The Tomb of Valdemar

by Simon Messingham

  Neville hides his surprise. ‘You can do it?’

  ‘Of course I can do it! The question is, do you really want it done?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Restoring the power won’t get you what you want. You should know that.’

  Neville is staring up at the controls. He is bunching his fists.

  The Doctor grabs those fists. He stares into Neville’s face.

  ‘Nothing for nothing, Paul. This is a negotiation.’

  Neville pulls away. ‘I would do anything. Anything.’

  ‘Now that’s not a very good opening gambit, is it?’ The Doctor is casual again. ‘I mean, the essence of negotiation is that we slowly reach an agreement, bargaining our way to...’

  ‘Shut up. What do you want?’

  The Doctor considers. ‘Return myself and Romana to the tomb. Release Pelham from wherever you’re keeping her.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Neville laughs, genuinely amused. ‘You give me the universe and that is all you want? I am not an idiot, Doctor. What is down there?’

  ‘Just my ship. I promise not to interfere with whatever you want to do.’

  Neville considers.

  Why is the Doctor feeling hot all of a sudden? Why can’t he get that line out of his mind: ‘Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all for Mephistophilis’? Faustus, Act One, Scene Three. Don’t think about it.

  ‘You don’t believe I will be able to use the power, do you?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say.’

  ‘You think I don’t know what I’m doing?’

  ‘Do you want this bargain or not? Because I’m tired of listening to you.’

  Neville smiles, his perfect teeth shining. ‘Doctor. How can I refuse?’

  The Doctor hears a rushing sound in his ears. Why is his conscience acting up? It isn’t fair, why should such a choice be left to him? He forces himself to think of the Key; the consequences of failure should he not collect all six segments. He thinks of the end of the universe.

  It is as if he is no longer in control of his actions. It’s not possession or anything like that; he has come to this conclusion logically. Rather, it is as if someone has fed this intention into his mind; cut off any pathways to alternative actions; guiding him inexorably towards that which he knows he has to do. As if he has been hoodwinked.

  What he is doing is right; he can’t put his finger on any flaws, any way out of the necessity to restore the power.

  ‘Doctor, do it,’ says a panting Neville. ‘Do it now.’

  Feeling like the victim of some arcane confidence trick, the structure of which he is unable to comprehend, the Doctor snaps his fingers and the power comes on.

  Something happens. All around the palace lights and sounds, operating from instruments previously hidden or ignored, suddenly emerge like a new morning. In the piazza, the lazy cultists are astounded by the sudden shifting of their architecture. Nothing stays still, even the floor is moving as if working its way through some carefully rehearsed ballet.

  Hermia, Stanislaus and the others clutch at the trundling furniture, certain that all their suspicions are well-founded.

  The palace is full of devils.

  Romana sees her room begin to grow, the wood of the wardrobe expanding and darkening, as if previously only sketched in. Her bed, in fact everything, becomes more defined, though she had never realised it lacked that definition.

  Huvan claps his hands and laughs. The music in his head, that sweet noise that has lodged itself in there ever since his arrival, swells and layers. He feels in tune with the palace.

  His poetry rises from its squalid piles, the scribbled sheets hanging frozen in front of him. Huvan yells like an ape. He did this. He has made it happen.

  He has never been so happy.

  In the control room, Neville is lost in his rapture. He is weeping as he stares at the returning life. Somewhere deep inside the palace, great cogs are turning. Neville touches this, feels that, watches the swells and transformations of the magic of the Old Ones. ‘It’s alive!’ he roars. ‘IT’S ALIVE!’

  As for the Doctor, he just looks, his usually animated face stern and unmoving. He is perhaps the only still object within this palace, a centre, a void.

  He watches Neville’s rapture with but one thought in his mind. What have I done? What have I done?

  Deep down beneath the skin of Ashkellia, a great spin is beginning. Particles, invisible microscopic particles, are charging up ready for their planet-spanning marathon.

  Machinery a million years old and more prepares itself to begin work again, after all this time.

