The King's Dragon Read online

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  'Amy. Amy.' Someone spoke softly in her ear, breaking the spell. It was the Doctor. 'What is it?

  Can you hear something?'

  The tale ended. The crowd broke into rapturous applause. Beol! they cried. Beol! Beol! The name dispelled all fear. Amy shook her head. 'I heard nothing.' And what had she heard, really - a whisper, a hum, a story? She nodded at the Teller.

  'He's good, isn't he?'

  Hilthe sat up with sudden interest. 'Now this is new! Whenever he's told this story before, he's always said that Beol won the dragon from the people of Dant. But this time it's from the people of Sheal. I wonder what that could mean...' Hilthe glanced round the hall and shook her head. 'Not that it makes any difference to this lot. I doubt anyone else has even noticed. He could tell them they brought it back from the moon and they'd believe him.'

  'Is any of the story true?' Rory asked.

  'Some of it. They did ride into town with that dragon on a cart behind them. Quite an old cart -

  one of the wheels was about to fall off. From the way he tells it now you'd think it was a chariot, with half a hundred acrobats behind.'

  'What happened next?'

  'We assumed at first that they were showmen.

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  And then Beol challenged me to debate with him.

  Which I did and, after that, we did what we do best. We held an election. Which Beol won - and I lost.'

  There was a whole world of disappointment compressed into those few words. 'I'm sorry,' Rory said gently.

  Hilthe patted his hand. 'Thank you. Very kind of you. Once I would have said that such is the nature of things, that fortune's wheel can turn in an instant - but immediately the city began to change. Not only in appearance - although that is certainly startling enough - but in the way it talked.

  Beol stopped being Councillor and instead was called King. And then we began to hear that the people of Dant and Sheal and Jutt were jealous of us and our new wealth, and that we must be watchful, and trust Beol to protect us...'

  On the dais, the Teller brought his story to a close. The crowd burst into rapturous applause.

  The King rose and bowed and left the hall, the Teller close behind.

  Hilthe watched them go. 'And so Beol will protect us, the Teller says. Protect us from whom?

  We have never needed protecting in the past.'

  Now that the King had gone, the courtiers left, flowing quickly past the table at which Hilthe and Rory sat. Beol's name was on everyone's lips; Beol's 41

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  daring, Beol's courage. Hilthe sighed. 'It is very strange to watch people you have known and loved all the long years of your life change so swiftly into strangers. Perhaps I missed something? Perhaps they can see something that I cannot see?'

  The room was almost empty. It felt tawdry and cold. Hilthe looked lost and sad. Rory pressed her hand. 'I don't think you missed anything. I think you're the only one seeing straight.'

  A smile returned to the corners of the old woman's mouth and some sparkle to her eyes.

  'Young man, I entirely agree with you!' As she got up to leave, Hilthe reached into her purse and brought out a small circular piece of tile. 'Thank you,' she said. 'If you don't mind listening to an old woman talk about the good old days - come and find me. I can talk about the good old days for ever.' She handed him the tile, bowed her head in farewell, and then ducked into the shadows of the arcade, leaving by another route to avoid the crowd.

  A complex of rooms surrounded the council chamber, and the three travellers were assigned a suite a short walk away from the hall.

  The Doctor checked the corridor outside, and then turned to his companions. 'Right. Pockets.'

  Amy and Rory stared at him blankly. 'I'll go first, 42

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  shall I?' The Doctor removed his jacket. He brushed fruitlessly at some of the mud spatters, turned the jacket upside down and gave it a shake.

  Gold poured onto the bed. Coins. Chains. A couple of forks. Another shake. Another fork. The Doctor picked it up and wondered at it. 'Forks...

  forks... what is it about forks all of a sudden?' He nodded at Rory. 'Your turn.'

  Slowly, Rory emptied his pockets. Coins. More coins. A couple of rings. A few bracelets. 'Nice,'

  said the Doctor. 'Not really your style. Amy? What do you have for us?'

