Bride Quest

An adventure of the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan.

by Clive May (clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk)

The copy right of all things pertaining to the concept and characters of Dr
Who is the property of the BBC.  This story is a work of fan fiction; it has
been written simply for the pleasure it gave me in writing it; and no money
has or will change hands with respect to the story.

The story and original characters are copyright Clive May 2001.

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Five

The small party moved through the less crowded, and poorly lit, ails between
the tented city that surrounded the permanent part of the settlement.  The
Doctor carried a somnolent Sarah over his left shoulder, without any
visible effort.

"Round that way," the Khan directed, pointing between two tents.  The air
over them was glowing with an eerie light, escaping through the leaf shaped
translucencies in the tent roofs.  The air felt soft and warm, cosy with the
scents and sounds of the Kulak, vibrant with the growing excitement of the
coming revels at the Festival.  People made of shadow, moved about in the
dimness, at once busy and at their ease, in the cosy gloom.

The small party turned along the way indicated. They came out into a well
lit, busier way.  Opposite, the gated corral of the Kharran Pitching stood
unguarded.  Inside the enclosure, there were six tents, looking like a fat
broody hen with chicks.  The main pavilion sat square in the center of the
area, with five smaller tents clustered about it in a snug semi-circle.  The
place seemed deserted, as they passed inside.

Marching up to the tent, the Khan paused to consider Harry a long moment,
before advising with a grin: "Best stay out of m'daughter's way if you've a
mind not to sport a matching pair, m'boy.  Young Demmy was fit t'bust over
that last fiasco." He drew back the flap, and stooped inside.  Harry held the
flap for the Doctor, then with more trepidation than he cared to admit to, he
stepped inside.

Demereen sat on a small backless divan to the right.  She was engaged in
trying to force a leather thong through a small loop on the end of a carved
length of wood.  She glanced up when they came in.  A ferocious scowl twisted
her pretty face.  She glared at Harry with undisguised hostility.

To forestall the all too likely explosion of some considerable
unpleasantness, the Khan said quickly: "Demmy.  We have guests.  These good
people will be joining us for the Festival."

"Is there a bed for Sarah?" the Doctor inquired, peering round at the
sparsely furnished interior.

"Through there," Demereen said.  Rising, she pointed into a screened off
portion.  "Is she hurt?  What happened?"

"Kerd!" said Kharran Khan, by way of explanation.

A tiny flame of anger danced in Demereen's liquid eyes. "What!  Oh!
Father. How could you?"

Kharran Khan spread wide his hands in a gesture of innocence.  "But I
didn't do anything, m'dear!"

For a long moment, Demereen looked as if she might argue the matter with her
father; then abruptly, she spun in a whirl of skirts to follow the Doctor
into the sectioned off area.

Enigmatic shapes clustered in the darkness beyond the partition of
embroidered felt.  Picking his way to a low divan, the Doctor gently laid
Sarah upon it.  Demereen lit an oil lamp, and held it out over the prone
figure, letting the dancing yellow light illuminate the woman.  The Doctor
inspected Sarah's face, peeling back her eyelids to study the pupils.  Her
eyes were rolled up, showing the whites; but otherwise, she seemed fine.

"She'll be fine for now," the Doctor pronounced.  "But she's going to have a
terrific hangover in the morning." He did not sound particularly sympathetic.
They left her to get on with sleeping it off.

In the main section,Harry and the Khan had been joined by a stout,
middle-aged woman.  She held a bowl of steaming water in strong, capable
looking, hands.

The Doctor said, with a twinkle in his eye: "Remarkably prescient Head of
Household, you have there, Khan."

"Yes," the Khan agreed.  He eyed Harry up and down, then the bowl of water.
"Bit prone to under estimation, on occasion, dontcha think?  Really!  Clonny!
For my money, it's going t'take more than one small bowl-"

It was a damned close run thing.  The Khan didn't *quite* get the bowl of
water tipped over him; but only because it was the "Blessed Libation" to
top-off the tub; and Clonhilden didn't fancy her chances of snagging a
Priestess to bless another "Libation Bowl" this late on the Eve of No
Moons.

