The Tomb of Valdemar

by Simon Messingham

  Cleverly, Romana seats herself next to Huvan. ‘It’s your decision. We don’t have the power to stop you. You must do what you feel is right.’

  ‘What happens to me?’ He is shouting again, frightened.

  ‘Who sorts me out?’

  ‘You do. You do it to yourself. Your powers are almost limitless. It is possible to start again, a new man who doesn’t remember any of this.’

  Unsurprisingly, Huvan is not best pleased to hear this.

  ‘What? A new man? That... that’s as good as killing myself.

  Don’t be so stupid.’

  ‘No,’ says Romana. ‘One day you will remember. I promise.’

  ‘You will be different but you will still be you,’ says the Doctor. ‘The man you should have been. Otherwise, look at Valdemar here. A million years of solitude before the next curious lot turn up. I said it wasn’t easy and I didn’t lie.

  Make the decision, Huvan, before you destroy everything.’

  ‘I can’t... I can’t...’

  ‘Decide!’

  So Huvan decides. Miranda Pelham weeps for him, surprising herself. The spectre of death still hangs over her, having so nearly taken her. What he had to do to himself... would she have had the courage? Yet another life ruined, all because of her own idiocy and short-sighted ambition.

  She cannot help looking at the giant creature that dreams here. Valdemar, the real thing, her fiction become reality.

  There is a nagging thought, a thought that won’t leave her.

  All those years ago, stumbling over the cult, writing the book.

  Had she really been the one doing the writing? If this big guy here has been asleep and dreaming and gathering all this knowledge for a million years, who’s to say he didn’t... ? No, it can’t be true. They couldn’t all be characters, could they?

  Who’s writing whose story here?

  ‘Of course,’ the Doctor is saying, ‘of course I knew all the time that my hypnotic suggestion would enable you to shake off his influence. You mustn’t take the credit for that.’

  Romana folds her arms once again. ‘Oh yes? So it had nothing to do with me at all, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, you’re young, inexperienced. You must expect to trip over occasionally.’

  ‘If you must know,’ Romana states calmly, ‘I think I had help from another source.’ She pats a tentacle that is wider than her. ‘Our friend here. I don’t think he’s quite as dormant as he makes out.’

  ‘What absolute poppycock!’ the Doctor bellows. ‘I’ll have to teach you humility, Romana. If you’ve any chance of becoming as clever and resourceful as I am –’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ says Pelham. ‘The universe nearly ended, all this around us and you two just stand there bickering.’

  They stand in front of her, unrepentant. ‘Miranda,’ says the Doctor. ‘You must learn to see things from the correct perspective. Now what are we going to do with you?’

  MIRANDA PELHAM

  She reels. The voice is deafening, booming round her head.

  She feels herself falling.

  MIRANDA PELHAM

  ‘What is it? Are you all right?’ Romana helps her to her feet.

  ‘I don’t know. Didn’t you hear it?’

  The Doctor shakes his head. ‘Hear what?’

  MIRANDA PELHAM STAY

  She puts her hand to her mouth and backs away from the body of the Old One. ‘It.. it’s him.’

  ‘Him?’ snorts the Doctor.

  ‘Doctor,’ hisses Romana.

  ‘I was only saying...’

  MIRANDA PELHAM STAY LEARN

  The words are more than words. She finds the language unfamiliar but there are pictures too, stories told by Valdemar beamed directly into her mind. He has been so far, understands so much, even knows about that which she fears so much. He can help her, teach her. God, there is so much they could do. She could learn to lose that fear. He knows how.

  ‘Miranda?’ asks the Doctor.

  She is laughing now, tears blurring her vision. ‘He needs me, Doctor. He wants me to stay... so much I can learn from him.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure.’

  She clasps his hands. How to make him understand, how?

  ‘Don’t you see? There’s nothing for me back there. Just that lousy Protectorate trying to kill me. Either that or old age.

