'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 shifted 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.

'I told you,' said the Doctor, appalled at himself.'It's a hydra.' Then, turning, he took one last regretful look at the frozen, stony Gharib, and fled the balcony. He knew the Vizier was too fragile to give chase, but his haunting, gla.s.sy voice called out in rage,'Bring back theAja'ib The Doctor took the spiralling steps to the ground floor three at a time.

Chapter Fourteen.

Hating Monsters

The storm chose this moment to break, and unleash a great, dark torrent upon Fortalice.Rain crashed on to the shabby rooftops and cascaded in the streets, creating instant floods which, gathering force and speed, seemed to be sluicing the townspeople away as they fled the square and the creature that was wreaking havoc there.

Wreaking havoc, the Doctor found himself thinking as he ran into the street. An odd phrase, really, and although it was the effect he often had, he had never wondered where it came from.

The lightning cracked open the dense sky and was followed by the inevitable, bronchial mutter of thunder. The square was almost cleared of people: they were as terrified of the electrical storm as they were of the hydra, which was, with the whole town to choose from, contenting itself with attacking the Executioner's gilded palace. Its shrieking mouths, the Doctor noted, belched acrid flames. He peered through the murk and panic, the slashing rain and smoke, and saw a clear route to the platform.

Shackled, Iris could only watch and swear as the machinery that held her continued to buzz, whirr and saw through the air. The blades glinted and ran with rainwater and scythed ever closer.

The Executioner threw back his cowled head and bellowed out his frustration - at the vanishing crowds, the storm's onslaught, and the inexplicable beast above. The beast was wrecking his resplendent home.

Iris writhed against her bindings and then she saw, coming at a run across the square, a familiar figure in a green velvet coat, his cravat flying loose behind him, and his drenched hair plastered down his face.

'Get me out of this thing!' she howled. As if in response a blade slashed into her chubby arm, flensing neatly through her cardigan. She screamed.

'I'm coming!' called the Doctor, hopping nimbly over fallen bodies and dodging the last curious few.

This exchange alerted the Executioner. His head whipped around and he poured a stream of foul invective at the Doctor.

'You set this... thing on to my execution!'

The Doctor vaulted on to the wooden platform and laughed madly. Even his was taken aback by his obvious pleasure.'Haven't you heard?

Monsters dog me wherever I go!'

There was a crack then, a rending of stone and metal as the turret that the hydra was attacking toppled free and crashed on to the cobbles of the square.

'Make it stop!'squealed the Executioner.

'I can't!' laughed the Doctor. 'It isn't even real. How can I?' Then he slid, blithe and Houdini-like, into the apparatus that held Iris, struggling with the primitive bolts and knots.'Have you out in a jiffy,' he hissed, and ducked suddenly, avoiding the blades that whizzed, that instant, towards his face.'Hang on!'

Iris was beside herself.

The rabble this year,' said Our Lady,'seems even rowdier.'

Gila glowered at her from across the iron table. He was tired of listening to her, drinking her ancient syrupy sherry and nursing his aches and bruises. For some time now the robed stranger had been telling her visitors the story of how she came down from the mountains and made her life in this dank, vegetative gloom. Sam looked as eager to be gone as Gila did, but she kept prompting the hag to go on, as if she might learn something useful. Gila fancied getting back outside and having another pop at those peasants. They wouldn't take him by surprise this time.

Our Lady's children, black-eyed, docile, reverential, drew around them to listen to the woman talk. She, thought Gila, liked the sound of her own voice too much.

'They won't attack the temple,' said the nun.'Don't worry, Gila.You're quite safe here.'

Gila scowled at her.

'Poor Gila,' Sam smiled.'His nerves are shot.' She took advantage of the pause in Our Lady's story. 'Really, we ought to be getting back to our friends.'

The nun's patient smile froze.'No one can leave the temple until this dreadful day is over. That is tradition. Can't you hear? The tempest has begun.'

They listened to the rain, which could still be heard this deep inside the building as it lashed against stone and stained gla.s.s.

'A little bit of rain won't hurt us.'

'Nevertheless,' said Our Lady, 'you will stay. At least until morning. I wouldn't dream of sending you out there.' She sounded absurdly like an overly concerned hostess. 'But I have talked too long. You must rest.'

With that she stood and motioned the nearest of the children to clear away their dirty plates and gla.s.ses. The other children melted into the undergrowth. They could hear them sn.i.g.g.e.ring, rustling, even after they were gone.

'I hope you will be comfortable sleeping on the ground here,' said Our Lady sadly. "The lichen is quite soft, though somewhat damp. Pretend you are sleeping in a safe forest glade.' Then she was gone, slipping into the darkness, and Sam and Gila were alone again.

'I don't know about you,' said Sam,'but I'm not sleeping down here.'

'What do you want to do?'

'We're going to find a way out.' She had drunk too much of that sweet, crystallised wine. The fumes knocked inside her head and all of a sudden she found that the sweet, fecund scent of all that vegetation bothered her.'We have to get back on the bus.'

'I thought you'd do as Our Lady told you,' said Gila. 'You toadied around her enough.'

'What?'

'Asking her questions. Keeping her rambling on. Who does she think she is?'

'It doesn't hurt to be polite.' G.o.d, I sound like my mother, she thought.

'Yes it does.'

'Are you coming or not?'

'You reckon she'll just let us wander out of here?' Sam led the way through the trees. She gazed apprehensively into the overgrown chapel.

It seemed that the oozing plant life had proliferated even as they talked.

Fresh, tender shoots had crept across the pathway she was sure they had taken before.'I think we can get out, yes,' she said, stumbling on a pile of fallen stones. The ground was perilous with ruined masonry and brown leaf mulch. 'I think,' said Gila, following,'that she intends to keep us here.'

'Oh,' said Sam wearily.'Why? Why do you always think the worst?'

'Have we come across anyone on this trip yet who's meant us well?'

Sam thought.'Not really.'