Part 15 (1/2)

He squeezed the core again. Gently.

A portal at the far end of the chamber widened and closed again.

That was wrong.

He teased another section of the core with his thumb.

The green of the snake deepened. Its eyes glittered with livid malice.

'If I don't live to be Merlin, you could be in trouble,' he added. 'Sorry, but I can't stand here all day.'

He jabbed a finger at the pulsing core.

The whole s.h.i.+p lurched. The back of the snake's head flared out like a cobra's hood and went on expanding in a green curve until it finally enveloped him.

He struggled as tingling coils of light plasma wound around him. With a spasm, he dropped the slippery core and fell backwards.

The snake tightened its grip.

On the floor, the core throbbed in a pool of gel. Its ganglia twitched and curled helplessly just out of the Doctor's flailing reach.

Shou Yuing sat in the pa.s.senger seat of her car and prayed.

The Brigadier was a good driver, but he was taking the corners too fast. Her 2CV was H reg: one of the last made.

Her brother had only given it a respray last week.

'Please he careful,' she said and clung to her seat belt.

She could already hear new rattles that she hadn't heard before.

'And the Doctor said something about examining the dig?' said the Brigadier brusquely.

'Yes. He kept on about finding new evidence.'

When they reached the hill overlooking the lake, she saw Ace's new crater where the site should have been.

'What's going on? Someone's bombed out the dig!' The Brigadier smiled.

He brought the car to an abrupt stop beside Peter Warmsly's Range Rover and got out. Shou Yuing clambered out of her side and yelled after him. He still had her car keys.

'Stay clear,' he called back and drew his gun.

He ignored the three figures standing on the headland and the cl.u.s.ter of military vehicles stationed further along the bank. Instead, he headed towards the crater and soon vanished into its depths.

'What do you know of Excalibur?' said Ancelyn to Doctor Warmsly. He glanced quickly at Bambera, who shrugged vaguely and stared out at the lake.

Peter s.h.i.+vered. 'King Arthur's sword Excalibur, wrought by the lonely maiden of the lake,' he said. 'She rose up out of the water, holding the sword Excalibur aloft.'

'This lake?' asked Ancelyn eagerly.

A warmth returned to Peter's disheartened voice.

'”Thou rememberest how, in those old days, one summer noon, an arm rose up from out the bosom of the lake, clothed in white samite, mystic and wonderful, holding the sword. And how I rode across and took it, and have worn it like a king.” '

How strange it seemed to the knight, to hear the people of Avallion retell the story of his own ancestors. The drab words of their speech caught fire when they recalled the moments of their history touched by that of the real world.

'I told you it's just a myth.' added Peter. 'Honestly, women in water, holding swords.' He shook his head in gloom.

'Look!' yelled Bambera. She pointed out at the lake.

Something flashed on the water twenty metres out. A sword was rising above the grey-green waves. It was held by an arm dressed in s.h.i.+ny black material. A head broke the surface and flung itself back, gasping for air.

'It's that blasted girl,' shouted Peter and he began to wade out into the waves.

When the water surged upwards out of the airlock alcove, Ace had felt the sword wrench her arm up above her head.

It seemed to cut a path through the water as bubbles seethed in a rising column and carried her with them. She was aware of a sudden vast darkness around her, and of a green crustacean hull that sank away below.

Excalibur lifted her towards a flat sky surface of grey ripples where existence seemed to end. After the cold water, there was a shock of cold air as she burst into the world. It was that which took the breath she had held away.

The sword was still light in her hand, so light that she was sure she could use it as a float if she needed it. After moments of treading water, she heard shouts in the distance. She saw figures on the sh.o.r.e and struck out towards them.

The world vanished. The ghost snake's coils wrapped over the Doctor's head and shut out air and reality. His one free hand stretched blindly for the pulsing core of the s.h.i.+p and found only dust. The fingers flailed in a desperate attempt to s.n.a.t.c.h at anything.

The Doctor's chest tightened under the crush. He was suffocating. The envelope of green light slid around him, reducing his awareness to imagination. His normal defence of self-induced coma was out of reach. His thoughts reeled uncontrolled. His future lives began to flash before him.

Merlin again.

Too late for that now. Someone else's problem. Not his.

Morgaine could find an adversary elsewhere. Even if he had lived, he would never be, nor ever have been, Merlin.

Ectoplasm choked him.

Somewhere in his memory, a voice was lecturing: 'There is a degree of injury beyond which any bodily regeneration is impossible for a Time Lord.'

The aged Prydonian science tutor had scoured the cla.s.s for the pupil who was paying least attention.

'And that point is? You!'

The young student went pale. 'Total death,' he intoned.