  Valdemar wants me to stay, be his companion. And that’s what I’m going to do.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asks Romana. ‘After a while, it may become impossible for you to return. Realistically...’

  ‘Realistically? You call that real? Well if that’s reality, give me the dreams any day. I’m staying.’

  ‘You have to be sure...’ the Doctor begins. She cuts him off.

  She is manic, unable to stop laughing.

  ‘Oh just go, for heaven’s sake, before I wake up and change my mind.’

  ‘As long as you’re all right.’

  The laughter is crippling her, sending an agony of convulsions through her chest. ‘All right? I’m bloody terrified!

  Go, go now!’

  And, at last, they do go. All three of them. Miranda Pelham wipes the tears away and sits down next to her creation.

  There’s a lot of catching up to do.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing,’ says the Doctor, ‘how quickly things recover? Not just things either.’ He nods at Romana, at how fresh and young she is again. Too young, inexperienced. No, she is absolutely wrong as a companion, won’t do, won’t do at all. The world of Ashkellia is just as it is supposed to be.

  Unpleasant, hot and filthy.

  However, the gateway has disappeared, nothing there now but a patch of bare rock.

  ‘I hope she’ll be all right,’ says Romana, looking at the patch. ‘She seemed very nice.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ says the Doctor. ‘I do hope you’re not going to get all maudlin on me, I really can’t be doing with it, you know.’

  ‘Doctor,’ she replies with a warm, genuine smile. ‘Just once, try and be nice.’

  He mutters to himself, as if the suggestion that he is ever grumpy is the utmost presumption.

  ‘Well?’ says Romana.

  ‘Oh, all right. Just once. Come on, let’s get Huvan here into the TARDIS.’

  The boy, eyes betraying his childlike state, follows meekly behind. The Doctor gently – one could say respectfully –

  takes his arm. He and Romana both feel remorse, and guilt.

  They prompted Huvan to commit this devastating action upon himself. His trance-like emptiness is a sad reminder of his bravery. No matter what they do, he will never be the same again.

  They usher Huvan along to the blue box they left all that time ago. The Doctor pauses, perhaps hearing something in the tunnels. He shakes his head and unlocks the door.

  Together, he and Romana help Huvan inside.

  The door closes, just a blue box again.

  ‘Mas-ter?’ comes a welcome metal voice.

  ‘Hello K-9, you look much better.’

  ‘Doctor?’ asks Romana.

  ‘Oh, what now? Do you have to keep asking me so many questions? We do have a Key to Time to find, you know.’

  ‘What are we going to do with Huvan?’

  ‘Don’t rush me, don’t rush me. I’ll think of something. I always do. Now, where’s that first segment? What? Well, find it. Quickly!’

  And then, with the sound, the TARDIS disappears. Nothing is left, not even an imprint in the ground, to tell anyone they were ever there.

  Ashkellia is silent, unthinking. Outside the tomb the atmosphere still boils, the clouds still rain their perpetual orange showers. Nothing is left here; no palace, no space ships, no Valdemar. Even the hole in the planet’s crust, that provided the updraught to keep the palace afloat, has somehow healed over.

  Far away, a New Protectorate establishes itself over humanity, unaware of the fate of its best agent. And the Magus? Oh, the cult will live on, as cults do, but diluted and broken, eve
ntually splitting and dividing into a thousand fragments. Undoubtedly, Paul Neville will gain a martyr’s reputation that may, in time, become as infamous as the myth of Valdemar itself.

  We digress. Back to Ashkellia, where to detect any kind of movement we must return to the tunnels. Follow the howling and bellowing from that inhuman hybrid throat, the sound the Doctor so nearly heard. Through the tomb of Valdemar, it chases itself; the two become one, perpetually enraged, constantly fighting itself, tearing and mauling and rending.

  Its wounds are horrendous, yes, but somehow, never fatal.

  Ever.

  Chapter Sixteen

  And that was Ponch’s ending; simple as that.