  Amy stared at the treasure in disbelief. 'I don't know what you two have been up to, but I've not spent the whole evening pilfering!'

  The Doctor shrugged. 'Check your pockets. You never know what might have fallen into them.'

  'Nothing has "fallen into" my pockets!'

  'Give it a go anyway.'

  With much reluctance, Amy shoved her hand into a pocket - and pulled out a spoon. It was the one from the gatehouse. Amy stared down at it, warm in her hand. She had no recollection of picking it up. Under oath, she would have sworn she had only touched it.

  'Try your other pocket.' The Doctor was watching her closely, his deep-set eyes dark and intense. Amy pulled out a necklace. She pooled 43

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  it into her palm. 'I don't even remember seeing this!'

  'I'm sure you don't,' the Doctor replied. 'I don't remember much after the first fork and I was concentrating.' He took the necklace from her hand and added it to the pile. He hopped onto the bed and sat cross-legged, hunched over the loot, stirring it around with one finger. 'What about the rest?' he said. 'What are we not telling each other?'

  'What do you mean?' said Rory.

  'We were there for about two hours—' 'Really?'

  Amy was startled. She hadn't noticed the time pass.

  'Mm. So think. What did you see? What did you hear?'

  'There was a king and a dragon...' Amy said slowly. She laughed. 'You were there - you could hardly miss the pair of them!'

  The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and switched it on, directing it at the gold. 'A king and a dragon. Anything else?'

  'I got talking to an old woman...' Mid-sentence, Rory seemed to change his mind about what he was going to say. 'Doesn't matter, it wasn't that interesting.'

  Under the sonic screwdriver's pale beam, the metal began to shift and change and liquefy. A 44

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  haze gathered over it, like mist over the moon. 'The Teller told us how Beol won the dragon — hey, he was good, wasn't he?' Amy said, but as she spoke she remembered something else, something on the very edge of her memory, something that filled her with dread... She shook her head. No. That was rubbish. That was because the Teller was good at what he did. Like a scary movie. 'Oh, Doctor, you were sitting right next to me, you heard everything I did!'

  'Yes. Yes, I did.' The Doctor switched off the sonic. The glow around the treasure disappeared.

  'It's not gold, of course,' he said. 'There isn't any gold on Geath. I won't bore you with the full technical name because it would take the best part of two minutes to say it. Besides, it's more famous under its trade name. Enamour.'

  The Doctor unfolded himself from his sitting position and picked up his jacket. He gave his jacket another shake which didn't result in any more treasure and didn't remove any more mud. 'And when I say "famous", what I mean is

  "infamous". Enamour is banned throughout all self-respecting galactic civilisations and in most of the disreputable ones too. It's advanced and highly dangerous technology, and what it's doing on a pre-industrial world like this I don't know.' He laid his jacket out carefully on the bed in front 45

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  of him and stared down as if it was a particularly difficult puzzle. Then he shoved his arms into the sleeves and flung it back over the top of his head.

  Somehow, he ended up wearing it. 'But I want to take a closer look at that dragon. Find out where it came from.' He turned to his friends. 'Are you coming or are you staying?'

  ' U r n . . . ' s a i d
R o r y . ' W h e n y o u s a y

  "dangerous" ...?'

  'I mean dangerous - and not in a safe way. Are you coming?'

  Amy laughed. 'What do you think?' She was first to the door - which meant she was first through it when the howling started in the corridor beyond.

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  3

  Outside, the corridor was dark, apart from a single lamp on the wall where the passage bent away towards the right. That was still burning, but as Amy watched, its flame withered and died. The howl grew louder. The low growl rose quickly in pitch until it was an eldritch shriek that made Amy's teeth tingle. Whatever was making all this racket was round the bend in the corridor.

