4

Down in the Heligan’s rooty heart, the man who had been left behind to guard the TARDIS was growing bored. He walked all the way round that thicket of new trunks, peeking in through the gaps between them, but he could barely make out the Blue Box, and from the bits he could see it did not look nearly as scary or impressive as the old stories made it sound. It was supposed to be ‘bigger on the inside’, whatever that meant, but he could not see in through the windows.

Small noises came constantly now up the shafts in the floor: splashings and slitherings and strange, scratchy rustlings. He ignored them. The old tree was restless tonight, and who could blame it? It was trembling and shaking itself, full of new sounds.

Deep in thought, and studying the TARDIS, he did not notice the things that came squeezing out of the shafts all around him. As spiky as conker casings, as tall as men, they moved like crabs on their crab-leg roots, slow at first, then scuttling suddenly ...

The tree was restless tonight.

No one heard his screams.

‘Revenge?’ asked the Justiciar, turning from her prisoners to confront the angry newcomer who had interrupted her. ‘Yes, but it must be done honourably, Chairman. I am the Justiciar, and I say that we must have a trial. We must make certain that this really is the Doctor; he should be allowed to have his say before you put him to death.’

‘You are not fit to be Justiciar!’ sneered Chairman Ratisbon. ‘You are like so many others nowadays; you think the Doctor is only a fairy-tale monster to scare our naughty children with.’

The Justiciar blushed angrily. ‘Hasn’t everyone wondered that? Everyone with any intelligence? Even fierce old men like you, Cut-Out-The-Doctor’s-Living-Heart Ratisbon? But here he is, and he says that he is the Doctor, and by our ancient laws he must face judgement.’

‘There is no need,’ said Ratisbon. ‘Judgement was passed on this traitor nine hundred years ago. The sentence is agony and death, and it is my duty to see that it is carried out. Take him to the Chair!’

And although the Justiciar held up her hands and commanded them to stop, there was no stopping the men who poured into her chamber, who seized hold of the Doctor and dragged him roughly away. Leela, while her own guards were distracted, snatched back the knife that one had taken from her and ran to rescue him, but one of Ratisbon’s men felled her with a blow from a spear-butt. She landed on all fours, groggy, blood dripping from a cut on her forehead. Ven ran to her, and his mother came and knelt beside her, dabbing at the wound with a cloth.

‘Leave me alone! It is barely a scratch …’ Leela tried to fling them away, to run after the Doctor. They held her back. ‘Where are they taking him?’ she demanded. ‘I thought you were leader here?’

The Justiciar said, ‘I thought so too, but it seems not. Ratisbon is our executioner. It seems he is impatient to get to work.’

The room quivered. The whole tree seemed to be stirring restlessly, like some great animal troubled in its dreams. From outside the room came a rustling sound, like someone dragging a heavy bundle of twigs.

One of the men who had been lingering in the open doorway, not sure whether to stay with the Justiciar or follow Chairman Ratisbon, suddenly shouted out in fear. ‘Justiciar!’

He stumbled back into the room and tried to shut the door, but something shoved it violently open. The rustling sound was very loud, and the room was suddenly filled with the compost smell that Leela remembered from down below. She looked at Ven and his mother, saw fear and incomprehension on their faces, and stood up, knife in hand, ready to meet this new peril face to face …

Except it had no face. A hard greenish shell studded with sharp spines, a cluster of busy, scuttling, claw-like roots, delicate tendrils that groped and fluttered, a thick hairy stem, but nothing anywhere that looked like eyes or a mouth.

Behind her one of the Justiciar’s women shrieked, and the creature swung towards the sound. It’s blind, thought Leela, but it is not deaf … She motioned to the others to be quiet. She did not know if she could fight this thing – not alone. A few of the men in the room had spears, but they looked too scared to use them. Anyway, where did you stab a thing like that? What would its weak points be?

Someone whimpered. The thing twitched, creeping forward on its skirt of roots, tendrils reaching out to feel the air ahead. Leela held her breath, trying not to tremble as a tendril-tip came within a hand’s breadth of her face.

Then, from somewhere outside, there was another scream – There must be more of them, thought Leela – and the creature whirled around and scuttled out. More screams in the corridor; whispers from the huddled, frightened people in the room.

‘What was that?’ hissed Leela.

‘I don’t know!’ Ven whispered back. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘The Doctor,’ she said. ‘He will know what they are, what to do.’

‘But Ratisbon has the Doctor!’ said the Justiciar.

‘Then we must save him!’

The Justiciar looked at her for a moment, then slowly nodded. To the people in the room she said, ‘You who have weapons, come with me; the rest, gather at the Hall of Justice. Be careful of those … those whatever-they-ares.’

Leela was already at the door. She acted as if she had forgotten that she had ever been their prisoner, and they did not try to remind her. Outside, the wooden corridors were filled with the rooty rustling and wet vegetable smell of the creeping things. Leela gripped her knife more firmly.

‘Where have they taken him?’ she asked.