"You must know by now that your scheme has been scotched." Holmes"s voice rang with a kind of righteous indignation, brother or no brother. "The army which Baron Maupertuis raised for you has been scattered. You may have retrieved your fakirs from the fray, but you cannot proceed with your invasion of Ry"leh. You may as well give yourself up and return to England, where I can..." The words seemed to catch in his throat. ". . . I can promise you a fair trial."
"Oh Sherlock," said Sherringford, "you can never abandon a theory once you"ve got your teeth into it, can you? At least Mycroft, lazy though he may be, is flexible in that regard."
He smiled in brotherly affection.
"We aren"t invading Ry"leh," he said. "We"re invading Earth."
Chapter 16.
In which G.o.d wants to have a word, and an evil from the dawn of time is debunked. debunked.
"Invading the Earth?" Holmes snapped. "I"ve never heard anything so preposterous. Why in Heaven"s name would you betray everything that you hold dear in the name of some alien race?"
Sherringford leaned forward earnestly.
"Have you heard the word of G.o.d?"
There was a moment of silence as we tried to work that one out. The Doctor was the first person to come up with an adequate response.
"Were you thinking of any G.o.d in particular, or would a general chit-chat with any deity suffice?" he piped up eventually. "You see, I"ve come across enough G.o.ds in my time to stock several pantheons and still have a few left over for a Gotterdammerung or two. There"s even a planet I could point you to where they worshipped me for a few generations, but then, I suppose that"s understandable. I hope you don"t want references, because I"m not on good terms with very many of them. Apart from myself, of course, and even then we had our differences."
He frowned, as if rerunning the spiel in his mind to check that it all made sense. I knew that the whole thing was a trick to give him time to think, and to make Sherringford underestimate his intelligence, but I couldn"t help thinking that he was overdoing it a bit.
Sherringford had heard the Doctor out in good humour.
"You are a heathen, Doctor, but that will change."
"I doubt it," the Doctor said. "I"ve bandied words with bigger megalomaniacs than you without any noticeable change in my opinions."
The raksha.s.sa took a step forward. Its claws gouged holes in the wood and its spiked tail swung ominously. I"d felt the strength in that tail, and I didn"t particularly want to come up against it again.
"You will regret those words, heretic. . ." it whispered.
"Worry not, Brother K"tcar"ch," Sherringford said soothingly. "G.o.d will protect me."
"K"tcar"ch?" the Doctor exclaimed. I could see he was surprised, and suddenly remembered the name. K"tcar"ch was the alien that they had all met in the Library in Holborn, but I thought the Doctor had told me that it looked like a large walnut with five legs, like the Ry"lehans fighting on the slopes of the mountain.
"We have already met, Doctor," K"tcar"ch hissed, "but now I know the Peace of G.o.d, and have abandoned my body of flesh for this spiritual form!"
"Brother K"tcar"ch has been converted to the One True Faith," Sherringford said with some pleasure. "Another of Her miracles. Once you have heard the Word, you too will know Peace."
"Peace?" spat the Doctor, "I"ve seen more, bigger and nastier wars than you"ve pulled wings off flies, and most of them were the result of the members of one faith thinking they were better than the members of another. I abjured religion a long time ago. You may have come across some creature that claims to be a G.o.d, but I will eat my hat if it is the real thing."
"You will meet Azathoth shortly," Sherringford a.s.sured him with a benign smile, "then you will understand."
Now there"s a familiar name, I thought, as the raksha.s.sa made a complex sign across its armoured and studded chest, and the Doctor"s face fell.
"Azathoth?" he said.
Sherringford beamed.
"Not the Azathoth?"
"Indeed."
"Not the amorphous blight of nethermost confusion that blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity, coexistent with all time and conterminous with all s.p.a.ce?"
Sherringford"s face broke into a joyous smile.
"Doctor, I had no idea that you had studied the Faith!"
