Doctor Who: BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures [015] - The Scarlet Empress by Paul Magrs

Author:Paul Magrs
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563405955
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 1998-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Will You Come Back for Me?

Queens are quite common, here on Hyspero.

What does it take, how much effort does it require on this rough, shifting world, to lay claim to a province, a populace, even an entire city, and impress it with the force of your personality and the might of your will?

All over Hyspero tinpot tyrants run small principalities. Endlessly they plot skirmishes and wars against their neighbours, drawing up elaborate plans of conquest and colonisation, but they all know better than to try.

There is a delicate equilibrium here, even on this chaotic world, and each small power balances the next. The small-time rulers of these various lands have learned to realise when they are well off.

Only the Scarlet Empress and her brood of nine hundred grandmothers behind her, each identical with her, thirst for more and more power. Her insatiably malign presence at the heart of Hyspero, in the city named for their world, bonds the other, lesser rulers in adversity and maintains the tentative structures of power here.

Few have actually laid eyes on the Empress. They have seen her guards – the squad of beautiful, tattooed men she sends out to patrol her world in their flowing crimson cloaks. They feel her might and hatred in many more or less insidious ways.

Yet one of those rulers of lesser lands, happy with her lot and content to be apart from the rest of Hyspero – happy in fact, never to return again to the rest of the world – is Angela, the Bearded Lady. Major Angela, self-declared queen of the forest and bears of Kestheven.

That morning she was sitting with her thick legs upon the wooden garden furniture that Sutt had built her. He was showing himself to be a proper worker, that boy – one of her best. As she lay back on the white veranda, she could crane her neck and listen to him as he crashed about, checking the outer walls of her house for storm damage. He had complained to her that his fleshy hide was strawberry-marked with rashes and cuts. It wobbled as he shook the shutters and ambled thoughtfully about her garden. Angela tutted and sighed. After all these years she still couldn’t keep the bears from trying to shave themselves.

The sun was going in over the lowest part of the forest canopy. She could feel it drenching away on her skin. Days were so brief here. It was one of the things she’d had to grow used to, back when she had first come to rule in Kestheven, about a decade ago: that, generally, the sun penetrated only feebly into the heart of the forest. For ten years she had lived here, and for ten years she had been deprived of her sight. She was in full and confident possession of the belief, however, that her beard itself equipped her with a curious kind of sixth sense. It bristled and whispered things to her. Sometimes, unbeknown to her companions, Major Angela knew a little more about what was going on than she ought.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.