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Harry followed Clonhilden from the pavilion, across the compound, to one of
the smaller tents.  The woman drew back the flap of the leaf shaped opening,
and motioned for him to enter, being careful to give him plenty of room.
Harry stepped through, into a steamy atmosphere, fragrantly scented with
exotic perfumes.  Peering round in the gloom, he made out under the centre of
the tent, a framework of bars.  They supported the sides of a huge bath made
of leather, which stood waist high.  Tent and bath formed a single unit.

More of those fat bellied lamps hung from the uprights, casting a dancing
yellow light.  A cosy gloom filled the farthest reaches of the tent.  Obscure
shapes moved there, to a quiet accompaniment of jingling bells.  Peering
closer, Harry could just make out several women.  They seemed to have been
engaged in a communal hair dressing session.  Six sets of black eyes, shining
in shadowed faces, were peering back at him, full of curiosity.

"One moment, Lord," said Clonhilden. "I'll just get the bath filled." She
moved around to the shadowed women, and gave curt orders.  A tiny smile
touched Harry's lips at the grumbling complaints that this provoked.  But
the smile vanished abruptly, to be replaced by surprise and scarlet cheeked
embarrassment, as two of the middle aged women advanced on him. Quite without
self-consciousness, they started pulling off his clothes.

"Oh!  I say!  Steady on!" Harry stammered out.  He tried to back away,
fending off the strong hands, and nimble fingers, attacking the buttons. The
women just looked annoyed, and made comments about the state of his
clothing.

 Warm water sloshed into the leathern bath.  Steam rose, filling up the
tent with a fragrant cloud of water vapour.

Harry backed into the wall of the tent.  His cheeks glowed bright scarlet
as one of the women reached for the fastenings of his trousers.  In
desperation, and rather more roughly than his usually gentlemanly manner, he
fended off the woman.

"I say!" he croaked.  "I say!"

The woman desisted from trying to debag him. She set hands on her broad hips,
and pursed her lips in obvious annoyance.  "Is something wrong, Lord?" she
asked.

"Eh..." gulped Harry.

"Look!  I have NOT got all night.  I want to go to the Festival as well, you
know!"

Another bucket of steaming water was emptied in the bath.  The sound
possessed a very final and inescapable quality to Harry Sullivan's ears.
 He swallowed again, pressing further back, making the yielding leather wall
bulge.  He held out his hands before him, in a pathetic gesture of defence.

"Well?" the woman demanded.  "Do you *want* a bath or not?  I haven't got
all night."


Harry began to stammer out something about privacy and decency; but the woman
was obviously not listening.  She began advancing on him again.


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Harry's cries of indignation reached as far as the main pavilion.  The Khan
broke off from an animated extolling of the long legged eastern wooly.
"...And the fleece- I say!  Is that your man?"

The Doctor, lounging negligently on a settle, arched an eyebrow.  His blue
eyes twinkled with merriment.  He nodded.  "Very possibly," he conceded.
"I imagine he's just suffered a little culture shock -  now...If you were
to cross the Curve Horn with..."

Demereen came in from the bed area.  She stood a moment watching them.
"Talking business, again!" she observed with mild disgust.  "Father, have you
no soul?  This is the Night of No Moons!  For the Goddess's sake!" She
flounced to a settle, flopped down on it, and glowered at the two men.

Father was a dear; but he could sometimes let his passion for sheep get the
better of him.  Sometimes, she thought his love of sheep almost rivalled his
love of the Kulak.  Where she might stand in his affections, she had long
felt, was a sheep best left unshorn.  With a little aggrieved sigh, she rose,
and retreated back into the dark recesses of the tent.

The air was thick with the sour smell of Kerd.  Demereen wrinkled her nose.
It was a powerful smell; but there was something that could be done about it.
She rummaged in a box, and lifted out a cut crystal bottle of perfume.  It
was her favourite scent, carefully hoarded for special occasions.  The
fragrance was distilled from the exotic flowers that only grew in the jungles
of the Southern Continent.  The perfume had to be imported at what her father
declared, loudly and often, to be: "ruinous!  utterly ruinous" cost, across
the inner sea.  It was the sole extravagance she was permitted.  It seemed a
shame to have to waste it on masking Kerd.

