by M. J. Baker
"Lovely job, if I do say so myself. I should have tuned up this old thing years ago," he said, patting the console. "The Doctor would have thanked me, not to mention Socrates."
He started back towards the temple for the third time in as many hours. The Warrior knew that, at this very moment, his earlier self was being led back to the temple to face trial.
Which meant everyone would be looking the other way.
Chapter 5
It took the Warrior longer than he'd hoped to reach the temple and find another entrance. The cave in which he'd met Ohila would be heavily guarded and the entrance he'd been frogmarched in and out through was on the other side of the temple – too far away and he would risk running into himself. He unclipped his sonic screwdriver from the bandolier across his chest and set it to work as a sonar. He clambered over amber terrain in a wide arc around the surface-level perimeter of the temple, thrusting the silver device into any nearby cave or shadowy crevice as he went. Eventually, the dull, rattling sound of the sonic changed to a high-pitched whistle as he waved it over a vertical crack in a small boulder. An opening had been found.
The Warrior puzzled at the crack for a moment, recognising some form of dimensional trickery but unable to grasp its nature. After tilting his wizened neck to an uncomfortable angle, his head snapped up and he boggled at it in disbelief. It was a perfectly ordinary boulder, no bigger than his head, with a thin fracture running up it. Except when it wasn't. The Warrior, eyes fixed on the crack, took one long stride to the left. The rock was unchanged. He side-stepped back to his original position and continued to the right. Nothing. The Warrior continued to encircle the boulder, tilting his head as far as a humanoid neck would permit, getting closer, further away, from below, from above. Finally, he caught it. Looking down at the crack in the boulder from atop a larger rock, he spotted the crack widen ever so slightly. He moved his head back to where it had been and the crack constricted. He continued to move his head forwards and the crack dilated like a pupil. Now a round tunnel entrance gaped open in the side of the stone
"This is Time Lord technology!" he blurted out, affronted.
The crack was bigger on the inside.
Angular misdirection: a crude form of dimensional engineering that the Time Lords are so smug about having invented. The rock was exactly as it appeared – a small, cracked rock with, the sonic told him, a cavernous tunnel behind it. The Sisterhood had carved an entrance but placed it in a localised corridor dimension running parallel to the crack and pointed it in this direction. Everywhere else the entrance was invisible and intangible but from this angle, and only this angle, the Warrior could see it. Primitive by Time Lord standards but otherwise incredibly advanced.
Too advanced for Karn.
The Warrior thought for a moment. If the corridor dimension was visible here then he'd have to enter through the tunnel entrance from this angle or the crack would close again. Which meant…
"Oh, I'm getting too old for this nonsense," he said wearily, backing up slightly to get a running start. He peered over the edge at the entrance below, which had shrunk into a crack once again. In two enormous bounds, he leapt off the edge of the rock and down directly at the crack, which remained stubbornly closed during his descent.
'Geronimo!' a delighted little voice at the back of his mind squealed.
Gallifreyans have an innate sense of time passing, whatever the rotation and orbit of the planet they're on, so when the Warrior awoke he instantly knew he'd only been unconscious for a minute. Though he'd never actually tested his instincts when it came to time; it's hard to keep track when you have a malfunctioning TARDIS.
He was lying on stone steps in a dank tunnel, a trickle of dull amber sunlight seeping in through a crack in the wall at the top of the stairs, a mirror image of the one he'd seen earlier. Evidently, he'd found the way in. As he sat up, a dozen torches lining the walls of the tunnel burst into life at once. The Warrior could see flickering shadows in a torch-lit corridor at the bottom of the stairs. He stood up, dusted off his jacket and paused to gather his thoughts.
His acute sense of timing also made him fairly certain that his younger self was just arriving at his cell. That would allow him a Karnian hour until the trial began, another hour for it to take place and then a little under half an hour before his younger self would reach his TARDIS and return to the starting point: space and time currently occupied by his own TARDIS. He would have until then to get his answers and leave before things started overlapping.