The Doctor c.o.c.ked his head and gazed up at Sherringford.
"Oh, I"ve come across some of your sales literature in dentists" waiting rooms and the like," he said with a straight face. "I may even have attended a jumble sale or two. What confused me is what an omnipotent, omniscient G.o.d like Azathoth is doing here on Ry"leh."
"This is hardly the time for a theology lesson," Holmes muttered.
"On the contrary," his brother corrected him, "your transubstantiation will be easier if you are prepared and if you understand what hearing the Word truly means."
Holmes sneered and turned away. Sherringford turned to the Doctor and me and smiled.
"After giving birth to the cosmos, Azathoth drifted, discorporate, through the void," he said in the tone of voice reserved for priests and religious lunatics the universe over. "Across the Universe, Her followers prayed that She would be born into a physical body. After hundreds of billions of years, their prayers were answered, and Azathoth became incarnate amongst them. As a mark of Her special favour She spread the Word amongst them, so that they might be more pleasing in her sight."
"You see," the Doctor said, turning to me, "how the truth becomes distorted and woven into the legend? Azathoth must have floated around in the vortex for billennia before managing to find a gap and manifest itself corporeally on somebody"s home planet. It was always the weakest of the Great Old Ones, according to legend."
"They went out into the universe in their star-spanning craft to spread the gospel of Azathoth," Sherringford went on, "but the unbelievers took arms against them. There was a jihad, a holy war. Azathoth, in Her infinite mercy, would not lay waste to the forces of darkness, and was vanquished.
They wanted to kill Her - as if a G.o.d could be killed! - but they were too weak and divided, and banished Her to this cold, hard world with the most faithful of her followers."
"For which," the Doctor murmured, "read "Azathoth tried to spread her religion around a bit via a sophisticated sort of mind control, and got stomped on"."
"It"s a bit hard on the inhabitants of Ry"leh," I said. "Having a G.o.d dumped in their laps."
"Inhabitants?" the Doctor asked.
"His lot," I said, pointing to K"tcar"ch. "The ones with five legs."
"The Shlangii?" He shook his head. "No, they don"t live here. The Shlangii are the most feared mercenaries in the known universe. I presume that a couple of garrisons of them were stationed on Ry"leh to stop Azathoth escaping. They are notoriously unreceptive to new ideas, which makes them ideal choices to guard a creature with a natty line in ma.s.s hypnosis.
Unfortunately, it looks as if Azathoth has managed to convert a substantial number of them. I knew that it reminded me of something back in Holborn, but I couldn"t remember what."
Sherringford had been following our conversation.
"Alas," he said, "the remainder have taken steps to prevent themselves hearing the message. Some form of surgery I believe. Poor, misguided creatures. If only they knew the glories that they have blinded themselves to."
"So they"re not peaceful philosophers?" I asked, just to make sure. He just laughed.
"That"s why they were attacking Maupertuis"s men," the Doctor said. "They must have thought that Maupertuis had come to rescue Azathoth."
"Which, of course, he had," said Sherringford. "Although he did not know it.
But we tarry too long. It is time that you heard the Word yourselves."
Holmes was staring at his brother"s hands.
"I have been wondering ever since we met in the Library why my brother has been wearing gloves," he said suddenly. "An affectation, I thought, or perhaps a disfiguring skin disease. I noticed then that his nails had not been cut for some time - the material of the gloves was stretched to a point in an unmistakable way - but it has just struck me that his nails are considerably longer now than they were in the Library. Longer than they could feasibly have grown in that time."
"The Mark of Azathoth," the Doctor said quietly.
Sherringford raised his right hand.
"Our stigmata," he said, flexing his fingers. Something seemed to ripple beneath the glove, which suddenly split along the seam. Scarlet flesh swelled out, revealing fingers that were clawed, pebbled and veined with black. Sc.r.a.ps of white material fluttered to the wooden floor of the caravan.
"Such a relief," he sighed. "I have been trying to hold this back for weeks."