With a resigned shrug, Demereen crossed to the snoring woman.  She
un-stoppered the bottle and sprinkled a little of her precious store over the
woman's clothes.  Reaching up, she lifted the shutter of a lamp hanging over
the divan.  She splashed a few drops on the swollen glass belly.  Instantly,
the perfume, evaporating from the hot glass, filled the air with its exotic
fragrance.  The final few drops she emptied into the warm water in the tub,
before setting the bottle aside.

Taking her hair, Demereen wound it into a thick rope, tying it with a leather
thong.  She coiled the silken rope onto her head, and fastened it with a
couple of bone pins.  Slipping out of her work-a-day clothes, she let them
fall to the rugs.  Thoughtfully, she fingered the tiny whistle, dangling on
its thong, between her breasts.  Nothing could induce her to remove Kulaan's
Love Token, even for a bath.  She gathered it up and set the mouth-piece
between her lips, before stepping into the pleasantly warm water.  With a
sigh, she decorously arranged herself in the spacious tub, and took up a wad
of soft absorbent leather.  With slow strokes, she began laving water over
her self.

As she set the leathern sponge aside, and reached for a stone jar of scented
oils, a familiar tightening inside her head warned of the Shivan Witch's
presence.  Demereen peered around. "Shiv?" she called softly.

A shadow in a gloomy corner rippled.  The Shivan Witch was suddenly there,
bearing a flowing dress over her forearms.  The light-green silk shimmered
with a thousand hues, in the lambent light of the lamp. It was Demereen's
favourite.

"This will be perfect with the coral jerkin," Shiv observed.  The dumpy woman
made for the divan, meaning to lay out the dress there.  She halted abruptly
when she caught sight of the recumbent woman.

Shiv set the dress on a trunk, and trotted to the bed.  "Who is this?"

Demereen shook her head.  "I'm not certain.  We will be having guests for the
Festival.  The poor woman is one of them."

"Kerd!" Shiv exclaimed with distaste.

Demereen nodded with a wan smile.

Shiv leaned over Sarah, examining the comatose woman.  Irritation warred with
compassion in the sharp little face.   After satisfying herself that the
woman was not suffering undue distress, Shiv perched on the divan, and
watched Demereen bathing.

It would have been less painful to look elsewhere; but Shiv did not.

For Shiv, The stewardship of the Daughters of Terra was a life-long and holy
commitment.  So she set her jaw against the pang of bitter envy that wracked
her diminutive frame at beholding such a powerful promise of fruitfulness,
embodied by the ripe fullness, of Demereen's maturing body.  It was a mental
and physical torture for the little woman.  The weight of the long sterile
centuries endured, and yet to be endured, bore down with merciless ferocity
upon her soul.  In the shadowed light, the expression of agony on her face
passed unnoticed.

At last, Demereen stood up and took the towel Shiv held out.  She dried
herself.  Shiv, first, helped Demereen on with the dress.  Then she set about
dressing the long silken hair.  Her plump fingers were extraordinarily
nimble.  Even so, it took a long time to plat Demereen's hair with the
coloured leather strips and to adorn the braids with the silver coins on
their fine filaments of gold.  Shiv fussed, and fiddled, over the task until
it was just right.

Even after all that time, on returning to the main section, she found the two
men still engrossed in the methods and means of rearing sheep.  Listening,
she realised that the Doctor's knowledge of husbandry and sheep seemed to
rival that of her father.  She watched their animated faces in the lambent
light.  The strength of the two men seemed to shine through the skin from
some inner source, putting the light in the tent in shadow.

There came a bustling at the entrance.  Harry Sullivan stepped through.

The Doctor rose, grinning.  "How was the bath?" he asked with a frank
innocence that was almost painful.

If looks could have killed....