  Strange, it hadn’t gone the way he’d expected it to at all. I mean, where was the big climactic fight? Yes, that would have been good: hordes of armoured soldiers suddenly appearing to help Hopkins, and then an invasion from the higher dimensions by the Old Ones, who had engineered the whole thing as a way of conquering the universe. That was more like it, a whole sight better than what he had actually come up with. For a start, this ending didn’t make sense; there were loads of holes in the plot if you looked for them.

  So the Doctor just realised there would be an alternate palace through the gateway, did he? And miraculously just happened to be right. Who would fall for that one? How come Hopkins and Neville got fused together and avoided the effects of the higher dimensions entirely? What is this higher dimension thing anyway?

  The real reason it doesn’t work is, of course, obvious. If Miranda Pelham had stayed behind in the higher dimensions with that big green thing, how could she have turned up here to tell him about it? Eh? Answer that one!

  Lots of reasons why this ending is no good. There are hundreds of better ones he could think of. Anything rather than that.

  Except, for some reason, Ponch knows he cannot change the ending. This is how it happened, he couldn’t change it even if he wanted to. There is a correctness, a smoothness, an... what was that word... an inevitability about this ending.

  Even that thing about Pelham seems right. Don’t ask him how he knows, he just does.

  He has been out in the tundra a week now. After three days he was caught by a couple of hunting ur-dogs, sent out after him.

  He had been sleeping inside one of the ancient barrow mounds, determined not to be afraid of the dusty bones and metal that were stacked inside, sculpted into strange ornate shapes from another, ancient age.

  The ur-dogs, rare and valuable tracking hounds, with long snouts and two tireless stringy legs, had sniffed him down to the grassy mound. Ponch remembers the fear that woke him, the snuffling outside. He had known exactly what had come for him.

  The old men of the township would have instructed the ur-dogs to keep his head unmarked. They would see to that first, ready for the fun they would have with the rest of him.

  He imagined their salivating muzzles, their sour breath over him as one held him and the other ripped, feeling his muscles stretched tighter and tighter until...

  Only their eagerness to make the kill had saved him. The ur-dogs whooped and gibbered, lit by the gleaming moon outside, savouring their rush into the barrow mound.

  Ponch remembers finding the rusty pike, running it through the first of the beasts: a stubby, yellow, furred thing with an almost human face beneath the hair. He had screamed like a beast himself.

  The second animal had dropped to its tiny, wizened forepaws and breathed short jolts of night steam towards him, its long tongue lapping up the stench of its partner’s howling death.

  It jumped, hard and quick, at him but Ponch was ready. He had clubbed its snout with the dagger he had grasped in his left hand. The force of its jump meant the blade sank deep. It was scrabbling all over him, screeching and biting with pain and anger. Ponch kept stabbing, given an advantage by the beast’s reluctance to sink its teeth into his face.

  At last, with the thing lying on top of him, breathing its sickening innards all over him, it stopped, and died, and that was that.

  He left two heads on top of the barrow mound, so they would know who had done this.

  Apart from that, Ponch has to admit to himself that the journey has been pretty quiet.

  For some reason, the story makes him think of his past.

  Perhaps it had been the old woman, perhaps she reminded him of his mother.

  Except that he remembers nothing about a mother. No family whatsoever. He tries to think about his childhood and can’t. Not that it has worried him before. Memories are a luxury here and, anyway, nothing ever changes. Just the same old foraging for furs in summer, the township in autumn, and the holing up for the inevitably terrible, culling winter. Waiting for the sun so they could start the whole thing off again. Only one day mattered, right at the end of the autumn, the one day around which all other days revolved; the day the guild sleds came out of the mountains to collect their treasures and distribute those precious gifts.

  Now, Ponch can clearly remember last guild day, and definitely one before that. Vaguely, there is the recollection of a third but he cannot be certain. Before that, they all blur into one. He guesses he would say he had fifteen or so summers behind him, but is sad that this life has ground memory from him like chaff from a millstone, scattering the details. How can Pelham’s story feel more real to him than his own past?