  Inside the pyramid, the tomb of Valdemar comes to life.

  The great gateway to the tomb, huge as a tower block, lights up. Bolts and locks slide into place. A pattern appears, apparently growing from the metal. The image is that of a five-pointed star.

  The door shakes. It rattles, and blows of indescribable force hammer into it. Something is pounding, a force that has lain dormant for a million years. Dormant no longer.

  Chapter Seven

  At last, the changing ceases. The palace seems brighter, more focused than before. All feel the difference, as if they had just awakened from a strange, elusive dream.

  The Doctor sits and waits for Neville to go back on his word.

  Once the theurgist has got over his excitement, he calls for Kampp. The unimpressed, impassive butler takes the Doctor by the arm.

  ‘You wanted to see Pelham, Doctor,’ says Neville. ‘Off you go.’

  The Doctor nods. ‘And Romana? I don’t suppose you’re going to let her go, either?’

  Neville scratches his beard, eager for this to be over. ‘She has her uses. It seems my young ward, Huvan, has taken rather a liking to her.’

  ‘This way, please,’ says Kampp silkily, pulling the Doctor’s arm just a little too firmly.

  ‘Look, I’ve got work to do,’ says Ponch, ‘and I think I’ve guessed what this is all about. Is there a Valdemar there or not? Why don’t you just tell me?’

  The woman scowls. ‘You can’t stop me mid-flow. You’re destroying all the cumulative tension. I get enough stick as it is. If it’s not my plots that are too complicated, it’s my characters. Now they’ll have an excuse to attack my style as well. Trying to be clever but no content, that’s what they’ll say. Hell, we live in a godless age. Can’t you give a girl a chance?’

  ‘Girl?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Footsteps in the snow behind them. Ponch whirls around, ready for an attack. It is Ofrin. He yells. ‘You gonna help me with these hides or do I have to knock your brains out?’

  Particles of ice crystallise in his great beard.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’

  Ofrin blinks and spots Pelham. ‘You? Where did you get to... last night?’

  ‘Good morning.’ She turns, obviously in some great arthritic pain. Ponch is surprised to notice she has turned paler since they sat down.

  ‘Great ending by the way,’ Ofrin says softly to the woman.

  ‘Lots of fighting and that’s what we all want, innit? Ponch!’ he bellows again.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m coming. So, the ending’s about fighting?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The woman looks at the snow. ‘Perhaps it changes depending on who hears it.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I think you should stay for the end. I don’t think I’ve got long left. If I don’t tell it now, I may never tell it again.’

  ‘Ponch, don’t you dare.’

  Ponch turns to the bearded giant. He has never stood up to Ofrin in his life. ‘I’ll be there soon. I’ve got to hear this.’

  Ofrin starts to growl. Ponch has already said enough to get himself killed. He will have to fight.

  ‘Leave us, Ofrin. Ponch will be along shortly.’ The woman is staring at the giant, kindly but unblinkingly.

  ‘But I... the work...’ Ofrin stutters.

  ‘This is work.’


  As Ponch watches, he sees Ofrin flap at his own face as if bothered by a snow-fly. The big man’s eyes, almost hidden in his hair, screw up as if grappling with some insoluble problem. ‘It won’t take too long,’ says Pelham.

  Ofrin nods. As if he has forgotten something, he turns and clomps back to the growing settlement, muttering angrily.

  Ponch is impressed.

  ‘Right,’ says Pelham, settling on to the tundra bank again.

  ‘No more interruptions.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. Mind you, you’ve only got yourself to blame.’

  He looks around at his new surroundings, new but so, so familiar. The bare metal room, the locked door. Only the padded, restraining chairs separate this from the hundreds of other cells he has been locked into. And Miranda Pelham, tired and bruised, strapped next to him.

  ‘I thought something was up,’ she says, ‘despite my rather limited view of the world at the moment. What happened?

  How did you get the power back on?’

  The Doctor is not listening; he is thinking through all the possible permutations of escape.

