officially anyway. He already knew he was greater than anything his professors could teach him. He needed more.
Oh, he had learned the usual arcane arts, even added to his store of scientific and medical knowledge, but he sensed a greater truth, beyond theurgy, beyond even him.
By this time, Neville had a reputation. He was a visionary, a fanatic, one who saw. His first group gathered around him.
He remembers those days with amusement, children practising useless ritual – the candles, the evocations, the chalk circles. Neville likes to think of these times as groundwork. They were a masterpiece of style over content.
The engine contained the parts but there was no power to drive it.
And then, there came the revolution. He remembers the slogan: ‘The oppressed masses of this evil empire will no longer tolerate centuries of idle cruelty.’ Dull, unimaginative, long-winded, like the revolution itself.
Neville, the young Neville, his hair already greying with the knowledge of a generation, was on Europa at the time, wandering the universe, looking for that which he needed, when the word came. His home, that moon with its palace, had been scorched. An Immolator Six capsule fired into the atmosphere from Robert Hopkins’s own personal starship.
Robert Hopkins, Chief Prosecutor to the New Protectorate, second only to the Virgin Lady High Protector herself.
Hopkins, an ugly man, who refused even basic plastic surgery to improve his appearance. Austere, and driven by a desire matching Neville’s own.
It was Hopkins’s aim, it was stated, his goal, to bring in the arch-necromancer himself, the Duke of the Second Quadrant, Paul Neville. Bring him back to Earth and personally behead him in front of his mistress. Oh, after a lengthy and just trial of course.
As for Neville, the news did not trouble him. The loss of his fortune was again predestined. He would make his way, armed only with his dark knowledge.
When he was twenty-eight, hiding in the slums of Sao Paulo city, Paul Neville read The Tomb of the Dark God, by some unknown, dipsy, utopian author, Miranda Pelham. The book changed his life.
Of course it was New Age nonsense. Of course it was crude and contained a fraction of the knowledge Neville needed. Yet something was planted in him: a seed, an idea. Enough to put him on the right path. He knew he had to meet Miranda Pelham.
How the times had changed. She still lived in luxury, in her own permanent time-share on a Caribbean island. He, who once would have commanded millions, was forced to travel incognito in the storage bays of hovercraft, his entire collection of books and magical equipment stuffed into an ageing sack.
Avoiding the New Protectorate guards at the dock, he walked to her beach hut. The apparent wealth there made him sneer. What could match the wealth he had grown up with?
Already, the island’s calm was dissipating. Troops were arriving. Property would be seized to house corrupt protectorate officials, who preached poverty but ended up as greedy as those they had overthrown.
Neville found Miranda Pelham on a sun lounger, sipping cocktails. He could not imagine anyone more ignorant.
She was no longer young, no longer the aspirant. Her hair was dyed platinum blonde, her skin a deep brown. Time had done its work. Neville threw back the black cowl covering his head and introduced himself. ‘I believe you,’ he stated simply.
Pelham, for all her faults, had been thorough. Neville had been right to track her down. Amused by him then, she had no idea of the extent and importance of the knowledge she had collated.
‘What do you want?’ she asked constantly, as night after night he studied the documents, the transcripts from a hundred planets and races, all traced with painstaking accuracy. All boiled down to the single root myth, the story of Valdemar.
A dark god from the beginning of time, released by the Old Ones to cut a deadly swathe through the universe. Finally trapped and buried in its tomb beneath a raging ocean, asleep and dissipated perhaps, but not truly dead. All the legends narrowed in to this one single termination. It had to be true. To Neville that was as clear as the sun shining.
Now he understood his destiny. His life was preordained, dreamed into existence by a sleeping god an eternity away.
Only him, no one else. He was Valdemar’s chosen son. He had looked up from the parchments, up in the warm inky night to the full moon of Terra. He seemed to see a face up there on that orb, a dark face, revealing itself to him at last.
