The Doctor straightened up in his seat with some effort. 'Madam President, may I respectfully remind you of our agreement? I was to be allowed to synthesise the essence of the future TARDISes -'

'No longer necessary,' snapped Romana, her cold tone a stark contrast to the way she had been addressing Samax a moment earlier. 'We know where the Type 102 is, and we can recover it for ourselves. It only remains for you to identify exactly where.' She stood over the Doctor. 'Do the decent thing, and provide the coordinates, Doctor. At least that will save us the trouble of a long search through the Edifice.'

The Doctor snorted in disgust. 'Do your own dirty work, Romana.'

Vozarti pulled the Doctor's hands sharply away from his head. 'You are in no position -'

The Lady President placed a manicured hand on Vozarti's forearm. 'No need, Castellan.'

Vozarti scowled, which just made him look like a petulant teenager. 'I'd prefer this resolved before the Reaffirmation Ceremony -'

'Very tidy!' spat the Doctor. 'All done and dusted, so that your celebrations can run uninterrupted.' He staggered to his feet, rounding on Romana angrily. 'Well, I hope your flunkies have plenty of time to do things just right for you, Madam President. I hope they make the Panopticon spick and span for your big appearance. Don't forget to get them to scrub the floor well, because you wouldn't want to trail the hem of your robe through any of that blood.'

Romana blinked at him, evidently unmoved. She spoke in a quiet, controlled voice. 'Who are you to speak of spilled blood? I just swore in Samax as the new Chancellor of Time Present.

You'll recall how his predecessor died, of course.' She did not let the Doctor bluster out his excuse. 'Technician Nivet, start scanning the Edifice in all four local dimensions. The Doctor will provide you with the necessary assistance.'

The Doctor dropped down into his seat again and another lance of pain spiked his chest.

Nivet looked up from the spatiotemporal cartographer. 'Madam President, there's a big temporal distortion in the Edifice, bigger than any we've detected before.'

'Anything on the Emonitor?'

'Tragdorvigan reports not, ma'am. But the Edifice distortions continue to extrude through many dimensions and are heading towards Gallifrey.' Nivet continued to manipulate the cartography controls as he spoke. 'I've adjusted the sensors so that they now show where the Edifice is touching the planet surface. It seems to be becoming more volatile.'

The Doctor cried out as the pain worsened.

Vozarti was ushering Romana towards the doorway. 'Madam President, you must return to safe quarters. I've called for a retinue of guards.'

Romana wafted at him with long fingers. 'Oh, don't fuss.'

'I will not have you discomfited before the Reaffirmation Ceremony,' persisted Vozarti. 'You must be prepared and composed. Anything else will give succour to those superstitious elements who see signals and portents in the tiniest of events.'

The heavy doors of the Survey Room swung inwards, and a group of Chancellery Guards swept in. At a gesture from the Castellan, two of them seized the Doctor by his arms and hauled him up from the chair. The Doctor recognised Klenchron, one of Mali's two guards, as they started to drag him across the room.

As this happened, he caught a glance of the display by the cartography machine. The fourdimensional image of the Edifice twisted and fluctuated before his eyes. The savage pain twisted in the Doctor's gut. 'Turn off your probes,' he groaned at Nivet, struggling to free himself from the guards. 'Turn them off. You're giving that thing an itch. And it's going to scratch.'

The dancing seemed to be reaching its climax. Fitz watched Tarra step aside from the main group, as though she wanted to just watch them. She was smiling, as though congratulating herself on the delirium she had induced. The coven had taken up her wailing song, and now continued its noisy, violent thrashing without her.

Tarra looked across at the Visualiser. Ressadriand was standing beside it, considering the frenzied scene. He had pulled off his halfmask, and was staring in plain horror at the escalating events. Fitz could see the youngster's mouth moving, but could not hear his voice over the howl of the coven.

'No,' Ressadriand was mouthing. 'No.'

Behind him, the greyspeckled image on the Visualiser screen suddenly flared brilliant white.