  ‘Doctor?’ she insists, breaking his concentration.

  ‘Do you have to ask so many questions? You’re worse than Romana.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she snaps, sarcastically. ‘I’ve been stuck in here for a day now, without a word to anyone. Typical that when Neville finally sends me someone, he doesn’t want to talk. Anyway, I thought that your Romana seemed very intelligent.’

  The Doctor ponders. ‘Hmm, she started well...’

  ‘Doctor. The power?’

  He realises Pelham, for all her seeming innocence, knows a thing or two about interview techniques. She isn’t going to let go.

  ‘It’s perfectly simple. The power was never off.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Let me put it this way. When a person is asleep, they’re still alive, aren’t they? Everything is still switched on; otherwise, they’d be dead. Sleep is simply a different form of consciousness. I was an alarm clock, telepathically speaking.’

  ‘So you gave Neville exactly what he wanted. And ended up here.’

  ‘Oh, I expected Neville to go back on his word,’ the Doctor replies, indifferently. ‘They always do.’

  ‘Then why the hell did you switch the palace on?’

  The Doctor cannot answer. He doesn’t know. Or maybe ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’. ‘Don’t worry, there’s nothing he can use here,’ he says, avoiding the question. ‘Oh, the quality of the catering will probably improve, but it won’t help him with Valdemar. I must get back to the TARDIS. At any cost. No, I don’t think he can do any particular harm.’

  Pelham shakes her head. ‘If you had known anything about Neville...’

  ‘If I had... ! All right, tell me about Neville. That’s obviously why he has put me in here with you.’

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘We’ve got nothing else to do. It all started...’

  ‘No, no,’ he replies, irritated, ‘the short version. I need to be out of here, very quickly. He plans to reawaken Valdemar, doesn’t he? Why?’

  ‘Revenge, power; to regain those possessions and lands lost to him. It’s a good story, I fell for it myself. And not just me.

  It’s ten years since Neville became the Magus of the cult of Valdemar. From my little book, and a club of a handful of nutters, the cult has become the most powerful magical organisation in the New Protectorate.’

  The Doctor turns to look at Pelham. He wonders at her motives. She isn’t stupid, she isn’t easily swayed, so why is she here?

  ‘I was afraid.’ She supplies an answer for him. Her bright blue eyes darken for a moment. To the Doctor she seems, for the first time, old. ‘He was fanatical, ruthless, charismatic. I fell for him, I guess. I lost everything in the revolution and hanging around with him seemed a good idea at the time. I was thirty-five years old. Old being the operative word. You know, back in the old days, a long way back, all you got was about thirty-five years. Now, all you get is about a hundred.’

  The Doctor hears the tremor in her voice. Miranda Pelham is afraid of her own mortality.

  ‘Valdemar was my life’s work,’ she continues. ‘I may never have believed it but Neville is good, very good. If there was some chance, any at all... Somehow he managed to raise all this funding and I really didn’t have anything better to do.

  Like you, however, I’m starting to regret that decision.’

  Pelham sneaks a glance at the Doctor and he realises there is something she’s not telling him. ‘And it was as simple as that?’ he asks, probing. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ She keeps her face straight. ‘What about you? I still don’t know anything about you. You could be Valdemar himself for all I know.’

  At last, the first restraint comes loose. The leather snaps apart and the Doctor raises his freed right arm. ‘I might, at that,’ he says mysteriously. When she flinches he gives her his disarming smile. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘How did you do that?’

  He unwraps himself from the remaining restraints.

  Distracted, he replies, ‘You know, if I spent less time answering questions and more time getting on with the job, I’d never get into half the trouble I do get into.’ He moves to unravel her restraints.

  ‘One thing, Doctor. You said Neville couldn’t use the power of the palace. How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Who said I was sure? I’m taking a chance and I don’t like it. However, Valdemar is not what he thinks it is. Whatever is down there in that tomb, it’s not some sleeping all-powerful god. For Neville to achieve anything, he would need a highly disciplined psychic controller. A telepath of unbelievable sensitivity. And that, Miss Pelham, only occurs naturally in the human race about, ooh, once every thousand years. The chances of Neville having one on board are negligible.

