Doctor Who: The Tomb of Valdemar by Simon Messingham

Author:Simon Messingham
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563555919
Publisher: BBC
Published: 2000-03-14T10:00:00+00:00

Let"s start with the lower levels and work up. And that"s not just for show, for as the night outside gets darker, the palace itself is continuing its emergence as a character. The scattered tenants hear all sorts of strange far-off (and not so far-off) noises, not all of them mechanical. Lights appear in the distance, glowing balls that dance and bobble, inviting you to chase, to follow. The lifts become erratic, sometimes not working at all. Nobody uses them any more; they are sticking to their own levels.

Down in his artist"s studio, Kampp rises to his feet. Black, coral-like scale has grown over the sockets of his eyes like the shiny carapace of a beetle. Ignoring the body of the dead guard (who remains dead, whatever you might think was going to happen), he staggers out into the corridors, looking for someone. He comes across the duty guard – a dull-witted, heavy man called Srohan, deemed fit only to act as jailer and night-watchman down here.

This slow-wittedness manifests itself in his sleepy failure to recognise the alterations crawling all over the advancing Kampp. Instead, fatally, he leaps to his feet and salutes, just as the butler is on him. In time-honoured fashion, Srohan doesn"t even have time to scream.

And then there are two of them.

At about the same time, probably and correctly on the stroke of midnight, the scattered children of the cabal cower in their quarters. The palace is no longer their playground.

Through Huvan, a boy they have tormented without cessation since they met him, Valdemar has returned. With the deaths of their two friends, they understand the extent to which Paul Neville has betrayed them.

The twins Diana and Juno, the two bovine ladies in yellow and red from the masque, particular playmates of Huvan"s, have hidden themselves in their plush apartment and blocked the doors with furniture. Like Srohan, they are not overly burdened with intelligence or sense, such needless qualities bred out of them over the centuries. They have been frightened out of their wits by the day"s proceedings. They curse their dispossessed parents for sending them here with Neville, conveniently forgetting it was they themselves who staged the tantrums and sulks until they got their own way (Hermia had said it would all be a blast. One supposes that for her, it was).

„No one is getting through that door," says Diana, taking her red-handled lady"s pistol from the cabinet.

„No one," replies her sister, taking the equivalent yellow handle.

„You"re getting fat," says Diana.

„So are you," says Juno.

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