"You might have warned me," Harry said reproachfully.

The Doctor grinned, quite unabashed, and slapped him on the back.  "You look
absolutely splendid in those clothes, old chap!" he boomed.

And, indeed, Harry did.  A white shirt, all ruffles and laces with short
loose sleeves tied in at the elbow, was covered by a sheepskin jerkin.  This,
too, was sleeveless.  The jerkin had discrete fringes and an abstract pattern
of stitching in red brown and green.  There were large functional breast
pockets.  On the right was a stylized shepherd's crook, on the left, an eagle
with half spread wings, the family totem of the Kharran Clan.  Loose leather
trousers were tucked into calf length riding boots with large ornamental
brass buckles.  He looked dashing.  That was the only word for it, dashing,
in a roguish, piratical way.

Clonhilden looked him up and down, approval and speculation glinting in her

black eyes.  The Khan watched her, smiling an amused, indulgent smile, but
one that was coloured ever so slightly by a proprietorial
generosity. It was the smile of a man who knows that he is the better man in
the eyes of the lady.

However, Clonhilden's frank appraisal of Harry niggled at his complacent
self-possession.  Kharran Khan frowned, an brushed thoughtfully at his
moustache.  Perhaps he *ought* to have found time from his business affairs
to arrange that formal attachment he was always meaning to get round to?  By
the Goddess! Got up in all that gaudy, the fellow looked like he might mount
a real challenge for the lady's affections.

He cleared his throat.  "Are we ready?" It seemed they were.  "Right, then!
I'll just round up the rest of the flock who's coming, and we'll be trotting
along to the Gather.  Wouldn't want to miss the start of the parade."

Demereen held out a hand.  In a shadowed corner, a patch of gloom shimmered
as the Shivan Witch cast of the Glamour.  She trotted over to Demereen's
side, and took the proffered hand.

The Doctor drew back the flap.  The party stepped through into the summer dim
of the Night of No Moons.  The warm breath of Holy Mother blew steadily.  It
was scented with the fragrance of summer blooming flowers, the smells of
cooking, and cloyed with the odors of her people.  It rustled about among the
tents, noisy with music, the hubbub of excited voices, and the cries of the
ubiquitous livestock.

The Kulak were at festival.

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The Khan's party progressed effortlessly through the milling throng of
festival goers, courtesy of the Shivan Witch.  She padded along behind the
Khan's entourage, looking for all the world like a tiny tug boat in the wake
of a great liner.  She was looking all about at the happy throngs of people,
her bright eyes wide, drinking in all the happiness of the Sons and Daughters
of Terra, on this most special of all nights.  Their wild gayety was a salve
to the burden of the sterile centuries which soiled her soul with ennui.

At one point, the Khan's entourage merged with the party of another Lord of
the Kulak.  Their two spaces merged to form a larger open area, encircled by
a milling throng of the People.  Shiv was joined by another Witch, attached
to this Lord's Clan. The two stocky women embraced fondly,  then strolled
along hand in hand, talking softly, their sing song tones drowned in the
happy hubbub.

As the merged party entered Temple Plaza, at the western end, the two
Clans began to disentangle their respective members, sorting themselves into
two distinct groups once more.  Unfortunately for Harry and the Doctor, a
spontaneous circle dance broke out in the midst of the two Clans.  In the
ensuing melee, when the dance lost cohesion and collapsed, the Doctor and
Harry got separated from the Khan's group, and were left behind. Demereen,
too, got separated, but with far more dire consequences.

Noticing her charge was missing, Shiv grew concerned.  She began to cast
around in the crowd, growing frantic when she could detect no sign of
Demereen.

At that exact moment, Demereen was but a few yards distant.  She was backing
away from three dark forms, which had moved from the shadows between two
pavilions.  As the three closed on her, she looked desperately over her
shoulder, seeking a gap in the milling throngs of happy people through which
she might escape the unwanted attention of the three men.

"Well now!  What have we got here?" Grimlak exclaimed.  He advanced from the
shadows, drawing taunt the leather thong wound about his hands.