It obliterated the flickering orangeyellow candlelight, and cast an actinic sharp light over everyone in the room, throwing jagged shadows behind them.

Despite this, Fitz found he could not tear his eyes away from the screen. A shape had formed.

It looked like a yellowwhite flower with many petals, slowly rotating against a dark background.

Ressadriand struggled with the Visualiser. 'This is getting out of control,' he howled.

"There's something ... Oh, Rungar, protect us! What is that thing?' He started to struggle with the controls, panic making him fumble and slam his fists against them. On the screen, the ghostly image of the flower grew ever larger.

Fitz was thrown aside as a couple of the coven raced over to Ressadriand. Kellen was trying to pull him away from the controls, with Eton standing by and staring in disbelief at the image on the screen.

'That looks like a Flower of Remembrance,' said Eton. The light from the screen flickered over his face.

'It's an omen!' wailed Ressadriand. 'We should stop this now!'

'I agree,' said Eton.

Kellen was furious, and tore off his own halfmask so that he could see better. 'No, I say we continue. Get away from the Visualiser, both of you.'

Fitz started to move forward, ready to rescue Ressadriand from an unseen attack by Kellen.

Then he felt a firm grip on his shoulder, and was surprised to find it was Tarra holding him back. 'Too dangerous,' she said in a soft clear voice that cut through the growing howl from the Visualiser.

He saw that she had grabbed Kellen too.

'Too late,' Tana said.

Ressadriand thumped at the controls of the Visualiser, screaming out, 'No!'

Eton's face pulsed in the light from the screen as he tried to drag Ressadriand back to safety.

The entire Visualiser seemed to have lit up now, even the frame and the controls. The coven had fallen silent, amazed and appalled at what they were seeing. Eton was holding on to Ressadriand, wrapping both arms around his torso, trying to drag him back. They were still in this strange embrace when there was a huge, soundless explosion of white light.

Fitz knuckled his eyes and then blinked away the afterimage. Tarra's grip on his shoulder had eased, and he stepped cautiously up to the Visualiser. For a while, as his sight returned, he thought that it appeared to be made of bone. Then the moment had passed, and things looked as they had before. Except for one thing.

Both Eton and Ressadriand had completely vanished.

'It's all right,' grinned Nivet. "The Edifice is withdrawing from Gallifrey.'

Vice President Timon watched him adjust some more controls. He was a smart young technician, Timon noted. He would need to find him some rewarding work, something for the Vice President, rather than languishing in the office of Time Future.

Timon was still idly calculating how best to steal Nivet from that old bore Chancellor Djarshar when the prisoner made a sudden move. The Doctor had struggled free from his guards and bore down on Nivet.

'The Edifice is not withdrawing from Gallifrey,' the Doctor shouted.

'Guards!' Castellan Vozarti rushed forward, gesturing for the President to stand back. Timon did the same. Best to keep the Vice President safe too, he decided.

'What are you saying, Doctor?' That pretty woman, Combat Elite Mali, was at the cartography machine, examining the display.

The Doctor shrugged off the guards, and at a gesture from Mali they did not retaliate. Timon noticed that they stayed close to him, though.

'Thank you,' said the Doctor to Mali. 'What I'm saying is that the Edifice is not withdrawing.

Nivet, you must turn this device off. The Edifice is obviously responding to any kind of temporal scanning. You're just drawing its attention -'

'No,' insisted Nivet, 'you can see there that it's -'

'It's just probing, reaching out to -' The Doctor broke off in horror. 'Look!'

'Oh, no!' breathed Nivet.

From where he stood, as far from the cartographer as possible, Timon saw the image of the Flower of Remembrance suddenly expand wildly.

'Ferisix and Thrayke preserve us!' cursed Nivet.

The image swelled to fill the screen, seeming to reach out for them. Involuntarily, everyone who had gathered around the display screen suddenly leaned back. The Castellan and the guard, Klenchron, laughed nervously at their own surprised reaction.