There were only two problems with this plan. The first was that the Warrior had no idea where to start or how to get around the temple. When he'd arrived on Karn, he'd tuned into Ohila's thoughts telepathically so could just about gleam where she was and how to get her attention without causing any upset. But now…he could hardly ask directions when he was a wanted, albeit supposedly captured, man. There was nothing to be gained by invading the Sisterhood of Karn's temple a second time except to settle a nagging question. Maybe Ohila was right, he did have a war to get back to after all. Perhaps one unanswered question, however irritating, isn't worth dying over. The life of a time-traveller is fraught with things happening out of order, answers to questions you haven't asked yet, partings before meetings, people wanting to kill you before you even found out if you deserved it. Which brought him to the second problem with his plan: the thin, sandy-haired man in a yellow tunic stampeding up the stairs towards him.
With a sparkling blue spear.
Chapter 6
Instinctively, the Warrior faked right and ducked down to his left. The stampeding man took the bait, tripped over the Warrior's outstretched boot and went sprawling through the air. His face met the stone of the tunnel's far wall with a sickening crunch and he landed heavily at the top of the steps. The guard's prone form began to slide down the staircase but the Warrior hopped forward, caught him lightly by the back of his tunic and rolled him over. His eyes were closed and his face smeared with wet blood, oozing from a gash across his forehead that pooled and bubbled on his upper-lip. Still breathing then. The Warrior placed two fingers of each hand on either side of the unconscious man's neck and felt two distinct pulses, each one bursting as the other lulled.
Still alive.
Damn!
The Warrior noticed fresh blood dripping onto the yellow tunic and became aware of a dull stinging in his right arm. He looked at it and saw a thin cut along his flesh under the split material of his jacket and shirt. Behind him, a blood-speckled spear was embedded in the wall, still crackling with an intense light. The old man sighed heavily.
"Oh, why couldn't you have just died?!" he growled at his unconscious assailant.
The spear came out of the wall with ease and the Warrior brought the tip up to his face. It fizzed at him, warningly.
"Kharus arrows? Regeneration-proof? I've never heard of such a thing," he said to the still-insensible guard. "But, then, war does that to folk. Nothing gets the psychopaths thinking of more efficient and more sadistic ways to kill people than the opportunity to use it."
He sighed again.
"Trust me."
The Warrior stood over the prostrate body of the weapon's previous owner and raised it above his head with his uninjured arm, point aimed squarely at the man's left heart.
"Sorin? SORIN! Where have you gone you stup-" a faltering voice came from behind him.
The Warrior wheeled around and aimed the spear at the stunned face that had entered the tunnel at the bottom of the stairs, belonging to a young man in an identical mustard-coloured tunic, with bulbous nose and jet-black hair.
"Derek!" the Warrior blurted out, recognising the newcomer.
"D…Derrin. How…are you…?" the boy stammered.
"Very well, thank you," the Time Lord replied, realising that he was still aiming a spear at the serving boy who'd brought him tea earlier. He lowered it slowly and smile politely, letting the silence between them linger.
"What happened to Sorin?!" Derrin dema
nded, spotting the inert body.
"Oh…well, yes. He had a little accident with the stairs, you see, gave himself a bump. I was just…helping him."
"With a spear?"
He looked for a believable explanation and found none.
"Well…look, as far as anyone knows I'm safely locked away in a cell right now. He's only knocked out so when he comes to and says he's seen me everyone will be on high alert and that'd be very bad for my purposes…" he trailed off.
"But you are in a cell right now. At least…I saw you. They showed me the feed of you in a cell, I had to identify you because…you killed the High Priestess."
"Do you believe them?"
"Well," Derrin gestured at the spear in the Warrior's hand, "you're not exactly making a great case for yourself right now."
The Warrior looked down at the weapon.
"Fair point," he replied.
"But I still don't understand how you...oh. Time Lord. Of course, 'The Time Lord sometimes known as The Doctor'. You've come back in time. But the punishment for murder is death, though they’ve never needed to enforce it…"
"And yet my future self…" the Warrior interrupted, pointing at himself, "…is very much alive. So evidently they found me innocent. Sorry for the spoiler."