  Amy ran after it. As she swung round the corner, she saw the lamps gutter and die, one by one, plunging the way ahead into shadow. The screech stopped. Behind her, Rory shouted, 'Amy!

  Where are you? Wait!' But the lamps were going out more quickly, so she gathered pace and ran to

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  catch up with the darkness. She heard the growl again, coming from ahead, rising up and drowning out Rory's voice.

  Then the walls fell away from her. The howling stopped. 'Hello?' Amy called out, her voice echoing slightly. 'Who's there?' She peered ahead and, as her eyes adjusted, she saw that she was standing in a chamber about a quarter of the size of the council hall, as far as she could tell. A meeting place, perhaps, or a reception room. Nearby, a single lamp burned bravely. Through its slender light Amy glimpsed pale frescoes, ghostly figures dancing on the walls and, deep in the gloom, the glitter of gold, or Enamour, or whatever it was the Doctor called it. Beyond that, the room was completely dark, although, at the edge of her perception, she was sure something was moving, scratching, growling...

  Amy took a deep breath. 'Right. Time for a closer look.' She lifted the lamp from its holding and, heart pounding, took a slow step forward. She held the light up and out in front of her, trying to get some real sense of what lay ahead. Two steps, three... and then the torch she was carrying began to flicker. 'Don't even think about it!' she told it.

  But the lamp had its own plans — or, rather, something had plans for the lamp. Because it didn't simply go out — it was pulled out. To Amy's 48

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  astonishment, the flame spun into a long thin golden thread, which was dragged across the room, where it was ravelled up and soon gone.

  'Now that is just not fair!'

  Deep in the darkness, whatever-it-was moved: two quick steps across the tiled floor. Amy jumped away, crashing to a halt when her back hit the wall of the chamber. The howl was low and rumbling and definitely a threat; a threat that was gaining ground, like an air-raid siren warning you of the approach of something terrible. It was a sound to keep you awake at night. More steps towards where Amy stood. Then she saw it, half-visible, barely a condensation of the darkness itself.

  It was humanoid but elongated. Its limbs were thin and stretched, like the long black branches of a tree in winter, and they were growing longer. The creature's reach extended rapidly, spreading out from its side of the chamber towards Amy. She held her dead lamp up in front of her, a poor useless shield. To the shadow, she said, 'So there really is a monster. You'd think I'd know better by now. Hello, monster!'

  Its jaws hinged open and it screamed back.

  'Not much of a talker, eh? That's fine. I don't mind doing the talking.'

  Its huge metalled arm stretched out towards her, scaled like the hide of a dragon. Amy held the 49

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  lamp aloft. 'I come in peace!'

  The creature unfurled its long fingers, too many fingers. Amy flinched back against the wall. 'Urn... help?'

  None came. But, as the first flood of emergency adrenalin subsided a little, Amy realised that lack of help might be less of a problem than she feared. The beast loomed darkly over her. Yes, it was big; yes, it was scary; yes, it was making enough of a noise that any second the dead were going to wake up and knock on the wall and complain about the racket and ask why a hard-working corpse couldn't get any sleep around here

  — but it wasn't actually coming any closer... If anything, it was keeping a slight distance; studying her, examining her...

  Slowly, tentatively, Amy reached out to touch the creature in front of her. Her hand went right through it. The insubstantial giant shuddered, flickered half-in and half-out of sight, and then vanished.

  All the lamps came back on, fiercely. Amy nearly dropped the one she was holding. Carefully, hands shaking, she put it back in its place on the wall, scolding it as she did so. 'Where were you when I needed you most?' With the lamp back in place, and breathing deeply to steady herself, she turned to take a look round. The room was empty, apart from the big stash of gold heaped up in the

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  middle, gleaming prettily under the lamps.

  Amy shook her head. 'Huh.' She went over to the gold. Cups and goblets; rings and brooches.

