Doctor Who: The Shadows of Avalon by Paul Cornell

Author:Paul Cornell
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563555889
Publisher: BBC
Published: 2000-02-07T10:00:00+00:00

* * *

The sleek black helicopter sped north, dipping and bobbing over the terrain below. The air around it was getting thicker and thicker, full of drops of green fluid that splattered against the fuselage and were flung aside in great sweeps by the blades.

At the back of the aircraft’s cabin sat the Doctor, half asleep, his head nodding to the beat of the rotors. In his mind, a woman was touching his brow with a cool hand and telling him all was not lost.

He jerked awake and looked around wildly when Caldera touched him on the shoulder. ‘Two minutes to go,’ he murmured. The Doctor noted that the men all around him were tensed, all looking towards the side door beside which one of their number sat, his hand on the release lever.

They had split up for a while before midnight – the soldiers to make one last pass through the woods for their missing man, the Doctor to return to the village for his normal clothes. The soldiers hadn’t understood that, and had been amazed by what he’d returned in.

On his way out of the village, he’d noticed something strange. From the hut by the pebble beach that he knew belonged to Gwyllm, he’d heard the sounds of a woman wailing. He’d gone to the window, in the darkness, and looked in. A handsome woman, he presumed Gwyllm’s wife, was holding his clothes to her chest, sobbing. The Doctor knew the instant he saw her that the fisherman had vanished, gone into the night like the others, and that the only comfort he could offer would be to solve this as part of the greater mystery of Avalon.

For that he had to travel north, to follow in the footsteps of this man Margwyn and speak directly to the Unseelie Court. He could try to persuade them to communicate with Mab once more, offer his services as an intermediary. Perhaps they might also have news of Compassion and Fitz. Perhaps Constantine had given the courts of this world one set of strangers each.

The thought had come to him, as he found the soldiers huddled around a clearing in the woods, that if they knew what he was planning they wouldn’t be offering him a lift.

The black helicopter had come out of the night sky almost silently, showing only the blink of its navigation lights. As he stepped inside the cabin, the Doctor had looked back. The helicopter was already rising into the air, and he’d seen the village by the lake, a few lights here and there, a dog barking. It looked utterly unprepared for war to fall upon it.

Perhaps he could make sure that it never would. Or, perhaps, the damning thought struck him again, he could never be sure of that no matter what he did.

Now, he took his place at the back of the two lines of men that formed along the walls of the cabin. The floor swayed beneath them, the pitch of the engines changed, and there was a gentle bump as the skids just touched the ground.

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