The Warrior set the spear down carefully and descended the steps towards Derrin, hands outstretched soothingly.
"Darren," he said calmly. "They let me go but I came back. Whoever killed Ohila is still on Karn and there is something very wrong happening in the Sisterhood. I'm here to find out what but I need someone who knows the temple, who can get me around undetected. Will you help me?"
The younger man's face hardened.
"What are you going to do with him?" he said, nodding at the still-unconscious Sorin.
The Warrior looked back and grimaced.
"I can't risk him raising the alarm," he said desperately.
"Spare him and I'll help you. If we're quick, we can get your answers before he wakes up. If we succeed, then I look like a hero. If it all goes to pot, I’ll claim you threatened me."
"Wise strategy," said the Warrior, impressed, "but risky to leave him alive."
"He doesn’t deserve to die for your purposes," said Derrin, echoing the Warrior’s words back at him bitterly.
The Warrior sized the young man up.
"Deal," he said finally.
The tension lingered between the two men.
"So where do we start?" said Derrin finally.
"No idea," the Warrior admitted.
The Time Lord looked down at the Kharus spear lying on the ground.
"Tell me, Derrin," the Warrior said. "Does the temple have a laboratory?"
Chapter 7
Derrin disappeared down the corridor and returned a few seconds later with an oversized maroon robe. The Warrior threw it over his jacket and disappeared under waves of velvet. With the hood up, the robe was a figure without a body, gruff face and tell-tale beard shrouded in darkness.
"Stick your hands out…and hunch a little," Derrin instructed.
The Warrior hesitated but obliged. The younger man took one of the Warrior's hands and looped it through his own outstretched elbow.
"There. Now it just looks like I'm guiding one of the elders around. Nobody would dare approach an elder unbidden and…it can't hurt my reputation either," he added sheepishly.
The older man said nothing and gestured Derrin to lead the way. The boy bent down and collected the dropped Kharus spear, holding it upright like a sentry. The Warrior didn't need to wonder who he was protecting himself from. Another wise strategy.
As it turned out, the temple didn't have a laboratory in the conventional sense. It took the Warrior a few minutes of frantic explanation before Derrin thought of somewhere even remotely similar. The vestry of "practical Pythianity" was a section of the temple where Sisters of high intelligence were housed, Derrin quoted, to "alleviate the burden on the Sacred Flame by learning to harness its power ourselves". That sounded like a woolly way of saying ‘practical science’ to him. A religion that put its faith in the immortality-bestowing powers of a magic fire would have to stump up some results eventually. Especially when the Time Lords, practically immortal through wobbly genetic engineering, paid such close attention the Sisterhood of Karn’s progress.
In the Ancient Times, Karn was colonised by the exiled Pythia, previous ruler of Gallifrey before Rassilon deposed her, and her followers. Both discovered separate means of attaining immortality but, whereas Rassilon established a new society based around regenerative science, turning Gallifreyans into Time Lords, Pythia built a matriarchal religion for the Sacred Flame. Soon after, the colony was granted independence from Gallifrey provided that the Sisterhood supply elixir to the Time Lords for use in stabilising difficult regenerations.
It was a tenuous alliance.
They walked at a slow pace to avoid drawing attention and because, hunched over and face deep in the hood, the Warrior could only see a few feet in front of him. After their procession had ambled down a couple of long corridors, they turned a corner and the rocky ground became a bright marble floor, upon which slow, reverential footsteps could be heard passing. The Warrior's dust-daubed boots, hidden by the hem of the robes spilling around his ankles, threatened to slip and his hold on Derrin's arm tightened to keep balance. Admittedly, this probably helped the illusion he was a frail elder of the Sisterhood – given leave to end her servitude, cease her elixir dose and eventually shuffle off, being helped around by a serving boy.