Pelham was sleeping in the next room, unaware of the significance of the moment.
When the soldiers came, he and Pelham were ready. Even she had been forced to comprehend that she was about to lose everything.
On the night itself, they climbed into the motorboat and raced away from her burning home. Shots and cries came from the beach, the joy of destruction.
After an eternity they found refuge with some of the last remaining Elite, in a far-flung corner of the disintegrating empire.
Here, they planned. Pelham was sceptical... Perhaps she still is. Neville, however, was very persuasive.
His first major realisation was that he needed a psychic. All the legends spoke of Valdemar as being a force, a black shadow, an entity that needed life to contain its essence. All the legends spoke of this... this possession. The Centauri called it ‘Stoodlhoo’, the Xanir ‘Prah-Tah-Cah’, the Ogrons with their lumpy language simply ‘The Getting Into’.
Which is where Huvan is so necessary. More proof of the Doctor’s misunderstanding. You call Huvan a coincidence?
He comes from a half-remembered project from Neville’s university days, when he was still dabbling in science. Neville had been at home, randomly screening subjects for psychic potential. Even as a twelve-year-old, Huvan was off the scale.
Neville was guided even then by his dark master – the experiments, drugs and surgery to stall the boy’s adolescence, to prolong forever the time when psychic potential reaches its maximum, the body in a constant state of war with itself. It was worth the emotional turmoil, worth the tantrums and fevers of puberty, for now, twenty years later, Huvan is the most powerful psychic force in the galaxy.
Neville is glad he had not had the brat killed.
Neville now had a host for the master; the hardest work was over. All that remained was to find the resting place, the tomb beneath the sea.
He and Pelham wasted three years scouring planets with high percentages of water until Neville realised that perhaps the legend described a different type of sea. He was running out of funds and so his enforced patronage by fellow displaced Elite families began. He and Pelham created a fanciful story of wealth and power to encourage this patronage. It helped that the author still possessed a reputation amongst these decadent idiots.
These years of searching and begging and constant failure seem a blur to Neville – so many setbacks, so many near misses.
For Hopkins was still hounding him, determined to bring him in. He became Neville’s nemesis. They met once, at a starport on Centauri. An elaborate trap, set in motion by an impoverished Elite governor, desperate to retain the last leavings of his wealth.
Neville remembers the encounter, in the doorway of the orbital shuttle, the soldiers running. Hopkins’s twisted face, slavering with anticipation, then disappointed as Neville operated his transmat-bracelet. Hopkins’s face fading away, never tiring, disbelieving.
Since then the clumsy fool has not even been close. Neville has outsmarted him all the way.
And now Ashkellia, that nowhere in the middle of nowhere, further even than the outer colonies, at the very limit of travelled space. Ashkellia, the tomb of Valdemar, and the Doctor. Spread your sedition, Doctor. Send your girl to stir up trouble amongst my lackeys. Nothing happens here without my knowledge, without my seeing it happen. Do all those things.
But you will re-power this palace.
Do you understand? This is no amateurish expedition stumbling by accident across an ancient burial site. This has all been foreseen; dreamed of centuries ago by a creature so
powerful, it could die and design its own resurrection through me. Through me!
The time is right, Doctor and all you others, the Time is Right. The Stars are Right.
Romana raises her arms and dives. Below, a benevolent face looks up. It is good to feel herself stretch through the air, those brief fragile moments of sensuality before she impacts.
The mosaic face dissolves into a thousand fragments.
The water is cool and clear, exactly what she needs. Rather than rising, she thrusts forward with strong strokes to the end of the stone pool. She feels she has somehow transcended herself; it has been a long time since she last swam. She has become a new kind of creature, one for whom only motion matters. She twists and starts out for the other end once more, springing away from the mosaic tiles. The pool is circular, like so much here, and perfect. No thought, just action; the silent void of water.
