4

‘It looks like every other barren rocky planet we’ve landed on,’ Jamie murmured. He peered round the edge of the TARDIS’s door, a breathing mask pressed to his face.

The Doctor brushed past him and strode out on to black sand. It billowed up around him.

‘Hey, how do you know it’s safe to breathe?’ Jamie’s voice was muffled behind the mask.

‘I don’t. But I’ll wager we’ve not been brought all the way out here to suffocate.’ Putting his hands on his hips, the Doctor craned his neck back and looked up into the night sky.

Jamie pulled away the mask and breathed in quickly. The air was dry and bitter, tasting vaguely of rotten eggs.

‘Sulphur,’ the Doctor said, answering the question the Scotsman was about to ask.

‘I hate it when you do that,’ Jamie muttered. Standing beside the Doctor, he looked up into the night as well. There were very few stars visible and they were little more than distant specks. Rising low on the horizon was a thin vertical strip of gauzy stars. ‘That’s the Milky Way,’ he said in awe. ‘But it’s wrong,’ he added, tilting his head to one side. ‘The Milky Way does not look like that.’

‘It seems we have travelled very far indeed,’ the Doctor said, looking about them. He wrapped his arms round his body and a shiver ran through him. ‘We’re at the edge of known space, in that place known as the Great Desolation.’

‘And I’m guessing this is one of those places no one ever returns from?’ Jamie asked.

‘No one,’ the Doctor replied. ‘This is the place where myths go to die.’

Deep in the silent heart of a black-glass pyramid a sound reverberated off the sloping walls.

Slow and sonorous, the noise washed across the circular silver pool set into the floor and the fluid within trembled. A series of thick concentric circles spread out across its surface and then a shape appeared, rising up into the blackness. Hooded and wrapped in dripping grey robes, it was joined by a second and a third, and then the liquid boiled as four more rose from beneath the silver. In a ragged V formation, the seven tall shapes turned to face the pyramid’s only door.

The noise boomed out again, growing and intensifying until it became identifiable: the sound of laughter – insane and malevolent laughter.

‘Is this planet inhabited?’ Jamie asked.

The Doctor was lying prone on the ground, staring intently at the black sand through a huge magnifying glass. ‘Remarkable.’ He looked up. ‘Inhabited? Once, perhaps, but not now. This world is ancient beyond reckoning.’ He patted the ground and a cloud of fine black particles rose to envelop his head. ‘This sand has the consistency of talcum powder,’ he said, coughing. ‘Some of it is already dust. Why do you ask?’

Crouched on the brow of a low hill, Jamie pointed. ‘Well, unless I am very much mistaken, I’m looking at a city.’

The Doctor scrambled to his feet and dusted himself down. ‘Nonsense, this place has been uninhabited for aeons,’ he began. ‘Probably just an oddly shaped mountain range. Oh! That’s a city.’

Jamie bit his lip and said nothing.

The Doctor dug into an inner pocket, pulled out a long brass telescope and focused. ‘It’s a city,’ he repeated.

‘Why is it so shiny?’

‘It’s made of black glass.’ The Doctor handed over the telescope.

Jamie pressed the instrument to his eye. The distant cityscape shifted into sharp focus: a vast metropolis of towering ebony-glass buildings razor-etched against the starless sky, each one outlined and traced with threads of gold. They were all tall and slender, triangular and pointed, some bent into odd, irregular angles. He couldn’t see any windows. The young Scotsman pulled the telescope away from his face as the image shifted and blurred. He blinked hard, eyes watering. ‘It’s difficult to look at.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘It was built by creatures who did not live completely in this dimension.’

‘You’ve seen it before.’

‘No. I doubt there is a single creature alive today who has seen this place. My people told stories of it. This is the Nameless City: the home of the Archons.’

‘Friends …?’ Jamie suggested hopefully.

‘The enemies of every living thing.’ The Doctor took the telescope and put it to his eye again. ‘I cannot see any signs of life,’ he murmured. He tapped the telescope against his bottom lip. ‘I seem to remember something about the Nameless City.’ He shook his head. ‘It is a curse having a memory like mine: to have seen so much and not remember all of it.’