The combination of a thick robe on top of his heavy jacket in subterranean temple corridors lit by open flames was making the Warrior uncomfortably hot. So it was a relief to him when the pair halted unexpectedly. They'd arrived or they'd been caught, either way meant shedding a layer and doing something impressive.
"Here we are, ELDER!" Derrin announced loudly, bowing low into the Warrior's eye-line. The young man winked but was met with an exasperated look from beneath the hood. The Warrior heard an incongruous beeping followed by the sound of stone sliding against stone. Derrin took the Warrior's hand in his arm again and led the way inside a dimly-lit room. There was another scrape of stone followed by a gentle thud.
"It's safe now," said Derrin.
The Warrior burst from the robe and shuddered gleefully in the cool air and near-total darkness, save row of small blue lights at the far end of the room. He bundled up the robe and used it to wipe the sweat from his face.
"There's a…swish or something. I've heard the Sisters refer to it as a way to…here!"
There was a quiet click and both squinted against the sudden brightness from a cluster of fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Other than the red stone walls, almost every surface in the room was a sterile white that gave the place an intolerable glare.
"TURN THAT LIGHT OFF! YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!" a voice screeched.
Derrin turned around quickly, his eyes widening.
"Oh," he said.
"Well…good afternoon," the Warrior said, politely, to the owner of the voice.
Chapter 8
The thick darkness that surrounded Rula thinned slightly as the small blue lights flickered into life. She inspected each one proudly in the gloom, tapping the dimmest gently until it snapped to attention with its peers.
She let out an involuntary yelp as the room suddenly flared and, sensing movement near the door, strode towards two figures and roared.
"TURN THAT LIGHT OFF! YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!"
Then she froze, her face softened quickly as she recognised one of the people who had entered. He, however, seemed less than pleased to see her.
"Oh," Derrin said.
"Well…good afternoon," another voice said politely. She was suddenly aware of the other person. A short, impish man with a worn face, peeling leather coat and scraggly beard. Rula was taken aback at the sight of a male not wearing a flaxen tunic. But he couldn't be a retired serving boy because…well, there were no reti
red serving boys. So who was he?
Rula opened her mouth to ask, but then caught Derrin's eye again. He looked scared, though she didn't understand why, so she gave him a reassuring smile.
"Hello, Derrin," she said gently. He gaped for a moment, then spoke.
"Rula…I…Doctor! No!"
Derrin snatched at air trying to grab the short old man by the scruff of his coat, who had taken a stride towards Rula far longer than she thought possible for his stature.
"That's not my name," he muttered.
"Don't harm her!" Derrin cried.
The old man peered up at Rula's face and she, rooted to the spot with surprise or fear or both, met his eyes reluctantly. She had seen, when tending to elders in their waning decades, the effects of advanced age but never this close and unabashed in a living humanoid.
It was fascinating.
His gaze snapped to a point over Rula's shoulder and he brushed past her. Rula caught Derrin's eye again and mouthed who's he? The serving boy looked bewildered.
"What are you up to here then?" the old man said as Rula turned to look at him. He was inspecting the array of lights she'd been working on when they'd arrived. When he reached out to touch them, Rula sprang over and grabbed his hand more forcefully than she'd intended.
"Sensitive," Rula stammered. Then she sighed and let go of the man's wizened hand.
"Well, I'm not sure it matters now. I was testing their ability to distinguish signals other than light, seemed to be working too, but then you flooded them. They'll be too dazed to do anything for a while."
"I'm sorry," the old man said. "I know what it's like to have an exciting experiment interrupted."
"Ohhh so you're a Pythian shaman then, from the outlands? Why are you in the temple?" said Rula, accusingly.
"Well, that's a little complicated. But tell me about these," he indicated the array, "what do you mean by 'they'?"
"I…don't think I should be telling you. I mean-"
She was interrupted by a new voice, booming as it echoed off the laboratory cave walls: female and audibly dripping with contempt.
"RULA. DELIVER A VIEWING GLOBE TO THE PRISON CHAPLAINCY. CELL EIGHT-NINE. IMMEDIATELY."