His shoulders began to swell.
"Dealing with pagans and unbelievers, I have been forced to retain this debased guise, hiding any changes beneath by clothes, but now I can allow my transubstantiation full rein."
We were all backing away from Sherringford now. Holmes was horror-struck. He held out his hands towards his brother in a way that was either an entreaty, an offer of help or a warding off. The Doctor was looking on with a detached scientific interest. I just wanted to get out.
Sherringford"s shoulders erupted through his robes into moist, filmy wings. I could see the pulsing of veins as blood pumped into them, filling them out as I watched. Droplets of some fluid sprayed across my face. The wings stretched until they touched the ground. As soon as his wings could take his weight his legs began to wither away into an armoured tail.
"You will be so happy when you have heard the Word," he hissed.
A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.
The creature was vast and swollen, like the carca.s.s of a beached whale that had become bloated with putrefaction.
A discharge of some mucus-like substance hung in thick, cobweb-like strands from its rugose skin to the floor. It was a vivid purple in colour, with irregular black spots marring its surface. I saw no limbs, no eyes, no organs of sense at all, just one huge toothless maw that s...o...b..red incessantly at us. The wooden planks of the floor were bent under its weight, and pitted as if it sweated some acidic substance.
"Oh my G.o.d!" I whispered. There was a stench within the caravan: a stench of something old, and decayed, and evil.
"My child..."
I whirled, looking for the speaker, but we were alone.
"Where . . .?" I said.
Ace inclined her head towards the . . . the thing in front of us.
"There," she said.
"You poor lost souls, you have made your way to salvation." The voice continued. It was mellifluous and curiously hypnotic. I could not believe that it came from this swollen leech.
"Who are you?" I cried. "Where are you?"
"I have been known by many names," the voice continued, "but you may call me Azathoth." I could not determine whether it was a physical thing or whether I was hearing it within the confines of my own skull. "I am everywhere. I am here for you. I am your saviour."
"Talks like the R.E. master at school," Ace muttered.
"Approach me, and feel the warmth of my love for you."
"No fear."
There was something in that voice that touched a chord deep within me. It approved of me. It forgave me.
"Come closer..."
I took a step forward. Ace caught at my arm and tried to drag me back, but I pushed her away.
"What do you think you"re doing?" she yelled.
"Come close to me, and receive my redemption."
I gazed lovingly up at its rough hide.
"I want. . ." I began, then trailed off in confusion.
"You want to be loved," it said. I nodded dumbly, and took another step.
Ace"s arm snaked around my windpipe and pressed hard. Choking, I fell back into her arms.
"Don"t listen to it," she yelled in my ear, but it was still whispering in my mind, and I struggled in her arms. Somehow, as I fought to get free and she fought to drag me back, we staggered sideways just enough to bring a figure into view around the side of the creature"s bulk. A figure that was kneeling before it, dressed in ragged embroidered robes of peac.o.c.k blue.
"Tir Ram!" I cried, forgetting for a moment that insistent voice in my mind.
He did not react. He seemed to be in a world of his own, worshipping Azathoth.
"Who . . .?" Ace asked.
I shook my head to try and clear it. My thoughts were muddy and confused.
"He"s... he was allied with Baron Maupertuis..." I said, stumbling over the words. "I told you about him . . . it was his fakirs who created the gateway through which we arrived here."
"The gateway that brought you into my light," said Azathoth calmly. "Tir Ram has joined me, as you will join me. Follow his example, and submit yourself to my love."
I managed to elbow Ace in the pit of the stomach. She fell back, coughing, and I ran forward to take hold of Tir Ram"s shoulder. His head was bowed and his dark hair fell across his features. I am still not sure whether I wanted to drag him away or join him. A part of me had succ.u.mbed to Azathoth"s message, but a part of me still rebelled against its seductive lure.
"Tir Ram!" I cried.
He turned to look at me.