  Obviously, if that were the case, the danger to the universe would be... ah, there we are.’

  Most of the restraints are off but Pelham does not move. In fact, as she lies there her strong face drains of colour. She stares at him and he wonders whether she is going to be sick.

  ‘What? Come on, come on, chop chop.’

  Her mouth moves but the words don’t emerge. He puts an ear to her lips and feels warm breath trickling into his head.

  ‘Tell me,’ he says.

  ‘You...’ The words are whispered. ‘You haven’t met Huvan, then?’

  ‘Huvan? I’ve heard the name.’ He goes cold just as the cell door is opened. He barely hears Kampp enter the room.

  ‘Time enough, Doctor,’ the butler purrs.

  He feels light, gorgeous. The pain, the black dog that hounds him, biting at his confidence, ruining his life, has gone.

  Huvan doesn’t like to admit it, but he feels good. Life is not the empty black hole it has always been. He wouldn’t do it in public, he wouldn’t want anyone to know, but he can’t help smiling.

  It must be the Lady Romana. It has to be. She walked into his life like an angel, out from the tomb. He couldn’t breathe when he saw her; that’s how he knew. And now he cannot bear to be in the room with her, so certain is he that he will mess everything up. She brings meaning to him. Oh, that’s good; that’s a good line. Better write it down now before he forgets.

  Huvan sits up. He scribbles on the yellowed paper, not realising that the pencil is six feet away, writing on its own, stabbing through the air over his table. He just wants to get the line committed; he is already sixty-three lines into his

  ‘Ode to Romana’, the work he will present to her when it is done. Isn’t it amazing how a man can write the truth about his feelings, when speech is so ugly and stunted? Visions of her gratitude overwhelm his imagination. She will fall to her knees, tears in her eyes.

  Even the palace has changed since she arrived. Huvan knows there is a presence here, something he cannot explain, something not even the Magus can explain, he bets.

  All his life he has known h
e is special. The Magus tells him often enough, has worked on him enough. Huvan remembers the endless operations, painful operations; so much a part of his growing up; they became normal, even attractive. Every time he resurfaced on the operating table, Neville’s face was there, reassuring him it was all for his own good, that he would have died without these messy procedures.

  Huvan is afraid of nothing, he is certain of that. Nothing except Hopkins, the creature that would destroy them all.

  And even he has paled, a childhood nightmare.

  Inevitably, work on the poem is disrupted by more rewarding musings. This new lightness he feels has not served to help him forgive. He thinks about Hermia, that blonde witch, the one he would have given his life to. Until Romana. How mistaken he had been. Smiling contentedly, Huvan settles back on to his bed. The pencil drops to the floor with a wooden plunk. Time to go over the retribution, the punishments; those deceptive blue eyes, that flawless skin, those caustic snarls she gave him when all he wanted to do was be nice...

  The door opens and breaks into his fantasies. The Magus himself.

  Instantly, Huvan is up and on his feet.

  ‘Relax, my boy,’ says Neville, in that brown, warm voice of his. ‘I trust you are well.’

  How can Huvan explain his new self? How can speech describe what he is becoming? And it is all thanks to the Magus, of that there can be no doubt.

  ‘You do not need to speak,’ says Neville. ‘I can see.’

  ‘What’s happening to me?’ asks Huvan.

  ‘Are you in discomfort? Pain?’

  ‘No. The opposite, Magus. I feel... born again.’

  The older man smiles. ‘Good. That is good. I have rekindled the power of this palace. Can you feel its blood running around us, in the air, beneath our feet? This is your time Huvan, you have much reason to be happy. At last, the universe will understand what you are, what I have made you. We live in exciting times.’

  Huvan likes it when the Magus talks like this. ‘What...

  what..’ he asks, stumbling over the words, ‘what is it you want me to do?’