‘Would there be something about it in the TARDIS’s library?’ Jamie asked.

‘Ah! The library. Genius, Jamie, just genius. If I can activate the TARDIS’s archive, it is sure to have something about the Nameless City.’ He passed the telescope to Jamie before turning and darting back into the ship.

Jamie was about to follow when he spotted movement in the distance: a swirl of black cloud heading out from the city. ‘Doctor, I think we may be about to have company.’ He trained the telescope on the fast-approaching cloud, but could only make out vague shapes in the gloom. None of which looked human.

The Scotsman slapped his hand against the side of the TARDIS and stuck his head through the open door. ‘Doctor, something’s coming. We need to go now!’

The Doctor was hunched over the console, desperately weaving a handful of wires together. ‘Give me a minute. I just need to push a little power into the library. There’s something at the back of my mind about the Nameless City.’

‘We don’t have a minute.’

Jamie looked over his shoulder. The cloud was closer, and he caught a dull reflective flash – weapons!

‘Now, Doctor. Now!’ he cried, rushing into the TARDIS.

‘The … Name … less … City.’ Low and rasping, the sudden sound sent both the Doctor and Jamie scrambling backwards. The drawn-out syllables echoed off the interior of the TARDIS.

‘The Nameless City.’

The Doctor attempted a shaky laugh. ‘Why, it quite startled me. The TARDIS’s voice is usually female.’ He twisted a wire from the bundle on the burnt-out console, pulled his sonic screwdriver out of a pocket and focused it on the wires. The screwdriver hummed and there was a sudden stink of burning rubber and molten metal.

‘The Nameless City.’

The voice started low and slow, and then speeded up to become sweet and unmistakably female.

‘Home to the Archons –’

‘Stop,’ the Doctor commanded. ‘We don’t need a history of the Archons. Why is the Nameless City so important? Why does it stick in my memory?’

With a glance at the door, Jamie moved over to where the Doctor was standing.

The female voice continued. ‘The only description of the Nameless City occurs in the Necronomicon, the Book of Dead Names. Harnessing the Music of the Spheres, the Archons raised their city over a pool of gold, surrounded by canals of mercury and Zeiton-7.’

The Doctor’s fingers bit into Jamie’s arm. ‘That’s it. That’s our ticket home!’

‘How?’

‘The TARDIS is not a machine,’ the Doctor said. ‘These old TT Type-40 Mark-III machines are organic; they were grown, not made. If we can get the old girl to the city, we can treat her with the gold, mercury and Zeiton-7. Then the self-repairing mechanism will take over.’ He clapped his hands. ‘She’ll be as good as new.’ He looked up at the black monitor. ‘What is the location of the Archon world?’

‘The Archon homeworld is on the Prohibited List. Data has been struck from the records.’

‘Why?’ Jamie wondered aloud.

‘Now that, my young Scottish friend, is the question.’ The Doctor nodded towards the door. ‘Go and see how close our friends are.’

Jamie hurried outside. And ran straight into a huge black shape.

‘Doctor –’

Jamie’s cry of warning was cut off as a massive three-fingered claw gripped his sweater and jerked him forward and up. Suddenly he was cartwheeling through the air. He caught an upside-down glimpse of dozens of huge black metallic ape-like creatures converging on the TARDIS before he hit the ground hard in a billowing explosion of powdery sand.

‘The Nameless City … The Nameless City … The Nameless City …’

‘Yes, yes, yes, I know.’ The Doctor pulled apart the wires and the ship’s voice crackled and faded.

A metallic thump echoed against the ship.

Then another, and another.

Something was hammering on the outside of the craft.

When Jamie had been dragged outside, the Doctor’s first instincts were to go to his aid, but he knew he would be of little help and it would leave the interior of the TARDIS open and exposed. Throwing himself on the ruined console, he’d pushed the manual lever and the door had shuddered and then squealed shut. ‘I’m sorry, Jamie. But I think you will be safer out there than in here.’