  Beautiful. She picked up one of the brooches. It had a lovely sheen about it, almost an aura, something that seemed separate from and yet at the same time intrinsic to the metal. She turned it over in her hands. It felt soft, like silk rippling between her fingers. And it was so very lovely...

  She was fixing the brooch to her jacket when Rory burst into the room.

  'Amy!' He ran over to her. 'All you all right?

  What happened?'

  Amy admired the brooch and then picked up a necklace from the top of the pile. 'Hmm?'

  'What happened?'

  She gave him a puzzled look. 'Nothing happened. The lights went out. I came in here and found some gold. Enamour. Whatever. Do you like my brooch?'

  'What? Yes, it's very nice. Amy, what about the noise?'

  'What noise?'

  'You know!' Rory shrieked. 'That noise.'

  'Oh, that.' Amy shrugged. 'I don't know. The wind, maybe. Trapped in the corridor. These old buildings, no proper insulation. Do you think this necklace is too much with the brooch?'

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  'The wind?' Rory was unconvinced. 'Do you think so?'

  'Rory,' she said impatiently, 'if there was anything else, then I'd tell you, wouldn't I. OK?'

  She decided the necklace worked, put it on, and turned to go. Then she saw the Doctor.

  He was standing by the door, leaning back against the wall, tapping the sonic screwdriver against his cheek. He was frowning. Tall and thin and alien, much scarier than any creeping shadow or sleeping dragon. Amy looked away, suddenly feeling 7 years old again and knowing that the stranger in the garden with the box of delights was disappointed in her. And then she felt cross with him, not only for leaving that 7-year-old behind after promising to be back, but because he didn't believe her now. She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye. 'There was nothing actually there,' she said firmly. 'It was all a trick of the light.'

  The Doctor pushed himself up from the wall.

  'All right,' he said pleasantly. He slipped the sonic screwdriver into his pocket. 'Well, as I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted, I'd like a closer look at that dragon.'

  'Won't there be a guard on it?' Rory said.

  'They're not going to let us wander in and take a poke at their precious dragon, are they?'

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  'When did that ever stop us?' Amy said, lightly.

  She walked past the Doctor and out of the chamber without meeting his eye again. 'Coming, boys?'

  They came. The three of them crept back through the complex to the council chamber. Amy walked slightly behind and tried to clear her thoughts.

  'No,' she said eventually, more to herself than anyone else, her fingers tangled in her new necklace. 'It was definitely a trick of the light. Too much imagination in the dark.'

  'That's what you said before,' Rory replied.

  'Because if the w
ind was howling around the corridors, it could have blown the lamps out, too, couldn't it? Couldn't it have been the wind?'

  'Yes, the wind could have blown the lights out.'

  So whatever she had seen — if in fact she had seen anything at all — it must have been her imagination. Yes, her imagination. This was what happened when you hung around with the Doctor. You started to believe there were monsters in every corridor, when it was only some wind rattling at the windows. But how did that explain the lingering feeling of dread? The sense that someone was coming, that something terrible was about to happen? That someone was watching her?

  'Stupid creepy place,' she muttered. 'Imagination.

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  Definitely. Trick of the light.'

  'Amy,' Rory said. 'Nobody's disagreeing with you.'

  'Well, good,' she said. 'Quite right, too.'

  'Although,' Rory added, 'I don't quite see how the wind blew the lamps alight again.'

  The Doctor stopped dead in his tracks. 'I wonder,' he said in exasperation, 'if we could talk a little less. This being an attempt at stealth, remember? And trying not to attract any attention and all the rest of it? Just a suggestion.'

  Rory and Amy nodded. The Doctor walked on, and they trailed guiltily behind him. Then he stopped again. 'Ah.'

  Amy peered over his shoulder. The doors to the council chamber were round the next bend in the corridor, but two of Beol's knights were standing in front of them. 'Are there guards?' asked Rory in a stage whisper. 'I said there'd be guards.'

  Amy put her hand on the Doctor's shoulder.