Doctor Who: The Eaters of Light (Target Collection) by Rona Munro

Author:Rona Munro [Munro, Rona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473533301
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2022-07-13T23:00:00+00:00

Book Three

CHAPTER I

Kar crouched now on the same hillside, unable to meet the Doctor’s eyes as he looked down at her. Around them the other Pictish survivors listened and watched, sombre and silent. They knew this story. They shared her grief. Ban moved closer to his sister, leaning against her as she struggled to finish speaking.

‘It’s still in there,’ Kar whispered, ‘feeding every day. It drinks the light out of the air. It destroys every creature it finds.’

‘A more accurate description would be to say it breathes the light and eats the life.’ The Doctor was mentally calculating, seeming to lose interest in her and her distress now he finally had all the information he needed. ‘Specifically it feeds off the vitamin D in any living creature, but once it’s strong enough the light alone will probably sustain it.’

His gaze had gone to the carved stones at the crest of the hill.

‘So those stones are positioned to indicate the movement of the sun, correct?’

Kar just nodded mutely. The Doctor was making rapid intuitive calculations.

‘So we’re close to the winter solstice, the shortest day. After that the days will grow longer again, more light for it to breathe in.’

Kar was watching him with desperate hope. ‘Do you know what it is?’

‘Yes. I do now.’

‘Can we kill it?’

‘No. Show me those weapons. I take it they are weapons?’

Kar was still carrying them, the weapons she should have handed to her dead brother, to the warrior who would hold back the dark. For a moment she hesitated, then, slowly, she held them out to the Doctor.

He examined them closely, two long spears of wood, one ending in horizontal teeth of iron like a comb, the other with a thin sheet of transparent rose quartz set in the end of the shaft. The Doctor held this up to the sky, seeing the pale winter light turn red as it was filtered through the thin crystal. He grinned.

‘Clever. Weapons to drive back a monster that eats light. You could never kill it, but you learned how to hold it at bay.’

He tossed the weapons back to Kar and looked back at the cairn, still working this out.

‘But it’s too late for that solution now. This is only one Beast, but the rest will follow. Think of it as the scout from an anthill, a little scurrying worker sent out to find food and carry the news back to the nest. If it goes back now and the gate is still open, the rest of the colony will soon stream through it, in their thousands.’

Nardole was liking the sound of this less and less. He wasn’t so much asking a question as looking for confirmation of his sense of dread. ‘And then what?’

The Doctor’s tone was almost absent, detached, his mind clearly still working through possible scenarios. ‘Then they’ll eat this sun and move on to the next. They’ll breathe in all the light in the universe.’

Nardole blinked. That was actually even worse than he’d feared. ‘So what do we do now?’

The Doctor focused on him then, his brow furrowing in irritation.

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