Five minutes later, Romana surfaces with a gasp of simple, joyous laughter. She shakes her head and gulps in the warm air. She settles back and floats, looking up at the blurred, shadowed ceiling high above. The mixture of scents from the jasmine plants around the pool do not quite overpower that clean refreshing smell of fresh water. Heaven. Absolute heaven.
‘I thought you were never coming back up.’ A voice, changing everything. ‘You must have the lungs of a Birostrop.’
For a moment, Romana cannot place the voice. She swivels her head and sees the golden-maned man watching her.
Stanislaus. Tenniel Stanislaus.
‘I’ve never seen this pool before. The palace must have created it just for you. It’s nice.’
Not as stupid as he looks, thinks Romana, strangely embarrassed that she has been observed revealing her emotions. And dressed as she is in this flimsy white one-piece.
‘Why don’t you dive in?’ she says, trying to keep her voice even. Even though the Doctor has asked her to mix with these people, she is reticent. Why, she does not know.
Perhaps Stanislaus is the one sane person amongst them, a kind of lever into the hearts and minds of the others. Perhaps some maturity is lurking there after all.
‘All right!’ He grins enthusiastically and hits the water like a bomb.
Romana hauls herself out of the pool. Stanislaus has been attempting to prove his own breath-holding abilities and surfaces yet again, lips turning blue with cyanosis.
‘I think you’d better come and have some breakfast,’ says Romana. ‘Before you drown.’
Stanislaus grins feebly, blinking away tears of effort.
Romana walks to the cane table, laid as it is with amphorae and fresh fruit. Water follows her on the stone-flagged floor.
She sits and pours herself a drink. Stanislaus follows, dabbing at himself with a towel.
‘I must say,’ Romana says as she pours for him, ‘this palace can be extremely civilised.’
‘It’s your taste, Romana. You know how to pick and choose what you want. We want everything now, all the time.’
‘You must learn to manage your imagination.’
‘Easier said than done. This palace can give you anything you wish for.’
Romana smiles. ‘Careful what you wish for... And what about Paul Neville?’
‘What about him?’
‘What does he wish for?’
Stanislaus screws up his face and thinks. Romana winces at the effort this must take. ‘He is going to give us back what the New Protectorate took.’
‘How?’
‘Valdemar.’
‘And what has he told you Valdemar is?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Romana.’
They stare at each other. His eyes are blue, piercing blue.
The water is drying on them. ‘I need to get dressed,’ says Romana. ‘And no doubt the lovely Hermia awaits.’
Stanislaus whoops. Playfully, he flicks his towel at her.
‘Yes,’ she says calmly. ‘Don’t do that again.’
She stands, relishing his discomfort. ‘And I wouldn’t believe everything Paul Neville told you either,’ she continues. ‘Do you know the old saying, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”?’
‘No.’
‘If you want something, the usual method is to work for it.
What Neville is offering you has a price. You just don’t know it yet. Goodbye.’
And with that she leaves for her room. ‘Wait! Wait...’ His yells end when she closes the pool-room door.
Unfortunately, Romana does not make it to her room, not yet anyway. Someone is lurking in the shadows of the corridor.
Feeling distinctly underdressed, she has a good idea who this lurker might be.
She will have to brazen it out. ‘Huvan!’ she snaps, turning to face him. ‘I would rather you didn’t follow me around.’
He is sheepish, genuinely ashamed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I couldn’t help it.’ He steps out of the shadows. What is he wearing? A black T-shirt with some kind of poorly printed motif emblazoned on the front, a crude joke involving the unintelligible word ‘smeg’ that is neither funny nor interesting. Tight black jeans and white shoes. And when did he last wash that ginger hair? Honestly, does Neville make him wear these things? Is it some form of punishment?
‘Huvan,’ she sighs. ‘What do you want from me?’ If only she had brought that towel with her, anything to shield herself from that stare.
‘I... I...’ he stammers, ‘I... just want to... protect you...’
‘Oh, grow up!’ Romana snaps, tired of these adolescent rantings. ‘Stop mooching around after me!’