Their laughter turned into a yell of alarm.

Timon found he was shouting in fear and amazement too.

Long, thin shapes sprang out of the cartography display, ethereal shards of bone which spiked out around the crowd of people surrounding the display. In seconds, each person was pulled howling and screaming back through the screen.

Timon looked wildly around the room, initial disbelief turning into horror.

The Castellan and his group of guards. Mali and Nivet. And the Doctor. They were all gone.

Chapter Fifteen.

Set in bone

Mali felt as if she were liquid, splattering out in uneven gushes on to a cold, damp floor. It was only pain that eventually turned the fluid into flesh, viciously defining each muscle. She supposed that meant she was still alive.

'Be careful what you wish for.'

'We're on the Edifice, aren't we?'

'Yes ... Yes, I'm afraid so.'

The disembodied voices rang clearly through the musty air, and Mali felt she should know them. Lifting her head a fraction, she timidly opened her eyes. A smooth surface beneath her was gleaming dully.

Nearby, in the gloom, a dark, bulbous eyeball glared malevolently at her.

In horror, Mali attempted to recoil, but the sudden movement locked her arms and legs into cramps. Even as she gasped with the pain, Mali saw that the eye was just the top of a helmet; the Chancellery Guard whose head it protected was stretched out beside her.

'How? How did it take us?' That was the second voice again the Castellan, of course. She still wasn't used to this version of Vozarti his soft, mild tone was nothing like the outraged bellow that had driven her through so many training exercises at military academy.

'I'm not sure. Perhaps it wanted us to come.' The first voice belonged to the Doctor, well mannered and precise, deliberating over every word. She closed her eyes, listening to him, gathering her strength.

'How could it just reach in like that and take all of us ... here?'

'We'd all better get used to the idea.' Mali heard the Doctor walking away, then a rattling of heavy doors. 'No way out won't budge. We seem to be locked in.'

Dazed, her vision still a little blurred, she saw him come out of the shadows and back towards the indignant Castellan Vozarti. They were in a vaulted chamber, large and gloomy, apparently devoid of furniture and purpose. The floor might've been carpeted with broken teeth, littered as it was with dull and jagged debris she couldn't identify. The Doctor seemed baffled himself, peering about in the halflight at the fallen bodies around him. Presently his gaze fell on her, and he held out a hand. She reached for it instinctively.

'Are you all right?'

Even as the Doctor spoke, his own face crumpled and his fingers flew to his temples.

Random noises seemed to yank themselves from his throat as he fought to find some way of expressing the pain.

'What's the matter with you?' Vozarti asked him guardedly from the shadows.

'Doctor?' Mali lowered her own arm with the absurd notion that perhaps she'd caused his distress by pointing.

'This place,' the Doctor gasped. 'Something ... things ... in here ...'

Vozarti impatiently stepped over two of his men to get nearer the Doctor. 'What are you saying?'

'Something's in here with us.'

Mali turned automatically to scan the room, her training finally sparking her back into life.

Those guards awake enough to feel alarm at the thought of the Doctor's 'something' pushed themselves up on their elbows and gazed groggily around. Nivet, she noticed now, seemed peacefully asleep and did not stir.

It was getting a little brighter. A feeble, sickly light from somewhere up above was driving the sticky shadows in the room further up the ruined ivory walls. But one dark shape remained, holding its ground.

Suddenly it was striding across the gritted floor towards them.

'See it?' the Doctor stammered. 'A spider. A spider, made of bone!'

Mali glanced up at Vozarti, to check she was looking in the right place. 'What do you mean, bone?' he said. 'It's a shadow.'

'A man's shadow," Mali whispered, forcing herself to her feet and drawing her gun.

'Bone like everything else in here. Dead.' The Doctor kept repeating the word as the shadow stalked closer. 'Dead. Dead. Dead.'

'What's casting it?' Mali fired her staser as it neared her, the report echoing around the room.

'Hold your fire!' Vozarti told her, furiously. 'We don't know what it is or how it can harm us!'