  He knows now why he has come here. The old woman, Miranda Pelham, wanted him to discover the real secret. He had come to the mountains, to the home of the guild sleds, to fmd out who he is. Why he lives the life he does.

  There is no mistaking that he is in the right place. The mountains here are oddly formed, regular, occasionally fortified with gigantic blocks of black stone.

  He sees the cylindrical watchtowers, the battlements and ramparts Ofrin once boasted of seeing when he claimed to have visited this place once long ago.

  No one has ever known people on these battlements. There is no movement of any kind. Of course, Janua lives here, the great god of the guild.

  But there are other stories.

  They say that it is the dead who inhabit the citadel of Janua, all the people that ever died, that this is where everyone goes when they eventually get killed; that they’re deep underground, and that the living provide furs for their warmth, to stave off that particular eternal cold. He remembers imagining their skeletons wrapped in fur, the teeth grinning and chattering.

  So this is where he must travel. There is a sharp drop to a faraway cave, right at the end of a long, overcast, snowy valley. Ponch can see it now. This is where he must travel.

  He thinks of the old woman, how kind and vibrant she was, despite her great age. How she laughed all the time, even when she was angry, if that’s possible, even when Ofrin threatened to kill her. She would not be afraid now, not of ghosts and phantoms.

  Even better, think of the Doctor, always jumping feet first into trouble, always ready to take on the worst with a smile, a quip and that familiar mocking ‘Well... ?’.

  Yes, be like the Doctor. You don’t know the dead live in there, you don’t know what lives in there, so until you do, what is the point in being afraid? You always have to find out for yourself.

  Bolstering himself up with this and many other new styles of thought, Ponch pulls the axe from his filthy fur coat and starts off into the valley.

  The wind blows hard against him as he plods along. The permanent daylight of the summer sun is partially obscured by the sharp crags. There are more shadows, more dark spaces to worry about. Ignore them, ignore it all and keep going.

  Ponch begins to hear sounds, noises he has never heard before. A grinding of metal, a kind of muffled roar of flame, deep below. He thinks of a fire, of the warmth and the lovely light on the cold long nights of trapping. The loneliness of so many months on your own, the constant vigilance and mistrust. Fire provides more than a physical warmth and he could really do with it right now.

  Nothing here in this wilderness but rock and snow, except that
which you make yourself. You had to grow up very quickly here. He hasn’t seen many children. They are kept well hidden, along with the priceless child-bearers. How many make it, get to have any kind of life? How did he make it?

  He wonders about the story. How old had Pelham said she had been? Forty-three? Was it possible people could live so long? So many questions. Despite his wariness, and the knowledge that he may never return from this place, Ponch thinks about a childhood he can no longer remember. It’s about time he sorted out the answers.

  He takes half a day to reach the black smudge at the far end of the valley. The ground here is weathered but artificial, smoothed and covered in some unfamiliar black substance.

  The guild sleds have worn tracks into its skin and Ponch follows them.

  All around him, the mountain has given way to the ancient citadel built into it. There is no natural rock left, everything has been shaped and carved, designed as a defence against some massive besieging force. Some time ago though, Ponch realises. The ironwork has rusted completely, the bricks and fortifications and steps have crumbled and worn smooth with age.

  Who does live here, he wonders? Who drives these sleds?

  Why do they need the furs so greedily?

  Ponch stops. No more questions, forget the questions, they’ll only get you killed. All you must do now is keep going.

  He moves into a dark cave, seeing it is actually an ancient archway, an entrance into the citadel. His breathing is hoarse and he can feel himself settling into a familiar watchful state of awareness, almost a trance, nothing but senses and instincts. The conscious mind, far too slow, must be subdued.

  The tunnel is lit, somehow. Ponch sees great rusted metal runners in the floors, tracks of some long-lost technology.

  Odd skeletal structures, with hooks and chains and levers, clink in the cold breeze. Still he has seen no life, not one living creature.

  He smells the familiar oily smell of the guild sleds. They are here somewhere.