[Doctor Who 059] The Daemons by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

Why, it were just the same as last night. What were he up to? The Master's voice became loud and commanding:

' ... arise at my command!

Azal! Azal! '

Stan, holding the stone pillar, felt it tremble under his hands. He could hear a low soughing, as of a distant wind. The air was of a sudden surprisingly cold, even for the dank Cavern.

The Master was now reciting an incantation in some foreign tongue... this was it! This must be the secret. He didn't say this lot last night. Stan desperately tried to seize hold of the strange sounding words and stow them in his memory, but they slipped away and were lost in the echoes of the Cavern. The ground was starting to shake now and the temperature was dropping fast. The Master's voice rose in a crescendo as he reached the climax of his invocation:

' ... Malelt Tilad Ahyram! '

An horrendous crack as of the thunder of hell, and the very earth lurched, throwing Stan to the floor. In desperation and despair, clinging with his fingernails to the cracks in the rock floor, he felt a wave of unearthly coldness sweep over into his body and through his bones. A foul animal over stench made him retch. Over the sound of weird shrieking that now echoed round the Cavern, Stan again heard the voice of the Master. No longer was it triumphant, self-willed, commanding. Now it was filled with terror and supplication.

'Stop! Go back to the mark! You will destroy me! No! No!'

Stan forced himself to look up. The Master had evidently been thrown to the ground, just as he had himself. Advancing upon him, not ten feet away from Stan himself, were the giant legs of some creature so tall that his head was almost touching the roof of the Cavern. The legs, covered with shaggy hair like that of a goat, ended in a pair of gigantic hooves.

The Master had scrambled to his feet and recovered some of his usual arrogance. 'Go back, I say! Azal! I command you! Back, in the name of the Unspeakable One...' And the Master uttered a word of such power that once more the ground shook as if the world would crack.

The creature hesitated, and slowly retreated to the flag-stone with the esoteric carving. Stan, as fascinated as he was terrified, tried to see what manner of face it had, but succeeded only in catching a glimpse of an ear; an ear almost human, but pointed and with a thick coating of hair. As the noise and the earthquake subsided, Stan struggled to his feet and squatted by the frost-enrimed pillar.

The Master gazed up, triumph in his face. 'At last,' he breathed.

A great rumble, as the bass tones of the creature's voice were heard for the first time. 'Speak,' it said.

'Azal, I bid you welcome. I am the Master. I brought you here.'

'That I know,' growled Azal. 'Tell me why you now call me.'

The Master drew himself up. 'I charge you... and I require of you.

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