. 'I know.'

When he sat her and secured her inside his wicked-looking contraption, the Executioner explained that there were microphones all about her head. Everyone would hear each of her wails and screams; even her tiniest of gurgles would resound. He hoped she would put on a good show and go like a banshee.

Iris looked grim. 'You're really going to do this, aren't you?' She eyed the arms and legs of the device, as they hummed into life. Their pincers and blades began to flex.

'Of course,' said the Executioner with a tight smile. The loudspeakers crackled and she heard his next words booming around the town square. Instantly the crowd stopped to listen attentively. 'You are a visitor, a demon, and the only purpose of your existence is to -'

'Spare me the rhetoric,' she barked and was pleased at the way her voice carried out over the heads of the throng.'But I've got friends out there, somewhere. Other visitors...'

'Have you?' asked the Executioner eagerly. 'And they'll stop you from doing this...'

'I doubt it.'

One of the mechanical arms made an experimental slash in the air, drawing closer to her.

'Wait!'cried Iris.

The Vizier had opened theAja'ib like a prayer book, and was chanting over it. 'Go on,' said the Doctor, goading him. 'Show me what it can do.'

The Vizier's gla.s.s body was suffused with pink, as if in effort. The pages of the book began to smoke and the first thing the Doctor thought was that he was destroying it. Then he noticed that the pages were swarming with tiny, animated figures. Like holograms they s.h.i.+fted and crackled, drawing him in and becoming clearer all the time. The pages unfolded like a three-dimensional map and the more he stared, the more vividly he could see what was emerging from the text's vellum: the metal automata he had read about in those very paragraphs, exactly as he had imagined them, gliding through tendrils of smoke, slicing the air with bolts of lethal radiation. The Vizier chuckled, staring down at what he had conjured in his hands. The Doctor licked his dry lips.

'Very impressive,' he conceded. To himself he repeated the spell the Vizier had murmured. It seemed a simple enough formula. 'But aren't they very small? I thought, when you said a full manifestation...' He shrugged, as if disappointed.

'I can manage a full manifestation...' growled the Vizier.

At this point the voices of the Executioner and another voice - one he recognised - came blaring out of the night. For the first time the Doctor peered over the balcony and realised at a glance what was going on.

'Oh, Iris,' he moaned. 'How do you always get yourself into these things?'

'Ah,'said the Vizier. ”They're about to cut out her heart.'

'Hearts,' corrected the Doctor absently. 'Here, let me have a go.'

The Vizier gave him a mocking sneer, but rested the book on his lap.

The Doctor concentrated on the page where the book had opened. The previous image had cleared. He started to intone the words he had heard the Vizier say. Iris and the Executioner continued to squabble in full view of the crowd and he tried to block out of his mind the first affronted shrieks as the Executioner's apparatus set to tentative, teasing work.

'How dare you think you might match my skill?' jeered the Vizier.

The Doctor came to the end of the spell and found that he had meanwhile untied himself. He seized hold of the Aja'ib with both hands and jumped to his feet, just as the book started to smoke and rattle hard against his fingers. As if, he thought suddenly, something very large was trying to get out.

'You can't...'gasped the gla.s.s Vizier.

Yet he could.

The Doctor stood at the balcony and, as if summoned from some mysterious pocket dimension of which theAja'ib was the threshold, a distinct, incandescent form was taking shape in the air.

The crowd below had started to notice something going on above their heads.

Two vast purple wings sprouted out of the smoke. Scaled bats' wings, taloned and scarred, wildly beating. There were screams. Then a body emerged, as wide as the double-decker bus. Three shrieking heads thrashed at the end of three serpentine necks and multiple cries filled the stormy air with weird quaverings and glissandi. The creature bounded and descended, baying hungrily with three mouths, upon the crowd. The crowd instantly lost all interest in the ritual torture of Iris Wildthyme.

'A hydra,' the Doctor gasped in wonder.'I've conjured up a hydra!' He slammed the book, but the creature was free, capering horribly above the people, who were scattering now. Its cries drowned out theirs.

'What have you called up?' the Vizier said hollowly, drained of colour once more.