She tries to walk away but something stops her. Something not herself. Her hearts suddenly pound in her chest. The power, magic, whatever it is, forces her to turn and face Huvan once more. He is smiling in the shadows.
‘I saw you in there, I saw you speaking to him. Don’t do it again.’
Romana stays silent. How is he doing this?
He continues. ‘Don’t worry. I could never hurt you. Ever.’
The force is gone and so is he. Rage bubbles inside her.
How dare he possess her in this way!
Before her temper is brought back under control, before she goes off looking for the boy and regrets what she says, she stomps back to her room and locks the door, sick of Huvan, sick of being watched.
The morning ritual. Just the thing to get you going, a spot of black magic before breakfast.
The Doctor follows the acolytes into what he remembers as the large piazza where the young ones held their masque. It is all very different now. These children, they know not what they do.
He conceals himself behind some purple drapes put up especially for the occasion. Whether or not Neville already knows he is here is not the point. One has to keep up the traditions.
The ex-masquers, in their black robes, shuffle up to a small raised dais that emerges from the floor. They raise their arms, chanting words that seem to the Doctor harsh and cobwebbed with age. Words from another aeon.
The Doctor feels a cold draught whip round the piazza.
Now, is that atmospheric control or something else?
Paul Neville enters in the full regalia – cloak, staff, beard.
‘Valdemar!’ he bellows. The acolytes kneel and murmur the appropriate responses.
Actually, the rest of the cabal is rather dull. The Doctor watches but with no particular interest. A mishmash of occult rituals common the galaxy over to groups with nothing better to do. All designed with one aim in mind, to get the psychic juices flowing. He vaguely recalls a church, back on Earth, twentieth century. The Master and the trouble he caused. Forget it; a different age, a different Doctor.
The Doctor supposes this mumbo-jumbo might actually do it; it might convince the palace to switch itself on. He doubts it though. For the real work to be done, for the whole thing to get going, Neville would need the power of a genuine psychic prodigy, and he has seen no evidence of one here. In fact, these decadent children would have trouble pulling a rabbit fr
om a hat.
‘Ah!’ Realisation hits him. He claps his hand over his mouth. The murmuring continues. He has thought of a way out.
His thinking has been flawed. What would be so wrong about restoring the power to the palace? There’s nothing Neville could do without a psychic key to utilise that power.
All right, the lights would come on and there would be a lot of beeping, but without the psychic control of the Old Ones, the palace would just idle, turning over like an engine in neutral.
Restoring power is not without its risks, the Doctor admits, but once he has the Key to Time fully reassembled, he could always come back and close it down again. For once, he would have to leave a job temporarily unfinished. But the stability of the entire universe was at stake. He couldn’t be expected to be in two places at once.
The Doctor nods to himself. Very well. Get the power on, find Romana and get on with the mission. There seems to be no other way.
That’s not to say he has to make it easy for Neville...
The chanting has reached its inevitable shouting climax.
Neville is on his knees, sweat pouring out of his robes, screaming for his master. ‘Valdemar! VALDEMAR!’
The drapes by the entrance rustle in the cold wind. The Doctor hasn’t bothered to stay for the end.
He waits for Neville in the control room of the Old Ones. He has draped himself over one of the baroque instrument panels, scarf dangling. He appears completely calm, just waiting. He pops a jelly baby into his mouth.
A sound, in the doorway. The Doctor grins. ‘Knock, knock,’
he says. ‘Hello Paul.’
Neville’s eyes glitter from his exertions. ‘You wanted to see me?’
‘Yes, I did want to see you.’ The Doctor leaps up. ‘Yes, I did.
How was the black mass? Very strenuous, I should imagine.
If you want to go around raising demons and the like, I’d make sure you have a vigorous warm-up beforehand.’
‘I take it you wanted to see me for something more important than this nonsense.’
‘How about I get the power back on for you?’
The Tomb of Valdemar Page 9