The Doctor was beginning to formulate the theory that someone like Jamie – a human – would be of no interest to the creatures, who had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to bring him and the TARDIS to this long-forgotten place. He nudged the Necronomicon with his toe. None of this was accidental.

Snatching a length of wire from the mess on the floor, he wrapped it round his sonic screwdriver and then pushed the other end of the wire into the monitor. An image formed, dissolved into snow, then slowly re-formed to show the exterior of the TARDIS.

‘Oh crumbs.’

The TARDIS was surrounded by what he first assumed were black metal robots. There were dozens of them, shifting and moving around the craft, three-fingered claws scraping the blue surface. Measuring them against the outside of the TARDIS, he calculated that they were at least two metres tall. They had two squat legs and four arms: these were creatures that could stand on two legs and run on six. Despite their size and bulk, they would be fast. Their heads were smooth featureless domes with a single long, glowing red oval where the eyes should be. They had no mouths. As they moved, the Doctor saw that they were semi-transparent. Then he realised that they were not made of metal: these were creatures of glass.

The TARDIS lurched, sending the Doctor crashing to the floor. The last image he saw before the monitor’s picture dissolved into static fuzz was of the huge creatures toppling the ship on to its side and hoisting it on their backs.

‘Well, I did want to get to the Nameless City,’ the Doctor said, sliding across the floor and ending up in a heap against the wall. Turning his head to one side, he saw the Necronomicon caught like a fly, in a spider’s web of wire. Pulling a crumpled spotted hankie from his pocket, he wrapped it round his right hand and reached for the ancient book. He wondered what else it could tell him about the Archons and the Nameless City.

When Jamie awoke he had no idea how much time had passed – it could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Rolling over, he hauled himself slowly to his feet, biting back a groan. He’d banged his elbow and the fingers of his left hand were still numb. The entire left side of his body was going to be one enormous bruise, he decided, probably the same colour as the black sand. He looked around: the creature had flung him into an almost circular crater. A thick layer of soft powdery sand at the bottom had saved him from serious injury.

The Doctor!

With a little difficulty, Jamie scrambled up out of the crater, the fine dust swirling around him, getting in his eyes and nose, and coating his tongue. Once he reached the lip of the crater, he saw the Nameless City ahead in the distance, which meant that the TARDIS should be right behind him.

He spun round.

The TARDIS was missing.

His gaze followed a mess of tracks in the dust … and there, now a long way off, was a billowing cloud of dust heading towards the city.

‘Oh, Doctor …’ Jamie sighed, and set off after the cloud.

The black-glass apes carried the TARDIS towards the city on their backs. Inside the ship, the Doctor had precariously balanced a stepladder on the ruined console. He was standing on top of a wooden stool, which he’d wedged into the top rungs of the ladder. The contraption brought him close to the door, which was now directly above his head. Slowly and carefully, he ran the sonic screwdriver round one of the circular wall panels. It dropped to the floor, bouncing like a ball. The Doctor grinned; the roundels were practically indestructible. Directly in front of him were the square windows set into the TARDIS’s outer door. He carefully undid the hermetic seal and peeled off the glass-like membrane. Shoving the film into his deep pockets, he popped his head out of the opening and looked around.

He was within the walls of the Nameless City.

The Doctor’s eyes immediately started to water. The angles, shapes and perspectives of the buildings were wrong and almost painful to look at, while the gold-trimmed black-glass pyramids reflected one another in endlessly dizzying iterations.

Blinking hard, trying to focus, the Doctor turned to face the direction the TARDIS was being carried.

Directly ahead of him, in the centre of a vast square, was a towering gate: two massive black-glass pillars rising hundreds of metres into the dark sky supported a golden lintel that was easily two hundred metres across.

‘A Time Henge,’ the Doctor murmured in awe. He had come across these ancient gates scattered across hundreds of worlds, including Earth. Millennia past, the Time Lords had rendered them inert and useless, but, once, they would have been used to transport people and goods between fixed places in space and time.