The tall young man grinned wolfishly.  "Well met, Lady," he gloated.  "Well
met indeed.  And not a sign of that damned Witch?"

Demereen drew her skinning knife.  The smile on Grimlak's face deepened with
amusement.  "Ah.  Spirited - I like to see spirit in a wife of mine.  It
makes for an interesting nuptials." He arched an eyebrow in speculation and
licked his lips.

Demereen held the blade ready.  She put on her best contemptuous sneer.  The
mass of thronging people around them gave her more self-confidence than was
really warranted.  She observed quietly, her voice dripping scorn: "it would
take a real man to enjoy me properly - to get an heir on me.  They do say
that you couldn't even get your bastards on the Goddess herself."

The mad light which flamed in his eyes caused Demereen to take a step back,
sudden fear clutching at the pit of her stomach.  In grim silence, Grimlak
advanced on her, a hot house of suppressed fury.

Demereen backed up another step, and collided with Shiv.  The Witch stood
with arms folded, her countenance stern. Demereen let out a little whimper of
relief, and hastily moved around behind the little woman.

Eyeing Grimlak with distaste, Shiv told Demereen to: "Go child!  I *shall*
deal with this sheep tick.  I have a way with lice."

Demereen needed no second telling.  She sheathed the knife, and edged away
into the crowd.  Grimlak watched her leave, his face a mask of impotent fury.
When the press of people had closed in behind the Khan's daughter, he bent a
look of insane hatred on the Shivan Witch.

"Verminous bitch!" he snarled.

Shiv regarded him coldly, studying his angry face, as though marking him in
her long, long memory.  Then she switched her gaze to one of the young men at
Grimlak's back.  A sad look came over her sharp features. She shook her head
in regret and disappointment.

"Must you serve this dog, Bryllaan?" she inquired gently.

The Young man grew ill at ease.  His jaw set grim.  "I am bonded by law and
custom of the Kulak to the service of the Lord." he said.

Shiv nodded,  satisfied with Bryllaan's answer. "Then keep your oath,
Bondsman Bryllaan," she said.  "You are a good man.  It pains me to see you
in service to this dog."

Grimlak snarled.  "You think to delay me while your little Demereen runs
bleating like a lamb back to her father, and that ridiculous little whelp she
has set her braids for?"

"This is so, *Lord* and there is naught you can do to..."

At that precise moment the summons came.

Such power it had that she rocked back on her heels.  It's power to command
was absolute.  The need could not be denied.  She would have to go.  No
Shivan Witch could refuse that summons.  No matter that, in answering the
call, she must abandon Demereen to the un-tender mercies of Grimlak. The
whole of her kind had responded thus, all down the long ages of their
stewardship of the Daughters of Terra.  Response to the summons was ingrained
deep in their souls.

She pointed a stubby finger right into Grimlak's face.  In a voice that
rose hackles all down the necks of everyone in hearing range, she warned:
"Leave the lady be, Grimlak Vilian Khan! Or by the Goddess! I shall
personally see to the withering of your manhood!"

 With that dire warning given, she spun into the glamour, and flew away down
the avenue in the crowd which opened magically before her.

Grimlak was only momentarily taken aback by the vehemence of the little
woman's curse.  This was a stroke of the purest luck; he did not intend to
waste it. Smiling darkly, he pulled the leather thong taunt, and
began searching the crowd for Demereen.

At his back, Bryllaan bit his lip.  He fingered the hilt of the skinning
knife, and imagined jamming it right down the throat of the tiger head totem
stitched to the back of Grimlak's jerkin.  The fellow at his side laid a
cautionary hand on his arm.  Their eyes locked in a tense unspoken dialogue.
The Goddess held her breath; but the moment passed; and with a little noise
of disgust deep in his throat, Bryllaan shoved the knife back in the worked
leather sheath.  They set off after the Lord.

In all conscience,  he could do nothing to prevent this odious Bride Questing
of his Bond Lord; but by the Good Goddess! he would do his very best to make
the lady Demereen's ordeal as easy as possible.


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