The Doctor looked around. Glass apes poured out of the nearby twisted alleyways and irregular streets. There must have been thousands – tens of thousands – of them. They ebbed and flowed round the TARDIS, reaching up to touch it as it was carried aloft towards the largest building in the centre of the Nameless City: an impossibly tall windowless triangle of shimmering, gold-etched ebony glass.

‘Like a trophy, or a relic,’ the Doctor murmured. As he watched, a vertical seam split the glass triangle and an opening appeared at the top of a series of uneven steps. The doorway was a series of ragged lines, tilted at an angle. Beyond the doorway, there was nothing but thick impenetrable darkness.

The Doctor gingerly climbed down off the stool and ladder. The TARDIS tilted, sending him staggering left and right, then forward. ‘Looks like we’re heading up the steps.’

Replacing the window membrane or the roundel in the wall was clearly impossible, so, wrapping his hankie round his hand again, he slumped to the ground and lifted the Necronomicon off the floor. The book fell open to the illustration of the Nameless City. Focusing on the text, the Doctor began laboriously translating the arcane languages. Almost unconsciously, he started to whistle.

Jamie discovered that the gravity on this ancient planet was a little bit less than Earth’s. He ran in long loping strides, covering a lot of ground quickly, racing towards the Nameless City, which grew out of the desert floor in jagged, irregular blades. He could still just about make out the billowing cloud of dust … and then it suddenly disappeared.

They had gone into the city.

‘Doctor, you will be the death of me yet,’ he muttered. He crouched, then took off at a flat run and launched himself into the air in a soaring jump. He had to get to the Doctor; he would never forgive himself if anything happened to him. And he was also keenly aware that this was all his fault. He should never have taken the book; the Doctor had warned him countless times about talking to strangers.

Jamie’s relationship with the strange little man was complicated. The Doctor had saved his life on more than one occasion, and he’d repaid the compliment by saving the Doctor’s life in return. In their time together, Jamie had come to accept the Doctor as his laird, and as a clansman he owed undying loyalty to his chieftain. Jamie knew the Doctor was not human: he didn’t know exactly what he was, though when he was growing up, he had heard tales of the legendary fairy creatures of the Unseelie Court who haunted Scotland’s deepest valleys. He suspected the Doctor might be one of the dark Sith. He also knew that humans rarely came away from their adventures with the fairy folk unscathed.

Silence.

The TARDIS had been righted and the Doctor had slid off the wall into a tangle of wire and metal. He’d crouched on the floor for a long time, listening intently, but hearing nothing. He finally stood up and peered through the empty square in the door where he’d pulled out the glass-like membrane. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. He saw another TARDIS and then a second and a third; he was surrounded by hundreds of blue police boxes.

Reflections.

He was looking at reflections.

The Doctor was within the enormous black-glass pyramid, and the mirrored walls reflected and distorted everything around him. He could see the massed ranks of thousands of crystal apes standing still, their ‘eyes’ now just dark panels. Almost directly in front of him, a few metres away, a huge triangle was traced in gold on the floor, and at its centre was a gold-encircled pool of shimmering silver liquid. Lifting his right hand, the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the pool, thumbed the button, then examined the result. Just as he suspected: mercury.

He cracked open the door and popped his head out, looking quickly left and right. There was no movement. He breathed deeply: the air smelled stale and sour, but with a definite tang of dead fish.

The Doctor squeezed out of the half-open door, ducked through the ranks of unmoving crystal apes and crouched at the edge of the mercury pool. He stared at its metallic surface and then looked back at his poor damaged craft. He needed to get the TARDIS into the pool. The Doctor wrapped his arms tightly round his chest and rocked to and fro: if only he could take control of the apes, he could get them to carry the damaged craft …

A droplet of mercury, a metal bead the size of his thumb, popped up on the surface of the pool. It vibrated and then floated upwards.

Another appeared. It drifted up into the air.

And another.

A shimmering thread of music hung in the air, a single humming sound.

Suddenly, long strings of metal streamed up towards the unseen roof and slowly, slowly, slowly a head appeared out of the silver. A second head emerged, a third, then four more.

‘Archons,’ the Doctor breathed in amazement.

With a swirl of sound, the seven figures rose from the mercury.